Sure, it is upsetting (period)- mine was replaced at 6000 miles as were quite a few others! Unfortunately, this is a situation where YOU have to take control and be persistant with calls until you get some satisfaction. GM willNOT ring your phone off the wall NOR knock your door down to offer you anything. I am nowat 4 months of constant calls back and forth and arguing with them over this and I am still waiting for it to be resolved. Good luck.

 

per dennis' request i'll try to shed some light on the subject that may or may not have been covered already(haven't got a chance to read all of both the threads pertaining to the topic)

vehicles involved in this are-all 04-05 chevy colorado,all 04-05 gmc canyon, with 3.5L vin-6 rpo L52
2006 chevy colorado, 2006 gmc canyon, wtih 3.5L vin-6 rpo L52 and last 6 of vin less then 287698
2006 HUMMER H3 with 3.5L vin-6 rpo L52 and LAST 6 OF VIN LESS THAN 287591

Basically if you have an 06 H3 with the last six numbers under what i specified your problems could be due to a bad cylinder head.

The conditions for it are, your SES,(service engine soon) light will come on with the dtc code of p0300 for a cylinder misfire.its a single cylinder fault that only happens at idle, sometimes you can feel it, sometimes you can't. VEHICLES BUILT BEFORE THE VIN BREAKPOINT MIGHT BE AFFECTED BY WHATS CALLED NON UNIFORMINTAKE VALVE SEAT WEAR. THIS PREVENTS THE INTAKE VALVE FROM FULLY SEATING THUS CREATING A POOR COMBUSTION.

VEHICLES BUILT AFTER THE VIN BREAKPOINT ARE EQUIPPED WITH HARDENED VALVE SEATS TO PREVENT THIS, IF YOUR H3 HAS ISSUES AND DOES NOT FALL UNDER THE VIN CRITERIA THEN YOUR PROBLEMS LIE ELSWHERE. UNLESS IT CAN BE VERIFIED BY YOUR DEALER WITH A CYLINDER LEAKDOWN TEST THAT THERE IS STILL A LEAK. I'm not saying that its not possible for there to still be a problem because its after all, still a mechanical part. and parts can and will break.

Other then that, i will say that our dealership sells probably 20 H3's a month and we've been selling Hummer's since the H2's release. We have to date only had one vehicle that we found with a bad cylinder head. GM declares this as a rare occurance.They kinda suck to do, i myself am not a fan of the I5's. with proper engineering the 4.2L I6from the trailblazer/envoy could have easily fit. a little more engineering during the prototype faze could have netted the H3 with a 4.8L genIII vortec v8.

I'm surprised that there isn't a sticky on front/rear diffs or t-case's. maybe its a midwest thing but we've seen ten times the amount of those going bad vs. any engine problems.
hope this helps out.
Dustin



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Thanks for the info Midnight. I will have to disagree with one thing...as far as GM stating the head replacement is "rare" - look at the numbers on here of people that have had them (sure I realize there are many who have not as well as the fact that many do not fall into that "faulty vin range" so they will not suffer the problem hopefully.) Also, I have several acquaintances locally who have H3's that fall into the "vin range" who have had or are still waiting to have the replacement done. I know one person who is now going on 2 months waiting to get hers fixed.

As for the mechanics who have to do them - I feel sorry for them as I hear it's a long involved repair and for the pay....

 

I understand where your coming from, but remember that there's over 200 thousand vehicles under that vin range though, thats a lot compared to the actual number that are being repaired under it. and in my own personal opinion i think they had a couple bad batches in there that were probably shipped to the same reigon. which would account for some places having a lot of occurances. and some places, like ours, that have very few.

the reason for the long wait is a few things, and i know excuses dont' justify what you as a customer have to go through, believe me; mechanics relate closer to the customers then we do to the corporation.
excuse a) gm didn't plan on having this problem thus they didn't have an abundant supply of complete cylinder head assemblies laying around

excuse b) because of this, when we do come across a faulty head and because they are not a common stock item, we have to open a **** case(im not a parts guy but i believe it stands for special parts aquisation claim(i know i butchered the spelling) so that we can aquire a head in a timely matter(or try to)

excuse c) after all this is general motors we are talking about, i would rather work on a gm vehicle any day of the week before i touched a dodge or a ford. but that doesn't mean that they do not have their faults. we have been fixing the exact same problems on cadillacs northstar v-8's for over 10 production years and they still haven't figured it out.all i can say is be patient and stay persistant in your calls to corporate hq to get them to make things right. just dont' take it out on your dealership, we only do as we are told, if we don't there will be somebody else occupying our bay by the end of the week. job security is non existant in the automotive field.

 

Thanks Dustin for helping with our frustrations here...A voice from the inside is a comfort, especially when they know our pain..

 

have these indiviguals vehicles shown the problem signs that relate to the cylinder head, keep in mind this is not a recall. the vehicle does have to set a ses light with a misfire at idle and it does have to be verified by a mechanic using proper diagnosis that the cylinder head is bad. if thats all been done and your waiting that long, im not sure what to tell you, either your parts dept has not filed the **** case or they are completely out of cylinder heads. the one vehicle we did took about a week or so to get the cylinder head.
Dustin

 

Yes, they were all diagnosed and some have already been replaced and the one in particular I was referring to has been waiting for all parts to arrive and get in (there was SEVERAL ahead of hers.) Last time I had mine in for a week for a minor repair I asked my service writer for an approximate number of these they had seen thus far and he said close to 20.

In regard to your previous post - sure I agree with everything else you have said...I am just MAD MAD MAD (or as Dennis might say PMSing LOL) with GM right now as they have been jerking me around for 4 months now. I also realize that any employee has to do what they have to do at their job if they don't wish to be replaced. Unfortunately non of us is expendible (even if we like to think we may be lol) I also empathize with the mechanics, service writers, etc. - as they have to experience the wrath of those of us who are displeased (and it really isn't their fault at all - they just happen to be the ones we get to see to chew the ears off.)

 

i'm not sure what i can tell you, where do you live? is it always that far out to get work done? unless we have to order parts we can usually get a vehicle done within the same week that it comes in, if not in the same day(parts granted). i'm not sure how far we could extend loaner vehicles but if anyone is close to sioux falls sd it might be worth a trip. or at the least a phone call to see what our service dept might be able to do.

 

Mid, I am in FL. Apparently my dealership has been inundated with this problem (last I heard the count was up over 20 and that was a couple months ago.) I do have an acquaintancewho has been waiting at least 6 weeks for parts to come in and there are several ahead of her to be done. Perhaps as someone stated previously - maybe many in that vin range were shipped to the same areas/regions which could account for the large numbers we are seeing here and the lack of parts. ?? I know I would be LIVID if I were one of those who had to wait weeks and weeks.

 

FYI..
I just called my dealer service writer buddy (I've known him a long time after having a POS Land Rover)
He said, to date, only 8 H3s has came in for this problem....It is an entire head assembly..Complete with valves, cam, all the goodies...Just a simple remove the old head and replace with new head..