Yukon hybrid gas engages hard (2011)

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Halomez

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I have the 2011 Yukon hybrid. It has over 260,000 miles on it. When it switches from Electric to gas it often engages hard with a clacking sound in a jerk. I'm wondering if it's a clutch or transmission problem. Has anyone experienced this issue? Had it fixed? What did it cost?
 

j91z28d1

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how old is the battery? 99% of the posts I've seen about a buck or jerk when cranking the engine has been a weak hybrid battery. it can't handle the load of moving truck with one electric motor and starting engine with the other at the same time, the voltage drops and you get a buck. it's ******* everything.

260k. is a good amount of miles, I would guess you're not on the first battery, since they all go about the 120-150k mark depending on climate. are you the original owner? how into working on the truck yourself you are will depend on if you wanna test that battery and stuff?

260k is in the higher side of what I've seen posts about. I'd be super interested in what all you've done maintenance and repair wise
 
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Halomez

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how old is the battery? 99% of the posts I've seen about a buck or jerk when cranking the engine has been a weak hybrid battery. it can't handle the load of moving truck with one electric motor and starting engine with the other at the same time, the voltage drops and you get a buck. it's ******* everything.

260k. is a good amount of miles, I would guess you're not on the first battery, since they all go about the 120-150k mark depending on climate. are you the original owner? how into working on the truck yourself you are will depend on if you wanna test that battery and stuff?

260k is in the higher side of what I've seen posts about. I'd be super interested in what all you've done maintenance and repair wise
It is the second battery. I have also replaced the engine. Everything else is original and garage kept. I bought it used in 2015 and live in Ohio. The previous owner lived in PA.

I'd be curious if there is a way to improve the battery without replacing the whole thing. I took it to a specialist when the first battery started acting up and they were able to test and service individual cells, but I replaced the whole thing anyway.
 

j91z28d1

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ahh that sounds about right.. they sold you an engine over the valves tapping I'm guessing. common afm issue on all these Gen ls trucks. how many miles on the new engine? is afm still active? the General consensus seems to be do oil changes much sooner than factory recommends helps the afm lifters last longer. if your new engine is pushing 130k and your changed the oil by the dash %. Id be worried about the 2nd one and looking into afm disables and deletes info.


the battery is a long story. I can link you to the prius boards that show you how to cycle the battery cells to bring some life back. these trucks use the same cells just more of them. the pack is made in the same Japanese factory to what gm asked for. sadly that means same fan size for 17cell pack as our longer 40cell packs. add moving a big truck instead of a little prius and it's really ******* the packs. heat being the main thing that kills them.

if you log the battery data and post it up, a guy over there will graph it out and give you an idea if there's any life left to make cycling the cells worth while. I've only see one Canada truck that was worth even trying, I'm guessing because it's cold up there. mine was bought in Cali, ended up in Colorado and then Florida where I picked it up at and brought it to 115deg summers. at 140k 39 of 40 cells were damaged beyond the point they could be brought back. which is pretty normal but ugh haha.

when they referb cells shops buy used ones from crashed cars, hook them up to a charger/discharger setup. it slowly charges and discharges them over a few days and records the capacity. if they come up to about 80% of a new cell it considered A+.

that's what they were offering to do to your cells, the results are normally very bad for our trucks. but you won't really know till you do it. most just buy the "new" pack from them.. which is just prius cells that have been cycled and matched. I don't know if you can even buy a new pack form gm anymore.

I went with the drop in lithium cells. I avoid recommendationing them because they are pretty untested long term and a bit pricey. so unless you're just nerdy and into it, the green bean referb pack swap seem to be better for the common owner.
 

BG1988

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My cells barely start the engine...Getting 24mpg(27mpg in the summer) which is above EPA


the hybrid part doesn't effect the mpg it's just for starting the engine anyways... unless you go extreme edition of a backroad you can get like 32-35mpg exploiting the autostop feature

it's all at the EVT transmission..

most likely since he is up north it's corrosion on the bus bars..
 
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Halomez

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ahh that sounds about right.. they sold you an engine over the valves tapping I'm guessing. common afm issue on all these Gen ls trucks. how many miles on the new engine? is afm still active? the General consensus seems to be do oil changes much sooner than factory recommends helps the afm lifters last longer. if your new engine is pushing 130k and your changed the oil by the dash %. Id be worried about the 2nd one and looking into afm disables and deletes info.


the battery is a long story. I can link you to the prius boards that show you how to cycle the battery cells to bring some life back. these trucks use the same cells just more of them. the pack is made in the same Japanese factory to what gm asked for. sadly that means same fan size for 17cell pack as our longer 40cell packs. add moving a big truck instead of a little prius and it's really ******* the packs. heat being the main thing that kills them.

if you log the battery data and post it up, a guy over there will graph it out and give you an idea if there's any life left to make cycling the cells worth while. I've only see one Canada truck that was worth even trying, I'm guessing because it's cold up there. mine was bought in Cali, ended up in Colorado and then Florida where I picked it up at and brought it to 115deg summers. at 140k 39 of 40 cells were damaged beyond the point they could be brought back. which is pretty normal but ugh haha.

when they referb cells shops buy used ones from crashed cars, hook them up to a charger/discharger setup. it slowly charges and discharges them over a few days and records the capacity. if they come up to about 80% of a new cell it considered A+.

that's what they were offering to do to your cells, the results are normally very bad for our trucks. but you won't really know till you do it. most just buy the "new" pack from them.. which is just prius cells that have been cycled and matched. I don't know if you can even buy a new pack form gm anymore.

I went with the drop in lithium cells. I avoid recommendationing them because they are pretty untested long term and a bit pricey. so unless you're just nerdy and into it, the green bean referb pack swap seem to be better for the common owner.
The engine suffered a bearing failure that scored the inside of the engine at 144k miles. Lucky for me I had an extended powertrain warranty on it and I didn't have to pay for the engine. The refurb has run fine ever since.

The drive battery on the other hand... I replaced that at 128k miles with a refurbished battery. The "service hybrid system" light came on shortly thereafter, but the dealership never could tell me why, nor could they get it to go away. So I've been ignoring it for almost 140k miles and it's run fine until recently.

I'm curious where you got your lithium swap. It's probably not worth it but I always thought the Yukon Hybrid would benefit from a battery upgrade. I've always worked on my cars, but I've stayed away from the high voltage stuff until now.

I'm trying to keep this beast on the road because it's really unique and great to drive. Plus, I ordered a Cybertruck and I'll need this until my number comes up. I think I'm #543,210 on the list. ;)
 
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j91z28d1

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glad it was covered under the warranty. I see so many on these boards that are not and it's almost always something simple like a lifter. $10k later you get a reman engine and a truck worth 12k. that's the non hybrids, these engines are even more of a hassle because of the low numbers out there.

if you're into it, I really like having torque app on my phone to watch the hybrid data from time to time. it's just handy and only 5$ for the app, some manually entered PIDs and a 20$ dongle. you do need to be a non apple device for torque app. if you only have apple, there's others you can try and might have the data, but you can't add anything if they don't and of course nothing is cheap with them haha.

the real thing you need to do much with these is a tech 2. a 300$ clone one will do, it will allow you to access all the codes in all modules(if I remember right my yukon has 32 modules it can communicate with) you won't see but 1 from a normal obd2 scanner, and run a bunch of tests. it's very helpful to see what is throwing that service hybrid system light.
there's a code behind it. once you find it, you can get monthly or yearly access to the repair guides that shops use which will have trouble trees to walk you thru testing based on the codes. I have access to some stuff I can look up codes on too and post up. but if it's not simple, it is nicer to have you own access.

the more you read about these trucks on different message boards, the more you'll see thread after thread that dealerships can't or won't do even basic troubleshooting on these trucks. they are untrained on this older tech and the flat rate pay system rewards parts swapping not trouble shooting. Sadly keeping these trucks running long term turns the owners into mechanics lol or at home diagnostic techs.


with the miles you got out of your referb battery, it might be more cost effective to get another one, or just drive your truck in M4 mode which keeps it from going into auto stop to. avoid the bucking. but the lithium drop ins are from a small company called projectlithium. I don't know if I can't link directly, since not a site sponsor and all that. but that will get you there. it's mostly prius stuff, but since the prius stuff is the same, they have a set for our trucks. of course more expensive because we have almost twice the cells. your 40 nmhi cells are replaced by 20 lifepo4 cells. again thou, I'm having good luck with them. but the internet argument is you're using a nmhi controller to charge and discharge lithium batteries. it's a long story why it works, and even then some thing they won't last long term but it's not the normal lithium you hear catching fire and stuff. it's the lifepo4 chemistry that is very stable, and at worst you'd have to throw them directly in a fire for them to burn up. it's not the same stuff you cyber truck will have.


I'd be super interested in how your cyber truck ownership goes too. Hopefully you stick around.
 
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Halomez

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My cells barely start the engine...Getting 24mpg(27mpg in the summer) which is above EPA


the hybrid part doesn't effect the mpg it's just for starting the engine anyways... unless you go extreme edition of a backroad you can get like 32-35mpg exploiting the autostop feature

it's all at the EVT transmission..

most likely since he is up north it's corrosion on the bus bars..
What is this autostop exploit?
 
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Halomez

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glad it was covered under the warranty. I see so many on these boards that are not and it's almost always something simple like a lifter. $10k later you get a reman engine and a truck worth 12k. that's the non hybrids, these engines are even more of a hassle because of the low numbers out there.

if you're into it, I really like having torque app on my phone to watch the hybrid data from time to time. it's just handy and only 5$ for the app, some manually entered PIDs and a 20$ dongle. you do need to be a non apple device for torque app. if you only have apple, there's others you can try and might have the data, but you can't add anything if they don't and of course nothing is cheap with them haha.

the real thing you need to do much with these is a tech 2. a 300$ clone one will do, it will allow you to access all the codes in all modules(if I remember right my yukon has 32 modules it can communicate with) you won't see but 1 from a normal obd2 scanner, and run a bunch of tests. it's very helpful to see what is throwing that service hybrid system light.
there's a code behind it. once you find it, you can get monthly or yearly access to the repair guides that shops use which will have trouble trees to walk you thru testing based on the codes. I have access to some stuff I can look up codes on too and post up. but if it's not simple, it is nicer to have you own access.

the more you read about these trucks on different message boards, the more you'll see thread after thread that dealerships can't or won't do even basic troubleshooting on these trucks. they are untrained on this older tech and the flat rate pay system rewards parts swapping not trouble shooting. Sadly keeping these trucks running long term turns the owners into mechanics lol or at home diagnostic techs.


with the miles you got out of your referb battery, it might be more cost effective to get another one, or just drive your truck in M4 mode which keeps it from going into auto stop to. avoid the bucking. but the lithium drop ins are from a small company called projectlithium. I don't know if I can't link directly, since not a site sponsor and all that. but that will get you there. it's mostly prius stuff, but since the prius stuff is the same, they have a set for our trucks. of course more expensive because we have almost twice the cells. your 40 nmhi cells are replaced by 20 lifepo4 cells. again thou, I'm having good luck with them. but the internet argument is you're using a nmhi controller to charge and discharge lithium batteries. it's a long story why it works, and even then some thing they won't last long term but it's not the normal lithium you hear catching fire and stuff. it's the lifepo4 chemistry that is very stable, and at worst you'd have to throw them directly in a fire for them to burn up. it's not the same stuff you cyber truck will have.


I'd be super interested in how your cyber truck ownership goes too. Hopefully you stick around.
What OBD dongle do you use with Torque? I got one that didn't work. It actually caused a few problems with my Yukon.
 

j91z28d1

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I have 3 these days, well 4. OBDx GT I used for updating modules software from the gm site. not much diagnostics with it thou.

link to 2 of the cheap ones I use for tq are here in the first post. at the end I post about the 3rd one. it doesn't work with tq app, if has it's own app. but it does lot of the bidirectional camands needed for trouble shooting trees. Sadly it doesn't show all 20 battery cell voltage like the first 2 with the manual added pids to. Just the min and max voltage. but its useful in it's own way.


 

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