My Deal With Chevy
 

As some of you may remember I put a standard 350 chevy engine in my mother's 95 suburban with myself and my mechanic. Well it's a fabulous 500 miles later and there is a vibration coming from the engine I believe. We changed over 3,000 dollars worth of parts/sensors/gaskets/wires/etc. on the overall rebuild.... but still the vibration came. So today I took it down to the dealer and told them that my mechanic and I believe there is a vibration in the engine and I showed them how it felt. The service director believed there was a vibration but wasn't yet convinced it was from the engine. So he said that they would look it over free of charge and find the vibration and if it is truly coming from the engine. ....More drama will come when I call them tommorow and find out the results. So yeah...just random bickering.

Be happy you may get a free answer out of that. most places wont do that kind of stuff, especially pinpointing something like that unless its soomething simple.

Well I want to give chevy the benefit of the doubt and say that it could just be something small that my mechanic didn't realize. But who knows?

Well chevy said that during the install that I should have changed the engine mounts and that is what is causing the vibration. I think that sounds like a legitimate reason. My problem is that it only gives off the vibration when the car is in gear @ idle. But the RPM are holding @ about 6k which is normal for a suburban. Your thoughts?

If any part of this comes across as "talking down" to you, I apologize, because it's not meant to be. This is just the way I understand what you're saying, and how I'm reading it.

First, I want to make sure "...in gear @ idle" means what I think it means: Car is on, it's in Drive, one, two, etc, (the "in gear" part) but you have the break on (the "idle" part) so you aren't actually moving.

So you only feel the vibrations when the car is in gear and idling (meaning you have the break on and aren't moving) and you feel it, then I take it that you don't feel the vibration when you left off the break and start moving? If so, that to me would make sense. Unless it's vibrating like crazy, would you really feel it over road/terrain vibration?

So the engine mount thing makes sense?

I'm the last ( well maybe the 2nd or 3rd last ) guy to give automotive advice, so please don't take what I say as gospel. I'm just using my logic. If the engine mounts are causing it, then yes to me, it would make sense that you would only feel it when you're at a stand still. Like I said, once you start moving, I would think that the vibrations of driving would make the engine mount vibrations seem like they "went away" because you wouldn't be able to feel them over the vibrations of driving.

Well I guess I won't know for sure until I re-install some new engine mounts...that won't be for a while though because I can imagine that has to be a bitch.

Just like a couple of my former girlfriends. ;)

Good luck with however you end up going about getting this problem resolved.

any other ideas fellas? input?

Not sure how suburban motor mounts are but they shouldn't be that tough. jack under the motor to support the weight and a couple of bolts to drop out the old ones and replace with new ones. A large crowbar for the required gentle persuasion to line up bolt holes.. BUT the Burbs might be different. If you replaced the whole engine, I'm sure you From the write up, def sounds like they could be the problem. Are they rubber/poly cushions or are they hydraulic. My pops had a special service Taurus that exhibited similar problems and it was the special hydraulic motor mounts that were $800 to replace.

They're rubber and are pretty easy to install when the engine was out of from under the hood lol. But the suburban doesn't have very much room under the exshaust manifolds. IT should take about 4 hrs @ least.