that's one of the good things about the 6 speed auto. It has the ability to have very steep low gears, but the high gears are good for the highway.

 

That's what is really frustrating about their choices. Stick a 6-speed auto behind the latest AFM 3.9 to achieve 35+ mpg (highway) in a full-size Impala and a powertrain that is significantly cheaper to build and would have above average performance. What's the downside?

 

The contracts for the 4speed autos...

The production capacity for the 6speed autos...

And strike after strike after strike by workers.

 

Gracias. That's what I thought.

 

My beef wasn't with the new design, which just from the numbers and driving the two different engines, 3.4, 3.8 vs 3.5/3.9, tells me that there was a huge improvement for smoothness and power output. My problem is that they went and redesigned these new engines and they failed to fix the leaking gaskets that plagued the old GM V6s in the first place.

How you like to be told, when you get your oil changed at 50k, that your engine is leaking out of just about every gasket? I have yet to really see a Honda or Toyota, 4 or 6, have the abundance of problems that GM has with their V6s and 4spd autos leaking.

 

How do you know they haven't come up with newer gasket designs and/or materials, even though the head/block/intake interface is still similar to the design of the old 3.4 (referring to the common intake manifold coolant leak that the 3.4L had)?

I've not heard anything about 3.4s having excessive oil leaks from other areas, if that is what you mean. But even if they did, it is quite possible that they have changed to different materials or designs of the gaskets where leaking was a problem...

 

Of the two 3.5s I remember looking at intently and remember the mileage, they both had oil pans leaking. As noted the G6 had ~50k on it and was an 05/06. The Malibu was an 07 with only 7k on it and had the same problem! While the Malibus had just started, the G6 was quite excessive. The valve cover and intake gaskets do look like they will hold longer, the valve covers looked RTVed. Though, I do remember looking at one 3.5 at one point in time and seeing what looked like the intake end seals were starting to leak.

Lets make something clear, I think the new 3.5/3.9 are a big step forward in smoothness and power over the old GM v6s. My beef is that they did not fix the one thing that probably turned more people off of GM v6s than anything else, oil leaks. I know that the new Toyota 2.4 and older 1.5/1.6 Honda 4s have oil pans that do end up leaking, but all the Hondas I've seen all have over 100k on them and the Toyotas are actually quite easy to fix, from a labor stand point. Even the old Toyota 2.2s have problems with cam covers leaking, though it again is not a problem until over 100k. This is what I see at work, day in and day out, changing oil on cars for a living. In a college town you see a lot of small cars covering a lot of years.

Like I've said, I'm glad that GM is going to start only using the 3.6 and hopefully the 6spd auto will replace all the 4spds. I can only hope that GM has used better materials when it comes to gaskets this time around. I have reason to hope since all the Ecotec engines I have seen have not had a single problem with them when it comes to leaks. This is what a lot of people will call reliability problems when they are questioned about it.