Truck needs help...

**Tonik** · 01-05-2008, 03:48 PM

My brother-in-law just set off for the airforce and the ol' ladies mom gave us her truck my brother-in-law was using. It's a 2001 Chevrolet Silverado 4.3l v6 (about 140k miles) that he took HORRIBLE care of so I went to work on it today.

Fuel Filter
Flushed the crank case
Oil + filter
80 bucks worth of gas (holy shit)
Berrymans (gas tank)
Cleaned the MAF and Throttle Body
Hung an IV with TEC
Cap/Rotor/Plugs/Plug Wires

Now the problems...

1. Low Fuel light is on with the gas gauge showing empty though I just spent 80 bucks on gas. He said it's been that way for a while now and every once in a while it will work showing the amount of gas in the tank, the light goes off, but later on it will go back down to nothin and the light will come back on.

2. The low beam lights don't work. It's possible that its just the bulbs but I didn't get around to that today. When I turn 'em on the lights in the rear work along with the license plate lights but the low beams don't. The high beam lights do work.

3. It's hard to explain but... the truck ain't got no balls to it. When it down shifts it takes forever to gain speed. 2krpm to 5krpm is ssssllllooowwwww. I figured the tune up would take care of this (considering almost all the plugs were fried) but it's still sluggish. The only thing I can think of to fix this is replacing the MAF if that even helps. EDIT: I had the truck running and unplugged the MAF, there was a little "hiccup" but the engine continued to idle just like it was when the MAF was plugged in, eureka? Thoughts?

When I got it (before all the work) I checked out the codes at autozone... Catalyst Deficiency, Misfire, and an "unknown code". After the work today I pulled the power wire to rest the ECM and am going to see what codes get thrown now. I'm hoping the Catalytic code was thrown because of the spark plugs (if thats even possible).

Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Tonik

**Tonik** · 01-05-2008, 05:34 PM

Shameless Bump.

**Orcus79** · 01-05-2008, 08:06 PM

well i can tell you from past experiance for performance what you see is what you get, them v6s are slow in those trucks. Even with the manual tranny,

The fuel gauge should be easy, chances are all it is a busted ground at the sending unit or the feed wire to the gauge is busted, it happens from time to time.

Low beams could also be many things but start with a cont check on the bulbs. 2001 uses the indivudual lamps as opposed to the sealed beams yes?

**0rion** · 01-05-2008, 08:32 PM

the first thing I would do is go buy a haynes manual for it. The one I have only covers through 98 so I'm not sure the wire colors transfer over. Mine show the sending unit as purple and gray. I would ohm that out at the plug coming off the tank to see if the gauge problems are the sender or after the sender. I would imagine it's the sender but I would ohm it out to make sure.
First order of business for the headlights is to verify the bulbs are good then work from there.
I would clean that MAF before replacing it. It would be nice to log the truck to see exactly what's going on there. Is the truck still missing at all or cutting out under load? I had that issue with my 4.3 and it ended up being the distributor base was cracked because it's made of plastic and was letting a little moisture in.

**0rion** · 01-05-2008, 08:34 PM

didn't mean to be redundant

I typed this out 30 minutes ago but my wife came and and started talking to me.

**aeroengineer** · 01-06-2008, 03:37 AM

Check the Cats and make sure they are not plugged. Could be significant back pressure resulting in that cat efficiency code.

**0rion** · 01-06-2008, 10:54 AM

Originally Posted by aeroengineer

Check the Cats and make sure they are not plugged. Could be significant back pressure resulting in that cat efficiency code.

that would also explain the loss in power. I guess I missed that one.

**Tonik** · 01-06-2008, 12:29 PM

Update:

My brother-in-law is retarded and the headlamps just needed new bulbs. (halogens are unnecessarily expensive...)

I grabbed some MAF cleaner and went to town, it picked it up a bit but still horribly slow.

Also, I picked up an ohm reader and a haynes repair manual and will see what I can figure out about the gas tank thing later on today when I get a little time on my hands.

Thanks a lot for all your help.
Tonik

EDIT: Holy shit, I just took a look at these wire diagrams and my head hurts. Miller Time.