Grumpy Bears 2015 Silverado 2WD

[Grumpy Bear]

115,000 Mile Service

 

115,102 miles

5,105 this OCI

6 quarts AMSOIL 10W30

Purolator PBL22500 filter

2 bottles of Techron in the tank. 

 

Just under 5/32" on the tires.

Actually no visible nor measurable difference since last check.  

Simple rotation. No balance. They date out soon. Yea...about that....

 

Check all fluids for level and color. Mint. Transmission and Diff. 

Brakes still looking really good. Slides perfect. Vacuum on the money. OEM pump and calibrations. 

 

Drive home took a long enough highway route to fully heat the oil and check operation of AFM/VVT.  All good. 

Moving away from maximum efficiency and toward wear control.  

Edited May 29, 2020 by Grumpy Bear

[Grumpy Bear]

5/23/2020 Along Route 66

 

Ever notice on a really hot day an air cooled motor under moderate steady load gets eerily quiet? Really smooth? Looses all its mechanical clatter and you just hear a faint whir? Pulled into a Micky D's for tea yesterday and when I rolled the window down to pay all I could hear was the high pressure injector pump clicking in echo off the building. Eerie! Same sort of sound. It wasn't that hot. Mid 70's. 

 

We took a drive along US-Route 66 from US-6 to Normal Illinois. It's a fair drive to the starting point from our house and no real direct major route so I use the county blacktops. Winding at times along rivers and mind numbing flat and straight other, but never boring. These are 45 to 50 mph roads for the most part and it dawned on me how smooth this thing runs. Effortless pulls out of 5% grade river basins. Nearly like flying a glider. A hint of wind over the cabin at times if the windows are up and they were not much of the time. There's a fair amount of grade where a lower gear is handy so I run in M at times tapping down a few when needed. When we left that area I mindlessly left her in M-5. When we headed back north at days end along I-39 I looked down to see the oil and trans temps up just a bit above what I'm use to seeing after about a half hour. Then I noticed it. M-5. Yea, that quite. Still over 29 mpg for the day. Lord I love this truck.  Yes US-66 is this narrow in places. Felt like driving on bike path.  

 

 

This section is the actual road bed. Other times, as we headed south, the decommissioned road bed would be to our right and the rail bed on our left. Barriers up to prevent...well....you get the idea. Much of US-66 in Illinois was Illinois 4 which was finished just two years prior. I-55 stole some of it and the old road bed in places is now a bike path but still visible. There are two versions of this highway in places in Illinois. That which was between 1920 something and 1940's and another between 40's and 74 when it was decommissioned as a Federal Highway. The earth is slowly reclaiming herself. History is being lost. Sad. 

 

Edited May 23, 2020 by Grumpy Bear

[Grumpy Bear]

More US Route 66

 

(above)

Odell Illinois. Oldest station in this section of the route.

(below)

Sprague's Last of a breed of stations when the were ma and pa affairs

Google it. It has a rich history.

 

Re-post of Dwight to put them all in one place.

[Grumpy Bear]

May 2020 Report

 

Fuel annual running average as of the end of May is 26.68 mpg

6 tank moving average is 29.09 mpg.

May alone 29.62 or 0.2 mpg lower than last years May. 

10W30 isn't hurting much of anything.

STDEV is higher than that.

 

 

 

 

[Grumpy Bear]

6/10/2020 118,103 miles

 

3,001 miles per chance when I did this level/color check.

3 K OCI's would be a waste of oil with the current set up me thinks.

I5 Iphone 

1/4000 sec F2.2 4.15 mm ISO 25 natural clear sky sunlight. 10 AM

 

 

Edited June 10, 2020 by Grumpy Bear

[Grumpy Bear]

118,403 Miles 2793.3 hours

 

Replaced low beams with the same Sylvania Silverstar H11 Bulbs I put in two years ago almost to the day. That set lasted @ 1261 hours. I didn't actually write the hours down but I've been very steady at 42 miles per running engine hour. So a really close guess. I'm going to try to remember two things. Turn the DRL off during the day and make a note to hunt down the engineer that designed the lamp cover locks.  

 

There's your long term test of this bulb. 

 

 

Edited June 13, 2020 by Grumpy Bear

[Black02Silverado]

41 minutes ago, Grumpy Bear said:

118,403 Miles 2793.3 hours

 

Replaced low beams with the same Sylvania Silverstar H11 Bulbs I put in two years ago almost to the day. That set lasted @ 1261 hours. I didn't actually write the hours down but I've been very steady at 42 miles per running engine hour. So a really close guess. I'm going to try to remember two things. Turn the DRL off during the day and make a note to hunt down the engineer that designed the lamp cover locks.  

 

There's your long term test of this bulb. 

 

 

From all the posts on other forums and such it seems that the Sylvania Silverstars do not last long.  My personal experience with them has been that they only lasted about a year and that's it.  On two different vehicles. My truck and my daughters Cruze.  Sad that they don't last any longer

[txab]

Any vehicle that uses the low beam for DRLs, the Silverstar Ultras don't last long. They only have so much burn life to them. I tried them in a 900 series and required replacement earlier than I would've liked. They will last on the older GMT 800 series or vehicles that don't use them for DRL.

Edited June 14, 2020 by txab

[Black02Silverado]

33 minutes ago, txab said:

Any vehicle that uses the low beam for DRLs, the Silverstar Ultras don't last long. They only have so much burn life to them. I tried them in a 900 series and required replacement earlier than I would've liked. They will last on the older GMT 800 series or vehicles that don't use them for DRL.

Which explains why they didn't last on the Cruze.

[Grumpy Bear]

1 hour ago, Black02Silverado said:

Which explains why they didn't last on the Cruze.

I drive allot and two years? I think I got my money out of them. Not unhappy. Bought them again  

[Grumpy Bear]

120,000 Service

 

119,897 actual. 4,795 mile OCI.

 

6 Quarts AMSOIL SS 10W30 

Purolator BOSS PBL-22500 filter

2 bottles of Techron in this 26 gallon tank.

Zero consumption. 

 

The 10W30 is costing me a bit of fuel. About 3.9% more than 0W20. About 2/3 of that from the change from 0W30.

 

The lower number has more impact than the higher number. I knew that and now it's been proved over 10K miles of data.

 

No record hunting this year. I WILL use the A/C so it will get worse.   We have had a stringer of 90 F + days with big humidity numbers. I don't take this as well as I use to. 

 

Balance and rotate tires. All under an ounce of correction. Check and adjust spare pressure.

Brakes look awesome. 

 

Clean MAF.

 

YTD average 27.26 mpg. 6 MVA 29.43 mpg. Fuel cost currently 6.7 cents per mile. Fuel cost per gallon is once again on the rise so this might be as good as it gets for the year. 

 

 

 

Edited July 1, 2020 by Grumpy Bear

[Grumpy Bear]

07/04/2020 Operational Note:

 

90 F day. 50% humidity. Interstate at 55 mph. A/C on. I wanted to know how much the A/C was going to effect the fuel economy and operating conditions. 

 

Water temp 175 F. Oil Temp. 199 F. Transmission temp 160 F. IAT 90 F. So a few degrees of oil temp. Literally 4 degrees oil and about the same on the transmission. Water temp average for the conditions. 

 

On fuel, I ran 300 miles with a couple of short breaks. Had 12 miles on the tank for 312 total and used 10.279 gallons of Murphy's finest 87 E-10. 30.35 mpg for the test. Second highest tank it has recorded this year. Very efficient HVAC system.

 

Guess I'm done with the window cranks.  

[CadillacLuke24]

The brighter bulbs tend to flame out sooner, but for me the improved light output is worth it. My most recent set of Nightbreaker Lasers flamed out at 6 months or 23k miles....I have NO problem seeing anything at night though. 

 

That's awesome you get to drive old sections of US 66. I do that a lot with US 30 out here. Some is service road, some is WY highway (that is a huge project all its own I thoroughly enjoy) and some is being lost to mother nature. Last week I covered a stretch of the old Lincoln highway as designated by several maps. Near the end of the stretch, NE of Green River, I felt like I was getting the full 1913 experience....washouts, mudholes to avoid, and washboarding that turned into repeating potholes!

 

 

[Doublebase]

Grumpy, miss you buddy. Ever since I sold the truck and bought the Toyota Avalon internet automotive land hasn’t been the same. The Toyota forums are such a BORE. Nothing happens. Especially in the Avalon forum. Wow. Great cars and they don’t really have “problems” or people that seem to want to write about the cars.

 

So you went to 10w30 for a try? Why? You weren’t using any oil between changes on the 5w30. 
 

Have you ever done a transmission service on pepper?

[Grumpy Bear]

4 hours ago, Doublebase said:

Grumpy, miss you buddy. Ever since I sold the truck and bought the Toyota Avalon internet automotive land hasn’t been the same. The Toyota forums are such a BORE. Nothing happens. Especially in the Avalon forum. Wow. Great cars and they don’t really have “problems” or people that seem to want to write about the cars.

 

1.) So you went to 10w30 for a try? Why? You weren’t using any oil between changes on the 5w30. 
 

2.) Have you ever done a transmission service on pepper?

Well Hello Mike. Nice to hear from a friendly face. Reliability, yea, what a bore. I like that kind of boredom. Avalon is a nice car. 

 

1.) The first number in 10W30 is the base oil's natural SAE assigned viscosity. The second number the result of the viscosity polymer package. In other words this is a 10W oil that has VI improver to prevent it from thinning out to a viscosity less than required for a W30 at 212 F. I prefer to lubricate with the base oil instead of VI improvers. If they made a straight 30W or a 20W30 in a PAO/POE blend I'd use that during the summer. Anyway, the smaller the gap between the first and second number the less complicated the VI molecules. I expect I will continue to use 5W30 for the four coldest winter months. 

 

2.) Oh yes, several trans services in fact and another coming up at the next change. Overdue actually. 

 

11/17/2017 50 K  Pan drop and replace the filter WIX and replace fluid with 6 quarts Red Line D-6, 48%  PAO/POE 

 3/30/2018 58 K Trans thermostat modification. Lower temps < 50 F 

 7/24/2018 70 K Install PML 8 quart alloy pan. 8 Quarts Red Line D-6 now 78.6% PAO/POE 

10/16/2018 80 K  8 Quarts Red Line D-6 now 90% PAO/POE

 

Over this same period of time I lowered the water thermostat improving trans cooling. Combine with the trans stat modification fluid temps are 70 to 90 F cooler, summer/ winter respectively. I have to be sitting dead in traffic on a 95 F day now to exceed 175 F fluid temperature.  

 

I have two more trans mods I'd like to do yet. Inline filter and a more reliable converter.