[chaospiece]

Hey guys, thought I'd share my experience and some information from said experience.

I have an 18 SS built in January, sold in march of said year. Love my car but GM quality eventually caught up to it.
I never had a check engine light or any codes come off the odb, but all the problems I've had probably plauge many cars and owners wont ever know because I've been lucky to have friends who work and manage both my local GM dealerships.

I had the fuel pumps go at around 25k, they were only caught with a voltage test. I had actually taken the car in because of the colant hose leaks.

Had the transmission worked on a few times, I've learned to live with it, there really is no stock way to fix it.

The latest issue is my engine valve train is failing. My closest friends all have LT1s so they all said it sounds like normal valve train noise, but I had a feeling something was up, started to have something that was so-slightly off.

I took it to my trusty Chevy dealership which I'm lucky to have, they automatically knew it was a lifter. They have absolutely nothing to go by other than using a scope to single out the noise made at different rpms, no codes or abnormal odb readings. Its covered under warranty for full valve train replacement, but maybe even cam depending if there's scoring or if they find something else wrong when they do the full teardown.

They have been doing many valve train failure work recently and are about 3 weeks off parts coming in.

In short, you guys know your cars, maybe slight difference in ticks aren't normal for direct injection as people make them seem to be. Get your car checked out, I babied mine and I'm lucky to have a good dealership.

Any other failing drivetrain stories?

[cmitchell17]

If you are talking about the oil cooler coolant hose, where it goes from the hard aluminum pipe to a rubber hose and back to a hard aluminum pipe, I had that failure at about 75k or so. Mine split open and I had to limp my car home (when I should of towed it) and had to keep stopping and filling it up with water. I have heard it happening to others around here.

Its really frustrating that a single point of failure and critical item ends up being a stupid hose that shouldn't have failed. It's weird since after looking at the hose it had such a clean split all the way down the length of the hose.

I had the usual torque converter shutter around 40k or so if I remember correctly, then had the "triple flush", which then it came back around 80k or so, so I bought some of the new fluid myself and drained my old fluid and filled it up with the new stuff which has fixed it ever since.

Now I actually at around 104k just had what sounds like a pinion or axle bearing start making a slight grinding noise, you can barely hear it and it changes noise on and off the gas. I ended up swapping in a used differential from a 2019 SS, and I am going to tear my original one apart when I get a chance.

Apparently there is nothing serviceable in the differentials besides the pinion and axle seals and the case half seal, which is really disappointing and kind of hints that these units don't have the quality that the older AAM (GM) units had. I am pretty sure the 5th gen differentials were made by AAM, but I think this unit might be a GKN, or maybe its made by Magna not sure. I know it has Canadian stickers on them new haha so not sure if that may be Magna. I know GKN makes the driveshaft (which seem to be pretty POS like and one of the first things to break when drag racing) and yeah the driveshaft is what makes all the rattle/knock/clunking noises shifting from drive and reverse and neutral.

So I have plenty or more quirks (dimming interior door LED, rattling a-pillars, shift to park message, noisy/failed passenger vented seat, etc.) My valvetrain sounds like crap/POS as well but I have a mild/medium cam and lifters. I also had a intake valve seat fail but most likely that was done by my cam.

Overall the reliability/quality has been pretty bad and embarrassing, although its hard to say how much some of the stuff could have been because of the cam and ported heads and me messing with it and taking the engine out and putting it back in twice haha.

[chaospiece]

Modifying a car has it's caveats.
I'm fully stock because I wanted to get the most of a $45k car with warranty.

But since my warranty is almost up, I plan on modifying it as much as possible. Can't be worse than GM OEM parts.

[cmitchell17]

Originally Posted by chaospiece

Modifying a car has it's caveats.
I'm fully stock because I wanted to get the most of a $45k car with warranty.

But since my warranty is almost up, I plan on modifying it as much as possible. Can't be worse than GM OEM parts.

I think in a very very small number of cases an aftermarket part may be better than the OEM. For everything else I feel you won't find a better part than the GM one. Of course things change with "strengthen" aftermarket parts like engine internals, but even then you see all these items spend 25k on "built" motors with all these aftermarket internals, then they end up blowing up after 5,000 miles.

I don't think the issue is the inherent design, it's things like small manufacturing defects, purchasing department changing suppliers abruptly because of cost, outsourcing too many things that should be done in house, beauracracy causing delays in engineering changes and creating more problems, corrupted dealership network incentivising warranty work, engineering not being allowed to fix potential issues because of project budgets and politics.

That's just my outside opinion, I work in a similar industry and see these same problems.

To me 99% of having "good luck" with cars is just being aware of your vehicle and knowing, using all your senses, to spot problems once they occur, then having the knowledge to know what needs to be done and what is completely unnecessary to fix the problems.

[Joey Soul]

I have a 18ss as well, manual. Im around 25k now mostly aggressively beaten on and taken to the limiter on track and have had no issues like this.