Reply To: 2016 Sierra 8-Spd Issue

Good luck finding anyone to listen to you at GM. I am honestly getting pretty sick of driving my 2014 SLE Z-71. I hear the 8-speed is worse than my 6-speed, but that’s hard to believe. The truck alternates between lurching, lugging, and clunking throughout my entire commute. I swear the engine and transmission are independently controlled by drunken monkeys who are mad at each other. After denying any knowledge of the issue for two years, the service manager at my local dealership finally said the jerky drivetrain is their number one complaint. He claims it doesn’t harm the drivetrain, but I have trouble believing that. There are times I actually believe I will see parts bouncing down the road behind me. We have five vehicles in our family (1991-2015) and no other vehicle drives as poorly as the truck. I drive many rental cars per year and only one has been worse in the past few years. I just wish the dealership could reset the system to the way it was when I bought the truck new. They have tried pulling the battery but it doesn’t help. Had I not purchased an extended warranty, this truck would have been gone by the time the factory warranty expired. As it is, I will get rid of it before the extended warranty expires. I made the mistake of holding onto my last vehicle (Tahoe) too long–the Castech heads cracked at 100k miles (Mobil-1 at 4-5k intervals) and the 4L60E transmission developed a flare at 120k miles (fluid changes at 30k intervals). I certainly don’t have any faith that my GMC will do any better.