1971 Chevrolet Corvette on 2040-cars

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GM execs fired over fraudulent India emissions testing

General Motors hadn't had a recall in India since 1995. That changed when it was discovered that certain employees were playing tricks with local emissions testing in order to ensure passing grades for engines. More than ten GM Powertrain employees in India and the US have been let go over the ensuing emissions flap, including Sam Winegarden, VP of global engine engineering, a man who has been with the company since 1969, leading development of some marquee powerplants.
According to Automotive News, an internal investigation revealed that employees "violated testing procedures," sometimes swapping specially prepared low-emissions engines during testing regimes for the Chevrolet Tavera SUV equipped with the 2.0-liter and 2.5-liter engines. Employees were also manipulating weights in order to get vehicles placed into different emissions categories. The discovery has led to GM recall the 114,000 Taveras produced over an eight-year period and halting their production and sale.
The Economic Times of India reports that the issue is due to "a faulty component." GM has developed a solution to the issue, and once it is validated in testing and approved by the Indian authorities, the recalled vehicles will be fixed at dealers and production will resume.

GM won't pay owners of recalled cars for lost value

Kenneth Feinberg, the man in charge of the General Motors compensation fund dealing with the its widespread ignition switch woes, has issued an informal, two-letter response to the plaintiffs in more than 70 lawsuits seeking redress for lost resale value of their Cobalts: "No." The cases were recently combined into one, but Feinberg told The Detroit News that the fund will deal "only with death and physical injury claims," and that "perceived diminished value" will get no consideration.
ALG, the firm specializing in establishing residual values, determined that Cobalt owners had lost $300 compared to the segment competition and doesn't envision any long-term effects from the recall situation. Feinberg's statement comes in advance of public details on how the compensation fund will work and adheres to GM's long-held position on the matter. The company has already asked a judge to throw out such suits using the pre-bankruptcy defense, even as it stopped using that defense in cases of injury and death.
With plenty of potential gain from the GM suit, however, don't expect the plaintiffs to give up yet. When Toyota was sued for the same reason during the unintended acceleration debacle, it eventually settled the case for between $1 billion and $1.4 billion just to get it over with. Since the 85 law firms involved in the Toyota litigation took home more than $250 million of that total, we shouldn't expect the attorneys to give up on a GM payout, either.

'Killing a Duramax' Gale Banks YouTube series methodically tunes a diesel to death

Learning or perfecting a skill by watching YouTube videos is known as attending YouTube University. GM Authority picked up on one of the video site's more fascinating courses, hosted by Gale Banks; in a fair world, he should be referred to as Professor Banks when it comes to diesel engines and truck tuning. A few months after GM introduced the updated L5P 6.6-liter Duramax diesel V8 in the 2020 Chevrolet Silverado HD and GMC Sierra HD that ships with 454 horsepower and 910 pound-feet of torque, Banks decided he wanted to methodically tune the engine to death. The purpose of the resulting series, called "Killing a Duramax," is to push more power out of the engine in order to discover which parts break and when — or, as Banks puts it, force-feed the Duramax "until the crank hits the street and the heads hit the hood." With that knowledge, Banks can figure out all the weak points on his way to building what he calls a "Superturbo," that being a supercharged, twin-turbo race engine with more than 1,000 hp. What makes the series fascinating is Banks' knowledge, paired with the company's comprehensive iDash engine monitoring system that keeps tabs on a glut of parameters every step of the way. So for instance, you get Banks explaining the differences between inches of mercury and barometric pressure, how those are different from the water content of the air measured in grains, then showing those readouts on the iDash, then explaining in detail how they affect the air density in the Duramax system. The stock Borg-Warner variable turbo gets a lot of airtime — Banks accuses it of being "out to lunch" because he feels it's the weakest link on the engine. That turns into a turbo teardown and a deep explanation of performance pitfalls, such as when air pressure on the turbine begins to diverge from the boost pressure coming from the compressor. Banks says he can keep close tabs on where power's coming from, because the iDash monitors the horsepower contribution provided by the ambient air, the turbo, and the intercooler separately. The major changes so far are a stouter Precision 7675 turbo and TurboSmart wastegate (episode 5), a twin intake (episode 6), a custom liquid-cooled intercooler from a marine engine, a new GM oil cooler and synthetic oil (episode 10), and new injectors (episode 11).