1.7

hardly worth mentioning
Crashes / Fires:
0 / 0
Injuries / Deaths:
0 / 0
Average Mileage:
96,798 miles

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problem #2

Jan 042004

Suburban 4WD 8-cyl Diesel

  • Automatic transmission
  • 87,947 miles
We have a 1996 6.5 turbo diesel GMC Suburban. We had severe stalling problems. The dealer replaced the fuel pump at their cost and installed at our cost, new glow plugs, glow plug sensor, battery, and battery cables suspected to be the problem. It continued to stall. We returned to the dealer and they replaced the pump again at their cost, but we had to pay to drop the tank to check for contamination. There was a deteriorated screen we paid to replace. It still stalled. Only this time it stalled when I was going 50 mph and approaching curves along the river. I lost all power steering and brakes. Me and my five young kids almost ended up in the river. Had it been normal winter roads, we would have. All along we've done research and had it rediagnosed by a professional diesel mechanic, so we knew to tell our dealer (automall in brattleboro Vermont) to replace the pump mounted driver (pmd) sometimes called a fuel solenoid driver (fsd). After problems where automall tried to rip us off for a fake $100 deductible, they will install it at no charge tomorrow (1/7/04). We have driven just over 1000 miles total. However, this does not fix the problem. From all the research we've done, weve discovered many people have reported the same dangerous accounts of stalling. Several report having almost had serious accidents like I had two days ago. According to research, pmd failures are the most common part to fail on GM 6.5 diesels. The pmd overheats because of placement near the engine. There is a simple, yet costly fix that consumers should not have to pay to be safe. A pump driver cooler (pdc) can mount on the firewall (not the engine) to move the pmd away from the heat. Please investigate and issue a recall to install pdc's on these engines so we can once again be safe in our vehicles. My family of 7 canT afford another stall, especially during these winter months, and new pdcS alone canT guarantee safety. Thank you.

- Vernon, VT, USA

problem #1

Nov 252003

Suburban 4WD 8-cyl Diesel

  • Automatic transmission
  • 105,650 miles
It is a well known fact that there is a defect with the fuel injection pump on the GM 6.5L diesel engines. I have had a number of these pumps replaced by GM at their cost. However, the problem is not getting resolved. These vehicles die intermittently. When they die (stall), you loose your ability to control your vehicle with the loss of steering and braking (for the most part). There have been numerous times when I have almost been involved in an accident because of this issue. It is extremely dangerous when these vehicles die because of the pump problem. I am in hopes that this complaint could possibly turn into some sort of investigation within GM to have them fix the problem. They seem to keep replacing my bad fuel injection pumps with more soon-to-be bad fuel injection pumps....

- Sparks , NV, USA