What is the low down on these trucks. I found a 2004 and a couple 2008 all seem to be fairly priced and on the surface look good at a decent price.
What should I know. What should I look for. I have been looking for a Toyota Tacoma SR5 and I stumbled on the Colorado. This is for local use. No long distance stuff and no real towing.
I love them. I bought two for service trucks and ran the to just shy of 300k with almost zero issues. My youngest still drives one of them.
They drive so much better than a 2nd gen Taco.
They drive nice but the frame rust makes a pre recall Tacoma go "Dude, really?"
I have an 06 Isuzu i-350, bought in 2015 as the 3rd owner. I have no major complaints, and relatively few of the minor things you'd expect from a 17 year old >150k mile GM product. My truck had always been in Colorado (the state... yes it a PITA to search Craigslist etc for parts) so I cannot comment on rust, but the clear coat is certainly coming off. I don't remember if I test-drove a Taco, but I liked the GMT355 better than a Dakota, Ranger, or S-10 ZR2.
There is still metric tons of info on the forums even if some of the original gurus have moved on, 355 Nation or Colorado Fans.
The only major problem I can remember is that some of very early engines had the valve seats wear out too fast. So long as the 04 does not have a CEL it probably is okay, and this should not be an issue at all by 08. An airbag light may be chafed wires under the passenger seat. Otherwise the BCM (body control module) is not the most robust piece of electronics ever created, and some of the body ground points are supposed to be sketchy.
Most everything else is minor: The seal around the 3rd brakelight tends to leak. There are a few different ways for the driver's power window to wear out/fail. CD player eject mechanism breaks. HVAC fan resistor burns out. I have some kind of current loss which drains the battery after a couple weeks, but my truck has some kind of non-stock electronic thing under the dash (remote start?) and I'm too scared to try removing it. On the interstate the 4L60E has to downshift to maintain speed on anything other than perfectly flat ground (slightly exaggerated, but it is a little annoying). I have no idea what kind of gasket/flange is supposed to mate up to the pipe coming out of the cat, but I used lots of red RTV trying to fake it. I got an electric fan from a Mark VIII but I have not gotten it put in to replace the belt driven fan. Bilstein shocks are worth it, but IMO the Magnaflow cat-back exhaust is not. The headlight relay mod is absolutely mandatory (keeps the low beams on with the high's).
Check the frame. Then check it again with a hammer and a screw driver. I have never seen a frame rust out like the 1g Colorado. And I live in the land of rusted E36 M3 boxes.
As for the engine, an LS fits really well in the engine bay. That's all I got for that department.
I'm not from a rust area so can't comment on how quickly they return to the earth.
I'm not a fan of doing brakes on them, with the goofy bearing setup.
Most I've seen have been reliable but IIRC they have a somewhat common crankshaft thrust problem. Replaced a couple engines because of it.
The 5 cylinder always seemed to be the inverse of the marketing, power of a 4, economy of a 6
Loved the truck, engine was great. But it did not handle the load or tow numbers advertised well. Trans ran really hot(250) when working hard. And replacement engines are a fortune, compared to an LS. So for my needs the silverado was better. But for non heavy work it was great.
Scotty Con Queso said:Check the frame. Then check it again with a hammer and a screw driver. I have never seen a frame rust out like the 1g Colorado. And I live in the land of rusted E36 M3 boxes.
As for the engine, an LS fits really well in the engine bay. That's all I got for that department.
It is amazing how the cab and bed will look perfect, and the frame will literally have the top, bottom, and sides rusted away, just a thin spiderweb of welds and the framerail corners.
The other thing is they have unitized wheel bearings and captivated rotors. And weird glue-on magnetic tone rings. Basically a $2000 bill every time it needs front brakes. If the tone rings don't fall off before you need brakes, they will when you try to shock the hubs out of the uprights.
I'm on my second one. First one went 300k in 5 years. It was trouble free. Second one I've had 12 years now and it only started rusting after I let it sit a year. But it's rockers only, frame is fine. After I started driving it again a caliper seized, so replacing that I also did pads and rotors. I was psyched up for it after hearing about it for years, and it was a total non-event. I don't think it took any longer than doing shoes on the rear, which I did at about 220k. It's been essentially trouble free since 2011 and still runs fine despite maximum abuse and minimum maintenance.
Its an Atlas engine family, so the 4, 5 and 6 cyl (TrailBlazer) versions are basically the same. Like most engines, if they are treated well they do hold up. The 2006-up have larger ports and make a bit more power.
Even my S10 4.3L with 4L60e has to downshift on the highway to accelerate. Did measure the 6 cyl, its too long to fit in the S10 engine bay by a few inches.
The 2wd versions ride pretty smooth, I had a 2006 4 cylinder 5 speed Colorado for about 6 years. It's worth getting an extended cab truck just to avoid the regular cab bench seat which does has no recline function. My door panels rattled and squeaked at 16000 miles.
The only engine issue I had was a cam position sensor, and highway mpg was decent if you kept the truck below 70 mph. The resistors for the blower motor tend to go bad so you only get off and full power on the fan, I think you have to replace the whole switch.
A/C system is overkill for the size of the truck cab which is nice. You probably won't do anything like this, but when I had my Colorado I was young and attempted a burnout once.. the wheel hop was so violent I ended up having to change the U joints on the driveshaft.
I live in WV and was pretty diligent about keeping the truck clean, but the frame got scaly with rust way before anything on the body got crusty. I sold it to a friend who got probably another 6 years out of it before the rockers and cab corners got really bad, he loved the truck otherwise. On stick shift trucks, the throw out bearing is really noisy at low rpm, but I never found it to actually be anything wrong or affect functionality. One thing I liked about the Colorado was that it's a bit smaller than my Frontier which is nice for around town use, though it couldn't tow as much.
They suck to work on. I just had to do an exhaust camshaft actuator on one, and to pull the valve cover requires removing the intake manifold, which requires removing the alternator and AC compressor, which requires removing the LF wheel and wheel liner. They're the proverbial five-pound bag. The brake setup on the front has the rotors bolt to the back sides of the hubs, so if you live in the rust belt, it's pricey and involved to do front brakes, because the rotors are typically all rusted up, which requires you to remove the hubs, which you also typically destroy in the process, and you likely end up damaging the wheel speed sensors in the process. They're also prone to rotting the (metal) tabs for the fuel pump lock ring off of the top of the (plastic) tank. So then you have to replace the entire tank.
A friend of mine had one for 2 years, I think he went thru half a dozen blower motor resistors. He's not super mechanically inclined so that was a huge reason to get rid of it for him. It sounds annoying regardless though.
Otherwise he really liked it, except he mentioned that the speed governor was pretty low and you really weren't speeding by much in Montana. But that means you can hit at least 80mph in it, which is fine for a truck IMO
You guys are making me glad I don't live up north.
Both of the trucks I own/owned have zero rust so brake changes are a nonevent.
Total engine work on both trucks consisted of changing a couple of coils and a thermostat. I also had to put a transmission in one at 245k. I think the employee I sold one of them to had to replace an alternator a couple of months ago. His truck still drives 40 miles one way to work every day. It's over 300k at this point.
Blower resisters did fail on occasion but its a $15 part and takes about 3 minutes to change. You will probably need to change the resister connector at some point as well. Thats a $10 part and takes 10 minutes to change.
Other than that they needed nothing beyond regular maintenance.
Toyman! said:You guys are making me glad I don't live up north.
I do and I haven't had any of those problems on either of mine. There may be a little hyperbole in this thread me thinks.
When the trucks were still on the road, they all looked like this.
Now they are pretty much all gone. The ones you do see are fresh imports from the south and they don't last long either.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
That is amazing. That would be enough to make me want to move.
In reply to Toyman! :
Or buy a Swedish or German vehicle.
And yeah. It's.. a lot. Even for here. I have no idea how they managed to make the frames rust that badly that fast.
Toyotas did it because they had origami layers of thin sheetmetal, which rusts to structural unintegrity much more rapidly than a single thick piece. As far as I have been able to tell, Colorados were not manufactured like that.
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