[444turbodiesel]

I am not expecting it to run at 100% forever, but 5 to 6 minutes is far from forever. I take issue with your assessment of cooling systems too, I have run them at 100% and a properly designed system will dissipate 100% of the heat it produces no matter how long it runs at 100%. If not the designers either cut corners or miscalculated.

I didn't get a settlement, they lost in court and were ORDERED to pay. Big difference.

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No cooling system in a LD truck will dissapate all engine heat at 100% duty cycle in ALL conditions. Ambient temperature, road speed, airflow through the radiator are all very important variables. Not to mention the condition of the cooling system itself, as well as the transmission's condition (most overheat issues start in the auto transmission) LD trucks are rated to tow under ideal conditions with X% margin for error/extreme conditions. GM might not have allowed enough margin for the extreme condition you threw at it, but 99.999% of owners aren't going to deliberately abuse (the load in question could have certainly been considered abuse, and that's without mentioning how far over the limit you were on the rear hitch oke: ) and overheat their trucks just to prove a point.

If you had the same results pulling a 5th wheel while grossing 18K or less, I'd say you had a serious beef, but not with the load in the video.

If GM wanted to waste more litigation $$$ they could have certainly appealed the decision (and won, or drug it out long enough to run you off), they let you have $35K just to cut losses. The only thing you won was the battle of persistance; if there was truly a design flaw, lawyers would be flocking to make a class action suit out of it.

 

[diesel dan]

opcorn:

 

[TxChristopher]

No cooling system in a LD truck will dissapate all engine heat at 100% duty cycle in ALL conditions. Ambient temperature, road speed, airflow through the radiator are all very important variables. Not to mention the condition of the cooling system itself, as well as the transmission's condition (most overheat issues start in the auto transmission) LD trucks are rated to tow under ideal conditions with X% margin for error/extreme conditions. GM might not have allowed enough margin for the extreme condition you threw at it, but 99.999% of owners aren't going to deliberately abuse (the load in question could have certainly been considered abuse, and that's without mentioning how far over the limit you were on the rear hitch oke: ) and overheat their trucks just to prove a point.

If you had the same results pulling a 5th wheel while grossing 18K or less, I'd say you had a serious beef, but not with the load in the video.

If GM wanted to waste more litigation $$$ they could have certainly appealed the decision (and won, or drug it out long enough to run you off), they let you have $35K just to cut losses. The only thing you won was the battle of persistance; if there was truly a design flaw, lawyers would be flocking to make a class action suit out of it.

It was right at $30,500 I wish it were $35k! They were not capable of dragging it out long enough or running me off, and they were not capable of winning, nor would they desire more attention over this than need be.

It was a gooseneck, not a rear hitch. I was way under capacity according the the Texas Department of Transportation. I can go 26k and be legal, as in legal by real laws, but I stayed under GM's 22k limit set for the truck so they wouldn't cry about it.

We told them if they wanted to appeal to go ahead, we would file a class action suit. They declined. There was another guy that joined my suit by the way, he accepted a $6500 settlement and I continued on to hearing. If they appealed, we had a federal case ready to go, they will not risk a District Judge ruling that they take ALL the trucks back and fix them, which if a Federal Court District Judge orders that they would be forced to do even if they appealed. It may scare YOU to take on a big company, it doesn't bother ME a bit, especially when the evidence is all on my side. My lawyer wanted to make it a bigger case, but I instructed him to get me the fastest resolution, so he did. If someone wants to make a big case I can hook them up with my attorney, but it takes two years to get in front of a federal judge, so be ready to wait.

It wasn't to prove a point, it was to display the flaw, and yes, there is a flaw in the LLY cooling system. You don't have to load it like I did for the problem to show up, plenty overheat with 12k RV's out back. I don't have huge mountains within 1,000 miles and I don't have an RV so I created a load that compensated for my lack of mountains and them dragging their feet into winter where the highest temp available was very low 90's for two days.

I have an 06 GMC Canyon that I loaded to TWICE its tow capacity and ran it at 100% for over 30 minutes in 95* heat to compare to the Duramax. Results: The highest temp I could manage was 214* which I achieved by cheating it, driving it like nobody would in the real world, which meant flooring it from 20 mph up to 70 mph then slamming on the brakes straight back to 20 mph to take away the cooling of the airflow and the water pump and fan rpm. Doing this repeatedly BARELY got it to 214*. Otherwise floored forever it maintained 203*-205* and never skipped a beat. It never even went to its clutch fan the entire time, it had plenty of thermal capacity to spare. The Duramax towing the exact same load I can get to 240* in 5 minutes. You telling me a Canyon can out tow a Duramax? So the statement about an LD truck not being able to have more cooling than heat output is flat out incorrect, because some do.

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[TxChristopher]

....... Pulling an over-weight, over-dimension load would easily overheat my 525hp Cummins if I was foolish enough to keep it floored to try to maintain speed 100% of the time, even though the load was under my truck's designed (120,000#) weight limit the additional drag from the over-dimension put even my Kenworth's cooling system over it's duty cycle design limit.

There was not a single measurement of that load that made it over dimension. It was less than 14' tall which is the legal limit and less than 8 feet wide, and the GCWR was under 22k as set by GM and way under the 26k set by the state. The trailer had two 10k axles so it was way under limits. Every aspect of the load was legal both by state laws and by the ratings GM sets. They were provided with certified scale tickets and I had pictures and video of the truck being scaled. I actually was forced to move the uhaul back on the trailer because it initially put me over on the GVWR and the rear axle rating, it was much closer to the truck at first. I was concerned the state boys might stop me and weigh me and I didn't wanna hassle with tickets.

I wouldn't have wasted my time giving them such an easy out as the load being illegitimate.

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[Guest]

I can believe that you had not overloaded that truck. If you are going to go through all that trouble in court, I agree why give them an easy out.

 

[Guest]

I think we can stick a fork in this one, we hate to do it here, but this thread its taking too much time to watch.

 

[TxChristopher]

Addendum to O-heat video

Perhaps this can be added to the end of the overheat video thread?

I took these pics a couple days ago on I-10 west coming into Houston just for the darned naysayers out there who cried saying my load in the video was bogus because I had the uhaul on there backwards and that nobody ever tows loads like that.

I agree, my load was ridiculous since I should have gone with a portable building like this guy since it is FAR more drag then my puny uhaul ever thought of being! :damnit

By the way, I talked to the guy, he says the temp on that old beater Chevy stays normal when he tows portable buildings which he does all the time cause he does it for a living, even in 100* Houston summer heat at freeway speeds and his fan NEVER runs. Go figure. :Thumbup:

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