Self-maintenance your truck - dumb things to avoid.

Greetings Fellow Silverado drivers.

I haven't posted for awhile - and I thought I'd start a new thread about things we might discover that are truly "dumb things to avoid" in the process of self-maintenance.

I'll start with a couple and mybe others will want to chime in with their ideas too.

1. Recently a friend and I were both changing oil on our trucks. Both of us drained our oils into buckets and I had brought some 1 gallon plastic milk jugs to put the old oil in. My normal routine is:
- drain oil and remove filter -
- fill new filter with fresh oil and install on truck - and re-install drain plug -
- clean funnel -
- install remainder of 6 quarts of oil (about a pint is already in oil filter) -
- use funnel to pour old oil into milk jugs for recycling -
- clean oil bucket and funnel.

My friend - usually pours his old oil into containers FIRST so he doesn't accidentally have a spill - but then he doesn't clean the funnel before using. Its a little thing - but he was pouring old dirty oil and dust and "whatever" - back into his truck with the new oil. Also he doesn't pre-fill the oil filter with fresh oil. He wondered why I did. - Answer - so the engine is dry for the shortest possible period. On a Silverado its really easy and a no mess thing to do - so why not get fresh clean oil into that filter (and rubber gasket) as fast as possible.

2. Item 2 is not such a little thing - its a discovery I had when changing my oil - and one of those - "what was GM thinking" kind of things. If you look under your Silverado under the cab area you'll find a series of metal frame gussets that attach to the across the panels (on my 2004 extended cab I have 3 on each side). They have angular oval shaped drain holes in them - EXCEPT not at their very bottom. And they also have small open areas where they are formed/welded to the body panels. To my great disappointment - I discovered that GM designed these things to be dirt traps. Small amounts of clay, sand, or dirt can be trapped in there - harden and create great places for moisture to rust the body. I took out the equivalent of about 3 or 4 full cups of hardened dirt from the 6 of them - even though I don't off-road or drive in gravel - and wash my truck. Why is this so dumb? Because from the underside of the truck - unless you look closely - you wouldn't even see the dirt. Both the drain holes and open areas are on the front side of the travel direction - meaning normal driving throws dirt and crap up into these gusset areas - yet rain and car washing won't get it back out. All the galvanize in the world won't help if you don't keep these cleaned out once in awhile - moisture will collect. Just plain dumb engineering. My friends truck? Yup - he had the same problem too - and his is a street truck also. Next time you're under the truck changing oil - look for them - a little finger put into the oval holes will show if dirt is in there - I used some qtips and my finger to clean it out on the 6 of them (note small fingers would be really a benefit).

Retrace your maintenance when new problems arise. I developed a misfire sometime back. For the life of me I could not figure it out. It turns out a new plug had a hairline fracture in the porcelain. Had I been more diligent in inspecting the plugs, this was easy to avoid.

Make sure to always throw a cloth or blanket over the fender well if your toping up the Brake fluid. I've seen people with shoddy looking paint on the fendewell because they weren't careful when topping up Brake Fluid... Same thing goes for Transmission fluid...

I have you guys all beat.....It's not even fix yet. So I post awhile ago that the battery put a huge hole in the windshield wiper tube under the hood. No problem, i'll just go get some stuff at autozone, doesn't matter. Anyhow i'm changing the tubes around . Kinda easy, So i cut the by the windshield ,so i can unhook it from a 3-way connector. I get the autozone tube to plug into the the 3way connector. Now this is vacuum tubing, but it's working. I tied the autozone tubing to the old windshield wiper tube and pull it through nice and slow. Then I noticed something. This is probably why i should i have read my chilton about the setup. But i didn't, i mean how hard could it be ?

It seems to be there is 2 tubes for the wind shieldwipers tube. It seems to be that GM thought this may have happen so they made two tubes for the system,it's just a connector connecting two tubes together. However my dumb self cut where the windshield was and worked it to the broken area. So other replacing one tube for 36 dollars , i have to replace 2 of them for 36 dollars. But not only that. I was about say if this autozone stuff worked i would be happy with it. Except one thing. I try out the windshield wiper fuild and guess what ? The damn thing shoots out from under the battery. So i haven't had time to take out the battery and figure out if it's the tube or reservoir. So i'm thinking when my battery went bad it leaked some battery acid or something, to cause it to break under then battery. Because i thought my battery may have been sliding on the tube because it was alittle smaller then the factory battery. But as of right now i'm still in the dark. I'm working on getting it fix. DAMn i wrote alot, Hopefully it makes sense.

But hopefully if someone else has a problem like this ,it's two tubes,not one big one. :)

yeah theres lots of little things to remember, such as try not to drop your washing towel or anything on the ground cause the dirt and pebbles will get stuck in there and mess up the paint horribly.

also, dont drive fast and stuff right after you pull out of the driveway and the engine is still cold. the internals will heat up faster than the oil and there is a lot of friction that could happen that will mess stuff up pretty quick, especially bearings and the cam lobes and stuff... i found this lesson out the hard way lol with a 73 beater truck with a newer 350 in it. took only a few months to have a bad camshaft.

Greetings Fellow Silverado drivers.

I haven't posted for awhile - and I thought I'd start a new thread about things we might discover that are truly "dumb things to avoid" in the process of self-maintenance.

I'll start with a couple and mybe others will want to chime in with their ideas too.

1. Recently a friend and I were both changing oil on our trucks. Both of us drained our oils into buckets and I had brought some 1 gallon plastic milk jugs to put the old oil in. My normal routine is:
- drain oil and remove filter -
- fill new filter with fresh oil and install on truck - and re-install drain plug -
- clean funnel -
- install remainder of 6 quarts of oil (about a pint is already in oil filter) -
- use funnel to pour old oil into milk jugs for recycling -
- clean oil bucket and funnel.

My friend - usually pours his old oil into containers FIRST so he doesn't accidentally have a spill - but then he doesn't clean the funnel before using. Its a little thing - but he was pouring old dirty oil and dust and "whatever" - back into his truck with the new oil. Also he doesn't pre-fill the oil filter with fresh oil. He wondered why I did. - Answer - so the engine is dry for the shortest possible period. On a Silverado its really easy and a no mess thing to do - so why not get fresh clean oil into that filter (and rubber gasket) as fast as possible.

2. Item 2 is not such a little thing - its a discovery I had when changing my oil - and one of those - "what was GM thinking" kind of things. If you look under your Silverado under the cab area you'll find a series of metal frame gussets that attach to the across the panels (on my 2004 extended cab I have 3 on each side). They have angular oval shaped drain holes in them - EXCEPT not at their very bottom. And they also have small open areas where they are formed/welded to the body panels. To my great disappointment - I discovered that GM designed these things to be dirt traps. Small amounts of clay, sand, or dirt can be trapped in there - harden and create great places for moisture to rust the body. I took out the equivalent of about 3 or 4 full cups of hardened dirt from the 6 of them - even though I don't off-road or drive in gravel - and wash my truck. Why is this so dumb? Because from the underside of the truck - unless you look closely - you wouldn't even see the dirt. Both the drain holes and open areas are on the front side of the travel direction - meaning normal driving throws dirt and crap up into these gusset areas - yet rain and car washing won't get it back out. All the galvanize in the world won't help if you don't keep these cleaned out once in awhile - moisture will collect. Just plain dumb engineering. My friends truck? Yup - he had the same problem too - and his is a street truck also. Next time you're under the truck changing oil - look for them - a little finger put into the oval holes will show if dirt is in there - I used some qtips and my finger to clean it out on the 6 of them (note small fingers would be really a benefit).


you know i have never heard of the fill filter thing im going to start doing that from now on :iceslolan thanx for the tip