23/C8Z

I don't believe that is accurate.

Didn't one of our members here blow up a couple thousand mile C8 on track? And wasn't that near the beginning of this being brought up a couple months ago?

Not saying you're not 100% with the springs failing quickly. My issue would be if the spring (wire) was degrading slowly until it went beyond the point of being able to withstand XXXPSI or XXX temp... like with the springs at the very early stages of issues with the metal will they go bad at 5K 10K 20K Miles? Or is it all in a tiny window and they're not concerned about long term effects on the early or late side.

And nobody can forsee the future.

Who knows if this is a blip or a disaster. You can only speculate. This could be worse than the LS7 valve guides or not even close..

Nick49

Yes it happens to all of them, the difference is how the car maker handles it. A year ago I got notification from Subaru that my '13 Crosstrek could have a valve spring issue and all of them would be replaced at no cost to me. My car was years out of warranty and I was given a brand new Outback with under a hundred miles for a loaner for a week. My car was upgraded with new springs, new oil and filter and a wash. It had about 70K miles at the time. Originally I was told a spring breaking could cause enging noise and power loss unexpectedly which could result in an accident. Subaru also replaced a potentially faulty brake light switch on my way out of warranty car at no cost as well. Some manufacturers take owner satisfaction and safety seriously, some not so much.

blackmagicZ

A buddy of mine had about 270 miles on his car when the springs broke. He was told it was a small group of cars built in a two week window in September, possibly starting around September 5th.

b4i4getit

Sure all manufacturers get bad parts. But they should quarantine and check before putting on the assembly line. It's pretty sad that the cheapest Chevrolet has better quality than the most expensive Chevrolet. Not a GM hater but it's obvious the brush with bankruptcy has them returning to their old ways of business.

thill444

no they extended it. It’s June 1 to October 7th, but they don’t really seem to know so it could end up being extended again.

as for when the springs might fail there’s no telling. Hopefully early on but who really knows.

Zymurgy

Quarantine parts and check. LOL. How many are they supposed to check? They could test a thousand of them and have zero failures. Visual inspection would not find these bad valve springs. Test every one - for how long? At what cost? What about every other part they use? Test every single part and you would no longer have affordable cars. Like everything, there is a trade off. You don't test everything because the cost is prohibitive and mostly unnecessary. Sometimes crap like this happens and that's why companies have reserves for warranty costs.

sprayer

Or how about they use a reputable company and spend the extra $100 or what ever it is and have good springs.

The manufacturer should be pulling springs from every batch and have a testing machine before that batch gets sent out.

Like always, profit before anything else.

Zymurgy

So you know that their supplier is not reputable? For all we know, the supplier does pull springs from every batch and tests them. Random testing won't always find flaws like this.

sprayer

You tell me. If every 100th spring gets pulled it would show up.

If it was a reputable brand you would not be having this crap going on.

Zymurgy

No, every 100th spring would not be sufficient. They are not failing at anywhere near that rate. That's 1 out of every 6 engines. That is not happening. Nowhere close. Yes, even reputable brands have occasional production issues. Your anti-GM bias makes reasoning with you impossible. I'm done arguing with you.

sprayer

Re read what you just posted, it makes no sense. If you want to limit the potential of this happening the more you test the better your capture rate. It aint happening in every 6th engine you got that right. So what you want is to test in a bigger interval, how is that better. Gotta laugh at that.

CorvetteBrent

Define "reputable brand". Mercedes-Benz, perhaps? I had a 2003 Mercedes SL55 AMG. Most owners of that model and also the 2004 version experienced numerous serious problems. There was a major and dangerous problem with the gas tank. The hydraulic suspension was prone to blowing out, causing vary dangerous bouncing when it gave way, especially at high speed. The retractable hardtop was prone to spewing hydraulic fluid all over the car's interior as well as the trunk. The suoercharger's main bearing was prone to failure. The electronic shifter was prone tpo failure due to a small cheap plastic piece breaking. These failures were so frequent and reoccurring that Mercedes should have issued recalls, especially for the two dangerous issues.Instead, Mercedes refused to do anything about it except to use their attorneys to fight the class action lawsuits. Mercedes even had the gall to charge customers $8000 to replace the failed hydraulic suspension with the exact same version that would fail again! On my car, my hydraulic suspension failed twice in 10,000 miles. So, while many consider Mercedes to be a "reputable brand", in reality there is much more garbage going on with them than with General Motors.

sprayer

I very much doubt if GM used Peterson Spring this would be an issue.

The other factor is how much was GM willing to pay. I bet they negotiated hard to get rock bottom price. End of the day pay peanuts you get just that. All speculation on the price of the springs but they had to cut costs somewhere to give everyone the option of a 59k car. Some are over the moon with the price. I would rather pay a bit extra and get better quality instead.

Never considered Merc, Audi or BMW as reputable top of the line quality. Would never buy those car brands.

Old buckeye

If you depend on testing samples, you have already failed. The control of the manufacturing processes from the making of the steel through the processing of the steel into valve springs, is how you make quality.

punky

Looks like your GM hatred has taken you to yet another level of ignorance.
How can a consumer product in this case the C8 cause such a toxic level of jealousy and stupidity.

b4i4getit

As long as GM and others use the lowest cost supplier these issues will continue. I know how purchasing departments work. Every penny counts.

23/C8Z

Where would you rank the "issues" with the C8 thus far? The trans issues listed in the problem section and plenty single ones with only odd gears engaging. The nightmare of towing this car anywhere when it isn't running the ease of the frunk popping up and not adequately warning people the paint popping in the corners a continuation of the later C7s when they switched the body panels to save weight and there are PLENTY of others people even on here have had and didn't say a peep. Only find out through pm's. At one time I believed that the strike didn’t have a rippling effect on this car in particular being all new and us being so passionate. But I am starting to see the forest for the trees and hoping this gets sorted FASTER. The C8 Z06 isn't too far off and I am beginning to sweat a little.

Ona side note We all don't hate GM. I just bought the wife a brand new XT6 platinum with every bell and whistle. But I am still not happy with them in this scenario (and plenty of others should we list them all?).

Loyalty to the brand.. instilled in me by my father. A burden I have yet to shake.

Many of us watch this section and try to learn the good the bad and make an informed decision while gaining knowledge for the future.

I am honestly getting to the point with this company that even though I seriously cross shopped this last suv purchase? I may just say the hell with it and leave.. i have purchased mainly GM from new since I was able to afford my first new car 25 years ago. And before that? All I owned was GM vehicles.

thats what they did (and do).

And how did that work out?

There has to HAS TO BE some quality control. whatever was in place? Was obviously ineffective... back to the drawing board.

Old buckeye

"And how did that work out?"
So tell me how many samples should be tested for a problem if you do not know the frequency of the problem? That is impossible to know so forget about sampling as control to ensure the quality of product.

punky

Maybe we should all drive Subarus, not, YUK.

JerryU

Unfortunately some forum members have no idea about manufacturing or probability & statistics. One book I have is very comprehensive and written for the Government by by Mary Gibbons Naterlla, Experimental Statistics. (A current version is available on Amazon.) She uses many Military examples. One is what I told a group of business folks and a few politicians from our area who were flown in Huey Helicopters to Fort Brag after the 1st Gulf War. They were thanking us for the many National Guard employers we supported going to Iraq receiving full pay (we had 30.) We were sitting at picnic tables eating lunch as we listened to howitzer shells going overhead pounding a hill in a real live fire simulated War that goes on all the time for training.

Naterlla's Example Shelling France on D-Day.
A Navy Admiral who's ships would be shelling the beaches said he want's no casualties from Freindly Fire, i.e. NO Shells should fall short. Natrella describes the testing that is done on each production batch of shells and shows the distance averages and assure him 99.5% will NOT fall short. He says BUT I will be using well over 10,000 shells in our first barrage. She says well in that case 50 may fall short! She then shows the probability graph of distance. He says that is far too many. She goes into many iterations but finally ends with: "IF we test 9,999 shells from those that will be used for first barrage and have one left there is still a XXX% probability it will fall short!"

Recall one of our State Congressmen who came on the trip, said after my story, did you have to use that example with those shells going overhead!

Catching Defects
I'm confident GM tests samples of springs etc from batches received as part of their QA procedure. However finding what appear to be a very small percentage with defective springs is not easy. Whatever sample size may pass the load tests at installed and max lift height, which is probably a tight window and I expect would be a logical test. Even if a sample is tested to failure, it's unlikely to find an internal defect for a very few springs that fail in 100 miles and were subjected only a few thousand cycles. Nor would a sample test be logical to catch the defects.

The best place to catch that type of defect would be in the steel making procedure or perhaps at the hot rolled rod stage as it goes into a wire drawing machine. The R&D Lab I managed supported a plant making welding wire as a small part of our activity. One wire drawing machine took 7/32 hot rolled rod from a steel mill and in 11 dies drew it to 0.045 inch diameter. An internal defect, like a nonmetallic inclusion, might cause a break in processing (which operators hate as they have to restring the drawing machine) but perhaps not. A nondestructive test like eddy current could possibly be used as the rod went into the first wire drawing die but not sure if could detect the defects causing this low percentage failure. Frankly the best way to assure lack if internal and external surface defects, which cause the typical long term failure of the highly stressed valve springs, fatigue, is to follow very careful steel making practice procedures. (The typical valve spring fatigue failures is not what appears to be causing these few LT2 springs to fail in a very short time.)