[Artryan]

Originally Posted by 2017-ZL1

I assume that's your opinion. No way do you have data to support such a statement. I see 40 listed. How many hundreds do you personally know? How many thousands are on the road today? Now, do that math.

All I can tell you is that you're assuming everyone that has a failed pump has reported to this thread. I know 2 guys locally that are not on this message board and have both had their pumps fail before 8k miles. My point is that these are not high mileage cars and production numbers of the ZL1 are very low compared to the average car. Obviously there is an issue with the pumps over a good range of the production. If you believe these are rare occurrences then that's your opinion based on a forum thread that you don't know anything about the actual numbers other than approx 40 people has said they have a failed pump.

With that said, I'm just putting the reality out there in hopes that it might help someone. Until GM sponsors me and makes my car payment, I'm not going to get one here and act as if there are no known issues.

If GM wanted to do the right thing, they would recall the cars that fall into the production range of bad pumps. They've changed the part number several times, so obviously they know failed pumps are more than a rare isolated occurrence.

[Dixie ZL1]

IMHO GM is doing the right thing. They’re replacing oil pumps and engines due to the failure, extending warranties, and I know of one instance where the dealer replaced a pump proactively at the owners request.

In my case GM extended my warranty to include every element of the drivetrain by 1 year and 22K miles. I just had a rear wheel bearing replaced at no cost under this extended warranty and that obviously has no connection to the oil pump.

For me, the value of the extended warranty is much greater than the pain caused by the pump failure.

[2017-ZL1]

Originally Posted by Artryan

All I can tell you is that you're assuming everyone that has a failed pump has reported to this thread. I know 2 guys locally that are not on this message board and have both had their pumps fail before 8k miles. My point is that these are not high mileage cars and production numbers of the ZL1 are very low compared to the average car. Obviously there is an issue with the pumps over a good range of the production. If you believe these are rare occurrences then that's your opinion based on a forum thread that you don't know anything about the actual numbers other than approx 40 people has said they have a failed pump.

With that said, I'm just putting the reality out there in hopes that it might help someone. Until GM sponsors me and makes my car payment, I'm not going to get one here and act as if there are no known issues.

If GM wanted to do the right thing, they would recall the cars that fall into the production range of bad pumps. They've changed the part number several times, so obviously they know failed pumps are more than a rare isolated occurrence.

The pump was used in many applications outside the wet sump LT4. Many thousand are still on the highway and will never fail. I have near 10K on mine and have no concern of this loom and doom. No, everyone will not fail. That part I disagree with.

[Artryan]

Originally Posted by 2017-ZL1

The pump was used in many applications outside the wet sump LT4. Many thousand are still on the highway and will never fail. I have near 10K on mine and have no concern of this loom and doom. No, everyone will not fail. That part I disagree with.

I agree with you for the most part, I know not every one of them will fail. I do think there's a much higher probability that the LT1 and LT4 engines will see failures. I still believe that if people actually put the miles on these ZL1's that the average person does with their daily driver, the amount of failures would be much, much higher.

I have doubts that GM will ever step up and be proactive in helping owners that are prone to have this issue that is due to a defective part and or poor quality control/ engineering, BUT they certainly never will if owners themselves publicly claim that it isn't an issue. IMHO, GM should absolutely step up to offer a fix or extra warranty to those of us that have a car that falls within a certain production range. JMHO.

[Lt4zl1]

This sort of reminds me of when I had my 2013 ats 2.0t. I started reading about how many of them broke pistons and started to panic a little as mine was modded and heavily. I had a hybrid turbo methanol on it pretty much the works for 2014. Car was in the 400-450whp range and it did blow up but I blame it more on I didn’t know the platform well at that point and ran it too rich. I put it back to stock and traded it in when they came to pick it up under warranty and they didn’t flinch on giving me full boat credit even though I had modded the car and it went to the dealer for a few stupid things while tuned and modded. So they knew of my former mods and still took it in under warranty and let me trade it with a broken rod hanging out the block. Lol it still ran too the funny part as they drove it on and off the wrecker. Anyway fast forward to today way too many of these cars on stock tunes with no mods have blown up and broke pistons. 100 percent gm fault too they run too tight of a top ring gap the 2.0t has a terrible stock manifold that creates a lot of egt on them. The piston swells slightly during this condition the motors that got built on the lower end of spec .007-.012 top ring end up butting the ends and it pops the piston an or breaks the ring land and you now have no compression or very low on cylinder 3 is the usual suspect. I tune a lot of these cars and my failure rate on them is really good compared to the 1000s on a stock tune that have let go. My point in gm has done nothing to recall the cars or help customers and in the ats world this is known as a ticking time bomb if own a 13/15 that’s stock. The fact the tune has it lugging the motor so much and that tiny turbo builds boost so fast it’s just a recipe for high egt and disaster. But anyway gm has to know about this on those threads there are hundreds of cars posting and gm reps even answer on the Cadillac threads trying to help customers get repairs. I will say very few get denied warranty even modded and they some of those even fought it and got a motor free after fighting.
Those of you that are stock and know your warranty will cover it enjoy that and the car. Yes it sucks to be on the side of the road possibly I’m in the transmission business and that’s the number one thing usually to leave someone shit out of luck and stuck. But low oil pressure I’m driving it till it blows up so gm is giving me a whole motor. I’m not even giving them a chance to patch this motor. So if you do not own one buy yourself a cheap code scanner from amazon and keep it in the glove box. You get reduced power at idle and can barley drive it once you get oil pressure up a bit clear the code and you will get throttle back and keep driving it till home or it blows up completely. Let them eat a whole motor screw letting them patch it. I bet their are nearly as many crate lt4 engines running around as their are zl1s that are falling under this time frame. They only made 3600 or so 2017 zl1 not sure how many 18s and how many fall into this time frame. I’m 6/17 on my door sticker so I’m in the middle of it too and anyone that knows of my car knows the mods and how hard I am on this thing.
I’m now at 9000 miles have over 100 time slips. I drive this car 180 miles one way to the track when I go which is pretty often. Car gets almost no daily driving so most of my miles are doing logs as I do my own tuning or they are to and from the track usually running 90-100 mph and the balance is on the track.
I have turned this motor 7200 rpm too many times as I have had to fight shifting issues and hitting the rev limit as it comes up on it too fast sometimes so I raised it higher to attempt to avoid it. But seems if it’s not going to shift it don’t care how how the limit is. Anyway my point is I probably have beat this thing way harder then any one and knock on wood I have 35 psi at idle and it’s usually around 60-65 psi hot at shift points as I do log my oil pressure as this has been known a while of an oil pump issue. I run 5/30 always have so didn’t want to change it up as I have had this car since nov/17. It had 200 miles on it when bought it I changed the oil at 500 miles then 1500 then again 3000. I build engines or did for a living at one point so I know how critical clean oil can be on any engine. I do not use my engine oil life meter to me that doesn’t exist and shouldn’t be on a performance car. I see it get dirty I change it which can be around 3000 miles. If it’s still clean at 3000 I still change it. I run a catch can if you ever saw what trash is in these that actually work everyone would feel the need to use them. The stock clean side works well but there is no stock dirty side that just is pumped back up into the blower and burnt.
Just don’t trust in things if your my age in your 40s that you never had on other cars. We all learned to change the oil around 3000 miles when younger and those that have always had performance cars maybe even more often. Yes it sucks this car holds 10 quarts but don’t keep running it if you see it’s dirty and getting dark towards black. With a good tune and not running as rich as the stock tune runs these I have found my oil isn’t getting nearly as dark as when it was on the stock tune. I made my first mods around 3k due to some a10 issues so wanted to be sure the car didn’t have a factory bug before I did my mods.
Just be smart I wish I knew the cause of failure. I don’t do a cam in mine as I am still chasing a redicilous time on just bolt ons with no internal mods and only on boost. So far car went 9.52@143 on a pass that I spun and it’s didn’t make the 6-7 shift some reason it choose to hang the gear that pass. So it would have been faster. At some point I will do a cam as I’m in desperate need of the fuel lobe at a minimum. I spray a lot of methanol I do a lot of things many of you will never do. I have run this car so lean a normal motor probably have given up a piston this motor for the most part is bullet proof and exceeded so many people’s expectations. Bolt on z06 going 9.00 mine 9.50s on bolt ons. Cars on stock short blocks with turbos running well into the 8s. Many of these have been modded no issues so just enjoy your cars hopefully at some point there will be a “why” to go along with this thread and a good aftermarket replacement.
This is not a new failure to manufactures either. I have talked to a bunch of 5.0 owners that had to do a billet pump gear swap due to stock ones exploding soon as they turned them a few more rpm then that stock limiter was setup to. I can verify from my own car this is not rpm related. Lol though I command it to shift at 6200 it’s very rare it listens. I’ve had a hard time getting the trans to behave and shift when I ask. Other then that I really cannot complain about much on this car. Even the extremely rough ride can be tamed if you choose to buy a dsc sport suspension controller. It has a built in launch control that actually makes this car transfer weight like a drag car should and in touring mode it drives more like my Cadillac did then beat you up all the time. Plus when you swing the wheel it’s smart so still responds and gets tight. It’s also fully tuneable too if you choose to try to make it better then the settings it has in it. Those daily driving it need this as it’s making my drive so much more pleasurable and I feel the car really as smart suspension now.
Anyway I’ll post more on that when I get some new track data at Cadillac attack as that will be my first time on a sticky surface. As on now on my 18 inch et streets I’m spinning to 1.38-1.45 so if it helps me hook I think it will be easily in the lower 1.30s high 1.28 range.
So go enjoy the car buy the code scanner and run it into the ground if stock and gets low oil pressure thy way you get a whole new motor. Gm has to eat a large handful of lt4 engine maybe then something will be done. But my experience with the 2.0t ltg they just made changes through the years and just repaired what failed.
I know some will complain this is long so have at it but some will enjoy reading and hopefully feel a little better if in that failure range as my own car seems to be and see you can’t just sit and worry about it.

[L78toLT1]

While the prospect of losing the oil pump on my Camaro doesn’t keep me up at night, I believe any rational person would be hard pressed to name a current production vehicle with a greater chance of losing an oil pump than a gen5 LT. Identifying a vehicle more likely to lose a motor for other reasons is certainly possible, think VooDoo GT350’s, but as for oil pumps, ours are likely as bad as it gets.
I’m also not convinced this is entirely a quality issue. Based on the pics of failed pumps, it looks more like a design issue. It’s not always accurate to start screaming about quality every time something fails. It’s not all about quality. For example: A Yugo, or Vega, with every component dead nuts on the nominal engineering spec requirements would have perfect quality, and still be a P.O.S.

[Moniker]

Here's a link about why the oil pumps fail

https://gm-techlink.com/?p=12041

[JasonSB]

Is this an issue on the Z06?

[JonDaddy82]

Just saw this on a FB group I’m on:

[L78toLT1]

Take the cover off of that pump and i'm sure you will find the typical cracked outer race.

[Boost or bust]

Fffffuuuuucccccckkkkk

[Doc_Scott_PT]

I went through 11 pages, and did not see anything about 2020 year models. My order is going in, in May. From what I have read, it seems to be 17-early 19 year models. Is this accurate?

[2ltrgsr]

3/17-10/17 was the build dates so far that had 99% of the failures reported. But who knows how many weren't reported in the forums and Facebook groups.

[Alponcho]

I have ZL1 in that date range but not particularly worried about the oil pump because of the warranty. If it breaks, it will get fixed. That GM won't likely address the issue proactively is a missed opportunity for them. I bought a new 2001 M3, and it turns out there were rod bearing issues that year. So BMW did a recall, rebuilt engines, and warranted them for a full 6yr 100,000mi IIRC. Guys weren't happy to lose their cars for a week, I sure wasn't, but that response inspired confidence/loyalty in the company.