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faron79

2007/08 Chev. Impala owners...

Faron79
11 years ago

This could be my PSA for the year!

As some may recall, I bought a beautiful Cranberry-Red metallic Impala LTZ last August. Over this summer, I found out about a significant rear suspension issue with these cars. The top of the rear tires are slanted IN a few degrees due to faulty-length spindle-rods. This led to sometimes severe wear on the inside tread on the rear tires. Bad handling in winter ice often resulted too!

Had mine fixed this week via a "GM Goodwill" repair at our local dealership. I had to tell the Service-Mgrs. & a couple mechanics about it! I was tellin'-em about the significance of the issue, so at least I appeared to be a very knowledgeable customer. Showed them some web-sites, etc.

GM quietly recalled POLICE-version Impalas for the fix, but not regular retail customers.

So up on the hoist my car went! Sure enough, my inside rear tires were fairly worn!! Not to a dangerous level, but much more worn than the outside 2/3's. Some stories out there on the web had people unaware their tires had worn all the way thru to the belting!!!

One way it's fixed is by grinding these rods/mounting-holes shorter, AND then resetting/aligning the rears, along with the toe-in angle. I could tell the appearance difference when it was done! Mechanic had said the angles were way off!!

>>> So----- if you guys have an Impala, or friends, etc...tell-'em about this!!!!

LOTS of info on the web about this...

Faron

Comments (2)

  • graywings123
    11 years ago

    A "GM Goodwill" repair? What a crock of hooey. If there were any good will in GM, they would have recalled the non-police cars too.

  • Faron79
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    Hey Gray!

    This has been a pretty interesting "journey", finding out about this issue, and how pervasive it is on such a commonly used car marque.
    There have been arguments from GM that since this (design flaw??) occurred b4 the big bankruptcy/Gov't. bailout, the "New" GM wasn't responsible for the "Old" GM's troubles. I'm a lifetime GM fan, but this issue kinda irks me!

    Faron

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