Shopping for a Tahoe

[Daddy_O]

Hello Everyone,

I have been thinking of picking up a used Tahoe as an extra vehicle to pull my jet skis, do Home Depot runs, tote my soon-to-be college age kids and their stuff back and forth to school, etc. At the moment, I have got my eye on a 2005 Z71 with about 160K miles.

I was hoping the community here might be able to tell me any deep, dark secrets about the Tahoes from this generation. Do they have any particular reliability issues? Are there specific things I should look for when I am checking out the truck? I still see a lot of them on the road, and the “mileage†thread in this forum has a lot of success stories in it, but I figured I’d ask here in case there’s something important. For example, what is up with the “transfer case encoder motor�

Thanks!

 

[JoshM]

My 2004 Z71 has right under 170k miles on it now. We've owned it for 3.5 years and 30k miles.

When we first got it I did a full tune up.

Around 10k miles ago I had to replace the transfer case. Something on the inside wore a hole to the outside. Seems to be fairly common for the ~2000-2006 Tahoes, Suburbans, Silverados and their GMC counterparts. This wasn't something I wanted to tackle myself, so I paid a shop a little under $2,000 with tax and labor.

About 500 miles ago I replaced the shocks.

Next weekend I'll be tackling the brakes.

Other than that, oil and fuel changes.

There's no other SUV I'd trade it for.

 

[Daddy_O]

Thanks for your response.