[TxChristopher]

then how is this connected to overheating LLY's, and that video of load induced ECT rise? :shrug:

Because I told them the truck overheated when worked hard. They denied that LLY's overheat ever, denied warranty to repair the engine, and folded up their tents and ran away leaving me with a dead engine.

So we went to war, since YES they do overheat, and overheating is what caused the original blown head gasket. Basically they tried to screw me, and they ended up getting the shaft over it.

Had they just fixed the darned truck the first time when I called them to pick it up, I would not have sued. I would have taken the truck repaired and moved on. But they take a hard line when you mention overheating.

ALL LLY's overheat. Period. Anyone can beat them in court on this if they want. You all paid big $$$$ for a machine touted to be a tow master, "get the bigger trailer", "built like a rock" and all that mumbo jumbo. If it can't perform as advertised, then you shouldn't have to pay full price for it. Thats called reduced value, that what the objective of our suit was.

.

 

[killerbee]

overheating is what caused the original blown head gasket.
.

How much weight were you pulling when this happened? opcorn:

 

[TheBac]

Not exactly, GM to this day still denies there is a problem with LLY's overheating. Even though they have PI's and TSB's and have bought back countless trucks and paid cash hush money to who knows how many owners, they deny the problem exists.

At the hearing they claimed my truck was the first LLY Duramax that they had EVER heard of that overheated. It pissed me off, but then we just whipped out all the GM documents that discussed overheating and possible fixes for it. Every last document of course was dated well before I brought my truck in for repair, and my attorney did a great job of explaining and getting their engineer to explain that it is a long process of many customer complaints, testing and feedback that causes repair documents to be generated to the dealers. They don't just all of a sudden issue TSB's, they first have lots of complaints and they look at it and then send out what the think the fix is in the TSB to all the service departments.

To be honest, they made themselve look stupid trying to take that tack of there not being a problem, the judge even was incredulous :shrug: at that since they had so many internal documents talking about it.

We expected them to deny the overheating issue in the LLY trucks, that has been the stand they have taken for over two years now. Admitting it would put them on the hook to fix all the LLY trucks, they don't want to do that, so they take on each person case by case.

.

You'd think that GM would have tested the LLY with over-max weight and under extreme conditions to make sure it worked as advertised.

As for a recall, look at what just happened to Toyota and the "oil sludge" issues in their 99-02 vehicles. Customers won the class-action suit against Toyota for engine repairs. Assuming its the head design thats mainly causing the issues (programming, inadeq. cooling system, air intake, etc helping...), think if GM had to have a new head design made up for all of the O/H LLYs....talk about huge costs. We all know the bean-counters decided that its cheaper to weather a few lawsuits than pay everybody affected....



A bit-off-topic, but with EFI out now, can you look at the programming differences in the power levels between the LLY and LB7 and see if there's something there? Did anyone try running LB7-type programming (and power levels) in an O/H LLY to see what happens?

 

[killerbee]

A bit-off-topic, but with EFI out now, can you look at the programming differences in the power levels between the LLY and LB7 and see if there's something there? Did anyone try running LB7-type programming (and power levels) in an O/H LLY to see what happens?

Yes, but the long answer would be more than a bit off topic. The culpable differences between the 2 models are found in the forced induction mechanism.

 

[TheBac]

How much weight were you pulling when this happened? opcorn:

Why would this matter? Previous towing cycles could have started the problem. Whether or not someone was towing when an O/H incident happened, the big picture is that it DID happen. From all that has been described for the past couple years, just towing a simple TT could make this happen in certain trucks. Thats the point.

Hell, I'd be wayyyyy more concerned if it happened WITHOUT a load on it.

 

[TheBac]

Yes, but the long answer would be more than a bit off topic. The culpable differences between the 2 models are found in the forced induction mechanism.

Thanks. So you also looked at the VVT. Understandable. OK, back to the video.....LOL

 

[hhrecovery]

WOW... Congrats to you TX for taking this as far as you did and winning. I can't say that I blame you one bit.

I have to agree w/ everyone else though and say that it is crazy that GM isn't ponying up and fixing the issue on everyone truck. If people can figure out the problem and find a way to solve it looks like they would pony up and do a recall on all the trucks and fix them :shrug:

 

[TheBac]

WOW... Congrats to you TX for taking this as far as you did and winning. I can't say that I blame you one bit.

I have to agree w/ everyone else though and say that it is crazy that GM isn't ponying up and fixing the issue on everyone truck. If people can figure out the problem and find a way to solve it looks like they would pony up and do a recall on all the trucks and fix them :shrug:

Well, that goes back to the bean-counters. Say it costs $5K in shop time and parts to fix a few hundred thousand vehicles (LLY in 04-05's)...then its in GMs best interests to just whether the occasional person with gumption to sue them. Cheaper that way.
Most people would give up wayyyy before it gets to court, and just sell the truck to some other unsuspecting person.

Give you another example. The instrument clusters in the 2003-04 trucks are starting to screw up due to bad stepper motors. This would affect ALL GM trucks, not just diesels. Now, start to add up all those Tahoes, Yukons, Escalades (you get the picture)......just recalling them would be an incredible expense, not to mention clusters wouldnt be available. There are TSBs and historys behind this now. GM would rather "keep it quiet" and have to repay the occasional stubborn person. They like to see most people just give up and pay $360 for a new cluster or $120 for someone outside GM to fix it, than have to go through a huge recall.


As with everything to do with GM, it all comes down to money. Never whats right.

 

[killerbee]

Why would this matter?

I would think everyone would like to know how to avoid blowing a duramax head gasket, I know I would.


10,000 lbs, 15,000lbs...?

 

[TxChristopher]

An aside: without names, you heard the voice of the guy on the cell phone. As a professional driver he is the king of overheating the Dmax, even LB7's. His motto is "time is money", with the record for the most TPS experience past 90%. So when his overloaded son was on the side of a hill puking, his advice to him was "just put it to the wood, if it's going to overheat, it's going to overheat". Thus his son overheated 6 times on the same grade that afternoon. I wouldn't want to be spreading that story around... My point is not to berate, but point out, common sense somewhat prevails for those that acknowledge the limitations in the physical world around them.

As another asside, it was NOT Rick D Lance on the phone in the video as you wrongly are insinuating. It was another Dmax owner who overheats towing his RV up long grades in high outside temps. But not knowing who it was sure didn't stop you from asserting publicly here on this board for all the world to see that neither Rick nor his son have any common sense. WTF????? :shrug:

I dunno who has less common sense, the man that pushes his truck to overheating because it is supposed to tow a certain load without issue, or the idiot who comments about someone else when he doesn't know who it is he is commenting about. :damnit

The point of your spew above was to insult Rick, nothing else, mission accomplished, congrats to you! :Thumbup:

.

 

[TheBac]

I would think everyone would like to know how to avoid blowing a duramax head gasket, I know I would.


10,000 lbs, 15,000lbs...?

Oh yeah, we all would...definitely.

But then, for example, if you had an 01 Dmax, its just one of those things that happens. Bad gasket design that GM revised. Again, they aren't fixing ALL of those engines, just the ones that go bad under the 100,000 mile warranty. Hush hush

If you add lots more power to your truck, in the form of a huge turbo, or add mega fuel, or use big amounts of nitrous or water/meth, then its a risk. But then, you'd kind of expect that if you were upping power to those levels.

Nothing is guaranteed. None of us are Nostradomus, so we can't predict that kind of thing. Just look at the Ford guys with the early 6.0......they didn't know either if they got a 6Leaker or a decent motor. LIke I said, I'd be wayyyy more concerned if the engine O/H at a lower weight than at a higher one, as the expectations of it are much less.

 

[TxChristopher]

You'd think that GM would have tested the LLY with over-max weight and under extreme conditions to make sure it worked as advertised.

As for a recall, look at what just happened to Toyota and the "oil sludge" issues in their 99-02 vehicles. Customers won the class-action suit against Toyota for engine repairs. Assuming its the head design thats mainly causing the issues (programming, inadeq. cooling system, air intake, etc helping...), think if GM had to have a new head design made up for all of the O/H LLYs....talk about huge costs. We all know the bean-counters decided that its cheaper to weather a few lawsuits than pay everybody affected....



A bit-off-topic, but with EFI out now, can you look at the programming differences in the power levels between the LLY and LB7 and see if there's something there? Did anyone try running LB7-type programming (and power levels) in an O/H LLY to see what happens?

They might have tested it with above max weight. I am sure they did. You are missing the same thing they missed: wind drag

GM usually tows flat trailers with concrete blocks and such on them for testing, or aerodynamic round nose horse trailers and such that are not tall. They don't test with 13' tall 8' wide RV's that I know of. If someone has seen otherwise, speak up.

The wind drag causes much more power to be used to maintain speed than the weight does. This is why there are so many differences between owners on whether LLY's overheat, that and terrain of course. It takes way less power to pull a flat trailer with a bobcat on it weighing 12,000 pounds up a grade at 60 MPH than it does to pull a full frontal RV weighing the same 12,000 pounds.

So the RV guy overheats, the equipment towing guy maybe just gets a little hot, but claims he is "not an overheater". Of course he claims that, he doesn't WANT to be a dreaded "overheater". But put a high drag load behind his truck and he will overheat the same as the other guy.

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[TheBac]

Thanks. You are right, wind resistance would add even more strain to the system. GM should test real-world conditions, not just "hey, it can tow XXXXX pounds".***



*** (but only if you have a trailer no higher than the truck itself)

 

[TxChristopher]

Well, that goes back to the bean-counters. Say it costs $5K in shop time and parts to fix a few hundred thousand vehicles (LLY in 04-05's)...then its in GMs best interests to just whether the occasional person with gumption to sue them. Cheaper that way.
Most people would give up wayyyy before it gets to court, and just sell the truck to some other unsuspecting person.

Give you another example. The instrument clusters in the 2003-04 trucks are starting to screw up due to bad stepper motors. This would affect ALL GM trucks, not just diesels. Now, start to add up all those Tahoes, Yukons, Escalades (you get the picture)......just recalling them would be an incredible expense, not to mention clusters wouldnt be available. There are TSBs and historys behind this now. GM would rather "keep it quiet" and have to repay the occasional stubborn person. They like to see most people just give up and pay $360 for a new cluster or $120 for someone outside GM to fix it, than have to go through a huge recall.


As with everything to do with GM, it all comes down to money. Never whats right.

Steering shaft is the same deal, it would cost them way too much $$$ to design a new shaft solution then bring in all fullsize trucks, tahoes, suburbans, yukons, escalades etc etc built since like 1999 or whenever the exact start of the production of this shaft was. So they keep it on a case by case basis.

The overheating costs way more per truck than the shaft to rectify, they will never recall the trucks to fix them.

.

 

[TheBac]

Exactly.

 

[TxChristopher]

Could this not become large enough for a class action lawsuit against GM? I am a Dodge guy myself and just reading this thread, but it appears to me that it is a obvious problem and GM is only dealing with it as they come instead of doing some sort of recall which would be the proper thing to do.

It could easily be a class action suit. However, class action lawsuits take a lot of time and money to press. I have the money, I don't have the time. I have 3 attorneys, the one that handled this case is a board certified consumer law attorney. He handles cases in federal court all the time. He advised me that I could get big damages in federal court if we proved the overheating defect, but that it would likely take two years or more to get to trial. I told him I wanted the fastest resolution we could get, so we sued in a lesser way.

However, if they had balked at paying the judgement, and they acted like they might in the end since they were ordered to pay within 30 days and took all 30 to pay up, then we were ready to file the federal case. He already had it drafted up in case. GM decided to just let it go and move on, I would say thats a good decision on their part.

If they had not paid, we would be talking about the Class Action LLY Duramax Overheating case that would be in progress right now.

.

 

[killerbee]

Hmmmm. As I reread this thread, it occurs to me that you never state that you were towing anything! Did the truck overheat empty?

I mean I have no problem with that, just curious. I seem to remember some posts by you back in 05, you couldn't overheat the truck, regardless of what you tried. I'm confused. Did it start overheating all of a sudden?

Could you clear up this small point please?

 

[TxChristopher]

I just came across this video on streetfire.....I realize that lly's overheat, but I never dreamed it would be this bad. Not to count this idiot behind the wheel not stopping and at least doing something about it, or even letting the truck cool off. I just cant believe that someone would keep driving arrogantly just to prove a point. :nunu: And the idiot wonders why it went into limp mode.....http://videos.streetfire.net/category/Trucks^^Offroad/1/b108e8c2-25df-4054-8090-98af013f4333.htm

Ok, thats funny, and what you said is true, but not if you take into account the entire point of the video was to show in court that the truck will overheat if worked hard. If you slow down, or let off, or stop, it won't overheat, and you will not win your overheat case. Make sense?

Also, I didn't wonder why it went into limp mode, I knew exactly why. I was very low on fuel and was done video'ing already. But as I crested the hill right before that, it limped, so I grabbed the camera, played it to the hilt, and added it to the overheat video especially since it also allowed me to get in conversation with another Dmax owner talking about problems with his truck. Since I was so low on fuel it likely briefly uncovered the fuel pickup and threw the 1093. It wasn't because of the overheating or the fuel temp or anything else. But it was useful for painting a picture of a POS truck for a judge. :Thumbup:

If you still don't want to believe that someone would keep driving arrogantly to prove a point, I have over 30,000+ excellent reasons why. LOL

.

 

[Guest]

I need to make this point here. From reading this thread...I've learned a bunch about the LLY's, and some really good info has come out. That I'm thankful for.

KB...I believe that at the beginning of the video it shows him hooking up the trailer with the Uhaul. To me...since it was seen...it was understood that Yes...he's towing something to achieve the overheating. The little jabs and nit-picking can stop at any time. I would really like to keep the useful information flowing here. If I ever do get another truck...its information like this that is incredibly useful.

Thanks
Dave

 

[killerbee]

Dave, you missed the point. The video has nothing to do with how he trashed his truck. But stay tuned it may become more clear.