Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Jkel
OK Pete a dumb question and not meant to be smart. My car is an earlier Vin , before 25000, and there is a KNOWN issue with the tranny shafts. This is known by all parties involved that GM had some bad shafts due to defective materials.
Early on GM was supposed to contact people, provided lists of affected Tranny's etc..... but from what I know ,no such list exists.
GM says if you mod, you are SOL. Where does this seems like the right thing to do? They know a certain number of tranny's have a problem and it looks like they are crossing their fingers hoping either 1. that the person has modded their car so they will not have to fix it, or 2. or hoping it will not break at all.
I am not a smart man , but I feel it would take GM very little to inspect these shafts, we are only talking about a few in the grand scheme of things, and if the tranny is one that was affected they should fix it BEFORE something breaks maybe resulting in more damage to the car.
I have a system on my car, Launch Control, that I am afraid to use because if it breaks then too bad so sad, all beause I wanted more lope from a Muscle Car. If my tranny wasn't in the range of affected ones it would not be a problem.
I do not race but just would like to see what launch control actually does. Again I am not trying to be a smart -A** , I just think that these cars are so part numbered up that it would be easy for someone to look at the tranny, check the build date and see if it is one of theose tranny's susceptible to tailshaft breakage and fix it.
Thoughts?
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This is actually a very valid question. And I don't think you are being a smarta$$ at all. There has definitely been a lot of talk about this particular issue. I have seen lots of things written on here about "a list" and about GM contacting affected owners. I am not aware of any of that. I don't know if those were credible statements, if that is reality within GM or what. In this case, I can't say with any level of certainty or credibility that any such list does or doesn't exist.
I can tell you that my own car is in the same boat as yours. It is a sub 25,000 VINed car. I can tell you that my car was among those that was "held" during the time when the shafts were being looked at. I haven't used the Launch Control on my car yet. I do plan on trying it out a few times before my warranty expires though. I also haven't done any modification to my car so I am not worried about having a problem with any warranty claim.
Have you talked with the service manager at your dealer about it? Have you asked him or her what would happen and what they would do?
Regarding your comment about whether GM should just inspect the trannies, that is where I really take a hard line and in some cases piss people off. If you didn't mod your car, you have nothing to worry about. My opinion is that the "affected" output shafts were/are not seen as a safety issue so no recall was necessary. And anyone who broke the shaft on an unmodded car had it replaced or would have it replaced no questions asked. So why would GM need to do anything else? They are ensuring that any broken shafts on cars with valid warranties are being replaced. What else do you want them to do? Spend thousands of dollars needlessly inspecting cars. What does that do? Do you want them to just automatically replace components on cars who have had serious and significant powertrain modifications? If I was running a company I don't see that as being fiscally responsible. I also don't see it as necessary from a customer service standpoint when people clearly know they are potentially impacting the warranty when they make those modifications.
Please don't take offense to what I am about to type. I don't mean it to be anything personally. I don't think that it is any new news about this shaft issue. In fact, I remember news coming out on it when I was waiting to get my car in May, June, July and August of 2009. And there were members on here who posted very early on about their shafts breaking. So I would pose this question, why on earth would you mod your car knowing that this issue might exist and without first testing it out? I knew of this issue far before I even got my car so I would have certainly tested the Launch Control right away especially if I was planning on making changes to my car.