I took my car in for service. '04 GXP, 20K miles. Had a 'clunk' in the steering column when turning at slow speeds. Turned out to be a "loose support bracket" under the dash.

yikes. Was that a safety hazard?

anyway, on the service ticket, "mileage in" and "mileage out" were listed as the same, however actual odometer showed that 17 miles had been put on the car during service.

I could see 3-5 miles, but 17? Does that sound excessive for a 'test drive'? Did the tech go for a joyride?

Thankfully, the problem appears to be resolved and the steering/front end feels much tighter again.

comments?

Sounds reasonable. They probably took the car on a drive that included different speeds... Little highway and stuff.

Its not uncommon to put 20 miles on a sevice if its driveability related. Like Dame said, they have to test different speed and condition variables if its a steering or transmission or engine to make sure its not duplicated problem under faster conditions.

EDIT: How much did it cost to "tighten" up this loose braket. I think that may be my problem as well and if you wouldnt mind sharing.

I seem to be having that same problem with mine. Being in Germany it may be a little tougher to get that fixed but now that I have an idea of what the problem may be I can pass that on to the German GM dealer here in Berlin. Thanks for the tip.

BTW, I had the car up to 145 Mph on the autobahn here and it ran smooth as silk. Not for very long of course and always where it was legal and safe. At wide open throttle, the car didn't shift into 4th until about 6800 RPM. But when it did there was still some pull. I need to enjoy this while I can. I'll never do this back home!

145? I thought the GXPs were limited to 130 mph. That'* good news.
I just hit 100 mph in mine today just to see if the HUD went into three figures.



dave

The HUD will go to 199. I usually keep the measurements in metric over here in Germany since they use kilometers instead of miles. When you go over 199 Km the HUD will flash and...well the speedo only goes to 160 (Km or miles) so I switch the "E/M" button to English and then it reverts to show 124 Mph on the HUD (and the dial for that matter).

When I first opened up the car it only went to 133 and the governor kicked in. But I had heard that if you tap the accelerator it bypasses that or something and will continue on. For a while there I could not break 140 but as the engine broke in I guess it got a little quicker. At this time I have 14,000 miles on my 2004 GXP. I would like to see if it will hit 150 Mph but that might be too much to ask since I need a long stretch of road, not much traffic, and dry weather. At this time of year in Europe that may be hard to find. The cooler temperatures will help though. We'll see. I'll let you all know if and when it happens.

Well, within a day of coming back from service, the problem reappeared.

I took it back in today and requested to talk to the mechanic and go on the test-drive with him to make sure he is hearing/feeling the problem I'm reporting. The shop foreman came out, we went for a ride in the parking lot and in about 30 seconds he reproduced the problem and said "wow, yeah, I got it"

He asked what they had fixed last week. I said I did not know exactly, all the repair ticket said was "resecured support under dash area". He said "didn't they replace the intermediate steering shaft?".

We went back to the office and he looked at the repair ticket from last week. He was not real happy that the tech had entered NO detail on the repair.

He then went to the GM website (dealer/service restricted area) and typed in my VIN and "KLUNK THUMP" as search terms. About 5 hits came back, the first describing in accurate detail the symptoms I had reported. There was a TSB to replace the "intermediate steering shaft" (something like that).

Now, I wonder why the service tech didn't do that to begin with?

So I will see later today when I get it back. I'll post the exact repair details in case anyone else has the same problem.

I had the intermediate steering shaft replaced in my 2004 gxp at 5500 miles. I now have 9000 miles on the car and its going out again. I had to replace that same item in my 2001 ssei but not until there were 37,000 on the car. Sounds like gm never got the problem with the shaft fixed.