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Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Recalls, Chevrolet



According to The New York Times, General Motors now says that a problem which stopped production of one of its hottest models has been fixed. As we reported first last week, a number of 2010 Camaro SS owners were experiencing failures related to the Tremec six-speed manual gearboxes in their new muscle cars. And while company officials are declining to reveal what the actual cause of the defect was, what we do understand is that something untoward was going on with the output shaft of these vehicles. The defect manifested itself in the form of a debilitating mechanical failure when the affected vehicles were launched aggressively with the engine turning 5,000 rpm or more.

It appears that the model's production hold has been lifted, although some vehicles have been held back for inspection, just to make sure. GM's Adam Denison reports that about a dozen owners had problems, and hopefully the problem with remain isolated, with no further cases coming out of the woodwork. In the meantime, GM has apparently decided that no recall action is warranted.

[Source: The New York Times]REPORT: GM says Camaro tranny issue is fixed, won't reveal cause originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.



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2010_5thgen

is there going to be a recall for something?

HuJass

The article says no recall.

That's crazy!! How many more ticking timebombs are out there?
All the Camaro owners are going to be afraid to launch their cars aggressively.

The fix wouldn't be easy (removal of trans & replacement of output shaft), but I think it would be the right thing to do.
(Actually, they'd probably just replace the whole gearbox.)

It couldn't be an inspection thing. There's probably nothing to see by eye.
Short of metallugical testing, there's really no way to tell if an output shaft is bad. So they'd need to be replaced with known good shafts.

GM better hope this issue is VERY isolated.

Z28Wilson

They must figure that the problem was found quick enough.

km9v

It might be a very limited batch of cars affected.

2010_5thgen

rather than have a recall and spend however much money fixing any past cars, they want to wait until they break down ,then fix them. cheap way of doing it but not the smartest way. i still have my JD Power and ssoc. survey at home i need to fill out. maybe ill hold on to it to see if i have any issues.

OutsiderIROC-Z

I can see them using this to not honor warranty claims, claiming that the failures were due to aggressive launches...

I woulda thought this problem would have came out during pre-production testing?

HuJass

It probably wasn't a design problem. It's a manufacturing issue. Tremec got a run of bad shafts.
Don't know if it was their fault or a supplier's as we don't know how much Tremec does in-house.


And it will probably be cheaper for GM to repair the broken cars as they come in rather than a mass replacement of transmissions, many of which are probably OK. This tactic won't do much to build good will and confidence towards GM, however.

lcmc

Come on guys. Recall? They only had a dozen failures. To me that didn't even warrant a shut down. Most of the problems were probably operator error anyway.

HuJass

Recall?? Well, yeah!
Just because there were only a dozen or so failures (that we know about), that doesn't mean there aren't anymore. How do we know there aren't 500-1000 more potential failures out there waiting to break? We don't. That's exactly why recalls are performed.


And it's not operator error, either. Fbodfather said so himself.

Fbodfather

no one denied anything.

You don't make a statement until you know all of the facts.

We will contact every customer that has a Camaro with the issue......most cars do not.

graham

If that's how the competition does it, I say Chevrolet should start doing the silent treatment as well.

JeremyNYR

It sounds to me like GM is in the process of determining which lot (or date grouping) of transmissions have output shafts from the suspect lot/date grouping... or they already have done so. Automotive manufacturers have many ways to track when parts were built to narrow a defect down to a relatively small population of parts. They do this to avoid massive recalls when a very short-term manufacturing defect like this occurs. Thanks for the info Fbodfather.

HuJass, just because they didn't recall every vehicle and hold a press conference to announce it to the world doesn't mean they aren't addressing the problem properly.

HuJass

I never said they weren't addressing the problem properly.
I was trying to get across that they are walking a very fine line with this issue.
Do a recall and spend TONS of money on what could be a very isolated problem, or just fix them quietly as they come in and risk a public lashing for not recalling them.
I don't envy GM in this situation. They're either damned if they do or damned if they don't.

I hope it's a very isolated problem, for GM's sake.

bozobuttz

Who the F launches at 5000+ RPM??? Those 12 idiots deserved it.