Fan Clutch Failure

3645 Views 2 Replies 2 Participants Last post by ronlenhall, Aug 2, 2017

ronlenhall

Discussion Starter · Aug 1, 2017

Something to consider with this truck, if engine parts fail, there is only 1 source for these parts, and you are at the mercy of GM shipping parts to the dealer. GM does not appear to be in a hurry and there you sit.

Pulled my camper from Wisconsin to Yellowstone park for a family vacation. Halfway into South Dakota my check engine light came on. Truck was running fine, but the exhaust brake feature becomes disabled. I got the truck to Buffalo, Wy, and began to cross the Bighorn mountains and the truck overheated. I came back into town and got a campsite for the night. Had the engine code checked at O'Reilly's and it was P0483. The truck was fine without the camper so I ran it up to Sheridan Chevy dealership and they took a day to get to it and had to order what I expected was a relay from Denver. Got the truck back after 3 days and picked up my camper to make the trip across the Bighorns again and 5 miles into this trip, my check engine light came back on again, so I went back to O'Reilly's and sure enough the P0483 was back. Called the dealer in Sheridan he basically told me to get lost (knew I was a tourist and told me he could not get it for another week). Call the Chevy Customer Assistance phone number and obviously I was irate, and they told me they would get back to me in 24-48 hours, no help. I found a place and parked my camper in Buffalo and met my family in Cody for our vacation, slept in a tent. Took the truck into the Cody Chevy dealership and they determined that the clutch fan failed, but it will take 3 days to get the part because it has to come out of Michigan. That was great, truck was unusable for my entire vacation and my camper was 180 mile away. A day after I was suppose to be back at work, the Chevy dealership in Cody finally got the part and fixed the truck.

Long story short, I pulled a camper 3000 miles and wasn't able to use it because this truck couldn't get it the last 180 miles, Chevy Customer Assistance is useless (they did call me back 8 day later), and third if I would have bought a 4-5 year-old full-size truck (1/2 of the cost of this truck), I could have at least had a chance of getting parts at an O'Reilly's or Autozone and had it repaired much more quickly then GM can in Wyoming.

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Burgess159

· #2 · Aug 2, 2017

Ouch. That really sucks. I'm really sorry about that. It is unfortunate these trucks being so new and the diesel variants even fewer, which after reading a handful of posts, seems that most auto-parts stores don't carry parts to fix the trucks, and even GM dealers don't either

I imagine I would have been in a similar state as you after traveling that far and then being treated like that.

I can't say I've heard of the fan clutch going out on many trucks though, that's a new one to me. How many miles do you have on your truck currently? And have you towed a lot with it already? I guess if it was hot out and towing the camper up some good sized hills/ mountains, it was probably working that pretty hard. Being a new truck, it should not have failed like that. But I guess that is the thing with getting a pretty new vehicle (new in the models life I mean, only 2 years of production on the diesel powered machines), that they put in parts and don't exactly know if those are really good parts or not. It's no fun being a test dummy. I took the chance though and I haven't had any bad luck thus far, praise be to the Lord. But time will tell.

Again, I'm really sorry for your unfortunate trip and how you were treated.

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ronlenhall

Discussion Starter · #3 · Aug 2, 2017

I had about 16,000 mile and put about 3000 miles on this trip. I know anything mechanical can fail, so just my luck had the fan clutch failed when it was needed the most. The outside temperatures were 100 degrees most days. If the first dealer would have fixed the problem, it would have been inconvenient, but acceptable. But, my truck was useless for pulling my trailer for 8 days, that is where it became an issue. The dealers in Wyoming are not large and for most of the year, they do business with mostly local people and that is what they are built for. However, the 3 months where people are visited in large numbers and usually pulling campers, they must get overwhelmed. GM should have recognize this and with it's nearly unlimited resources provide help with parts expedition and technical expertise, especially on these new products where they have a product advantage like the diesel Colorado. That was my biggest disappointment.

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