2005 Chevy Colorado: The beginning of a long road.

In reply to Knurled:

It has a 4000 pound tow rating. The Abomination is 1700 and my trailer is 1100.

16 days in.

Best tank, just a touch over 22, 75/25 hwy/town . Worst tank, 18.2, all in town.

I had to put tires on it today. The ones on it were cracking in the tread. I went with Firestone Destination ATs. They might cost me a little in fuel economy, but the AT tires are nice to have on job sites and dirt roads.

I'm getting used to the way the engine sounds. I still love the way it runs.

They sound great with a Hooker Aerochamber and otherwise stock exhaust, but probably not the sound you're looking for in a work truck.

Just checked my last tank. 50/50 hwy/city. A little better than 26 mi/US gallon. That's with a header, exh, tune, 4.10 gears, and I don't drive with an eye toward economy.

Update time.

The company signage has been added.

I'm about 3000 miles in. Best tank is still about 22. The worst tank dropped to 15.6. That was towing my 16' tandem trailer, loaded with doors or scrap. My average is still 20.

The little thing tows like a charm. It has more than enough power to move several thousand pounds around.

My only issues so far are a burned blower resister and plug.

Still a great little truck.

Another issue this week.

I've been hearing the tell tale squeak of a bad universal joint. I stopped by a shop yesterday to get a price on fixing it. They wanted $395.00. Even though I hate working on daily drivers, for that kind of money, I'll do it myself. So I did. I picked up $20 in U-joints and swapped them in this morning in about an hour. I was surprised it was the front joint at the transmission, that was bad. That's a first for me. Every other one I've done, was the joint at the rear axle.

Other than that, the fuel mileage is still above 20 most tanks. I still love the little engine. The transmission must be getting used to the way I drive, or I've gotten use to the way it shifts, it's gotten better. Great little truck. I'll check back in in a month or two.

Keep an eye on those leaf springs, they are known for breakage. Hate to see something bad happen

3 months, 6500 miles. Best tank is up to 22.7, worst is still 15.6. The trucks are saving me a little over $100 a month in fuel costs. I did have to do rear brakes on the other truck. Over all I'd give them a 9 out of 10.

I had the tint guy help them out a bit. 20% on the front windows, 5% on the back. Much better.

3/14/16, 146000 miles.

We are 5 months and 18K miles in now. Still a great little truck. It runs flawlessly, drives good, rides good.

I just finished changing the rear shoes and drums. They are stupid easy other than the emergency brake cable.

Best tank has moved up to 23.4, worst is still 15.6 towing.

I did have the oil pressure alarm, on the other truck go off, but I think it was crap in the pressure bypass. An oil and filter change seems to have taken care of it. That was 3000+ miles ago, so I'm going to call it a non issue.

I honestly can't think of anything that I don't like about them now.

I'll update again if things change.

If you ever get bored or need new work trucks you could always do this: http://ls1tech.com/forums/forced-induction/1793704-sloppy-05-colorado-6-0-7875-80e-8-8-11-2-122-7psi-then-i-made-mistake-lol.html

Had a friend with a 4 door 5 cyl 4wd. He had it for 2 years and replaced the blower resistor about 6 times.

In the end he got rid if it because his wifes Silverado got better gas mileage with a small v8 in it......marvel at that lol

I bought a 2011 extended cab 5 cyl and am happy so far. Worlds better than the Ranger it replaced. Decent mileage and lots of torque.

So, yesterday afternoon I get a call that the other truck is misfiring. No big deal, dump a can of Seafoam in it and bring it in. By the time I looked at it this morning, it's dropped a cylinder.

Codes show a misfire on #4 so we throw a set of plugs in it. 4 of the 5 were only finger tight, and one, #4, looked like this.

That's not good.

New plugs didn't help. Still dropping a cylinder. Time for a compression check to see if the missing plug parts broke something. All cylinders are between 185 and 200. Not to bad for 195K miles. The coils have been shuffled, the codes cleared and it's back on the road to see what code it sets next.

More to come.

Yep. Problem solved. I'll give them this much. They are easy to work on.

Seems like crap gas and detonation happened on top of possibly never changed plugs.

Nitroracer wrote: If you ever get bored or need new work trucks you could always do this: http://ls1tech.com/forums/forced-induction/1793704-sloppy-05-colorado-6-0-7875-80e-8-8-11-2-122-7psi-then-i-made-mistake-lol.html

Damn you. time to look through 41 pages of near-awesome sauce.....

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine:

Sorry to threat hijack a bit, but my uncle recently got that exact red diesel Colorado shown in the pic on page 2. It looks great, and he really likes it so far.

Toyman01 wrote: Yep. Problem solved. I'll give them this much. They are easy to work on.

Got one with the timing chain jumped a tooth. If you want to take the front cover off, all you have to do is remove the valvecover first. In order to remove the valvecover the whole intake manifold needs to come off. But once you do that all you have to worry about is removing the oil pan. Long story short, the job pays over 16 hours for a reason. I'm not completely thrilled.

belteshazzar wrote:

Toyman01 wrote: Yep. Problem solved. I'll give them this much. They are easy to work on.

Got one with the timing chain jumped a tooth. If you want to take the front cover off, all you have to do is remove the valvecover first. In order to remove the valvecover the whole intake manifold needs to come off. But once you do that all you have to worry about is removing the oil pan. Long story short, the job pays over 16 hours for a reason. I'm not completely thrilled.

And the intake bolts are completely blind to get a wobble socket on to them.

Have you seen the starter location? Even after I've taken everything out of the way, and am looking directly at it, i can barely tell it's there. Hope that never fails.

Heaviest load to date.

Two 12 X 12 door packages. About 1000 pounds of aluminum on my 16' trailer.

Never missed a lick. This tank was part towing, part highway and got 19.2 mpg.

belteshazzar wrote: Got one with the timing chain jumped a tooth. If you want to take the front cover off, all you have to do is remove the valvecover first. In order to remove the valvecover the whole intake manifold needs to come off. But once you do that all you have to worry about is removing the oil pan. Long story short, the job pays over 16 hours for a reason. I'm not completely thrilled.

Well you don't have to take the intake manifold OFF, if it is anything like the 6 cylinder. It seems the first place the valve cover leaks is into the spark plug wells.

Now, power steering lines, those well and truly suck, and have a 100% failure rate over five-six years...

I had a couple of weird things happen today.

I filled the truck up this morning and when I started it a loud bang and a cloud of smoke rolled out from under the hood. I thought the battery had exploded. A under hood inspection showed nothing obviously wrong so I tried to start it again. It started fine but ran like crap and was hissing from under the plenum. Turns out, it blew the PCV piping apart. Other than that, it ran fine all day. I'm not sure why that happened.

Then, on the way home, the passenger side turn signal fell out and smacked the side of the fender hard enough to make me think I hit something. I had to wedge a piece of rubber into the clip to get it to snap back in.

Just a weird day.

I always thought the Colorados were cool little trucks. I always keep an eye out on Autotrader and Cars for the unicorn crew cab 2wd 4 banger manual trans.

We are right at 6 months and 22K miles into ownership. That's about 3600 miles a month. Still a great little truck. It has done everything asked of it with very few issues.

On average, I'm getting just shy of 21 MPG. Drives good, rides fair, economical, and cheap. What more can you ask for.

I'll post again if anything changes.