Drew Dowdell

I'm with @A Horse With No Name, the only things at GM I really like are the Sierra Denali and the Escalade. The rest of Cadillac's lineup is lost on me now that the CT6 is dead. I think the new Suburban/Tahoe/Yukons are fuuuu-gly. The GMC crossovers are terrible. I suppose I could do an Enclave if I had to, but there are other options from other manufacturers I'd pick first.

I like the Chevys as long as they're not overloaded with chrome. So the RST and the High Country work for me. The opposite is true at GMC.... Denali all the way baby, although the Elevations and AT4s are great looking too.

I KNOW! THAT'S WHY I SAID YOU'RE A BAD INFLUENCE! I love my truck, but I can't help looking.

You're a bad influence @balthazar !! I should NOT be on Chevy's website... Crewcab standard bed RST with the 6.2 liter and 10-speed - $52,310 I wish it was a bluer blue though.

Just came back from a night time test drive with them. So much better than oem so I’m going to order a set for the Encore also. But I definitely need to do the fogs as well. Don’t like the differing light color.

When I was in the Philly area last weekend and driving around at night, I was noticing my headlights were pretty dim. Since halogens can dim with age and these are most likely the originals, I decided to upgrade to LED. One set in. Both in

Someone in dispatched effd up. That's not the engineer's fault.

It's okay, I'm filling up with corn.

So it occurred to me that I never told you guys about my new job. If you hadn't been watching last season, I lost my job with Direct Energy in 2019, my last day was December 18th. I was told at the beginning of November that it was coming, just didn't have an exact date. Direct Energy paid me a healthy severance of 7 months of salary, plus bonus, plus a medical stipend. After 13 years, I was ready to go and I can't be mad at them for laying me off. In the ensuing months, Direct Energy laid off another 6,000 in June and then another 7,000 in August. They've also been sold out to a competitor. So I think I got out just in time. My initial plan when I found out I was being laid off was that I would take January and February off just to recuperate from 13 years of burn-out. Well, you know what happened at the end of February. But I had already started job hunting and was starting to get calls for interviews. At the beginning of March, I was hearing about this weird virus and places like Italy were shutting down. I decided that since I hadn't seen my parents in 18 months, I should make a trip down. I jumped on National's app and got a car for the next day and drove down to Miami the next day. I stayed with them for a week and every day I was getting 5 to 6 calls a day and setting up interviews for my return. By the end of the week all hell was breaking loose, NYC was shutting down. By the time I got home to Pittsburgh, all of my interviews had been canceled. I got back and we hunkered down for the next few months, but I kept applying to places. Thankfully, I was also getting unemployment and the extra $600 during this time. End of May, I got a call about a project manager job for a local municipality. After a few rounds of video interviews I got the job as Acting Director of I.T. and Project Manager for the Municipality of Bethel Park PA. My job is to update and bring they Municipality up to date and move their technology into the cloud. I'm enjoying it and they're keeping me quite busy. They never really had an I.T. presence prior to me and there is a lot of fixing that needs to happen. I finally get to build an I.T. department the way I think it should be built. Right now the position is a contract to hire (hence the "Acting" part of my title) and I have a strong reason to believe they will make me full time in January. So yeah, things are pretty secure for me now.

What year Traverse? You have to remember that even the new Traverse is a pig when it comes to weight. The old one was over 5,000 lbs with just one person in the vehicle and it was relying on a 288 horsepower / 270 lb-ft of torque V6 to move it.

No, @balthazar's son must have had the Colorado. In the Camaro it makes 335 hp and 284 lb-ft of torque.

Over Labor Day weekend I went to Deep Creek Maryland and rented a cottage on a farm away from the main resort area. Had a nice restful vacation with some hiking and a lot of sleeping in. But we also went to the nearby town of Oakland which has a small transportation museum in it.

What was the issue? For me, the 3.6 was one of the bright spots when I drove the truck. I just hated the seating position. The 3.6 in the Camaro is fantastic.

I like the new Genesis steering wheel too.... very retro.

Just did it.

Change the Dexcool yesterday and every 5 years. Get the pink/orange stuff, not the piss yellow “It works in everything!!” Prestone. Unless you have proof that the intake manifold gasket has been done recently, budget for the gasket replacement. Other than that, it’s an unremarkable engine and will probably outlast the car if he keeps up on oil changes. Not that simple unfortunately. The prior owner tried that and it ran like garbage and it cost me a lot of time/money to put it back to factory. These cars are designed to run the way they were designed to run and don't take well to people fiddling with the factory settings. The only thing I've looked into is a drop in EFI replacement for the E-Quadrajet. It's like $1200 just for the parts and comes with a completely new computer controller.

Which 3.4 liter? The 3.4 DOHC, or the 3400?

Trailblazer - South Korea EcoSport - India, on a European platform Renegade - Italy, on a European platform In fact, there isn't a single subcompact crossover built in the U.S. by any manufacturer. The closest you can get is the CX-30 (edit: and HR-V) which are built in Mexico. The smallest crossovers built in the U.S. are the CR-V/RDX and Escape/Corsair.

Unfortunately, my carb is electronic and the machines to calibrate it are unobtainium..,... so it has to be hacked through manual adjustment.

I'm not sure what you're saying was false... but here's what I know about these engines. The 3800 basic design goes way back '78 (though it had relatives from before then), but it technically did not become what we know of as the 3800 until 1988. Various sensors had been added and changed over the years to make it more efficient. The series 1 and series II made other minor changes to the block, but it was largely the same design. It was a cast-iron block rather than the aluminum 3.6 liter. The Optispark distributor system was excellent in concept, but had a design flaw that allowed moisture to build up inside. Later versions and aftermarket replacements included drain hole to allow moisture to escape. People bitch and moan about Optispark because at the time they were used to the distributor sitting at the top of the engine and being easy to access. Optispark removed the necessity to access it as frequently as an old-style distributor, but it was moved under the water pump meaning that changing the distributor meant draining the radiator (!!) and doing a water pump gasket. It was just a convenience thing for the old-school guys. But I bet every single one of those guys would take Optispark over a timing belt driven Honda which was common at the time. A timing belt job on them ALSO included doing a water pump swap. @A Horse With No Name - The GM 3.6 issue are largely around the timing chain and service intervals. GM tried to extend oil change intervals on the earlier ones, but old oil would cause the motors to stretch out the timing chains to the point that the VVT couldn't compensate. Multiple manufacturers (Ford and Honda that I know of) have dealt with similar problems, so it's not a situation unique to GM. GM addressed it by strengthening the chain and shortening the service interval. Other than that, the 3.6 has been fairly reliable by my knowledge. Electric motors have fewer moving parts if that's what you mean by simpler design, however the electronics in them are more sophisticated and complex. There's also (usually) no multi-gear transmission to worry about. I've actually been to seminars on this subject. Car manufacturer are already aware and working on it. More and more manufacturers are going to go with hardened versions of mobile device software to run their cars. Let Google or Apple or Blackberry sort out the operating system level stuff and the manufacturer will handle the car running parts.

This has been my jam the past week

I’ll be canceling XM as soon as my trial membership is up. The stations I like are too repetitive and the others don’t interest me.

I’ve only owned it a little over a month and I’ve had it on trips 4 weekends out of 6. I brought back a small U-Haul trailer full of furniture from my grandmother’s last night and just dropped the trailer off. Going to give him the week off from commuter duty and let the Toronado fill that role the rest of this week.

It’s really just a Model/ trim at this point, so it can stay under GMC.

The Chinese Brands forum has been renamed to Other Makes - any small niche brands will go in here The discussions in The Italians forum have been sorted in to their appropriate brand locations and The Italians forum closed The discussions in The British forum have been sorted into their appropriate brand locations and The British forum closed The discussions in General Motors News have been moved up one level to the General Motors category and the GM News forum closed The discussions in the General Motors - Worldwide Partners forum have been moved up one level to General Motors category and Worldwide Partners Forum closed Somehow the Mercedes-Benz and SMARTs forums wandered off and ended up under Honda, they're back in their proper location under Daimler AG Citroen and DS Forum has been created under Stellantis The discussions in The French have been sorted into their appropriate brand locations and The French forum closed Cheers and Gears Council has been closed Discussions in Industry New - Economy at Large forum have been moved to The Lounge and Economy at Large forum has been closed Most categories under Brand Discussions have been sorted alphabetically ... more to come