Stay warm and safe!
RENAMED!! The adventures of Chase and his 2006 Yukon XL Denali!! Follow along on my travels!
- Thread starter adventurenali92
- Start date
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adventurenali92
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So far so good! No storm rolled in yet as they predicted. We shall see. Was sunny 50, and mild wind all day. Taught on the mountain and socal Edison cut off power up here “as a precaution to prevent risk of wildfire.….” I get it but dumb considering they over reacted to the wind and weather today. lol. But thankfully it’s done for now and it was only a mild inconvenience throughout the day.
tooleyondeck
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This thread is creeping up on 9 years! That's amazing, keep it going broski!
Tonyrodz
Resident Resident
Now that's dedication.
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adventurenali92
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Yup started the build thread a while after I bought the truck and I’m coming up on 10 years of owning it next month lol.
My '05 was throwing Air Bag codes, but my scanner doesn't differentiate between the under bumper sensor and the seat sensor. Assuming it was the crusty under bumper sensor, I ordered one and replaced it only to find no change.
I looked at the price of new seat sensors and I refused to pay the ransom. Fortunately, there are aftermarket seat sensors that register the seat as an always occupied seat for a fraction of the cost.
Try one of these if the Air Bag light continues to stay on.
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adventurenali92
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Just might have to look into this….. airbag light still on and service airbag message in the cluster at every startup.
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adventurenali92
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been a bit. A few updates. So end of March I took a quick off the mountain dance night in cathedral city to meet up with my buddy Chris and his partner Amy. Long time dance friends and he and I geek out over Chevy stuff. He picked up a stupidly clean 2002 LT TAHOE a couple years ago off the old mechanic in town that finally retired and sold his wife’s Tahoe after she passed. When I say the Tahoe is clean….. man is it…. Anyways we’re good buddies and they moved to big bear from palm desert and still spend lots of time down there. In addition they got one of their friends in good at the convention center where I teach as a line dance instructor, as a a fellow dance instructor and she and I are good friends now as well. Was having a really rough day, stressed about the crappy winter and how absolutely awful my position at the ski resort had been going. Was gonna meet up with Chris, Amy, and Jennie, our dance instructor friend.
Cruising across the north side of the mountain in the high desert to then head down to the palm desert area, I look down to see my oil pressure gauge barely sitting above 20PSI…. While cruising at 70….. AHHHHHHH…. I freaked. Got down into yucca valley and pulled into an autozone. Grabbed a 5 quart jug of oil and checked the dipstick. It still had full oil so I’m like well crap this isn’t good…. Weirdly enough the truck didn’t give any indication of a problem. Ran exactly as it always did. Smooth idle, smooth applying power, no knocking, lifter tap, or horrendous noises. Babied the truck back home and missed the dance night. That really sucked. But thankfully truck got me home and didn’t leave me stranded. I know there’s only a handful of reasons on these engines why the oil pressure drops so I only drove it when I absolutely needed to for detail work and kept it in the garage and took the samurai for every other drive. Thankfully the samurai had been jamming and running well.
So I started with an oil pressure sensor thinking maybe that had gone bad. No dice. Still the same pressure. TechII showed it idling warm at 9-10PSI and only 20-25 max under load. Definitely not good. Mechanical oil pressure test confirmed that those residents were accurate. Ugh…..
Cruising across the north side of the mountain in the high desert to then head down to the palm desert area, I look down to see my oil pressure gauge barely sitting above 20PSI…. While cruising at 70….. AHHHHHHH…. I freaked. Got down into yucca valley and pulled into an autozone. Grabbed a 5 quart jug of oil and checked the dipstick. It still had full oil so I’m like well crap this isn’t good…. Weirdly enough the truck didn’t give any indication of a problem. Ran exactly as it always did. Smooth idle, smooth applying power, no knocking, lifter tap, or horrendous noises. Babied the truck back home and missed the dance night. That really sucked. But thankfully truck got me home and didn’t leave me stranded. I know there’s only a handful of reasons on these engines why the oil pressure drops so I only drove it when I absolutely needed to for detail work and kept it in the garage and took the samurai for every other drive. Thankfully the samurai had been jamming and running well.
So I started with an oil pressure sensor thinking maybe that had gone bad. No dice. Still the same pressure. TechII showed it idling warm at 9-10PSI and only 20-25 max under load. Definitely not good. Mechanical oil pressure test confirmed that those residents were accurate. Ugh…..
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adventurenali92
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So June of 2022, at approx. 165k, after the shop I spent years detailing cars for every week closed up a few months prior, I took the Nali into another shop across town, who is done some work for over the years for its owner. Well said owner was retiring and his son and his wife were running the shop. I went to high school with the son and we’ve always been on good terms. Did a couple trans services for me and an alignment that year and hadn’t given me any reason not to trust him, plus both him and dad are big GM full size truck guys. So I took it in and had him replace the oil pickup tube o ring as I knew that eventually it was gonna fail and it was the last part of the oil system I needed to replace after replacing all the other seals trying to get it to stop leaking. Charged me $740 in labor, which I know is because front diff has to get dropped and the oil pan has to come out to access the pickup tube. Bought a brand new GM OE pickup tube and o ring from rock auto and brought it into the shop for the job. Part showed up with GM part numbers and stickers so I assumed it was genuine. He told me they cleaned the original pickup tube in my engine as there was nothing wrong with it, and put the new o ring on the original tube and reassembled and everything functioned as it should. I didn’t see anything wrong with this as oil pressure wasn’t low and the truck came back to me reassembled with the same oil pressure as before. Not as high as it could be but within spec. So I shelved the new pickup tube in the garage and didn’t think anything of it…. Until now….
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adventurenali92
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Cue the low oil pressure and the new sensor not solving the issue. So now I know “either the pickup tube o ring failed, the oil pump failed…. OR….. hoping not the case, internal engine damage occurred and low oil pressure is a sign I grenaded the engine”….. so chatted with Chris quite a bit, the mechanic next door to my gym that I’m good friends with, and another buddy who used to be one of the techs at the shop I detailed for, who’s now at another shop. Everyone seemed to think it was the pickup tube o ring despite the fact that that o ring has less than 50k and less than three years of service on it. I’m like it can’t be that….. I probably just killed my engine. But I also knew that there was no other way to determine cause unless I opened up the oil pan and inspected the o ring….. I also didn’t have the $740 in labor that I knew it would cost at a shop to handle it….. so that means I was going to have to get real intimate with my engine. I was terrified of doing this job myself without a lift. But then I got to thinking one night a couple weeks ago after parking the truck, I need to go look at the pickup tube. It’s been sitting in the garage in its box, and when I pulled it out, it appeared to have a brand new o ring still hanging out on the end where it connects to the pump…. I was quite annoyed. So I texted a picture of the o ring on the tube to my mechanic friend from next door to the gym, and asked what he thought about the o ring. He said exactly what I was thinking…. “That looks like a brand new o ring, and because I’ve done a million of these things in the shop I know that that red o ring in the photo you sent is the GM spec new o ring for your engine!” I’m like well dang this is supposed to be in the engine not in my hand…… ooi…..
Photo of said pickup tube and what appeared to be a new o ring:
Photo of said pickup tube and what appeared to be a new o ring:
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adventurenali92
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At any rate I knew opening up the oil pan was going to suck. I didn’t even know if I could do it on my own. mechanic, and buddy Chris both told me I could handle it. It would suck and it was going to test me and be difficult but just keep at it. So I gathered all the necessary parts, in addition I decided to tackle the timing cover seal because I knew it was leaking. I also realized well the pickup tube is attached to the pump and the pump is right behind the timing cover. Absolutely don’t wanna do this job twice so I may as well just do it all in one job. Watched tons of videos, gathered tools and man did I hate every minute of this job……
So when I finally managed to get the oil pan out, after fighting the diff and it not coming of the truck despite being completely unbolted from the truck, I got my first look at the inside of the oil pan. Not a single flake of metal and I was surprised to find almost nothing where “dirty engine sludge” is concerned. Like the oil pan was clean except for the dirty oil. lol.
So when I finally managed to get the oil pan out, after fighting the diff and it not coming of the truck despite being completely unbolted from the truck, I got my first look at the inside of the oil pan. Not a single flake of metal and I was surprised to find almost nothing where “dirty engine sludge” is concerned. Like the oil pan was clean except for the dirty oil. lol.
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adventurenali92
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And unbolted the pickup tube…. The minute I got it out I knew it was the cause of my low oil pressure….. I still don’t know why the shop that did the o ring used entirely the wrong o ring…… especially when I brought them the right one to begin with… like I’m amazed that with this o ring installed, that my engine had any oil pressure at all for the last three years…. It doesn’t look like it failed, it wasn’t flattened out or cracked or torn. But nowhere near as thick as the red one on the new tube. And in addition I could see it had wiggle room on the tube and didn’t sit flush and secure where the new tube and new o ring was snug and didn’t move around at all on the pipe….
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adventurenali92
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adventurenali92
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adventurenali92
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Oil pan clean and new gasket in proper position ready to go in. I knew it would be a difficult maneuver to get in with the diff still in place but I took my time and wiggled it up slowly and steadily in one shot, and then put the jack stand under it to hold it in place a couple inches below the engine mount so I could reach up and dab RTV into each corner. I think that sort scared me the most of the whole job and it went relatively smoothly. The rest of the reassembly fought me and many many loudly yelled swear words happened in the process lol.
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adventurenali92
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adventurenali92
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Threw new valve cover gaskets in, did the passenger side a couple weeks ago when I had a few spare minutes, and then the drivers side before the disassembly of the oil pan. Was having a weird little oil smoke under certain driving and figured it’s been close to 75k since the valve cover gaskets were replaced. Can’t believe how easy it is to swap out valve cover gaskets on these engines. Put new rubber grommets on the valve cover bolts as well since the came with the new gaskets this time around.
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adventurenali92
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Moment of truth hit yesterday evening after filling the Nali back up with oil and coolant. He fired right up even after sitting in the garage for three weeks. AND….. GOOD OIL PRESSURE!! Thank god!!
willinnashville
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Son, I would have been a salty MFer.....
I feel for you removing that oil pan to get to that O-ring. I did exactly the same thing last year and it was not a pleasant job lying on your back. Your adventure with the other O-ring is exactly why I did mine myself, also despite having zero experience and dreading it. Just like yours, mine turned out OK too. Glad you got it fixed. Sucks that it needed to be done more than once
I feel for you removing that oil pan to get to that O-ring. I did exactly the same thing last year and it was not a pleasant job lying on your back. Your adventure with the other O-ring is exactly why I did mine myself, also despite having zero experience and dreading it. Just like yours, mine turned out OK too. Glad you got it fixed. Sucks that it needed to be done more than once
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adventurenali92
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Oh I’m definitely a salty MFer after this job lol. I’m salty AF at the shop that did such an Incompetent job….. like I’d be out of business as a detailer if I did such shotty incompetent work…..
I agree laying on my back on a roller cart to get everything in and out sucked. But I’m glad to see that I didn’t damage my engine and the parts I put it in fixed the issue haha.
