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Maybe this photo will clear up what I am trying to ask. This is not an actual picture of my motor, its some random photo of a k series motor
My english isn’t the best but let me try again, there are 6 bolts that serve a “dual purpose”, they hold down the camshaft hat/boss/cap, whatever you want to call it. That bolt also has a much smaller bolt made on top as one whole piece which sticks out of the valve cover and holds the valve cover on with an acorn nut. The bottom portion of the bolt is supposed to be set at 16ft lbs, they do not turn at all when applying torque to the top half bolt/acorn nut, which holds the valve cover on. The bolt and nut are torqued separately. I was not torquing the bottom half bolt which holds the camshafts in place, only the the acorn nut on top. The acorn nut tq. value is 7-8 lbs, I used 13lbs on those little suckers. In order to replace them I have to replace the whole bolt. Hopefully that will clear things up, thanks for your reply!
[quote=”jjohnson1″ post=187951]I would say if you don’t have the tools to look at live data, then you should at least pay the fee for diagnosis before throwing a stack of parts at it that may not help. Best of luck.
You can get scan tools that blue tooth to your phone fairly reasonable online. If you go that route, look for something you can look at live data such as fuel trims and O2 readings. That being said if you are not going to use it much, pay the diag fee. You may look at live data and may not give you much direction.[/quote]Well I finally took the v to an a.s.e certified mechanic. He drove it and ran diagnostics which cost $25 and his conclusion was that the cat was stopping up and causing the tranny to act funny and the cat was “dead” because of faulty primary and secondary 02 sensors. I ask was he sure and he assured me that he was positive and that he could see both 02 sensors constantly fluctuating, which immediately raised a red flag for me because I knew that the upstream 02 sensor should switch voltage frequently over a wide variance but the downstream should stay steady. He suggested $700 in repairs which did not include oem parts obviously. I balked at his proposal and went home and ordered a denso downstream 02 sensor from rock auto for $90 shipped. I installed and reset the check engine light. Now the V idles smooth, gas mileage is up to normal, the transmission shifts good and no more cel. Its been 1,000 miles and so far so good. I think that I am gonna change the tranny fluid, its been several thousand miles since the last change and its a brownish red.
[quote=”gmule” post=177649]Any of the domestic trucks would be great. You didn’t mention where out west you would be going so I assume that you will be in the rockies at some point. If you are going to spend any amount of time in the rockies I recommend a truck with a V-8 our high altitude mountain passes will suck the horse power right out of any of the 4 and 6 cylinder vehicles even more so if they are loaded down. If this is a one time trip with not a lot of time spent in the big mountains a smaller vehicle with a smaller engine will work just be warned that you will crawl up the mountain passes at a snails pace.
In no particular order
Chevy Silverado with 5.3
F-150 with the 5.4
Chevy tahoe with 5.3[/quote] Yea, we will be going to a lot of national parks out west, so a lot of mountain driving will be done.[quote=”Evil-i” post=177546]
lol, yea I’d really like to have had the vacation mobile in lampoons vaction..I should add, even though the link says to switch to synthetics, if I were you I would do some reading on the topic before making the switch. Synthetics are better then regular oil in every way but some people have reported leaks after switching. The oil doesn’t cause the leaks but it can make them more evident in an engine that hasn’t been kept up and/or with a lot of miles. Just read and come to your own educated decision. I’d also be weary of changing tranny fluid in an automobile unless I knew for sure that the tranny fluid had been changed on schedule. Manuals not included, every automatic I’ve seen changed with some miles on them (that hadn’t been changed on schedule if at all) have caused the tranny to fail. Some people will disagree and agree with me, that’s fine. That’s just been my experience and opinions. Good luck.
[quote=”Cole Lewis” post=168470]I have this truck and it is my first truck and i want to slowly upgrade the performance and i want to do it right. Where should i start ?[/quote] Personally I would start with maintenance first. Then I would do basic bolt-ons like exhaust. This link http://www.hughesengines.com/TechArticles/4buildingupmagnumtruckengines19932003.php is a pretty good schedule in my opinion.
[quote=”peshewa” post=168245]I’ve owned and serviced a lot of automobiles in my life. In my opinion, I think Toyota makes some of the most reliable cars and they are very easy to service as well.
As for your car, I have a few thoughts. Have you checked for recalls? You can Google your VIN or just go to all-data.com for this info. Lots of 2000’s gm cars had ignition switch recalls.
Recalls are fixed for free at the dealership, but find the details and print it off because they will wiggle out of it if given the chance.
I think your car has electric assist power steering, as many late model gm cars do. The electric motor on them is about half way down the steering column. It sounds like there may be a stripped gear, or maybe even a loose motor in that mechanism.
The good news, is that the steering column is not hard to remove once you get the panels out of the way. Half way down the steering column there are 3 bolts that hold the section of the column with the steering wheel, after removing the electrical connections and those 3 bolts, it lifts right out and you can see the section with the electric assist motor.
If you can put your hand on that electric motor, wiggle it to see if it feels loose. If not, the gear inside might be stripped.
The argument could be made that you may have already fixed most of the bad stuff on your car, so it may be cheaper to own now. No guarantees obviously but it’s a thought. I’ve bought cars from people that sold them cheap because they just spent $1000 on it and now another thing is wonky and they assumed it’s a money pit and I got it for a song, spent $100 and it was good for years.
Just my two cents.[/quote] Yea I think we are gonna look for a foreign automobile, not sure which kind yet.
I don’t believe this model year has electric assist. This car has hydraulic assist with a belt driven pump and I did not see the electric motor when I had the column apart. I also looked at the fuse block, which did have a slot for electric assist but there was no fuse there nor do I believe there could have ever been one because there was no metal tabs for the fuse to engage.
There are recalls for g6 steering problems but not for my model year. The only recall is for a cable that can crack effecting the brake lamps.
Thanks for the suggestions though, greatly appreciated![quote=”DaFirnz” post=168242]I’ll be honest that I haven’t come by too many G6s in my professional life, but everyone I have come across is a complete turd. GM didn’t kill Pontiac off, they fucking tortured it until it killed itself.[/quote] Agreed
[quote=”Evil-i” post=168377]The G6 name came from “Geeze, it spends 6 times as much time on the hoist as it does on the road.”[/quote] Yea its my last domestic auto for sure except maybe their trucks. I like their trucks o.k.
Well, after shopping the g6 around I have determined that car lots don’t want to give you nothing but crumbs for trade-ins. We recently looked at a vibe (toyota engineered) and tried it out and to my surprise it was a big let down. The thing rode rough, had motor vibration and was a little noisy. My better half just had to try out an hhr that they had, so I agreed and was quite surprised. The hhr outperformed the vibe in every way except power. The vibe seemed a little more peppy. Against my better instinct and even though I swore domestics off for a while but she *almost* had me convinced to consider the hhr when I felt and heard the steering pop and it done it repeatedly, so we took it back and the car lot kept saying that it was a good vehicle and all recalls had been performed, which I believe it (I actually like the 2.2 isuzu engineered if I remember correctly) was but I just can’t get past the steering. On a side note, the lot also had an hhr SS turbo with a manual and that thing was fun for a four banger.
[quote=”PaulKim” post=168227]haha, my friend had a ford focus 2001. He is the opposite of an automotive enthusiast. I guess you could say he is the epitome of “a to b drive”. He lives in like mid New Jersey. Drives average, not hard on the car, smooth roads all around, lot of highway type driving.
Every single suspension part on the car went bad. The windows randomly broke, the 2 rears could not stay up so he duct taped them. And these were manual windows lol. I seen another focus in a parking lot same thing I wonder if its an issue. There were some other problems with it I don’t remember but it sounded like it was going to fall apart every time it hit even a small bump.
I always made fun of him for it because I have a 2003 accord and I drive the shit out of it. And nothing broken besides some brake issues I have but its easy to replace those. He got rid of it for a kia forte sedan.[/quote] Lol…oh my gosh, that’s what I bought this car for, to be an a to b car. But I’ve had to replace everything from a-z and barely put a-b miles on it. No kidding, I bought it with 46,xxxx and I’ve put almost as much in the car for repairs as I originally gave for the car. I had a little honda prelude, 270,xxxx on it and the only thing I ever did was put fuses in it, besides oil changes and it never used a bit, never smoke and ran like a sewing machine and I drove that car very hard, I also had a little mitsu truck and put 100,xxx on it. The only thing I ever did was put a timing belt on it after the original one broke. The last four of my vehicles have been american and they all SUCKED. Its unfortunate too because I’m an all american but I just cannot trust their vehicles.
Yea actually it did. I’ve just decide to get rid of the car. It’s out of warranty and I’m not gonna dump another $1,000 +/- in this car. I just put a lot of money in this car this spring. On a side note, I’ve never owned a car that I had to replace a turn signal switch, all four wheel bearings, nor sway bar links not to mention all the other repair work I’ve performed on this car and I’ve owned a lot of autos, some with hundreds of thousands of miles. I’m gonna look at what the Japanese market has to offer the next few weeks. Thanks.
Well I chose to take the car to another tire shop today before giving up on it and trading it off. The tire shop was nothing special, just a 3 bay garage with a heavy duty tire balance machine. In fact I was very skeptical and the workers were just a bunch of country boys (no offense to country people) The lead technician couldn’t even talk plain, I barely understood him . So I told him the problem and everything I have tried. He seemed hopeful but also seemed unsure. He drove the car and came back and said that he thought it was a balance problem. I thought well shoot what a waste of time this had turned out to be, but I let him proceed. He took all four wheels off and re-balancd and indexed them several times, and after each time he would drive the car. To my surprise the “country” technician got almost ALL of the vibration out, at least to an acceptable point. Feels like normal road vibration now. I canNOT believe that a couple country boys with a normal balance machine did what college educated “techs” couldn’t do with their ten’s of thousands of dollar equipment. He told me the rest was because the tires were cheap. Lesson learned!