[trackbird]

After 7 glorious years, I finally retired my faithful 2015 SIlverado 1500. It was a 5.3 with crew cab and the electronic transfer case with the AWD option. We have been using it to tow our camper for about the last year and it did an admirable job overall. Sadly, the brakes were not up to the task and on more than one occasion I ran completely out of truck brakes and the trailer stopped the truck. That finally convinced me that it was time for an upgrade.

Last Monday, I drug home a new Silverado 3500 HD (Crew cab, short bed, 4x4/AWD, diesel with the 10 speed allison, 5th wheel/gooseneck prep, Z71 protection package, etc). I'm trying to put break in mileage on it before the next time I have to tow the camper, but so far I'm really impressed. It feels a lot larger than my last 3500, but it feels remarkably light on its feet with all that torque. GM was supposed to do a facelift and a power upgrade for the diesel in 2023, but they held it until 2024. I picked the truck up Monday, Tuesday I went to the chevrolet.com site and they are now "Introducing the 2024 Silverado HD". Awesome....

Despite that, I really like the truck and the facelift isn't really an improvement (I really think these trucks are rather ugly, but the chrome front end on mine is "less bad") and the diesel seems to have plenty of power so I'm not sure if I'll really care about the upgrade. Maybe I'll trade it in a few years....maybe I won't.

I've been trying to verify that the shocks didn't change between 2022 and 2023 so I can order Fox shocks for it. The OEM ranchos provide almost zero damping.

Also, I ordered the Advanced Trailering Package with the multiple camera views. However, you have to buy the "technology package" to get all of the camera views. So, I don't have the front bumper view (could be nice for parking) or the trailer side view cameras (that would be great for pulling around tight corners, etc). I'm a little irritated that the "Advanced Trailering Package" isn't the complete package unless you take lane departure warnings, parking assist, etc....all stuff I specifically didn't want.

So, be aware if you order one, check that stuff out. I ordered this one June 19th, give or take and got it last Monday. I hope I'm not sorry I bought a diesel.

[CrashTestDummy]

Congrats! Seems to be the year for new vehicles.

Unless something goes horribly wrong with that particular model Duramax, you WON'T be disappointed! We're still enjoying our '02, and it was supposed to be the one with all the injector issues. The only problem we've had with it was the priming pump failed to prime after the last filter change, which necessitated a swap of the entire filter housing (not terribly expensive, nor a bad job, except that I kept futzing with trying to make the old one work and even attempted a rebuild kit which failed to fix the issue). I guess 20 years is about as long as they last. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

The light lenses fogged as any 'good' cheesy plastic lens fogs, but the light assemblies, front and rear, were fairly cheap and easy to replace (and still available from GM!). They made the truck look new!

The factory shocks were the first thing we replaced on our truck. Strano, correction, Sam's Mom (it was that long ago) sent me a set of Bilstiens while we still had the paper tags on it. I did give the torsion bar adjusters a turn to keep the control arm off the bump stops 100% of the time, but that's it.

It's been a great truck for us, and we pretty much forget the race car is hitched to it when towing to events. We net a consistent 14.6 MPG, even with the larger tires (got ~19 towing to Topeka the first year we went, but I think the upsized Michelins have really hurt the mileage). The thing is hardly out of the shop w/o the race car hitched to it.