My truck is broken....

[deltabravo]

....2009 Silverado 3500HD, DRW, CC, 4x4.

32609 miles, it's not a daily driver and sees mostly camper hauling or trailer towing duties.

The idler arm and pitman arm are toast.

/rant off.

[trail-explorer]

Buy another truck and use it for daily driving, and a transport rig.

[btggraphix]

I had great luck with my old 97 GMC 2500.....I did all those front end parts sometime around 150K miles as preventative maintenance......my 2005 Kodiak has run 110K now with only one steering part replaced (the link from the steering box and I am not even sure I wasn't "sold" that by an out-of-town place that wanted to find something else to do on it.) Seems like they must have cheapened the front-end parts in the regular pickup truck line in the 2000's?

[rkortes]

Yep, love my 2005 GMC 3500 SRW Diesel/Duramax, but it has not been a fun ride with front end parts. Hopefully GMC will get this figured out. Otherwise, great truck!

[Bob_Olallawa]

deltabravo wrote:
I am looking at doing part time RV transporting with it, but after attending the orientation yesterday and discovering how much regulatory stuff is involved doing ANY type of commercial driving, I've second guess my game plan.

I think once you start commercial driving, the rules will become second nature and all will be fine. If more of the big rig drivers would try and run by the rules there would not be so many truck accidents.

[deltabravo]

The truck still pulls to the left. I am hoping it's due to the front tires. I am out of town and don't know if the new tires have arrived at Discount tire yet or not.

My truck doesn't get driven much - most of its duties are as a truck camper hauler with trailer behind it. This year I didn't go camping much, so the miles driven this year are way down from previous years. Combine that with the fact that I didn't take a multi state trip like I have in previous years, and the miles driven are a fraction of what I did in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

I am looking at doing part time RV transporting with it, but after attending the orientation yesterday and discovering how much regulatory stuff is involved doing ANY type of commercial driving, I've second guess my game plan.

[kerry4951]

deltabravo wrote:

kerry4951 wrote:
You wont hear anything bad from me. My first OEM set (General Grabber TRs)gave me almost 50K miles. I was so impressed I put 6 more on. I never had OEM tires give me that much mileage on any of my vehicles.Have about 6000 miles on the second set and they still look brand new.

I guess I need to start driving my truck more so I catch up with you in mileage. Kerry4951, how many miles on yours now?

(My brother has a granite blue 2008 dually. In some ways I like his better than mine.)

I have the granite blue also. We bought our trucks about the same time. I have about 56,000 miles on mine with so far no issues. Sorry to hear about your front end problem.

[Nautique200]

Glad to hear they are working for you. I just know that I have a vibration coming from mine and now I know why. This got me to looking into these tires online and what I found was not good. On Tirerack.com they are getting an average rating of 5.2 out of 10. Not so good.

[deltabravo]

kerry4951 wrote:
You wont hear anything bad from me. My first OEM set (General Grabber TRs)gave me almost 50K miles. I was so impressed I put 6 more on. I never had OEM tires give me that much mileage on any of my vehicles.Have about 6000 miles on the second set and they still look brand new.

I guess I need to start driving my truck more so I catch up with you in mileage. Kerry4951, how many miles on yours now?

(My brother has a granite blue 2008 dually. In some ways I like his better than mine.)

[kerry4951]

Nautique200 wrote:
I have heard nothing but bad things about the General tires. I have them on my 14 Ram with 1800 miles and I see I have a bulge in one of them already. I'll be putting either those Cooper AT3s or Michelins on soon.

You wont hear anything bad from me. My first OEM set (General Grabber TRs)gave me almost 50K miles. I was so impressed I put 6 more on. I never had OEM tires give me that much mileage on any of my vehicles.Have about 6000 miles on the second set and they still look brand new.

[Nautique200]

I have heard nothing but bad things about the General tires. I have them on my 14 Ram with 1800 miles and I see I have a bulge in one of them already. I'll be putting either those Cooper AT3s or Michelins on soon.

[Redsky]

SoCalDesertRider wrote:
Did you replace them with aftermarket, heavier duty, greasable joints, or just replace with the same factory, non-serviceable junk?

The factory ones come with zerk fittings but they need to be used with a grease gun. Pistol type grease gun is the easiest to get to the center fittings.

[MARKW8]

I had new tires installed yesterday on my 08 GMC CC,drw. 46k on it. I asked them to be sure to check the frt end for wear. The old oem Generals showed no unusual wear. Everything was good.

I do my own basic service so I know it gets greased. I will admit to service by the OLM which is usually 8500 to 9500 miles. Also I never changed a front end part on my 2000, 2500 Chevy. It was greased closer to 5k intervals. It was also over gvwr by 1200# with the camper on. It was under axle though.

Mark

[SoCalDesertRid1]

Did you replace them with aftermarket, heavier duty, greasable joints, or just replace with the same factory, non-serviceable junk?

[Redsky]

There are 9 lube points on the 2011 and later trucks and 11 on the earlier ones and the recommendation is to lube them every 3,000 miles. They are not "lifetime" lubricated like the 1/2 ton pickups and SUV's which also wear out.

When oil changes were done every 3,000 miles the chassis lube was done at the same time. Now with the use of synthetic oil the service intervals are much longer and the front end parts suffer from the neglect.