Chevrolet Silverado 1500 2 Door on 2040-cars

Auto blog

First 2015 Chevy Corvette Z06 engine blows up at just 891 miles

You've waited and watched and waited some more for the arrival of your 650-horsepower, $78,000 Chevrolet Corvette Z06. Finally, that joyous day arrives and you eagerly, but gingerly, begin to break-in the 6.2-liter supercharged V8 monster under your hood. Then 900-odd miles after delivery, your excitement grinds, quite literally, to a halt. That's what the owner of one 2015 Z06 claimed happened to him when a simple break-in drive resulted in a lunched engine. The owner, known as Lawdogg149 on Corvette Forum, says he was out breaking-in his car ahead of a January track event when it happened. "While making a pull from 35 miles per hour, I accelerated and shifted short of redline, and boom - the car began knocking. I pulled over and popped the hood. I could hear a loud knock coming from the No. 6 cylinder area along with a serious, grinding, metal-on-metal sound coming from the supercharger area," Lawdogg wrote. A subsequent trip to the dealer confirmed his concerns, with the service facility telling Lawdogg that the No. 6 valvetrain had failed. The dealer couldn't research the issue further, though, as General Motors requested the engine be returned for a more thorough evaluation. The good news for the Z06's unlucky owner, at least, is that GM will be covering the engine replacement under warranty, an expense that Corvette Forum estimates is a nearly $24,000 procedure. At this point, the two leading theories behind the engine's detonation involve a manufacturing defect – which could be why GM is so keen to tear the blown powerplant down – or a mistake on the part of Lawdogg. As Motor Authority points out, such an error could be something as simple as the Z06's owner accidentally shifting to first rather than third during his 35-mph pull. If, however, there's a deeper manufacturing problem with the Z06's engine, this might not be the only case we end up hearing about.

Chevy Express, GMC Savanna reportedly ending production for 2025

The oldest commercial vans on the market may only have a few years left, according to a report from Autoweek. The news outlet cited a "competitive analysis source" in saying that the Chevy Express and GMC Savanna commercial vans would be discontinued after the 2025 model year. They would then be replaced by a new electric van, likely Ultium-platform based, for the 2026 model year. We reached out to GM for comment, and this is the official statement sent to us: "We have said in the past that as part of GM’s larger EV acceleration plans that we will add two new vehicles to our commercial portfolio. The first is a full-sized battery electric cargo van and the second is a medium-duty truck that will put both Ultium and our Hydrotec hydrogen fuel cell technology to work. We have not disclosed timing, names or shared any other details, so any articles reporting more are purely speculative." The GM vans are mighty old, having been introduced for the 1996 model year. They've barely changed since then, having received just some facelifts and updated powertrains over the years. And with GM's electrification plans, we're not surprised that these vans will be on the way out. We do have some disagreement about the reported timeline for replacement, though. We suspect that the upcoming electric vans will overlap with the old vans for at least a year. The reason being that there are a lot of these vans on the road, and there are a lot of pieces of equipment that fit them. Box vans, buses and more have components that have been designed for the Express and Savanna. If you're a fleet that has invested in these components, you might not be ready to shift over to a whole new platform. So GM will probably want to give fleet buyers one last opportunity to replace any old vans before committing entirely to a new electric van platform. It will also be interesting to see what kind of market the GM electric vans enter. Ford already has its electric Transit on the way, and Stellantis will be launching the Ram ProMaster electric van next year. Those are both based on existing gas-powered vans. And GM itself has already delivered the first of its larger BrightDrop EV600 electric vans to FedEx. The coming GM vans will likely be new platforms, which could give them performance and range advantages, though the Ford and Stellantis vans will have the advantage of being compatible with equipment for the gas variants.

'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).