My First GMC Truck

is onealso the avalanch fan club as a lot of information, even though yours is atruck and not an AV the front half is the same.

Two items to look out for on this model year:

1. Some early 5.3 motors had a problem called "piston slap", where the skirt of the piston would rub the side wall of the cylinder on cold start up. It sounded like knocking or pinging until it warmed up and could cause scuffing of the inside cylinder wall and piston skirts. GM always claimed this wasn't a problem (it was most likely due to overly large tolerances between the piston and cylinder) and not all motors had it. Start the truck up after it has sat overnight and is completely stone cold and listen with the hood open. If you hear any sort of knocking or clicking that goes away after the motor is warmed up then you might have it. However, after 66,000 miles if you don't hear it I wouldn't worry - you're way past the mileage that everyone reports this problem begins.

1. The ABS unit under the seat has some notoriously bad servos or relays (I don't exactly know what), but several folks have posted that one day without warning their ABS module just started buzzing and vibrating and wouldn't stop until they pulled the fuse. There is a company that specializes in repairing these units, which is much cheaper than having the entire unit replaced if you're paying for it yourself. Their web site is
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   Look them up on the web and you will learn more from them than I can tell you. Their repair service runs about 0.00, but replacing the unit runs about 0.00 for parts plus around 0.00 for the labor.

These are the only two major issues that I know of. There might be an issue with the tailgate cables failing, but those should be replaced by GM with stainless steel ones under recall. The other newsgroup that you could go to is alt.trucks.chevy for information and opinions.

Cheers - Jonathan

Thanks for all the good information