2006 Silverado - rear drums or discs
- Thread starter D60
- Start date
After the changes in 2005 with the bigger disc in the front and drums in the rear, stopping distance actually decreased.
Probably drums. I have an 06 Sierra Denali that has rear discs and most lower trim levels had drums. you can, as mentioned, look at the RPO codes on the sticker or send me the VIN - I only need the last 8 digits and I'll run it thru the GM system and tell you.
I had already done that and obviously COMPLETELY missed that line! WOW! I AM BLIND
Kinda unrelated but NAPA's site used to allow you to input VIN rather than selecting year, make, model etc. That seems to have vanished which feels like backward progress??
I love the comments here from the parts dept. guys! When I call a dealer, I make sure to have two things handy off the bat: my account info so they can find us in their system, and the VIN for whatever I'm calling about.
Funny thing about OEM parts catalogs, though, is they vary WIDELY. GM, for example, keeps very good engineering notes regarding part supersession/redesigns. VAG, on the other hand? They wouldn't know what options a car was built with if the thing was parked in their shop instead of mine!
Then, you have the British. Ever tried finding parts for a newer JLR vehicle? Good luck.
Funny thing about OEM parts catalogs, though, is they vary WIDELY. GM, for example, keeps very good engineering notes regarding part supersession/redesigns. VAG, on the other hand? They wouldn't know what options a car was built with if the thing was parked in their shop instead of mine!
Then, you have the British. Ever tried finding parts for a newer JLR vehicle? Good luck.
Bless you.
Ford can be ambiguous with their supercessions at times. With a lot of parts it will give me a strange status code when I look it up, so then I have to place a test order to get the new number.
I take it you're a Ford parts counter man? I feel for you... I'm not sure if your dealer participates in Repair Link, but it's basically an online catalog that allows me to see MOST of what you guys do on your end. It didn't take long to recognize how easy it is for things to go south when it comes to ordering parts...
I'll say again: GM has long been a leader RE: build configuration info and part cataloging. The GM RPO sticker is probably the single best piece of information ever affixed to a vehicle, aside from the engine itself. Sure, lots of OE's offer some type of ID plate on their vehicles. However, most will decode nothing more than engine, trans, possibly exterior and interior trim, and maybe a few drivetrain options (think Ford door jamb codes). If GM figured it out in 1970.... why isn't that just STANDARD.
Reminds me of the time I replaced the timing set on an Audi A4 2.0 TSI. The original lower timing cover was a bear to remove (great sealant, apparently) which cause the steel cover to bend. No biggie, I'll order another. Give dealer the VIN, they send it out. It's wrong, it has 10 bolt holes vs. the 7 in my application. Call back, they say "the 10 bolt supersedes everything, it's fine". Ok...
Install the cover, button it up, and it leaks oil. Long story short, one of the "extra" bolt holes was NOT a blind tap, but a through hole into the timing area. It came down to me actually having to drive to the dealer with the original cover in hand to get them to believe that they screwed up and make things right.
Ahh RepairLink.... no we don't use them for the same reason we are not signed up for Fordparts.com and Ford's e-commerce accessories which is basically what you noticed. People, and I am not saying members here, but ones who question the marital status of my parents, are the ones who usually say that "any monkey can do parts" and balk at asking for a VIN. Other people I have talked to on the program say that the returns are substantial from people looking up parts wrong. Fun note, did you know that dealers don't get free returns on parts? We get charged handling fees to return parts to Ford and Mazda. Ford will nail us with additional repackaging fees if they have to produce a new box to make the part "saleable." I try to keep my returns to a minimum, because well its lost money for the dealer owner who pays me very well for doing my job.
But ya, a lot of shops will supply us with part numbers, and then return them because "that wasn't what we wanted." I would much rather the shops that either know what they want or do somethinng like "hey Ed we are doing a turbo on VIN xxx which is a 05 Super Duty and just send us anything you would hand out in your shop to do the job right the first time."
I truly appreciate the "behind the scenes" view you've given here. I will admit, in the past I have ordered parts based on a PN that I "knew" was correct. Correct, minus the fact that I hadn't considered any engineering notes that may have gone along with said part. I quickly learned my lesson: don't provide the dealer a PN, because as soon as you do they will treat you like the microfiche you think you are and sell you whatever. As they should! It isn't the counter man's job to listen to you tell him his job, then whine when the part is wrong.
On the other hand, I actually enjoy working with parts guys when trying to figure out a discrepancy in the catalog. One that stands out: I was replacing a radiator hose on a 2017ish Range Rover, and the replacement hose showed up with an extra "nipple" molded in that had no matching hose connection on the engine. Several calls and countless Google searches later, I found myself personally visiting the local dealer's parts department, face to face with his OEM ordering system. We still couldn't figure out the issue. As if by magic, one of the tech's walked past and asked what our issue was. Barely a sentence into our explanation, he stopped us and said "Oh yea, they changed that hose but the extra nipple is just blocked internally". WHAT?!
Sure enough, under the glare of his flashlight, it was obvious that the nipple in question was, in fact, blanked internally. No where in the OEM notes was this explained.
I just bought a crackhead-special GMT400 and the glove box was 100% missing. I found a beautiful replacement on ebay but the RPO codes are now completely irrelevant. I always found that sticker amusing on GMT400s especially because of the design of the glovebox. There must have been a better place to put it that was slightly more permanently attached to the vehicle itself....
My old 2002 Ford Explorer has disc brakes all around, I would think that if they had them way back then, drums would have been long gone.,,,
Nope, GM has long struggled to figure out how to do a rear parking brake with discs. They came at it anew circa '99 with the GMT800 but the design didn't work that great, utilizing a one-piece shoe. Rather than try to improve they said, "Meh, we give up....designing things is hard" and returned to rear drums for awhile, particularly around '05/'06.
I'm assuming they worked it out shortly thereafter. I don't think I've been into 1/2 ton rear brakes on the GMT900 platforms.
GM tried to tackle the same problem in the '70s on Eldorados utilizing a rear caliper that was also somehow cable actuated for the parking brake. These were also problematic because apparently they seized up quite often, but offroad guys flirt with them for an easy rear disc conversion that maintains a parking brake.
GM followed a similar engineering path with Displacement on Demand....abandoning it 'cause it sucked only to revive it years later with the hope that a new acronym (Active Fuel Management!!!!!!!) would somehow make it work better. Oddly, changing the letters did NOT make it work much better. Things that make you go hmmmm.....
The W-body is another perfect example of GM not knowing how to quite get a parking brake right. The original W's had ratcheting calipers, a la integrated parking brake. The 1.5 gen W's switched to drums on the cheaper models (mostly Lumina's and MC's) while using an updated rear caliper out back, still ratcheting. Then, the 2nd gen cars switched to a shoe in hat design parking brake, which carried until 2014ish when the W became the "Impala Limited" after the new Impala was released. At that time, the OG Impala switched BACK to a ratcheting style rear caliper.
There were also several front brake changes over the years, from an undersized single-piston system to a full Brembo setup.
For the life of me, I can't figure out why GM had such issues with their braking systems. Take Chrysler, for example. When the all-new WJ was introduced, it's front brakes quickly became a source of complaint. Easily warped rotors, poor braking performance, noise. Chrysler's solution? A simple bolt-on upgrade that replaced early ATE calipers with units from Akebono. No change in rotor diameter, no changes with respect to caliper bracket mounting points. Talk about a simple upgrade!
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