Owners of outdated BMWs are no strangers to getting stranded and having to attend for a tow, however drift automobile driver Andrew May was caught off-guard when the Chevy Silverado 3500 HD that tows his BMW E36 mysteriously broke down. The pickup refused to begin when Andrew and his household had been at a drift competitors in Englishtown, New Jersey, and their truck troubles solely received worse from there.
You gained’t imagine what turned out to be the issue within the comparatively new Chevy, which was repaired months later and after an excessive amount of hassle. First, we’re inviting readers to guess what was truly incorrect with the dually, which baffled Andrew, his drift assist crew and Chevrolet’s dealership techs alike.
Andrew, his spouse Elaina and their three youngsters journey the nation in an RV that doubles as a race trailer. They dwell out of the RV year-round, and the Momentum M-Class pulls double responsibility as transport for a BMW 3-Series (E36) coupe with a turbocharged M50 inline-six stroked to three.0 liters. The factor makes 500 horsepower on the wheels and even seems like an M3 Lightweight. It’s rad.
But the May household’s 2020 Chevrolet Silverado 3500 HD is the beating coronary heart of the operation, ferrying the household and drift automobile to competitions and exhibitions from the East to West Coast frequently. The Chevy has a 6.6-liter Duramax turbodiesel V8 and 10-speed Allison transmission. It has 84,000 miles on the odometer, so it’s barely damaged in. And it’s a Silverado High Country, which means it has all of the niceties on high of its mechanical bona fides.
One day, after placing the BMW right into a concrete wall whereas drifting, Andrew’s spouse went to fetch the Silverado however the truck wouldn’t begin. Andrew was caught performing a little bit of triage, juggling a track-side restore utilizing two different duallys to tug out his BMW’s collapsed shock tower whereas coping with the lifeless truck. He figured it was {an electrical} situation, possibly associated to the battery or starter.
After the mayhem of the race and the BMW restore, Andrew received the truck to a seller in New Jersey the place it spent the following ten days. The of us at E-Town had been good sufficient to maneuver the household’s RV to lots the place they might keep whereas the truck was present process repairs. Temperatures would attain 100 levels, and the Mays had been down on energy and water. Not excellent.
The (first) dealership confirmed there was no energy going to the starter, and the offender gave the impression to be a solid-state 550 amp fuse that went out. But changing it will require swapping out the entire fuse block, and, no, it wasn’t lined beneath guarantee because it wasn’t powertrain-related. The seller put in a brand new starter and fuse block and the Mays made it to their hometown of Atlanta, Georgia.
About every week later, catastrophe struck once more. The Silverado began having the identical points, as Andrew tells me:
And it stored doing the identical factor. It stored blowing this fuse, the strong state fuse, and nobody might work out why. They swapped out the fuse block once more. There was a number of instances the place they assume, ‘O.K., it’s mounted.’ I’m going get it, after which the identical day I’ve to convey it again or it simply doesn’t begin.
The second seller informed Andrew the starter gave the impression to be OK however they swapped it out anyway. Ditto the fuse block. Andrew was heading to the West Coast quickly, so he performed it secure, and requested for a spare fuse block in case the truck broke down. God forbid in the midst of nowhere — in silly large Texas or the Southwest.
Andrew went on, telling me:
So, I depart. I drive two or three stops, simply working little errands and…it doesn’t begin once more. Same factor, should get it towed. So they redo the entire thing, substitute the fuse block. All this type of stuff — they changed some module on it. They thought that was it. Now this restore has been one other 5 weeks after the primary breakdown.
I’m going get it. I drive it, however similar day, the examine engine mild comes on. And it begins, but it surely’s not comfortable about it. I drove it straight again to the seller. They had been closed so I left it within the parking zone and put the keys within the dropbox.
Another week later, Andrew received a telephone name and the Chevy tech on the opposite line mentioned, “Hey, we swapped out the fuse block again. And we went to test drive it…and something blew up.”
Andrew replied, “Describe “blew up.”
The tech mentioned, “Well, there was a loud sound and now we can’t get it to turn over.”
Andrew requested in the event that they had been attempting to show the crank manually and the tech confirmed they had been, which didn’t bode effectively. In truth, someplace in all this — via many weeks of changing modules and fuse block after fuse block — the seller even dropped the transmission and pulled the flywheel. Just in case.
That wasn’t it both, and the seller stored troubleshooting. Eventually, techs bumped into one other situation that pointed to the actual explanation for the issue, which we are going to reveal in a observe up publish. It solely took Chevy techs about 4 months to unravel the thriller, and it price Andrew about $3,000 out of pocket.
This all began in the summertime, and now that we’re nearing winter, “the Devil’s Truck,” has been absolutely repaired. Andrew gave it that nickname whereas it was within the store as a result of nobody might work out why it stored blowing fuse blocks. Andrew and the women are actually headed to SEMA, however he’s cautious of the truck.
Before we inform you what was incorrect with it, we would like readers to put in writing in along with your diagnoses. What do you assume was inflicting all the problems in Andrew’s Silverado 3500 HD?
Source: jalopnik.com