Homeowners of previous BMWs are no strangers to getting stranded and having to attend for a tow, however drift automotive driver Andrew Might was caught off-guard when the Chevy Silverado 3500 HD that tows his BMW E36 mysteriously broke down. The pickup refused to start out when Andrew and his household had been at a drift competitors in Englishtown, New Jersey, and their truck troubles solely bought worse from there.
You received’t imagine what turned out to be the issue within the comparatively new Chevy, which was repaired months later and after quite a lot of bother. First, we’re inviting readers to guess what was really mistaken with the dually, which baffled Andrew, his drift assist crew and Chevrolet’s dealership techs alike.
Andrew, his spouse Elaina and their three youngsters journey the nation in an RV that doubles as a race trailer. They reside out of the RV year-round, and the Momentum M-Class pulls double obligation as transport for a BMW 3-Sequence (E36) coupe with a turbocharged M50 inline-six stroked to three.0 liters. The factor makes 500 horsepower on the wheels and even seems to be like an M3 Light-weight. It’s rad.
However the Might household’s 2020 Chevrolet Silverado 3500 HD is the beating coronary heart of the operation, ferrying the household and drift automotive to competitions and exhibitions from the East to West Coast regularly. The Chevy has a 6.6-liter Duramax turbodiesel V8 and 10-speed Allison transmission. It has 84,000 miles on the odometer, so it’s barely damaged in. And it’s a Silverado Excessive Nation, that means it has all of the niceties on prime of its mechanical bona fides.
Someday, after placing the BMW right into a concrete wall whereas drifting, Andrew’s spouse went to fetch the Silverado however the truck wouldn’t begin. Andrew was caught performing a little bit of triage, juggling a track-side restore utilizing two different duallys to tug out his BMW’s collapsed shock tower whereas coping with the useless truck. He figured it was {an electrical} difficulty, perhaps associated to the battery or starter.
After the mayhem of the race and the BMW restore, Andrew bought the truck to a seller in New Jersey the place it spent the following ten days. The oldsters at E-City had been good sufficient to maneuver the household’s RV to rather a lot the place they may keep whereas the truck was present process repairs. Temperatures would attain 100 levels, and the Mays had been down on energy and water. Not perfect.
The (first) dealership confirmed there was no energy going to the starter, and the wrongdoer appeared to be a solid-state 550 amp fuse that went out. However changing it will require swapping out the entire fuse block, and, no, it wasn’t coated beneath guarantee because it wasn’t powertrain-related. The seller put in a brand new starter and fuse block and the Mays made it to their hometown of Atlanta, Georgia.
A couple of week later, catastrophe struck once more. The Silverado began having the identical points, as Andrew tells me:
And it saved doing the identical factor. It saved blowing this fuse, the strong state fuse, and nobody may work out why. They swapped out the fuse block once more. There was just a few instances the place they suppose, ‘O.Okay., it’s fastened.’ I’m going get it, after which the identical day I’ve to carry it again or it simply doesn’t begin.
The second seller informed Andrew the starter appeared to be OK however they swapped it out anyway. Ditto the starter. Andrew was heading to the West Coast quickly, so he performed it protected, and requested for a spare fuse block in case the truck broke down. God forbid in the midst of nowhere — in silly huge Texas or the Southwest.
Andrew went on, telling me:
So, I depart. I drive two or three stops, simply operating little errands and…it doesn’t begin once more. Identical factor, should get it towed. So that they redo the entire thing, change the fuse block. All this sort of stuff — they changed some module on it. They thought that was it. Now this restore has been one other 5 weeks after the primary breakdown.
I’m going get it. I drive it, however identical day, the examine engine gentle comes on. And it begins, nevertheless it’s not pleased about it. I drove it straight again to the seller. They had been closed so I left it within the parking zone and put the keys within the dropbox.
One other week later, Andrew bought a cellphone name and the Chevy tech on the opposite line stated, “Hey, we swapped out the fuse block once more. And we went to check drive it…and one thing blew up.”
Andrew replied, “Describe “blew up.”
The tech stated, “Effectively, there was a loud sound and now we will’t get it to show over.”
Andrew requested in the event that they had been attempting to show the crank manually and the tech confirmed they had been, which didn’t bode nicely. In truth, someplace in all this — by many weeks of changing modules and fuse block after fuse block — the seller even dropped the transmission and pulled the flywheel. Simply in case.
That wasn’t it both, and the seller saved troubleshooting. Finally, techs bumped into one other difficulty that pointed to the true reason for the issue, which we are going to reveal in a observe up publish. It solely took Chevy techs about 4 months to resolve the thriller, and it value Andrew about $3,000 out of pocket.
This all began in the summertime, and now that we’re nearing winter, “the Satan’s Truck,” has been totally repaired. Andrew gave it that nickname whereas it was within the store as a result of nobody may work out why it saved blowing fuse blocks. Andrew and the ladies are actually headed to SEMA, however he’s cautious of the truck.
Earlier than we inform you what was mistaken with it, we would like readers to jot down in together with your diagnoses. What do you suppose was inflicting all the problems in Andrew’s Silverado 3500 HD?
