You may recall the 2015 BMW 328iX GT I wrote up a couple of years ago. The BMW was sourced from CarMax in late 2018, and has been a great car. It took our youngest son through high school, and now it is off to college in the Northeast with our oldest son. He is living off campus, so the all wheel drive will be handy this winter. We have taken it from 20,000 miles to about 45,000 in two years, in the hands of two young male drivers. A pretty tough gig if you are a car, and it hasn’t asked for a thing but oil changes.
You know how plans go, especially during COVID. Sometimes they don’t go at all. Thus, a week before move in day for the youngest son for the 2020-21 school year, his college said it is all online, no one can live in campus at all. And if you want to defer your freshman year, we will let a limited number do so.
That’s what he elected to do, and he got a deferral slot. We are happy to have him home longer, and he went back to work at an engineering firm he spent the summer at. He is also working at a blacksmith and knife-making shop, about an hour each way from our house.
So, of course, he needed something to drive since he was unexpectedly home for another year. Our smart fortwo was OK for the drive to the engineering firm, it’s about 15 minutes across town. For the two hour round trip drive to the blacksmithing, though, I wanted him in something larger. And it is down a ruddy dirt road, really more of a cart path, something the smart does not excel at.
My son started dropping hints that what he really wanted was a cheap old truck to knock around in. We live in a mostly rural area, and a lot of his friends have old trucks. And most of them (the trucks) are pretty unreliable too, but teenage boys don’t care so much about that, I guess. The gas tank fell off of one, another one uses a screwdriver instead of a key in the ignition, and so on.
I started looking on the local dealer websites, looking for an older truck. I wasn’t having too much luck, when my son suggested Facebook Marketplace. “That’s where my friends found their trucks”. Not exactly a glowing endorsement, but we started scrolling through. We set up a search for pickups in a 10 mile radius, and we had a couple hundred trucks at our disposal.
Most of them were junk, to be blunt. “Ran when parked”, “just needs an engine and transmission, otherwise great truck”, “no title but my cousin can get you one”, that sort of thing. I cautioned him that my main concern with a cheap pickup off Facebook was that it be safe, and you can’t be sure of what you are getting when you are looking at buying a truck off a stranger with 200,000+ miles.
A photo of our truck from the Facebook ad
As we scrolled through, we came upon a truck that sure looked familiar. “Huh, that looks just like Mr. Rogers’ (*the names have been changed to protect the innocent) truck”, my son said about one in particular. It looked like a contender: a 2000 GMC Sierra stepside extended cab, 230,000 miles, clean inside and out for the age, and described as “same owner since 2004, good tires, cold air, all receipts”. It was only two wheel drive, which neither of us really minded for an old work truck. My son goes mountain biking and camping in state and national parks with friends, but he didn’t think he needed 4WD where they go.
Ad photo showing the 3 door cab. The driver side suicide door was added a model year or two later.
We clicked on the listing to contact the seller and it WAS Mr. Rogers’ truck! The family lives about a mile from our house, goes to our church, and his two daughters are the same grades as my sons. So we knew the truck pretty well, as it was Mr. Rogers’ daily driver. He was the kind of guy that would have kept it in good shape.
The asking price was $5,000.00, which was a little high. Looking at various online sources, about $3,800.00 was the average private party value. But, we knew the seller, and knew the truck had been cared for, so I figured that ought to be worth a little premium.
We connected through Facebook and arranged to see it the next day. Mr. Rogers’ was thrilled we were interested, because as soon as he put the ad up he decided he didn’t like the idea of strangers coming to the house, or driving it either. We were the first people who had responded to the ad.
We went over there with $4,000.00 in mind for our offer. He gave us the walkaround and pointed out the highlights, good and bad.
Another photo from the ad
THE GOOD: The truck has been in a carport, and with some buffing the paint is in good shape for the age, though plenty scratched here and there from carrying bikes in the bed. Over $9,000.00 was spent on the truck in the last few years, with all the receipts. Rebuilt transmission; new radiator; new fuel pump; new alternator; head gaskets replaced; new brake calipers and rotors front and rear; tires, brake pads and shocks about 15,000 miles ago; spark plugs replaced every 30,000 miles (in excess of the 100,000 mile recommendation). The CarFax shows just about every oil change since new, which I found incredible for that many years. Every 3,000 miles or so since new, starting with the first four years of GMC dealer maintenance in Florida, and continuing through his 16 years of ownership after it came to our local Chevrolet dealer as an auction vehicle.
THE BAD: hood release handle is broken and barely working; radio works but doesn’t light up; power door lock actuator on the driver door inoperable; headlights very cloudy despite attempts at polishing; left turn signal flashes rapidly (new bulbs didn’t fix), tailgate latches worn out and sometimes refuse to latch; LED odometer/gearshift indicator sometimes goes dark; and a modest area of rust-through in each rocker panel, despite the underside being very clean and rust-free. Google says this is a common problem on this generation of GM truck.
None of that seemed like a deal breaker for a work truck, so off my son and I went for a test drive. And first impressions were great; the air was indeed ice cold, the brakes worked well, and the engine fired right up and had plenty of pep. It tracks straight and true, with no play in the steering wheel, and the cabin is quiet. Does it drive like a new truck? No, it seemed worn in areas. The driver door in particular sags on the hinges, and the driver seat is “sat out” and sits too low. But if the odometer said 150,000, I would have believed it. It was an impressive truck to have almost a quarter million miles.
Things were going well until we pulled into WalMart so my son could drive it. As I pulled into a parking space in a shady, lonely part of the lot, the brake pedal went to the floor. We rolled up onto the curb and into the bushes. I got out, and saw a puddle of brake fluid under the bed. I told my son to watch as I applied the brakes, and the fluid was gushing out of a metal line under the bed.
So, we had to call our friend and tell him what happened, and ask for a ride! I don’t know who was more embarrassed, me or him. He picked us up, and said he would have AAA tow it to his mechanic, who was also a member of our church.
I told him where we were with the price….that we liked the truck until this happened, and we were going to offer him $4,000.00, just so he knew our figure. I suggested he get it towed, see what the price to fix was going to be, and let me know.
A couple of days later, Mr. Rogers called and the report was that the metal lines were failing from the inside out. Seems the one thing he had never done was flush the brake fluid, and the accumulated moisture in the system was rusting the lines from the inside. One of those weak points burst when I pulled into the parking space. This generation of GM truck had a class action on the brake lines being prone to corrosion as well, I read later, though mostly in snow belt states.
The estimate was $200 parts and $600 labor, to replace the lines and bleed the system. Replacing all the metal and rubber lines was the only way to make it safe, given the age, according to the mechanic friend. I told Mr. Rogers that if the truck was going to have all new lines, I would do $4,250.00 for the truck. He can’t sell a truck with no brakes, but I’m getting all new brake lines for a reduced price. It seemed like a fair compromise. He said he would take the ad down and consider it sold.
So a week later, the truck was done. We handed Mr. Rogers $4,250.00, and he handed us the keys and all the receipts. So we have a 21 year old truck (built November, 1999) with 230,000 miles, a stack of receipts, and just the right amount of projects and patina to make my son happy.
We quickly found the parts needed were cheap on Amazon. We started with the hood release handle ($9) and all four headlight/turn signal assemblies ($80 for the entire set). In the stack of receipts, I saw no mention of cabin filters, so I picked those up locally ($30) and a set of wiper blades was sorely needed too ($30).
I took the truck for a ride that night, and the headlights indeed were terrible. So we started there, for safety.
I popped the hood with the broken latch, and got to work.
The lights in the Sierra are pretty ingenious; you can remove both headlights and both turn signal assemblies with no tools, and then easily replace them or change the bulbs. The headlights are held in place with two metal rods. I have rotated the right hand one out of the clip, then pull straight up to remove.
Once the old ones were out, the difference was pretty stark compared to the new. Both new turn signals and the passenger headlight clipped into place right away. The driver side headlight took some fiddling, though. The path for one of the attachment rods was warped, or cast incorrectly. These were cheap aftermarket assemblies, genuine GM would have been a lot more money, but would have fit. We tweaked it with a utility knife and small hacksaw, and got the rod in place, finally.
The four new lenses not only work much better at night, but certainly gave the truck a cheap facelift. In the course of all this work, I replaced the four headlight bulbs with upgraded bulbs that are still just halogen, but claim to put out more light. I also replaced the turn signal bulbs while we had things apart, but that did not get the rapid flashing on the driver side to stop.
We had to aim the new headlights, so I Googled the topic and found a great guide to DIY aiming using your garage doors, masking tape and a tape measure.
We examined the sockets and wiring for the rapid turn signal problem, and found that the new driver front turn signal bulb was not working. That socket was pretty corroded looking. Inserting and removing the bulb a dozen times or so got good contact established, and then it worked and flashed at a normal pace.
Next went in the engine air filter, and the cabin filters, which were surprisingly not too bad. Must have been replaced in the recent past. They were wet at the bottom, making me wonder if the condensate drain was partially clogged. I got an old turkey baster and shot some Clorox into the bottom of the drain pan to get any gunk cleaned out (and threw away the baster).
The check engine light then came on, and my code reader said it was the mass airflow sensor. I had unplugged a connector to get the engine air filter out, and forgot to plug it back in.
After seeing what a difference the front lenses made to the overall appearance of the truck, we went back to Amazon and ordered new aftermarket taillights and third brake light/cargo light, for about $150.00 total.
The hood release was easy to install and works great:
The gearshift indicator and odometer did come and go as the seller stated. After a few weeks though, it would not come on at all. Slapping the top of the dash did not make it come back on as it did on the test drive.
This was an issue as far as keeping up with oil changes, as well as making sure of what gear you were in. I looked online and found instructions for soldering back weak connections that tend to cause the issue. That’s not something I am experienced in though, and I found rebuilt clusters with a two year warranty for about $100 on eBay. So that’s the direction we went in.
A word of warning; the odometer reading in this generation of GM truck is not in the computer. It is in the cluster. I had to tell the seller what odometer reading I wanted programmed, and I was honest about the numbers. But for $100, a dishonest seller can take a lot of miles off a good looking but high mileage Tahoe or pickup.
This week, the truck refused to turn over. The alternator is only two years old, but the battery was four years old from the stack of receipts we scanned into a PDF. We replaced the battery and all is well.
We’ve put about 5,000 miles on the truck and it hasn’t missed a beat (except for the battery). It’s been a lot of fun to have an old pickup around the house, though it will never have the cool factor of a truck owned by a certain Oregon landlord!
It looks like you got yourselves a really nice old truck. I am still trying to work my head around an old, high mile but well cared-for vehicle now being over $4k, but I guess good older cars weren’t going to be $2500 forever.
Yes, the rocker panels on these (and most other GM vehicles of this era) are rust problems. If you lived farther north you wouldn’t need to look this up online. 🙂
It really is amazing how long vehicles last in this day and age. It is getting to where almost anything reasonably cared for with under 200k on the odo is worth considering in an older, inexpensive vehicle and even 250 isn’t a deal breaker for the right one.
Full size pickup trucks are fairly generic in form and function. As such, used truck pricing can be a straightforward calculation of price per mile, given the expected lifetime of the vehicle at roughly 300k miles, and a bit more of the new tires/new hoses/new sensors thing going on in an older truck. Drop it down a bit because of the greater likelihood of catastrophic failure in the engine or driveline (low instead of no–as it is covered by warranty on the new ones), though these often get ultimately terminated by comprehensive electrical and rust issues instead. $5k versus $30k and up seems about right, for a good one in the low 200k mileage area.
My first vehicle was a 77 Ford Courier with 60k miles that my dad bought me for $2k…in 1983. Floor all rusted out (I repaired it with scrap kydex from work and fiberglas), rocker panels basically gone, dash all dried and cracked, and bias ply tires (mismatched at that I later learned). In a couple months the idle solenoid on the carb failed causing frightening backfires. Within the next couple years I also had to replace both the clutch and brake master cylinders, and by 110k miles the head gasket was failing. So maybe he didn’t get such a bad deal… Cars/trucks are *so* much better now!
A friend recently traded his 06 Ranger for $2K, and it had some large dents along with 200K miles. Pickup trucks of any kind go for crazy money.
Yikes, I agree with j p Cavanaugh, that seems like a lot of money for an old truck with a lot of evident, but apparently easily correctable flaws. This is why I recommend a minivan to my penurious friends: they work harder than a truck, are MUCH cheaper than a truck, and are generally purchased and maintained by mr Rogers types who believe in meticulous maintenance. I’m sure though that y’all had a lot of great bonding time and experience with this truck. May he enjoy many happy miles with it.
I’m casually looking for an older used pickup, since retiring, albeit a mid-sized (fits better in my 1928 driveway). Prices on decent used ones are shocking, since the pandemic. From what I’ve seen, Mr. Importamation actually got a pretty good deal. Yes, I’m considering the van option, though I would like something a little better on Forest Service roads.
I agree about the minivan part. I wanted an old Suburban to haul stuff in, I live rural and have to haul my trash. $4,000 seems about the starting point around here for the same age as that pickup. For the same price, I got a 2011 Kia Sedona instead. Same price, half the age, 1/3 the miles. It has a decidedly different image than a Suburban, so I can see it being a hard sell to an 18 year old recent HS grad, but it doesn’t have the age problems from the writeup. Choose your poison, I guess.
That is a nice truck, and I’d have killed to have it when I was 18.
It all depends upon what the task at hand is.
For many purposes, such as hauling bulk dirt, brush, manure, riding mowers, rock,and all manner of other sizable items, plus pulling most trailers, using a minivan is like trying to use a butterknife as a scalpel – it is simply not adequate for all potential tasks.
If you can find a non rusty vehicle with a decent running engine, this sort of idea is much preferable to buying new or late model for zillions of dollars. It’s not anywhere as expensive to refurbish things as it is to pay for a whole new car. The business world is based on making you think you want to go into massive debt for the “status” of a new vehicle. News flash: no one is impressed by your new normal vehicle. They don’t think you are rich..they know you are in debt.
Trucks in general are very expensive. I went looking for a slightly preowned truck and the 2016 Silverados are still hovering in the high $30ks. Went with a 2015 Ram which was still $35k but it’s 4×4 Hemi and a Crew cab.
I predict there will now always be a truck of some sort in your fleet. And if he takes it with him to college next year, then there will be a new truck in your own driveway soon after. They’re just too useful to not have if you have the space – something rarely realized until you actually have one. Time and convenience have an intangible dollar value as well.
My wife drove ours one day last week (vaguely similar condition, age, and color to yours) and while normally would want nothing to do with a vehicle of that age and…patina, yeah that’s a good word, let’s go with that, came back saying that she enjoyed driving it (for that day). And then suggested we use it to pick up something that would have fit into her car but she didn’t want to have put in there so off we went in it again.
I used to handle a 401k for a Ford dealer, and the salesmen were always pitching me on what they had to offer, when I went around doing my work at the dealership. One of the older guys pulled me aside one day, and noted that as I drove an F-150 as a daily driver, he knew I would never go back to driving cars again. I did manage to go back to cars for a few years, but I am back to only trucks now. It’s often how it works.
New trucks are expensive, so old trucks are expensive. Cash for Clunkers made it worse, especially for the age pickup from the article and a little older. There should be quite a few more right now, which would mean they’d be worth less.
This generation GM pickup and the one before it seem ever fresh, though. Good looking and sturdy, and people still admire one even with a bit of damage and age.
Nice truck. A friend of mine got the base stripper from the same year when he was a senior in high school, and he still has it to this day. It now has over 300k miles, but looks brand new.
While I prefer the squared off look of the early/mid 90s Chevys, these were still nice looking trucks before the whole butched mini-semi look came into vogue.
If new bulbs didn’t fix your turn signal from hyperflashing, then you have a bad ground. Most likely that ground wire is no longer hooked in or its shorted. Wiring in a new ground wire is an easy job for you and your son.
IMO the last of the really good GM trucks. Check the harness from the taillamp, from the base of the socket down to the junction module by the spare tire. I’ve seen them crack and fail, but we are in a harsh climate here…
The ’90 trucks are a really good trade off of looks, (relative) simplicity, parts availability in the aftermarket, repairability, durability, and not unpleasant to own and operate. A sweet spot of sorts.
Trucks of this era usually don’t have a “bulb burnt out” signal or idiot light. Typically, when a bulb burns out, your first clue is that the turn signal flashes fast. Put on your four way flashers, and walk around the truck looking for the burned out bulb. If a new bulb doesn’t fix it, it is likely a corroded bulb socket. You can start on that by spraying some circuit board contact cleaner in there (Home Depot carries it in the electrical section). If that doesn’t work, consider a new socket.
As I pulled into a parking space in a shady, lonely part of the lot, the brake pedal went to the floor. We rolled up onto the curb and into the bushes.
Whoa! Isn’t that what dual circuit brake systems are supposed to avoid? What’s the point of them if this happens?
For years commenters have been telling me to upgrade to a dual circuit brake system on my F100, and I’ve given it some serious consideration. But not if this happens if one line goes out. BTW my brake lines are still the originals. Like the rest of the truck, they must have used thicker steel back then.
Wow. $9k in repair bills already for a 20 year old truck. No wonder folks love their Toyota trucks out here. I can’t even imagine spending that kind of money on an older vehicle. Hopefully most of the expensive stuff is done for a while. But it doesn’t say a whole lot for GM durability.
Paul, the quality and reliability of a truck is not really that important and the big “domestic” car makers know this. Truck owners are extremely loyal to their brands and always feel their truck is “the best.” When they break down right out of warranty (and they all do in my long experience of dealer service) they pay and then keep quiet. They don’t want their friends to know.
I recently met an old friend who in 2018 bought a 2015 Ram 1500 diesel right out of warranty. In the two years he’s owned it he’s spent $6900 in repairs to it.
With the absurd sticker prices of trucks, the car makers are raking in profits on them when they sell them. Then the rake in more in off warranty repairs or the extended warranty,
The $9000 was considerably more than I paid for my 2000 Acura TL. In the six years it was my daily driver, it never had any kind of repair, only regular maintenance.
You guys ever use google?
https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/g19661272/longest-lasting-cars/
The LS powered half ton trucks are hands down one of the longest lasting powertrains ever built. We go through a lot of trucks, and even though I would buy a toyota half ton now, I attribute that to it having the oldest drive train. Ford has really fallen off lately (our ecoboosts were terrible), but in part I attribute that to Ford being the best seller and it having a harder time meeting CAFE.
That’s the impression I had. But $9k in repairs is still $9k in repairs. And that included a rebuilt transmission and new head gaskets, among others. So maybe that drive train isn’t quite a bulletproof as commonly touted?
Outlier?
We’re currently fielding a 4.8/4 speed truck…I specifically picked it because it does not have cylinder deactivation and it uses the 4L60. I can have the 4l60 rebuilt for about a thousand (depending on the failure, of course), not including R&R. It’s doing very well so far, but it is far below the older trucks like the featured one in terms of interior bits and pieces and trim. It is pretty horrible in that regard.
Also, having a lot of experience with these trucks, I can tell you sometimes people way overspend on repairs. I had an 04 tahoe that nearly all the gauges died on before 150k. I believe a rebuild was 500+. New stepper motors, a desoldering doohickey, and about an hour’s time fixed it.
Presumably $9k at a GM dealer with current dealer labor rates and OEM part prices. Yeah I think it’s crazy too but that’s just how some people do it.
It shouldn’t have went all the way to the floor if only the one line blew. However that extra travel does induce a delay and of course half the brakes don’t work as good as all of the brakes, so taking a little longer to stop is a fact. However 1/2 the brakes are more effective than no brakes and will eventually stop the vehicle.
Um, 50% of that trucks total braking capacity grossly exceeds the required braking power to stop it in a parking lot. There’s something else at work here.
And as you said, the pedal shouldn’t have gone to the floor. The other half of the system should have worked essentially normally. Or so I presume.
Yes, a dual circuit is supposed to give you some brakes. I had a brake line spring a leak on my 95 Voyager and I had no brakes (or not enough to notice). I nursed it home driving in first gear using the parking brake.
In the early ’70s I had a part-time job working on Saturdays, and I was assigned a 1970 International 3/4 ton pickup with 4 wheel drum brakes and no power assist.
One day, I was pulling up to a traffic light when a brake line burst on the right front wheel. I had to stand on that brake pedal for all I was worth to bring the truck to a halt to avoid hitting the car in front of me. Having the rear brakes was better than nothing at all, but this scared the heck out of me. It turns out the shop had worked on the brakes the day before – evidently they didn’t get something back together right.
I didn’t see anything in that list that I had even a little problem with considering the age and mileage of the truck. They might’ve been paying dealer prices, but that all sounded like maintenance to me. All these magical high-mileage Toyota pickups have rebuilt transmissions, too, if they’re automatic. The only issues here that I’d chalk up to “GM gonna GM” is the gauge cluster. People like to knock on GM, but they got these right.
There was SOME braking left, but the pedal did go to the floor to get any brakes. Large leak. If it was MY truck, I think I would have limped back home. I wasn’t going to make that call with someone else’s truck! The owner made the call to get it towed.
who buys $30 wiper blades?
I did, recently, because I’m extremely hard on wipers, and napa had some made in the US high end wipers on sale. I believe they were 20 per. So far, they’ve been fantastic.
That’s what the long lasting silicone ones run. No surprise there.
Well maintained older trucks are usually a good value, depending on how fuel economy fits into the proposition of course. Ones that haven’t been beat to death get pretty rare as the years go by, and the majority of drivers have a few blind spots on their upkeep, ala brake fluid flush, etc. My daily driver for the last couple of years has been a 2003 Ford Excursion 4×4 with the 7.3. I wasn’t looking for one, it kind of fell in my lap at price I couldn’t pass up. My original intention was simply to flip it, but even with 15 MPG it pencils out, due to lack of depreciation.
The prices that used pickups go for currently is insane, though good look selling a 2wd in my area.
I figure with either my F-150 or F-250 that I could sell them for more than I paid for them 4/5 years ago plus what I’ve spent on brakes, tires, batteries and some upgrades. To be fair they have only had about 4-5k miles per year added to them.
Good thinking. I prefer lower-mileage strangers, too. ;·)
Maybe or not. GM originally got these lamps from what was for many decades their in-house lighting division, Guide Lamp. They spun off Guide Lamp in 1999 and the company sputtered along for a short while, but they were doomed by their obsolete technology and processes. They were severely outclassed and undercut on price by the rest of the vehicle lighting industry, to such a degree that nobody wanted to buy lights from them; even GM quit buying from Guide very soon after the spinoff when they discovered they could get better lights for less money from other makers.
So Guide went out of business by the mid-2000s, which left GM in a difficult position with regard to replacement parts for the many, many GM vehicles originally equipped with Guide lights. They wound up doing a procurement arrangement with Depo, a not-very-good-but-not-quite-so-bad-as-most-of-the-rest-of-them Chinese maker of not-very-good-but-not-quite-so-bad-as-most-of-the-rest-of-them aftermarket replacement headlamps. So unless you happen to hunt up new old stock headlamps made in America by Guide, only aftermarket items are available
That said, there’s still a large range of quality in aftermarket headlamps; the best ones are about 75% as good as original equipment, and the range goes very steeply downhill from there.
Good job even thinking of this; many people don’t. That garage-door stuff is good enough to pull the lamps down out of the trees or up off the front bumper, but not close to good enough for a final adjustment unless your garage door happens to be at one end of 25 feet plus truck-wheelbase of truly dead-flat pavement. Lamp aim is by far the main thing that determines how well you can (or can’t) see at night, so in terms of safety it’s well worthwhile to make sure the lamps are aimed correctly, even if it requires finding and paying a shop with the correct equipment—yours are the “older U.S. lamps” type (and even if you never do this, that diagram you’ve posted near your description of aiming the lamps is not applicable to the type of headlamps on this truck; if you used it as your guideline, you’ll want to go back and check again using the correct guidelines).
When my auntie brought home her brand-new Century in 1998, i noticed it had Carello headlights. I figured at that point Guide might’ve simply been shuttered. When a very high volume model like late 90s W bodies has farmed out parts…
Funny* story about those headlamps: NHTSA, the agency in charge of writing and enforcing U.S. vehicle safety standards, had some complaints come in from drivers who said they couldn’t easily read overhead road signs while driving a ’97-’04 Buick Century. NHTSA determined the low beam intensity was two or three whole, entire candela below the minimum uplight requirement, and ordered a recall.
Transport Canada did similar tests and reached a different and more realistic conclusion: the headlamps met all requirements. And even if they hadn’t, an hour’s drive would put enough dust and microscratching on the lens face to diffuse plenty more light upward to the reflective road signs.**
GM pointed to Transport Canada’s results, but NHTSA, perhaps not wanting to piss off the AARP Brigade, refused to budge, or even to recheck the headlamps—there was going to be a recall. GM wailed that after eight model years the tooling for the headlamps was worn out and would have to be replaced at great expense. There was squabbling and legal wrangling, and eventually the agreed solution was that GM would install new low-beam bulbs with slightly higher luminance (essentially a Sylvania XtraVision 9006).
* Whether it’s funny as in “ha ha” or funny as in »headdesk« is left to the reader
** And even if it didn’t, the Century had been cleverly named after the median age of its purchasers—pretty safe bet many of them would have difficulty reading overhead road signs quickly no matter how much light might shine on them.
That’s just a chart I found online for the article. I actually used the back of an abandoned KMart near my house so we could get the needed distance. Lots of tape on the back of the building, looked like others had the same idea!
I’m sorry to keep arguing about this, but parking lots aren’t nearly so level as they look…
Blimey, Mr S, you’re saying of the biggest car manufacturer in America and (then) the world, GM, that its own in-house lighting division had obsolete technology and processes, ones so crap that it failed directly when spun off. A GM in-house Deadly Sin (and given we’re talking lights, deadly is the word, huh).
Thank god for China’s capitalism producing something inferior even to that.
Ah well, GM or China, as long as it’s all cheap and piled high, right?
I haven’t formally tabulated, but as a proportion of their respective models over the years, I think Ford and Chrysler have put more lousy lighting on American roads than GM.
(…I haven’t formally tabulated whether Collie poo is less or more odiferous than Golden Retriever poo or German Shepherd poo, either…)
…oh, and:
If you picked good ones and not one of the many blue-glass “whiter light” scams, sticking with the intended, correct (halogen) type of bulbs was a wise move; so-called “LED bulbs” are illegal fraudulent, unsafe trinkets no matter whose name is on them or what claims are made for them.
(To Daniel Stern/reply wouldn’t appear in the right place)
I clicked on your links and just learned way more about vehicle lighting than I knew existed.
So thanks for the mental upgrade.
Lol he has that effect on people. I think that I found his page at random about 20 years ago, I know that because I was driving a Plymouth at the time and it probably had to do with Allpar, SDML, etc. not sure.
SDML! Wow, haven’t thought of that in many years.
Gladly!
I had a 4WD 2000 Sierra from late 1999 until 2003, when it was wrecked and IMHO, never right again. Before the wreck, I had a couple of complaints about it:
1. The rear ABS would be almost useless on rough pavement in a hard stop. Every GM 4WD truck I’ve ever driven from that era has the same issue. You have to double tap the brake pedal and for some reason, the brakes kick in.
2. The “carbon” issue, or more precisely, the lifter tick issue that GM lied about and insisted was carbon causing “noisy startups”. GM’s explanation and cure was nonsense. It was lifters tapping away on a cold startup. Colder and longer the truck sat, the longer the tapping lasted. Some trucks like mine weren’t too bad, my friend’s ’00 Chevy was about as bad as I’ve ever heard. The dealer finally took his heads off to clean the “carbon” (Very little was there), and the now carbonless engine tapped every bit as long as it ever did. He took the truck to another dealer and the service writer heard what it was doing and said, “It’s lifters, and GM won’t cover it!”, and that was that. It didn’t seem to hurt the engines any, my friend had that Silverado for almost 18 years and by the end, it would tick away on cold startup for over a minute, versus the 15 seconds it did when new. My truck did it a maximum of about 10 seconds on a below zero day when it had sat in the open all night. My truck is still owned and driven by the guy who bought it from the dealer I traded it to in 2003, it runs fine, but the rust has really eaten it up. It’s going to be going away when Covid does. It has over 300K on the engine, and about 100K on the rebuilt a few years ago transmission. Not bad.