Duramax Diesel Feedback

rubberfish

Registered User
Joined
Dec 17, 2003
Posts
4,562
Reaction score
11
Location
Langley B.C.
Kind of funny. Nobody has said, "wow, good looking truck".
And I'm not going to be the first either. :sorry:
Looks like it should be pretty quiet around the service
counter soon. Ya gotta sell 'em in order to fix 'em. :D

Welcome to the site. :)
 

TLBREWER

Windy B Ranch
Joined
Jun 10, 2005
Posts
1,640
Reaction score
0
Location
Moriarty, New Mexico
Kind of funny. Nobody has said, "wow, good looking truck".
And I'm not going to be the first either. :sorry:
Looks like it should be pretty quiet around the service
counter soon. Ya gotta sell 'em in order to fix 'em. :D

Welcome to the site. :)

They seem to be selling like hotcakes here, although I don't understand why. I see them all over the place. One thing that aggrevates me. When I bought my '06, I picked blue granite for the color. Very nice. Didn't see any that color for a long time. It seems like 20-25% of the new body style I see are the same color as mine. I know, pretty petty.LOL

Tom
 

TLBREWER

Windy B Ranch
Joined
Jun 10, 2005
Posts
1,640
Reaction score
0
Location
Moriarty, New Mexico
TL, just out of shear morbid curiosity, what sort of mileage are you seeing out of your truck loaded and unloaded?

Unloaded it does pretty good. It's got about 38K miles on it now. If I set the cruise at 75-80, I get about 19 on the highway. At 65, it does much better (13-1400 rpm). We drove up to northern New Mexico a couple weeks ago, over 400 miles round trip, and I used less than 1/2 tank of fuel. I'm estimating about 23mpg at 65. It also has no mods. Got a catback exhaust ready to go on when it gets warmer.

Loaded, I couldn't tell you. I don't have any long distance loaded miles. Most of my heavy miles are 20 miles or less. I can tell you that with 4000lbs of gravel in the bed it sits level with no squat. I've pulled a Bobcat on a 16 foot trailer a few times and didn't know it was there. So power and suspension have never been a problem. I can't bring myself to load my 1973 slide-in camper in the back:rotflmao so a new TT or 5ver are in the not-to-distant future. I'll get a better idea of loaded mileage when that happens.

Tom
 

argve

Resident Fruitcake
Joined
Dec 11, 2004
Posts
7,510
Reaction score
32
Location
Gwynneville, Indiana
Now I guess I'll be the first...

I sort of like the styling of the trucks - I like the looks of the dually, the smoothed fenders in the rear look a lot better then the dually fenders I had on the Enterprise (1991 F350), they were so blocky that they were ugly and I always wanted to smooth them out - they looked like bricks that were attatched after the fact.

I really like the Cargo Management system - that is cool. I would love to have one on my current truck.

Sorry guys but I like it. Now I haven't driven one so I can't comment on that but I can comment on looks.
 

rebel_horseman

Rt. Wing Extremist
Joined
Dec 20, 2003
Posts
2,089
Reaction score
0
Location
West Florida Republic
I guess I do need to praise GM on a few things after being harsh before. The Allison is a boon to GM. That's one of the best things they could have done was to put a real transmission in a HD truck. The suspension systems are definately good. I loaded 16k pounds of hay bales plus about 4000 pounds of trailer on a weekly basis on my old flatbed and hauled it 300 miles back to a market. Ended up filling up a 20' gooseneck 4' above the neck...total brick going down the road. Never had a problem mechanically and the truck rode good and level. Course it also got about 9 MPG before the Juice and about 11 after.
 

ChevSales69

Registered User
Joined
Mar 5, 2008
Posts
5
Reaction score
0
Location
Langley, B.C.
The trucks are definetly selling hot even with the "hate it or love it" body style... one of the things that i notice is Ford and Dodge customers are starting to head in our direction because they're doing way too many major repairs to their trucks where as ours are holding up quite well in that end (considering todays QC standards)
 

rebel_horseman

Rt. Wing Extremist
Joined
Dec 20, 2003
Posts
2,089
Reaction score
0
Location
West Florida Republic
Interesting. Can you elaborate on some of the big repairs? I know Ford had the debacle of the 6.0 melting pistons and generally being a POS in the early years. Just curious what you've been seeing or hearding from the Ford and Dodge owners.
 

towcat

Supporting Member
Supporting Member
Joined
Jun 24, 2004
Posts
18,196
Reaction score
1,437
Location
SantaClara,Ca/Hamilton,TX
Interesting. Can you elaborate on some of the big repairs? I know Ford had the debacle of the 6.0 melting pistons and generally being a POS in the early years. Just curious what you've been seeing or hearding from the Ford and Dodge owners.
I can tell you about AMR's woes. All '04 and up 6.0's have been in the shop for extensive rework. Everything from injectors to head gaskets to complete motors have been replaced. Currently, I have yet to see a '06 or '07 in the fleet.
In the towtruck world, Dodge is getting a toehold once again with their 4500's and 5500's because of Ford's persistent affinity to stay in the shop.
 

FordGuy100

Registered User
Joined
Apr 1, 2006
Posts
8,749
Reaction score
282
Location
Silverton, OR
The new Fords with the 6.4 are awsome, let me tell ya, I have around 1500 miles under my belt driving my parents 08. As to the problems they have, here is what I will say. From the forums I read, there seems to be some problems, such as leaking radiators, and once in a blue moon an engine failuer. I have heard that the new Cummins 6.7 w/dpf was having some growing pains in the begging, and I was hearing people were going through turbo's every 5000 miles or so because of the regen system that dodge uses. They seem to be ironing out fairly well, and I think I heard of a couple engines giving in. The new duramax though, I have heard has leak tranny fluid in cold climats, but thats basically it, I havent heard of one giving up the ghost. But, there is somthing that I have to add. On these forums, it seems like the new Fords outnumber the new dodges a good 5:1, and outnumber the new chevies 10:1. This is for both the question and performance parts of the forums. I can see this driving around town to, the new Fords outnumber the chevies at least 10:1 around here, but I cant really tell the difference between the 6.7 and 5.9 cummins equiped trucks. So with that many trucks out there, and that amount of people on the forums, it makes sense you would see 10x the problems with the fords, because theres 10x as many people owning them and showing up on the forums than the chevies.

But thats just what I see.
 

rebel_horseman

Rt. Wing Extremist
Joined
Dec 20, 2003
Posts
2,089
Reaction score
0
Location
West Florida Republic
Now that I think about it, we have a lot of 6.0 trucks deadlined here on base. I saw one that had a new Ford 6.0 block being installed and a new transmission too. Think the mechanics told me that the motor itself cost $12 grand. The ones that are running sound like crap (lopey erratic idle, loud, smokey, etc.)
 

Mike

Stroker
Supporting Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2004
Posts
12,389
Reaction score
15
Location
Cora
Here it seems pretty equal. I drive by the Ford lot and there are ALOT of Dodge pickups sitting there, go to the Dodge lot and find clean used Fords. The Chevys just dont sell well here in oil field country. 99% of the rigs in the patch are either a Ford or a Dodge with Fords taking the lions share by a good margin.
 

lotzagoodstuff

Supporting Member
Supporting Member
Joined
May 19, 2007
Posts
2,726
Reaction score
668
Location
Carmel, IN
I work with the diesel pusher motor home and big truck manufacturers and all I can say is I wouldn't buy any of the first year low emission trucks. They do burn really clean, but all of the new emission compliant diesels were rushed to market. Fuel mileage is poor on all of them and rumors about their long term wear is very suspect. Cummins seemed to be the farthest ahead during all the development, and they are currently ruling the roost in the motor home market.

I think the Fords have had the best 3/4-1 ton cab and chassis since 1993, however, two of my friends bought 08 Fords and have trouble getting anything close to my 15 year old junk for fuel mileage. Considering the cost of operation, it's hard not to look past the shortcomings of the Dodge and go with the new Cummins. I don't care how powerful or clean burning the new Fords are, fuel is approaching 4 bucks a gallon and single digit fuel mileage is pretty unacceptable.

On a completely separate note: I can't believe anybody is ranting and raving about GM quality, but you know what they say about opinions.
 

tonkadoctor

Full Access Member
Joined
May 5, 2006
Posts
3,776
Reaction score
0
Location
none ya bidnes
Here's my opinion. I used to think Dodge had the corner for the ugliest truck but the new GM trucks are downright fugly.

If GM wants my business they need to go away from a V8 diesel to an inline 6, fire the designer, go back to basics with a 3/4 and 1 ton people can afford to own AND repair, quit playing the "mine is bigger than yours game" and quit making everything look like cheap plastic.

These $50 - $60k trucks and $4.00 per gallon fuel has priced the new trucks out of reach of the people that actually need them........ THE WORKING MAN!!!

GM lost my business over 20 years ago and my brothers business a couple years ago with too many problems to count. Neither my brother or I will buy a GM product which is a shame since my Dad retired from GM and my sister works there, we each own both a Toyota Tacoma and a Superduty.

Put a small INLINE 6 cylinder in front of that Allison in a $25 - $30k crew cab and you will have me interested enough to finally set foot on a chebby lot for the 1st time in years.
 

ChevSales69

Registered User
Joined
Mar 5, 2008
Posts
5
Reaction score
0
Location
Langley, B.C.
The bummer is... i don't design the trucks... i just sell them. It's a good point that there or more fords and dodges out there than chevs and, yes, chevy is trying to make a big style push right now that's failing. But everyone that has bought a truck off me loves it. All the problems I've heard with the Fords have already been mentioned. As for Dodge, they've come a long way in the last few years with the cummins, finally with the 3rd Gen. the tranny doesn't seem to consistantly blow when towing... but now they have the consistant turbo problem instead. Back to our chevy's all i've really seen is a few fluid leaks after a year or two of running.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
91,217
Posts
1,128,519
Members
24,045
Latest member
Ramtough01

Members online

Top