05-06 GTO owners, check your upper rad hose
 

Smelled antifreeze the other day, stopped and looked and my upper radiator hose had drooped into the power steering pump pully. It wore a small hole into the hose. Found a replacement at a local car quest for the hefty price of $56. Gm dealer wanted $66 but they all had to be ordered with a minimum 2 day wait. The car quest (gates) hose I got, they had actually rerouted the hose closer to the radiator. Must have figured out there was a problem and they fixed it. Just an FYI, I'd hate to see anyone else get stranded over something as trivial as this.

thanks for the "heads-up".....mine's hibernating in the garage, but will check it now b4 the spring......

No problem, I don't know if the hose just got soft and sagged or if it was originally routed that close to the pump to begin with. The gates hose fit very well, nice and rigid and fixed both the leaking and routing problem.

Checked my original hose and it doesnt come close to touching the pulley.

Thanks for the heads up!. Mine had just started to touch!!! Thanks again

What do you guys have for miles? just wondering as mine has 67k and havnt had this problem yet.

29K all california, no snow or ice just rain and summers

106k, I drive the crap out of it. It's too fun to park it.

After checking mine again today it looks closer than it was, so i guess i will keep an eye on it and plan on replacing it soon, thanks for the heads up, and i too love driving mine always puts a smile on my face and makes that morning commute to work a little more fun. As of today ive owned mine 3 weeks and put on about 300 miles.

Gotchya beat :D.... I'm sitting at 107k and some change... I'm sure it'll be 108k by the end of the week.

BTW - I'm only getting 15k-17k out of a set of tires... :eek:

Turned 108,000 yesterday.

Sitting at 110,000 miles and now the trans is acting up.

What's it doing?

[quote=71GP76TA;4309815]Gotchya beat :D.... I'm sitting at 107k and some change... I'm sure it'll be 108k by the end of the week.

BTW - I'm only getting 15k-17k out of a set of tires... :eek:[/quote

I copied and pasted the probable reasons of why your tires are wearing rapidly below:



Negative camber front and or rear is what is skinning the inner shoulders of your tires. Measure your rear ride height from the lower lip of the wheel rim up through the wheel center to the painted edge of the guard / fender. My guess is you'll get a result in the range of 585mm on the rears. The result is a high negative rear camber that is causing inner shoulder tire wear.

The contact with the strut is NOT wearing out your tires. The strut surface is smoother than the pavement. Metal contact with tires causes heat build up and the tire to get greasy. Much like the tire boogers created from a burn-out, a tire than rubs hard on smooth metal will heat up and be greasy to the touch even after it cools down. Rub your fingers across the tire and you'll get a dirty / dusty result if they are healthy. If they have been heated by smooth metal against rubber friction they should leave a greasy residue on your fingers.

Without inspecting your car here are my guesses based on what you have posted and the results of being under who knows how many GTOs at this point.

1. Rear ride height is under 590mm causing significant negative rear camber. This can be verified by ride height measurements and a the negative camber reading from the alignment machine.

2. The LARGE contact spots of the front struts are caused by excessive play in the front suspension. The vehicle appears to have good alignment while in a static position on the alignment machine, but the wear pattern on the struts is larger than normal and out of the ordinary while tire wear is excessive. The solutions and inspections:

a. Radius Rod Brake Test
b. Strut Mount Inspection
c. Front Ride Height Measurement
d. Outer Control Arm Bush Inspection
c. Leaking Strut Inspection -- is there only in the lower spring seat?

If you could get your GTO to a Pontiac / Pedders Dealer they have more information and knowledge of these vehicles than most. They can perform all of these tests and inspections with you standing side-by-side with the tech. If not have the Dealer of your choice follow these steps and call us if they have any questions. My guess is that your vehicle needs strut mounts, radius rod bushes and rear coils with a four wheel alignment to spec or you will continue to eat / wear out tires rapidly. There is no reasons to expect that if the car was aligned to spec and ate tires and the tires were replaced and the car aligned to the same specifications that the new tires will last one mile longer. Either the alignments were wrong during the first set of tire use or there are issues mechanically with your car allowing the alignment to wander out of spec under load. A properly aligned and healthy suspension GTO does NOT eat tires or rub the paint off struts in a 2.5 inch pattern.

Not to throw gasoline on a fire, but... The GTO squats like a bandit under hard acceleration. Repeated hard starts will skin the shoulders off a rear tire in a very short period of time with a rear ride height under 590mm. If you like to do burnouts and have OE rear coils the result will be short tire life. That probably isn't the case here.

Get these well known suspension short comings fixed on your GTO and your tire wear will more than double, mine did....................................:D

A company called Peddars makes the aftermarket parts to get your suspension back to where it should be.

Another thread about tire wear and suspension pieces; http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/...=tire+wear+gto

The wife and I were down south over the holiday weekend.... It started slipping and acted like the torque convertor was locking in and out.... It seemed better if I was real easy on the gas and manually shifted it at 3,000-3,500 RPM... and didn't let the RPM's drop below 2k.... My guess is the trans got overheated somehow??? We stayed the night in Bakersfield and on the way home the next day it seemed fine.... although I was easy on it. I took it to a trans shop that I use on a regular basis and trust.... He said its an electronic issue.... which has yet to be diagnosed...



Sirrotica - The majority of the wear is negative camber. When I had it aligned I told the guys at the alignment shop to take as much camber out of it as they could..... Needless to say when I picked up the car I looked at the printout.... and the R/R was sitting at -1.5.... The idiot at the shop said it was in spec ... so they left it alone... I was going to have them redo it but I didn't have the time.. .... Driving like an idiot probably has something to do with the premature wear too...:D

My first set of tires wore out at 17,000 too and I made Pontiac fix the front end at 20,000, I had to fight to get it done but I succeeded. Next set of tires went 40,000 and the same problems started all over so I got Pontiac once again to fix the front end me paying $100 deductible because I had a damn good service manager working with me on this. The same parts wore out plus the struts and ball joints this time so $100 was still a bargain. The radius rod bushings are shot on your car if it's got over 40,000 on it, I would bet money on it, at static on an alignment machine they will check within spec, on the road your tires are allowed to toe out almost any time your on the brakes and the inside edge of the tire usually wears down to the cords. I just had mine done again at 58,000 and that's the second time. Quick test that takes 2 people, have someone watch your front wheels while you stop rather hard, if your front wheels move back in the wheel opening the radius rod bushings are shot for sure. If yours aren't shot you have a very unusual car, as I said mine were replaced twice before I hit 60,000 miles. Most front end people do not know how to properly check the Holden Monaro/Pontiac GTO front ends to check for defective parts believe me on that. The design of the parts on these cars are made so that no vibration is transferred and the rubber parts wear out really fast. Peddars and a couple other aftermarket companies make harder replacement parts that hold the alignment and wear much better than stock parts.

Excessive tire wear is a common problem on these cars, but it isn't something that is considered normal and it can be repaired if you know what to look for. After 2 freebies from Pontiac under warranty, The next time the front end wears out I will be replacing the stock parts with superior grade aftermarket parts. One other thing that is indicative of bad radius rod bushing is the brakes while not actually mushy don't have a real good hard pedal. You'll notice how much better the brakes feel after replacement of those bushings. Don't forget about the strut mount bushings, almost all of them were destroyed by the way GM shipped the cars over here on the ships. They blocked the suspension solid so they wouldn't move on the ship and destroyed the upper strut mount by putting all the movement and weight on the rubber part of the strut bushings during the shipment from Australia, another well known problem of these cars. Radius rod bushings and strut mounts are the biggest contributors to excessive tire wear on these cars.

When I get it out of the trans shop I'll be checking that front end out..... Thanks for the tip... :Peace:

NP, my pleasure to pass along the things I've learned the hard way about these cars. I know there are a bunch of haters here on PY amongst the "REAL" GTO owners and this forum isn't very good for information as opposed to LS1GTO.com. As nice as the cars are they do have some shortcomings and the front end quirks with the rapid tire wear is one of the annoyances. Just replacing the rubber parts with aftermarket parts pretty much solves those 2 problems though. Happy motoring..........................:D