"2007 Chevy Silverado LT: Transmission Failure Part II: Transmission Repair
Last week's
Silverado cliffhanger left off with our trusty Chevy being towed to Santa Monica Chevrolet after the transmission decided to take an early Fourth of July vacation. GM Roadside Assistance handled the tow as the truck is still under warranty. It was efficient and quick, I was pleased.
Today's thrilling conclusion begins later that same day:
I called Santa Monica Chevy a few hours after the tow truck left to see if they had a chance to look at the truck. Our service advisor had said earlier that they may get to it that day, but most likely it would be Tuesday morning. I took the chance and called anyways. To my surprise they had looked at it and he was frank with his diagnosis:
"We've had a rash of these lately. The input housing busting as the mileage gets up there. It should be ready by Wednesday."
I left them alone and waited for a call on Wednesday. It came around 2:00PM and said that the truck was ready. The forward clutch
sprag was replaced -- they did not, as some commenters had assumed, replaced the transmission with a refurbished unit -- and the transmission was, again, reconditioned. Two days to tear into a transmission and have it back in our hands? Not bad. But if they have, in fact, had "a rash" of these, it may have saved a lot of time in diagnosis and parts availability. There is also a TSB out on this issue,
NHTSA ITEM NUMBER - 10021018.The good news: Drive works and the transmission is again able to use all gears.
The bad news: The transmission doesn't shift any smoother than it did before the sprag failure.
Days out of service: 3
Cost to us: $0.00
Mike Magrath, Vehicle Testing Assistant @ 31,485 miles.
"had a rash of these" doesn't sound like an isolated incident for me...
3 days out of service for tranny problem isn't bad at all, how many days has the Tundra been out so far?
According to your source, "A sprag clutch is used in some automatic transmissions as a method of allowing the transmission to smoothly change gears under load". Sounds to me like this sprag ain't doing its job!
Chevy will fix the issue the cheapest way possible, and I doubt they would replace the transmission when they could get it to shift again. Even though replacing the transmission would be the best thing.
Sounds like your tranny will be going out again... maybe out of warranty (GM crossing its fingers)
This is what upsets me about gm dealers. Unless you know someone noone will try and go out of their way to help you. Recently I had problem with my transfer case on my 2500 silverado after 80,000 miles and the dealer was charging me close to 1,500 for the repair. Granted I was out of warranty but it was a defective gm part. I took matters into my own hands and called to complain and let them know how I was not satisfied. GM came through and paid for the full repair plus my rental that I had for about 2 weeks. Total cost to gm 1800 total cost out of pocket 80 on gas for rental
mileage gets up there.....at 32k miles?!!
I thought it is suppose to build ike a rock?
After this and the Mini windshield incident, maybe you guys should hire tony1021 as your ombudsman! Seriously, you should call GM and give them a good spleen venting on this. There is no reason for a tranny to go bad after 37K miles. They should replace the unit.
That's really not bad at all for time out of service. I wonder how much work it takes to replace the sprag (never even heard of that before, is that like the muffler bearings? :))
I'm going to share a personal, non-evidence based emotion: If at 31k miles my transmission shut down like that and had hard-shift problems, and after two trips it had not yet been solved, I would most likely dump the vehicle. It's not an "evidence-based" approach, it's emotional. I wouldn't have the conviction that the car would keep running or not leave me stranded in an uncomfortable spot.
I've dumped cars before at much higher mileage for similar reasons. That sense that no matter what you do, you won't be able to trust it. I've had 3 new cars and two of them gave me that sense of trust...my current 06 Civic SI (46k miles, no major issues), my old Saab 9-2x Aero (9k miles and traded in on the SI. My 03 Saturn Ion 5-speed never gave me any major issues, but just felt like it was ready to fall apart given the right pothole.
Joe
The good news in all of this is GM has plenty of surplus pickups sitting on dealer lots, so they'll have lots of leftover sprags to use for the inevitable wave of repairs that hit dealers.
I'm with Joe: it's definitely a trust thing. And once it's gone, it's gone.
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Wow...can't edit. Fun. For those of you lost, that was meant to go in Karl's Ford GT detailing blog, not here... Sorry folks!