2023 Suburban - Just had a "why'd we leave Toyota?" moment

We've got a third kid on the way, which'll put us at three car seats and two big dogs. Basically came down to getting a Suburban and offing her 4Runner. Admittedly, it's a sweet ride. But after getting it hotshotted from MN to the south, my wife drives it home 13mi and it throws a CEL. I scan it and get a P0606 - ECM processor error, a low voltage error, and some mfg specific errors. You can imagine I sat there sh*tting myself. Turns out there was a recent cold snap of -20degF up north and that likely ticked the battery off. Worth sharing the humor with fellow Toyota reliability enthusiasts.

Speaking of, anyone with a good recommendation on disabling AFM? Going to try and aid the timebomb that is the valvetrain on these motors.

 

Quality, Durability, and Reliability (QDR).

Congrats with the new ride and growing family! I suspect the Chevy will treat you well for the length of time you own it.

 

damn dude! wife and I are looking at getting her a suburban or Yukon XL and i'll prob have to do the same in the future. We've got 4 kids (6 and under) and the space is tight behind the sequoia's 3rd row. her van does well, but when her warranty runs out in about 4 years, we'll prob get her an SUV. hopefully just a quick fix and you'll be back at it. looks nice!
mind if i ask what specs on it like motor, trim, etc.?
good luck bud

 

We have a two year old and twins on the way so I briefly considered a Burb or something similar but I wasn't willing to give up my truck and I didn't figure we needed two V8s. We're picking up our new Honda Pilot next week.

 

Hopefully, that’s all just from the battery, and you don’t have any actual issues. My wife has driven a full size GM for the last 10 years. We finally got sick of all the stupid BS and sold her Yukon XL to buy an LX570. Yeah, it’s smaller. But I’d rather put a cargo box up top if/when needed than deal with GM issues.

All that space behind the third row is nice. If your experience is like ours, it’ll give your kids a place to play on the side of the road while your wife waits for you to come bail her out in your Toyota.

 

I cleared the codes and we're running it. After talking to their service dept it's likely attributed to the cold. There's a 50 ignition cycle reset before it should've cleared itself.

We thought we were going to get the new Sequoia but the trunk space is crucial and I'm not a fan of turbos/hybrids for a daily.

This one is an RST with the 5.3. Has the luxury package, pano, trailering package, 2nd row power buckets, and sliding console. Didn't want the Premium nor High Country as their ferrofluid dampers adjusting every microsecond, power running boards, HUD, etc are just more electronics that'll likely give headaches. She also prefers the front fascia on the Z71/RST. Will say the 6.2 had more oomph, but since this a people mover for us, we opted for the theoretical +1MPG and not needing to run premium.

Now I just need to resist getting a Comma 2 (or the upcoming 3) to turn it into a level 2 autonomous driver...

 

It’s funny because with 3 kids and 2 dogs I’ve been down this road - we’ve had an MDX (a fancy Pilot), two suburbans, a GX, a Yukon XL and finally landed on a LandCruiser. Every GM I’ve had ended up with some stupid issue that drove me to get rid of it. Only got rid of the MDX and GX for more space…

 

My wife has already assured me that the Pilot will only be for trips around the city and the Tundra will continue to be used for longer trips.

 

We still use the Tundra for trips often - wife doesn’t like the dogs in the LC so I feel your pain.

 

I'm keeping my truck and miles car. We're fortunate that we didn't have to get rid of multiple vehicles to get the Chevy. This is her 4Runner replacement.

Also, we were really liking the new Pilots. Good choice. If we didn't have to tote 200+lbs of dogs sometimes, we would've had more options.

 

When/If you charge the battery, make sure you hook up the charger such that the current is able to be detected by any hall sensors or current sensors. I know on the current F150's they have a current sensor on the battery and you need to hook up the positive charging lead on the opposite side of the sensor than the battery so that the BCM is aware that the battery is getting current and updates its state of charge.

My 2014 has a hall sensor on the negative wire, and so I have to put my negative charge lead on a chassis ground downstream of the hall sensor to get the BCM to see it.

 

Good to know. Will look into it. Thanks.

 

Look into a company called Range Technology for a device they have that plugs into the OBD port which will keep the engine in V8 mode full time and disabling the AFM. Had one for my 2010 Chevy pickup a few years back. Worked well to prevent the valvetrain time bomb problems. I would think that they still produce them for these vehicles. If I remember correctly, the price wasn't too bad on the one I bought. Something like $125 to $140 back then?

 

Question, liking the new Pilots because of? I just looked it up and it seems to be about the same space as the one my wife drives now (2017 Pilot AWD EX-L)
When my parents/in-laws are in town, we have the third row for seating, but just in town/out for food/getting from short A-B, space is tight but manageable....
I might have mistaken the above, but sounds like the new Pilot is bigger?

Also, the Pilot has the weak transmission issue, which we also got, and it took almost three year to four years to figure out what it was and the place that did the final check did a bulletin flash or something and now it is running fine, otherwise, I was ready to trade it in for a T4R for wife, but I will keep it for a while until it is almost 10 years. She also like the LC and Seq..... (shiver..... but she refuses to drive another V6....

 

Specs put it on par with the Traverse for interior volume/cargo. We have a lot of friends with that vehicle and the unibody really does create a lot of room, especially if you can fold the third row down. As we were initially trying to avoid a GM, the Pilot seemed worth investigating. The other main attraction was it remained NA.

For how much she used the full capacity of the 4Runner trunk though, we just couldn't get away with something that size. That was the depth of my research so can't speak to specifics about mechanicals.

 

We are a family of four, two girls under 10 (7 & 5) and two house-bound cats, so third row is down 90% of the time of a year, space is enough for a couple day of road trip. Anything bigger, say, IKEA run, Tundra will bear the weight of it.
I really wanted to get rid of the Pilot, due to the transmission issue and also just overall poor AC system (which in Houston is life/death issue) but it is paid off, running fine, so I guess it is here to stay for a while.... until it drops dead or runs off with a wheel or something.

 

I'd do the same. Trust me, I didn't want to get rid of the 4Runner.

 

Of the three row midsize SUVs, the Pilot has the most total interior space and the second most space behind the rear seat after the Kia Telluride. I was a bit iffy on the life of the transmission but not iffy enough to spend $10k more on a Kia. We don't put that many miles on our vehicles so I'm hoping it will hold up for the ~15 years or so that I want to keep the vehicle.

Space/storage behind the rear seat was worse in the Highlander and Pallisade and the CX-9 and Ascent were just too small. (And my brother in law, who's a Subaru guy through and through, recommended against the Ascent.)

Wife wouldn't even go look at a Traverse and I wasn't interested in the VW Atlas.

 

Time to take a dive into GMs LAN bus. I think that is what they call their version of CAN.

Some documentation online but I haven’t read much because I don’t own one. Would be cool to understand.

 

I've already been wanting to see if the AFM delete dongles just send out a message... But for how cheap they are, I'd rather just plug one in and be done with it.

Also, really? LAN buss? Terrible naming if true.

 

Never figured out why the Highlander ever existed when 4R was in the picture. I just looked up Telluride, hell, that thing is WAY more expensive than what the Pilot is asking for. Granted, might be nice ride but, eh, no.
We had a Mazda before, bad taste, wife would not even consider Mazda/VW/American brand. I had the manual Forester and kinda kick myself still for trading it in for the Tundra as wife loves the manual, too, but the Ascent is smaller than Pilot but cost almost as much if not more than the Pilot, and I can't justify that for the amazing AWD that Subies have.....
Yea, once you weed out the non-contender, you don't have much choice.....

 

Agree no point in reinventing the wheel or experimenting on the daily. Might accidentally break something else.

Yes GMLAN is the name. Local area network.. very similar to CAN just different speeds ect. I think general message structure is the same.


Any opinions on the car market? How long did you look? Seems prices are coming down. Was it a better deal to buy up north and pay shipping or was that the only way to get exactly what you wanted?

I have considered updating my daily but am holding out for another few % drop in pricing.

 

We had the same realization - Burb, Expedition Max, or Grand Wagoneer L. The other two are TT v6s, so only one choice. Now we're just crossing our fingers for the lifters to stay intact.

 

MSRP on the 2022 Telluride was only about $2k CAD more than the Pilot but dealers were marking them up at least $8k and Kia Canada didn't care. They jacked the prices on the 2023s way up even though they haven't changed.

 

Highlander would be a better fit for us than the 4R since we don't off road and need to use the third row.

Dealers are marking the Subarus way up, too. We might have considered an Ascent if we could get one for the MSRP of $50k, rather than the asking price of $65k ($3k more than the Pilot).

 

Didn't take long after we whittled down what we wanted, but that was because of dumb luck. The process of figuring which vehicle took a few months.

Right now you can't go to a dealership, request a build, and be given a date. I was told "could be 4 months, could be 10." As our third will be here at the end of May, it forced us to find one that was on a lot. The fact we ordered from MN was that Chevy's website had seven in this green which were RSTs. Two of those had 2nd row buckets. The other was presold and in WA. Unknowing to me, the woman who requested this build dropped it on a Sat evening and I called first thing Mon morn. Again, purely luck.

Something my wife kept saying was along the lines of "dealerships/salesforce don't seem to care to even work with us." Not that I have a ton of experience as I prefer holding onto vehicles longer than most, but I have to agree. The overall 'feel' of buying a car was "here's what we have, here's what it costs."

This purchase was overall strange. Never met the dude who I dealt with at the dealership (I guess I'm old fashioned in that I prefer to lay eyes/hands/be in-person). Had to deal with shady ass hotshot brokers. Had to text message the Russian driver who couldn't speak English so he could use Translate just to make arrangements for pick up.

Interest is high, although I'm spoiled and possibly skewed thinking about Covid times and the rate we have on our mortgage. Overall, if you don't have a need, I'd hold out.

 

extended warranty purchased?

 

Making the decision on which package today and overnighting the paperwork back. I'm more than capable but it just feels wrong thinking about pulling heads.

 

I don't off-road either, other than the crap Houston roads, which in itself is a challenge and half to get anywhere. But having a higher clearance would give me piece of mind of not worrying about high water.
I am tempted to go for a base level Subie for the manual as a daily as our work is demanding more in-office time. Truck is sweet, but does hurt the wallet a bit when driven everyday for close to 90 miles round trip.

Agree on the if not need to hold. Pilot is paid off, it will stay and work until it doesn't or if the repair gets too much, I am still watching the transmission like a hawk and hopefully I don't have to replace it before I get it traded.

 

3 kids and I’d just get three of the narrow car seats and shove them in the back. 4 kids like Andy and I’d again go three kids in the back seat and one in the bed riding Stifler style