My Mind Made Digital

I purchased an 08 Chevy Colorado, brand new,  at the end of 2007. I got the 4×2 with Crew Cab and 5 foot bed LT series with the “Sun and Sound” package. This meant a sun-roof, fog lights, a free year of XM satellite radio and a free year of OnStar. I had no interest in the latter two, but all the vehicles come with this installed. The truck was sold to me for $24,000, if I remember correct. It may have been a slight bit less. For the most part, this truck was just what I was looking for. I wanted to be able to comfortably accommodate 4-5 passengers as well as space for things like fishing gear, surf boards, golf clubs, 4 wheeler, coolers and other similar gear and the ability to tow a trailer if needed.  This truck fit the bill, but I have become less happy with it over time. Please read my review below based on my time owning this vehicle. I have had it since October 2007 to present.

Engine, Power and Gas Mileage

It has a 4 cylinder engine, though they also have a 5 cylinder inline engine as an option as well (strange choice in my opinion). I have no idea why it isn’t a V-6 instead. Anyways, I notice the lack of power in this 4 cylinder engine right away. This truck was said to get 22-24mpg city, I believe, and somewhere between 20-26mpg  highway. I had found it to be more like 18mpg city and around 24mpg highway. I consider myself an efficient driver and these are the gas mileage numbers I experienced. I rarely pushed this truck to high speeds/RPMs, mostly because it just makes a lot of noise and doesn’t seem to have much actual pickup. I did however, pull a slightly heavy 5′x8′ enclosed trailer behind it, and to my surprise, the truck felt like it didn’t even have a trailer behind it except for when braking and the fact that the trailer mashed the back end down pretty good due to wimpy springs. On a side note, this is not the Z-71 suspension model. I believe it may have a lower, towing geared rear end on it and that is why the engine seems to tow it effortlessly.

The entire time I have owned this truck I have noticed when I go somewhere and then turn the truck off and back on again within 1 – 15 minutes, the truck would be hesitant to start. Sometimes turning over quite a few times before even sounding like ignition is occurring.

More recently I had began slowly experiencing a more and more rough running engine and it would occasionally hunt at idle and, at one point, it started to stall here and there too while at idle. Also, it began getting worse and it would surge while driving, decelerating and sitting at stop lights. At stop lights this was almost dangerous because the engine would surge and start to get the car moving while my foot was on the brakes.  These symptoms were puzzling me because I have always changed the air filter, spark plugs, oil and oil filter regularly, as well as using fuel additives on occasion. Besides that, the truck only had 35,000 miles on it at this point.

I read around and saw a lot of mention about dirty throttle bodies leading to this on many occasions. I called the dealership and mentioned this and they informed me that cleaning the throttle body every 15,000 miles was a necessary maintenance need for the truck. I have never had to clean a throttle body every 15,000 miles on any vehicle I have owned, but either way I went ahead and did it to this one. This was at about 22,000 miles. The throttle body definitely had some crud on it. It should not have looked like it did, but there is some sort of  issue with the valve covers or engine block being ported into the intake system for some dumb reason. The oily sludge was very obviously coming into the intake and causing premature buildup. For a detailed post on cleaning the throttle body on this truck click here. After cleaning it the truck ran better for about a week or two. Now it is back to the rough running and worse than ever. I am going to be cleaning the MAF (mass airflow sensor) tomorrow and see if it helps. Also, I will be bringing it in to the dealership ASAP. Unfortunately, there is not free rental car until if and when there is a warranty covered issue with the vehicle. Otherwise, I have to pay for my own rental car.

Body / Paint

I got the charcoal grey color. The body was in good shape except I noticed right after purchasing it, one of the plastic covers under the bed in the wheel well was broken. I noticed this within hours of owning it. I took it back and they had replaced the entire plastic piece for free but it took a few hours. I feel the paint on this truck comes of quite easy and gets scratched easy as well. The simplest ding seems to chip paint off. Also, road salt and pebbles ping up the paint on the hood quite easily. There is a spot on both rear passengers doors in the exact same place that have been slowly rusting since the first few months of owning it to now.  They have gone from the size of a pin head to the size of a nail head. It appears to be rusting from the inside out all along. This, in my opinion, seems to be an obvious defect due to the fact it is on both sides in the exact same place (just behind the window on rear passenger doors). The Chevy emblem on the grill began weirdly flaking it’s orange color behind the clear coat from the inside out with 6 months of owning the truck. I took it in and they replace it at no cost. Today the truck has little dings and pings from the usual day to day assault from fellow Chicagoans car doors in parking lots. The underneath of the truck seems to be mostly free from rust, but I constantly clean the underbody off with the car wash spray wand year round.

Interior

The interior of the truck has black and gray color to it. I like the black and gray interior, needless to say winter salt and black carpet = mess. Fortunately I own a commercial grade carpet extractor w/ heat option. All in all the interior is pretty decent. The rubber mats (not included, extra $ for these mats) are nice except they don’t look like nice, shiny clean rubber after a short while. When I clean them I use wash them off and then use an interior cleaner/protectant and they look nice and shiny clean until the cleaner/protectant slowly evaporates. The center console box has a flip back top that opens for storage. I have found that I have cracked it from leaning on it with my elbow when I get into the truck. I feel this lid should have been made to handle this. I don’t think it’s noticeable except from underneath the lid.

Within the first couple months of owning the truck, I was leaving a bar to go home one night and the “Door Open” warning was being displayed as well as the interior light being on. I checked all the doors and they were indeed closed, so this was obviously a broken sensor/switch. After driving home with the constant beeping and the interior light on, I knew that I needed to pull light bulb out of the light housing until the morning so I would not have a dead battery in the AM. Also, I could not set the alarm as it would go off because the door was considered “open”. I took it in and they said it was indeed a failed sensor/switch and fixed it under warranty. Just recently, I was at work and a co-worker came in to tell me the alarm was going off on my truck. I went out and disarmed it only to find it was the door sensor thing again. Earlier that day the truck was fine on the way in to work and then just randomly, while sitting absolutely still in a parking lot for 4 hours, it decided to have a “door open” warning again. Again I had to disconnect the light and then went back in and finished my day at work. The light and warning were still on on the way home from work.  The next day I put the light back in, though, because I noticed the “door open” warning was gone for now. Now all I can do is wonder when it will decide to do it again.

For the entire time I have owned this truck it has been real finicky as to when it wants to lock when I push the lock button on either one of the remotes. This has always been super annoying. I read somewhere it has something to do with disturbance caused by the OnStar computer/antennae being mounted too close to the lock/unlock antennae. I am not sure if this is the case, but I do know I have always had to hit the lock button almost 15 times sometimes before it actually locks and arms the alarm. Because the alarm arming only flashes the lights and doesn’t beep the horn I always have to rubber neck back at the truck while I’m walking away until it finally locks on key press number 10-15 and I see the lights flash to know it locked.

Brakes / Chassis

The brakes that came on the truck were cheap. They squeaked from day one, especially on moist days. I changed them with better rotors and ceramic pads. The rear drums looked good, meat on pads and no scratches on drum, so I only cleaned the dust out and cleaned the drum surface with brake cleaner. Once I reinstalled them and drove, I noticed they still made a ton of squeaking, so I had to replace the pads and turn the drums instead.  All in all I feel the brakes are just too small for such a heavy truck. I think the front rotors overheat and warp and the rear brakes are drums. Drums are just a pain in the ass compared to disc. Also, I have a feeling I have a bent rim now too. I have no idea how that happened as I don’t recall hitting anything that would cause the rim to get bent, but I am pretty sure this is the case.

Summary

I bought this truck because I thought it was what I was looking for as far as design and economy, and because I really dislike Ford. Up until this truck I had always outright owned my vehicles, but they needed work all the time and I had to do it. I am mechanically inclined and enjoy working on cars, but I became too busy to worry about working on cars and not always being able to depend on them to start the next day. I bought this truck brand new with the thought of not needing to worry about my means of transportation so much and a warranty sounded nice at the time. The truth is I pay through the nose for this thing and still owe more than it’s worth plus the costs for spark plugs, filters, oil, gas and the time it takes to drop it off at the dealer and wait on their slow poke service center. I should have bought a foreign car. Preferably Japanese; Honda, Toyota or even a Volkswagen or something like that. When I tell people that many of them bring up the Toyota gas pedal recall. I’d much rather only have to worry about something like a small design flaw in a gas pedal that would get stuck down. It doesn’t take a genius to react to a stuck gas pedal and either shift to Neutral/Park, shut off the car and/or depress all the brakes. Besides that, I’m sure statistically American car manufacturers have probably had way more recalls and safety cover ups than most all foreign manufacturers.

Follow ups:

5/8/2011 – I just took the truck in for the rough idling issue. It turns out the MAF sensor wire harness had a cut wire close to the harness. I have no idea how a wire can manage to sever itself. There is nothing in that area that looks capable of severing the wire, and I know for a fact I did not sever it at any time. Very suspicious to me. Either A) they cut the wire to cover up some other defect that it really was, or B) they are the worlds cheapest wires capable of being cleanly severed on their own. Needless to say the truck runs better now, but still not as quiet and smooth as it was when it was newer.