Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Not a Lexus, or even a Toyota.

I have been shopping for Momma's forever replacement rig for over a year. I am replacing her '05 Durango. Body on frame, 300 plus HP 5.7.

No crossovers or unibody allowed.

I looked at a few Toyotas, Nissan Armada, Infiniti (same, same). But as I intend to tow the 20 foot inboard jet boat up and down very steep mountain roads,, I finally settled on a GMC Yukon Denali. Neither a Suburban, nor a truck would fit in the garage. Had to be a short wheelbase.

Anyway, this one popped up on Autotrader last night at Dennis Dillon in Boise. It is a '14 with 48K on the meter. 4x4, 6.2 Liter with a six speed AT, 3.42 gears. Really, it is just broke in. We were there bright and early this AM and got it locked down. While we were doing paperwork, two other parties came in and asked specifically about this vehicle.

$30 K out the door including Id 6% sales tax. The new one on the lot beside it was over $100 K plus other fees and $6 grand in tax. I am just glad that some folks are willing to eat the depreciation on the first fifty thousand miles.

I will be talking to my mechanic about lifting the intake manifold and deleting the AFM mechanicals. But that will probably have to wait until Momma's four year warranty has expired.

Nice ride you got there.

What does raising the intake manifold do for you?

Hard to find one that low of miles for that price.

Gain access to the AFM pieces - lifters specifically I believe.

I hope it came with a spare tire😂. My Challenger didn’t WTH.

I recently purchased one for the pretty Mohican to use for her side gig. Quite the vehicle anymore.

I stumbled across a Toyota cruiser, bought an advertised boat from a guy and he had this beautiful 86 Land Cruiser stashed away under wraps in the other end of that garage. Took a while. But we are dealing on it now. The older vehicles refurbed are more my style, but the gals like the newer.
Osky

Great looking Yukon Shooter.

My wife and I share a 2013 Denali. We primarily use it for towing a vintage trailer, a boat and our old Miley horse trailer.

It has lots of power and is very stable while towing. If you decide to use the tow button expect lower milage due to it dragging out shifts and using the transmission to help in braking. I only engage it occasionally.

I used it for a month to go to mearns quail country while I repaired my 87 suburban 4 x 4 that hit a deer. I had not taken it on bumpy roads before. Its active suspension gave a much smoother ride compared to the suburban.

You are going to like the all wheel drive feature. I cannot get any wheel spin while tugging any of our trailers up a steep gravel driveway.

We bought and installed the Range Technology AFM disabler as soon as we got the vehicle. It has run flawlessly. The disabler plugs into the ALDL port. Range Technology is a division of Holley. I would suggest you install it asap. No one would know you did it so it couldn't void the warranty. I have had to unplug it twice to go through emissions as they plug into the same port. When it was reinstalled it immediately went back to disabler mode.

https://www.rangetechnology.com/products/afm-dfm_disabler/


"No more shuddering as your engine cycles between running on half or all cylinders
Improved power at light throttle with all cylinders firing which can actually result in improved fuel economy depending on your driving habits
GM's troublesome valve lifters will no longer be tasked with activating and deactivating constantly, saving you money on costly future repairs
The Range AFM/DFM Disabler is the ultimate solution for full time V8 mode."

Nice... Congratulations for y'all

Congrats. Sounds like a good buy.

4 years ago we were SUV shopping. We'd about settled on a new Toyota Highlander when we looked at a Boise dealer website. They had a dealer demo Highlander, fully loaded. It had 7k on it and only dealer registration. They had it priced the same as a new stripped down model. We grabbed it. 7k isn't even broken in and we got all the pricey extras for the same price as a base model. 4 years later we're still learning all the stuff it has on it.

Plan to keep our 04 Tahoe into infinity.

Just starting on a few upgrades to it @ 190K miles.

1st up was removing the leveler/air lift.

A few rust spots are going to get taken care of as soon as the weather changes.
Going to do a mini lift and level just prior to the body work.

My ‘03 Suburban is entering its 3rd decade of service with 257k miles. I love my wife’s ‘22 4Runner but there’s no replacement for displacement!

Wife had a '13 Yukon (one trim below a Denali) and we had 180,000 trouble free miles out of it. She traded it on an 18 Infiniti. Have 130,000 trouble free miles out of it, but I liked the GMC better. The Infiniti is more 'plush', but just feels like a car to me, soft. The Yukon, felt like it actually had some beef to it.

A four year warranty on a 10 year old vehicle?? How does that work?



Jerry

Some dealerships offer warranties on 'certified' vehicles.

We've purchased several used delivery vehicles that were 'certified' and had a lifetime warranty.

As to just what 'certified' means I've no idea.

Was just getting ready to post the Range Technology disabler.

Just $$$.

I'd be on the plug and play AFM disabler ASAP. In-Laws have a loaded-up Tahoe w/5.3 and AFM. It tossed a valve somewhere just over 100K, it's now @155K. We took a ~200Mi round-trip road trip a couple weeks ago and I drove. Summbitch was "lugging" WAY more often than I'd allow mine to and that was in flat central MN, but, it's their rig.

It goes like this:

Tooling along on flat ground @ 70 and it's in V-4 mode on the cluster. Any slight incline and it feels like it's occasionally "missing" (it's lugging), the swap to V-8 takes too long and so when it does swap back it also drops a couple gears, gets you back up to speed, couple shifts back to high gear, then the swap to V-4, and if the incline or headwind is still there, it repeats the process, over and over. It'd give me a stroke if it was mine. I can't imagine towing with that garbage.

I pretty much like everything else about the rig and there's plenty of 5.3's and 6.2's over 250K Mi to know that they're solid platforms but to my mind, that AFM pre-maturely wears on the valve-train and likely the transmission.

Thanks guys. Yes, I will be buying the disabler soonest. Later, we will actually remove the hardware. Lifters, possibly cam, I don't know yet.

I would have been as happy buying her an O1-02 Yukon like my GMC 4x4 2500 HD with the 6.0, especially if I could have gotten a 4L80E in it. But zero luck finding one which was not already worn out. Plus they have the 4L60E trans, as far as I know. A couple of guys at work had the 1/2 ton Chevy or GMC trucks and had trans failures at 150K.

Warranty package on a ten year old truck? It is just insurance, sold by the dealer, against mechanical breakdown. I think he mentioned a $200 deductible. It covers all those computers which control ride height, valve timing, fuel injection, and a dozen other things, as well as actual mechanicals for four years. It was initially offered to us at $4K and I refused to purchase it. At signing, I folded when the sales guy reduced the cost to "employee pricing" at $3K.

You want to talk about aggressive sale technique. We were also "Strongly" encouraged to use their bank. But they got the rate down to 6.9%, and we will pay it off within six months anyway.

10 percent of the cost of the vehicle is a big expense to cover mechanical failure on a rig which will live in the garage and maybe get driven a thousand miles per year. But then again, those computers are pretty damned expensive. I still feel like I got hosed on that part. But it put Momma's mind to ease.

I about blew the salesman's mind when he told us: "Great News! You get 90 days of OnStar for free"
I said No Thank You. Disable OnStar please. I do not want them calling or texting later wanting me to pay for the subscription.

They had to go clear to the General Manager to see if that could even happen. I still don't know what happened there. I will find out when it gets through their shop and we pick it up.

Car Fax shows this rig was initially purchased in Idaho. The first owner had it a bit over a year. The second owner had it five days. And the third owners ever since. All were listed as personal. And all were listed as Idaho residents. That is a plus as we do not have much issue with rust on our vehicles.

Momma backed into a truck with her Durango three years ago. It exposed bare steel around the left tail light. That has not rusted yet. The value of the Durango was not high enough to bother getting the damage repaired. We are going to give it to an eighteen year old grandson, rather than take $500 tradein allowance. It still runs well and everything works. It just has high mileage.

We used to be GM people. Products lasted a long time. Last one was a Buick in the 80s, over 300K miles on it.

Then they started to falter. 83 had 3 transmissions by 100K. An 86 was pretty decent but the motor lost compression by 150K

Moved over to Ford and really happy with them. Then to Toyota for the last few and have been happy with them. Other than the way they engineer a few things that suck when you need to work on them.

I'm glad ya found this one and hope it works out for ya though! Since GM was the first vehicle for the wife and I on road vehicles kind of have a soft spot for them and hope they have made strides in quality.