2001 Chevrolet Avalanche from North America - Comments

When I first purchased the truck, it ran fine, but I noticed a dull groan coming from the truck which I assumed was a wheel bearing. Took it into a dealership and they said it was coming from the rear end.

Contacted original dealership (truck was purchased 2 weeks prior) and they fixed the right rear axle bearing. Picked up the truck and the same sound was there. They diagnosed it as an out of round axle housing which caused the bearing to disintegrate and leak fluid within 2 days after the repair.

Anyways, here's what's gone wrong since they replaced that rear end with a used "certified" rear end from a wrecker;

2 - 3 shift clunks and downshift clunks.

Excessive driveshaft play.

Vibration from at speeds 110km/h - 120km/h.

The dealership rotated the driveshaft 180 degrees, balanced the driveshaft, and replaced both front and rear u-joints.

All clunks and vibrations are still present - now the dealership is good for trying to repair the issue, but they had the truck for more than half the time in the first 5 weeks of ownership. They also will let me bring the truck back, but at a loss of $1500 for depreciation.

Anyways, regarding the Avalanche or should I say GM in general, any driveshaft back lash/play including 1 -2 or 2 -3 shift clunks is considered normal by GM. There are TSB's that advise dealerships not to do anything about it.

If you are interested in purchasing an Avalanche, I'd recommend that you visit www.cheveyavalanchefanclub.com to see what problems exist with these trucks.

I love the truck, but hate the problems associated with them. Great truck if you can afford gas because they are quite thirsty (considering it is built off the Suburban chassis).

I wouldn't recommend a GM vehicle to anyone since they cover their butts with their TSB's. I thought Chrysler was bad, but GM is actually worse. And this issue is common to all GM trucks with the 4.8/5.3 litres.

I wonder just a bit if you have an Avalanche since the first year model was a 2002... I have a 2002 Z71 and have never had a single thing go wrong (not even a burned out lightbulb anywhere). I'm a stickler for maintenance, most of which I do myself. I get 19mpg on the highway and about 15 around town. Because of the gas crunch, I now only use my truck for hauling and in the mountains, having bought a 32mpg commuter car. When I bought it in Feb 2002, I paid less than $30K (Sticker $42K) and will find myself hard pressed to get a nicer vehicle for the money!

I believe the vibration noise is from the stabilitrak system in the transmission. The noise kicks in at 60 mph. Its just a noise with a very slight vibration on my 2006 avalanche. There is also some hard shifting from first gear. I had this problem on a chevy truck and found out the shifter bearing on the 460le gm transmission is too small. It sometimes gets jammed in the shifter hole. The transmission needs to build up a lot of pressure to dislodge it thus causing a hard shift. The replacement shifter costs about $25. When the bearing gets jammed the transmission continues to run on less fluid to the other transmission areas causing those areas to run dry and wear out.