: 
: I am considering buying a 1993 Chevy or GMC 4x4 full-size pickup with
: the extended cab.  Any opinions about these vehicles?  Have there been
: any significant problems?
: 
: -- 
: Dick Grady           Salem, NH,  USA            grady@world.std.com
: So many newsgroups, so little time!


I bought a brand new 1992 Chevrolet K2500 HD 4x4 extended cab last
May.  It has had many, many problems.  See my earler post that describes
the situation.  I went to BBB arbitration, and they ruled that Chevrolet
must buy it back from me.  If you do get one, stay away from the 5 speed
manual with the deep low first gear.  They have put three of them in my
truck so far.  After about 1,500 miles, overdrive either starts
rattling or hissing loudly.  There is no way to fix them.  Chevrolet 
says that the noise is "a characteristic of the transmission."

Also, if you are planning to use your truck to tow, the
gear ratios in that tranny suck.  On a steep hill, you get up to about
55 MPH in second gear at 4,000 RPM (yellow line).  If you shift to third,
the RPM drop to only 2,500, and you begin to loose speed.  I should
point out that the 350 V8 they put in the HD (8600 GVW) trucks is a
detuned motor compared to the one they put in the light duty ones.  They
dropped the compression ratio, supposedly for "engine longevity"
reasons.  So the light duty 350 may pull better than my truck does.
Other things that have gone wrong include the ventilation fan (3 times 
so far), paint (had specs of rust embedded in the paint from being
shipped by rail with no covering), and suspension parts (link between
stabilizer and control arm fell off).

Any company can make a bad individual car, Chevrolet included.  What
really bothered me was the way they reacted.  They made no attempt
to deal with me except to tell me to take it back to the dealer for 
them to attempt to fix it one more time.  So I bought a brand new
Ford F250 HD Super Cab with a 460 and an automatic.  I will never
buy another Chevrolet.