Top 6 Problems of Chevy Silverado 2500 Truck 1st Generation 1999-2007

There are the top 6 problems with the 1^st generation Chevy Silverado 2500, which includes model years 1999 to 2007. And also offers tips and suggestions on the best way to take care of those problems yourself! For more Chevrolet cases, please refer to CHEVROLET.

 

No.1 Gauge Cluster

It is located in front of driver that’s where your speedometer is and all the rest of your gauges. You’re having issues with your gauge cluster, might be the speedometer tends to drop out, it could even be where your RPMs are or even any of your other gauges. When this happens it’s more likely to happen to all of them at the same time, and it’s more than likely going to be intermittent at first and then over time it’s going to eventually get worse.

To fix this problem is going to come down to bringing your vehicle to the dealer and they might be able to do a relearn procedure on the actual gauge cluster. But overall if that doesn’t work you’re going to have to replace the entire gauge cluster.

 

No.2 Erratic Gas Gauge

Maybe even after you just recently filled up, it seems as though the gauge just kind of bounces up and down or even drops out a little bit.

Here is fuel pump with fuel level sensor.

A lot of times what goes bad on these is the fuel level sensor. Essentially what happens is your fuel level is supposed to bring up float and then the sensor down the correct position. Of course it is going to correspond with the fuel gauge on your dash. If sensor that’s up against the fuel pump assembly itself goes bad or it doesn’t read like it’s supposed to, you’re going to notice that you have an erratic fuel gauge.

To fix it, you could try to take out your fuel pump from the system replace just the sensor. A lot of times what people generally do is they just replace the whole thing as a unit.

 

No.3 Service 4 Wheel Drive Indicator

When service four wheel drive light comes on on the dash that has the electronic four wheel drive switching unit. Essentially you’re just only have little switches instead of a big old lever under here to switch to four wheel drive.

Generally the causes why this might actually happen would be either the encoder motor that’s located on the transfer case which is essentially going to tell the transfer case to switch from either two to four or four to two is bad internally or even maybe the switch itself is bad. Both of these are very common issues and essentially the symptoms for it would be your four-wheel drive just really doesn’t work like it’s supposed to to and you got a light on you dash.

To fix this you have to diagnose switch then the encoded motor down by that transfer case since they are the most common causes.

 

No.4 ABS Light/Poor Ground Wire

We’re going to talk about ABS Light on on your dash due to a poor ground wire. Symptoms that you’re probably going to get if you’re having an issue with your ABS system would be a light on your dash. Something else that you might happen to notice is that the brakes just don’t work the way that they usually do. Typically your ABS unit is supposed to make it so you can stop your vehicle especially in an emergency type of situation safely and smoothly without skidding your tires. A lot of times this comes down to is actually a ground wire that’s going to be located underneath your battery tray. This is a very important ground wire because it needs to ground out the ABS unit which is going to make it so your brakes work the way that they should.

Typically this wire is going to be a braided type, you can see another one located over on the fire wall. If it looks like it’s green and corroded or even it’s crumbling and falling apart. That’s definitely something that you’re going to need to service or replace. Typically for good measure during your diagnosis process is you’d want to have an electrical diagram for this, you want to make sure you check all your power and grounds everywhere it should be, but generally if you just get underneath this battery right here and the battery tray you’re more than likely going to find an issue with that ground.

 

No.5 Muffler Heat Shield Noise

The symptoms for muffler heat shield noise you’re really got going to notice anything an exception of just the popping noise that’s coming from your exhaust. Other than that you’re really not going to find an exhaust leak or anything like that or at least not associated with this popping noise. For this popping noise generally it’s not something that’s easily fixable unless you were to replace the muffler. If you don’t have a leak it really doesn’t make much sense. The reason why the popping noise might occur is generally because as you’re driving everything’s heating up and metal expands as it heats. As things start to cool down or essentially as you turn off the truck, it starts to cool and contract. If it starts to cool and contract quickly then it’s going to make that popping noise.

 

No.6 Day time running light

Generally in the chevrolet truck what you might find is a daytime running light tends to burn out quite often now. Symptoms for this what you’re probably going to notice is that one of your bulbs tends to burn out quite often, sometimes within weeks of when you’ve actually replaced the bulb the last time. A common cause for this might be because you go ahead and replace the ball but you don’t actually pay attention to the bulb socket that’s the area that the bulb goes into. If you were to take a closer look at it what you might happen to notice is that the prongs are discolored, the plastic around the area is swollen or even melted a little bit. Generally that’s because the bulb either heated up the pigtail a little bit too much, and it melted that connection point or even the connection point was just weak and it melted itself. You could try to put a bulb in there, it might make pretty good connection for a short amount of time, but it’s generally going to just go ahead and burn out quite often again. If you find that you’re having an issue with a reoccurring ball burning out, don’t just replace that bulb. The thing you need to do is you place the pigtail that the bulb goes into at the same time as the bulb more than likely that’s going to cure your issue.