ANY UPDATES HERE
ANY UPDATES HERE
Looks like you found a solution, eh?
I'll post an update next week, but you are correct I no longer have the car (or any daily driver for that matter) and it feels awesome!
Wooooohooooo! Congrats!
[rubbing hands together]
I can't wait for the story on this one!
DWNSHFT said:[rubbing hands together]
I can't wait for the story on this one!
Indeed!
Im excited to hear this.
Gas in the oil will richen the fuel mix because it will draw the fuel vapors in the PCV causing the computer to pull fuel in the trim.
Then the car is driven far enough to pull most of the fuel out of the oil and it starts stumbling on the lean trim.
HOW is the fuel getting in the oil?
I'd guess a leaky injector or regulator. Easy and cheap enough to shotgun.
Instead of complaining about a driveability issue, I'd be screaming about gas in the oil. The driveability issue will likely be fixed when the gas in the oil is fixed.
Gas in the oil will kill that motor quickly. If it was a flat tappet motor it would already be well on it's way to the grave.
bentwrench said:I'd guess a leaky injector or regulator. Easy and cheap enough to shotgun.
Not on a direct injected engine.
In reply to bentwrench :
The fuel in the oil is coming from the DI system. Just a known side effect to how it works. Curious that it’s accepted with DI, but not for PFI.
And there really isn’t a fuel pressure regulator, it’s controlled by the high pressure pump.
Did the Camero assplode?
[just giving you a hard time
]
Here's the update:
After triple digit number of days in service over a 8 month period, I no longer have the car. I was able to sell the car to the dealership (basically a trade without buying a different vehicle). I couldn't in good conscience sell the vehicle to an individual. Additionally, this would have meant I needed to pay sales tax (13% here!) and essentially lose it. I had no issues with GM taking it back, or selling it to a dealership that was part of the process. GM dealerships alone (other than the leasee) are able to buy directly from GM Financial. I was able to get a strong wholesale value for the car, which meant $0 out of pocket. GM was willing to offer me a small discount on a new GM vehicle as a measure of good will. You may be surprised to learn that I did not want another GM vehicle.
I think they may have improved the issue, but I don't believe the car is fully healthy. GM strongly disagrees and believes the car is working 100%. They're the experts, I will defer to their judgement. ;) I'm out all previous lease payments when I did not have use of the vehicle, or it was clearly broken and I had to drive it anyway.
GM said there was absolutely no reason for a buy back. They said that while the experience was sub-ideal, they saw no issues with the process, how things were handled, etc. They also noted that the warranty terms specify no condition which would cause them to do the right thing and take the car away. Interestingly, the dealership suggested it might actually be GM Financial who bought the car. When I spoke to GM Financial directly, they were absolutely unwilling to come to any kind of arrangement to buy/take back the car, etc. I made offers of significant sums.
Tip - GM Executive Review will get involved if an issue has not been resolved after 4 service visits, IF you write the president. They're a little more competent than GM Customer Care and seem to have additional authority. That said, I can't point to an obvious positive impact.
Dealership #3 visit 1 - spark plugs and high pressure fuel pump replaced.
Dealership #3 visit 2 - spark plugs and fuel pressure sensor. An engineer worked on the car multiple days. During monitoring the dealership captured one acute misfire event. They believe a fuel pressure sensor was found to be faulty, which caused the car to spike rich. Apparently this is the only time this has occurred on the possession.
After this visit I believe the engine operation was somewhat improved, but the problem not fully solved. They attached a monitor harness to the car for a few weeks. They asked that I note when I thought there were issues. They asked me to ensure I put some miles on the car. I didn't have many places to go and I won't take it out of town, so I did a lot of short trips (eg. 10 minutes), always made sure the engine was warmed up before shutting off unless I was organically going to a nearby store, etc. I was aiming to give them something to look at, but I believe I drove the car in a viable manner.
Before visit 3 I took the car to an independent shop. It had about ~350-400 miles of driving between the dealership/engineer/myself. The plugs were examined and found to be heavily carboned. I took pictures (I'm obviously capable of pulling the plugs, but wanted a written assessment, etc.). On the worst plug, there was a tiny bit of exposed electrode on the tip, the rest was caked black, there was no light brown color on the ceramic. A couple of the plugs smelled like gas. These plugs are scheduled to last for 100k miles.
While the monitor was on the car, there were events such as driving down my street at a normal, or slower than normal pace, shifting from 1-2 and having a loud "bang" sound emit from the exhaust (in quiet mode) loud enough to startle people in their yards, causing them to whip their heads around.
Dealership #3 visit 3 - Engineer came out again. The claim was that they drove the car on the highway and the carbon on the plugs cleared up. They then ran two "upper engine" cleaners, which they claim fouled the spark plugs, thus requiring replacement. GM's position is that there was nothing wrong with the car and that the manner in which I drove the car was to blame for the carbon build up on the spark plugs (low speed, city, short run times, cold starts). They indicated the vehicle was working "per design intent." GM's position is that this visit was done as a goodwill gesture and there was no reason for the car to be looked at. They indicated the position of GM engineering is that long term fuel trim of +/-30% is problematic, anything other than that is "within spec". They could give no explanation for the dealership's position of -12 being "rich".
I will admit that I was likely mistaken with some of the events I noted during the monitoring. Additionally, I did not experience acute misfire events at idle as I had in the past and I told them this. As others mentioned earlier in this thread the engine naturally has a bit of a misfire feel at idle. That said, I'm confident that events like the exhaust "bang" sound mentioned earlier were misfires and GM is not being honest in stating the car did not misfire at all.
What's the lesson in all of this? GM has a warranty, but they don't stand behind it in the toughest times. I spent countless hours dealing with them (hundreds?), trying to get them to do the right thing, escalate, expedite, etc. The stress was unbelievable. Yes it's stressful having a broken car, but what is much worse is dealing with people who appear to care about their immediate concerns and do not care about the impact to you, or whether your car is viable. When you are repeatedly told things that are clearly not true, you cannot trust that they will ever do the right thing. I tried all sorts of different approaches, nothing yielded a different result in terms of their behavior. Yes this situation was an edge case, but IMO it is not worth putting your trust in them. It felt like someone broke into my house and stole my stuff, every day. Why? Because I was paying for something I wasn't receiving and they did not care to honor their obligations. A warranty only works if they care to honor it in a reasonable manner. Put me in a time machine, I'd gladly pay $10k to have not gone through this an had no car for this period.
On the upside, I feel freaking amazing now that it's over with. :)
In reply to Snrub :
glad it's resolved. but that was not how i expected it to end.
In reply to Snrub :
Congratulations on getting this wrapped up. Holy carp. I hope whatever you get next runs like a top for as long as you have it.
I don't think I'm in danger of being tempted by a GM vehicle, but if the gen II Volt's forward visibility is better than gen I, or I end up checking out a Buick TourX... This will certainly give me pause.
It is absolutely maddening that some companies seem to take an opaque bureaucratic approach to simply making it impossible to get resolution when things aren't right. On paper you leased a car and sure enough, there was a "car" in your possession. Job done.
Thanks for the update. I'm so glad that you are over this!
Glad you are rid of the car, but sucks how you were treated. It honestly seems very unusual for GM to act that way in my experience, and I can tell you that there was something wrong with that car. Wish they could have gotten to the bottom of that because now I'm genuinely curious.
Figured I should jump in here and say that my wife and I just went through the same sort of horrible experience dealing with her under-warranty Volt that needed a battery replacement and getting the run-around from GM. After two dealers and four visits being told that everything was fine and it's fine that the car coasted to a stop on the highway, we traded it on a Honda Clarity last weekend. Never again.
Tom Suddard said:Figured I should jump in here and say that my wife and I just went through the same sort of horrible experience dealing with her under-warranty Volt that needed a battery replacement and getting the run-around from GM. After two dealers and four visits being told that everything was fine and it's fine that the car coasted to a stop on the highway, we traded it on a Honda Clarity last weekend. Never again.
This kind of thing makes you question if they would actually honor something that happens on at an HPDE like they claim.
^ And that claim is NOT backed up in official documentation. If there was a dispute you'd likely need to take legal action pointing to news articles quoting GM employees. If it's not in the documentation, I would not assume it exists.
i feel old as berkeley hearing Tom say "my wife".
It makes you wonder what sort of history would pop up for this car in a Carfax, hopefully enough to scare someone away.
Glad you're rid of it.
Adam
Snrub said:^ And that claim is NOT backed up in official documentation. If there was a dispute you'd likely need to take legal action pointing to news articles quoting GM employees. If it's not in the documentation, I would not assume it exists.
That's an excellent point, I haven't looked but just "assumed" through the interviews it was there.
That plus your experience has basically sealed there will be no SS 1LE in my garage next year once I decide what to get once I give the girlfriend the Mazda 3.
Oh but for the record the LS is still the best engine ever and I plan to own many more of them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm just done with GM products that are supposed to transport people I care about.
Sadly, the warranty on most products is barely worth the paper it's written on.
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