Crapiest engine in the Chevy line-up?

[RubyCamaro]

This a copy of a post made on Facebook by a friend of mine who is a mechanic for a Chevy dealership & in mechanical school to further her skills:

Our new transmission tech discovered the 'joy' that is the 3.6 lt V6 today. The look on his face was pretty priceless. He came and got me and was like O.O every single one of these are leaking in the same place!!!!!!!!! Needless to say the LLT/LFX/3.6 V6 is the crappiest engine we've seen in any Of the current GM line up, unfortunately it's used across the board so there are lots of them wandering around. In fact it's the only engine that is continuously coming in for the same problems and I had to tell the poor guy about it however he seemed a bit relieved to find out the issue is common and not just something that has been spawning itself on everything he gets handed. XD Kinda can't wait to see his reaction when I tell him these front covers leak around every 30k miles even after they are resealed as well as the timing tensioners are garbage and on a TSB. and well since he will be going through all the work of pulling the engine to fix the front cover he might as well do the tensioners at the same time. Save himself another engine pull. XD Ill save telling him about the water pumps going bad on them till later. Don't want to scare him too much we all like having him around.

Discuss.

[spyderbuddy]

Got 50,ooo on my LLT and no oil problems. 2010 LLT at that, so where did this all come from. No Chain tensioner problems, front cover seal is good. I know this because I just Replaced my Serpentine belt with a Gates Kevlar Blue Racing Belt. No problems under the hood.

And FYI the V6 Camaro Just got one of the TOP TEN on RESALE VALUE.

[RubyCamaro]

Me either. Ruby seems to be fine. But I do worry about all the reports of problems. As I get ready to install my headers & tune totally giving up on the drivetrain warranty, it is increasingly worrisome.

[45thCamaro]

Well that doesn't make me feel very good

[lscamaro]

Originally Posted by 45thCamaro

Well that doesn't make me feel very good

Why? you have an LFX

[RubyCamaro]

She said both of them! LLT & LFX.

[45thCamaro]

Originally Posted by lscamaro

Why? you have an LFX

Because I spent over 30k on a car that the engine isn't claiming to be reliable. I still love my car. Maybe one day I'll drop and 8 in.

[KMPrenger]

Interesting story, but not sure I'm going to believe the sky is falling based on her assessment either.

Look, we all know the LLT has had its fair share of issues (timing chain and disappearing oil) but there are just as many or more that have gone many many miles without needing major repair. Unfortunately this really doesn't instill confidence, but I sure as heck don't believe each and every engine is a bad one.

I've been on this site for a very long time and don't remember reading much at all about front covers leaking. Timing chains...yes that happens. But not much comes to mind about front seals leaking.

There are a couple threads active right now in both the LLT and LFX sections asking at what mileage the timing chains have gone out. In the LFX thread someone there mentioned that his tech told him that they noticed the timing chain issue happens mostly to drivers who tend to do lots of short trips in the car. I asked him about it and he said that to me. Here is what he originally said:

Agreed. Furthermore, my understanding is that the timing chain issue was related to people who only drive their cars for short bursts and don't let the engine oil get to operating temperature. The LLT direct injected engines leak gas into the engine oil but the engineers thought it was OK because as soon as the engine oil gets to operating temp the gas is burned off. Well, in the case of people who are only traveling short distances on a regular basis the engine oil doesn't warm up hot enough to burn the gas off, the gas accumulates, and the timing chains and/or bearings start failing. I was told this was only with the LLT, the issues were corrected in the LFX.

So there is another opinion of a GM tech.

As far as the LFX is concerned I don't feel like that engine is plagued by the same faults, or at least the same frequency as the LLT. LFX has been used in these cars going on 3 years now and I'm not sure I've read about one failure yet.

Anyways...yes sadly the LLT does make me a little nervous which really sucks since I do love this car, but have to be worried if its going to fail on me in the future. As for the LFX, if I had that engine I'd be all smiles.

[OKCwhiteKnight]

75+K Trouble free miles!

[Grimlock]

The fact that there is no reliable and praised turbo kit for the LLT makes me sad. IPF is cool and all, but I enjoy bottom end power and need an excuse to ditch these headers of mine.

[rtcat600man]

Originally Posted by KMPrenger

Interesting story, but not sure I'm going to believe the sky is falling based on her assessment either.

Look, we all know the LLT has had its fair share of issues (timing chain and disappearing oil) but there are just as many or more that have gone many many miles without needing major repair. Unfortunately this really doesn't instill confidence, but I sure as heck don't believe each and every engine is a bad one.

I've been on this site for a very long time and don't remember reading much at all about front covers leaking. Timing chains...yes that happens. But not much comes to mind about front seals leaking.

There are a couple threads active right now in both the LLT and LFX sections asking at what mileage the timing chains have gone out. In the LFX thread someone there mentioned that his tech told him that they noticed the timing chain issue happens mostly to drivers who tend to do lots of short trips in the car. I asked him about it and he said that to me. Here is what he originally said:



So there is another opinion of a GM tech.

As far as the LFX is concerned I don't feel like that engine is plagued by the same faults, or at least the same frequency as the LLT. LFX has been used in these cars going on 3 years now and I'm not sure I've read about one failure yet.

Anyways...yes sadly the LLT does make me a little nervous which really sucks since I do love this car, but have to be worried if its going to fail on me in the future. As for the LFX, if I had that engine I'd be all smiles.

Thanks for the GREAT information. I too have heard that same story before about short trips and letting the oil get to operating temps.

As for the front cover leak, I had one, dealer took care of it under warranty back at 27K. I am now at 59K and have not seen a drop of oil leak since.

[Nutbutt]

Is the front oil leak typically a slow weaping issue. I was looking at a friends 2010 this week and it looked wet around the oil fill area. I was thinking this was from the oil fill tube itself and not the cover below it. Didn't find any oil on the ground or on the underside ???
Now wondering if I should havae told the owner ?

[scuba264]

When we were installing my intake a week or two ago, my father in law pointed out that it looked like there was some oil on the underside of my engine. I took a quick look but didn't think much of it, wasn't sure if it was actually oil or just wet and dirty and kinda brushed it off planning to look into it later.

Seems maybe I should look sooner than later...

[Sikoriko]

Weren't these engines inside the CTS Cadillac before GM putting inside the Camaro?