2.7l Silverado, 7,200 lb TT Vs Monteagle

BenK wrote:
Jeremiah

Good thinking and have gotten to know you over the years on this forum, which can say you will do the maintenance well.

There are two things suggest

#1 is that the coolant these days are rated for 5 years or more life cycle. The thermal system is one huge key to the longevity of any of these, modern small displacement ICE’s which are forced fed.

OATs and HOATs coolants are well know to have issues with O2 getting into the system to wreck havoc. The why most all OEMs have gone to a closed, overflow bottle.

They are now pressurized and the main onus is to keep O2 out when folks like me has to check coolant level/condition often. To check is to view coolant level through the translucent bottle walls and that they now have graduations for High and Low. Check on that level at each oil change, or like me…check it often, along with tires, oil level, etc

#2 is to find and read up on your engine. Did that when Ford’s EcoBoost came out because had similar concerns of the longevity. Found that Ford did many things that were sound engineering. Biggest was that inside the engine, there was/is an oil spray system to cool the piston undersides. That is something boy racers of my day did for their ‘built’ engines. Meaning that the engine oil is going to see some higher temps than a naturally aspired engine would see.

If you find that info, please post back on this. As I’ve not been able to find it…though haven’t had must time to do a proper search.

Beautiful setup !!!

Hey BenK,

Yes sir! I remember back 15 years ago or so stumbling on your Suburban’s web page and that being one of the first authoritative write up’s that got me thinking about maintenance and thoughtful mods. I am not sure if that page still exists or not, but it was an excellent write up.

As for maintenance on this beast, you are 100% correct. I tend to do most maintenance at 50% of the recommended interval. The Oil Life Monitor hits 40 or 50% and I am changing the oil. I’ll still do fluid changes on the transmission at around 30k miles. Fluid swaps just take a few minutes and are pretty cheap.

The coolant on these newer Chevy’s are a bit scary to me,I know they have improved, but it will be changed at 50,000 miles instead of 100k.

As far as the details of the 2.7l construction here is a video that helped settle me on the technical aspects of the engine.

GM Engineer Explains the 2.7L

Something that I thought was interesting is that there are simple, electronically actuated, ball valves in the cooling system so the truck can independently cool the block and the heads. I do see the actuators as a potential failure point but they look easy enough to change. I may change them as part of the 50k maintenance.

Thanks and It is good to hear from ya my friend!

Jeremiah