BREAKING: GM is officially recalling the L87

[DuraYuk]

@jfoj well done, you called the shots on this oil viscosity stuff accurately. I believe @Vladimir2306 should also chime in and let us what he thinks as his mind was very well made up on 0W-20... I saw the discussion over on the other thread discussing engine oil fill capacity.

I can relate to some aspects of this goof up from GM, as I deal with ridiculous politics. I am sure the engineers that designed and qualified this engine knew what was best for reliability. I'm sure the 0W-20 recommendation was the by-product of some stupid inter-company politics where the org responsible for emissions / economy came up with this 'fleet recommendation' and strong armed the engine dept...... From personal experience, all it takes for a technology company to ship garbage is a few bad apples who have been promoted high up in the technical and managerial ladder.

https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/N252494001-Bulletin.pdf

@jfoj I'm still going to ask you to not worry too much about the oil fill level as I don't see any recommendations in the recall for a new dipstick. Getting it at the max line when parked level, and periodically topping off to that level is good enough for the life of the engine.... Factory fill level as you have observed is probably garbage as well. Who knows if that is correct when they goofed up on the oil viscosity.......

So why not change the oil to that in 2025? Or diesels ? Or any other vehicle that uses 0w-20?

I'm not buying the oil fix. I think it could be a bandaid one vehicles with problems but the underlying problem will still remain.

 

[jfoj]

@jfoj I'm still going to ask you to not worry too much about the oil fill level as I don't see any recommendations in the recall for a new dipstick. Getting it at the max line when parked level, and periodically topping off to that level is good enough for the life of the engine.... Factory fill level as you have observed is probably garbage as well. Who knows if that is correct when they goofed up on the oil viscosity.......

I am not worrying about the oil fill level, I am informing anyone with an open mind they should open up their mind and LOOK at the dipstick and pay careful attention to the oil level on the dipstick. These engines can handle and should be run with 9 quarts with filter. I have been roasted and roasted over again by the majority here, but they are have surrendered to the "spec". Their choice, they can do what they want, I know what I am doing and will continue to do.

Understand the solution to pollution is dilution. A good friend of mine from the EPA taught me this. Given the fuel dilution of the oil occurs so easy on the DI engines, the more oil you start out with the longer it takes for the oil to become fuel diluted to become a problem.

Almost all of these GM V8 failures have been oil related. A few have had other problems, but the majority have been oil related. GM made some bad decisions, many were due to external pressure by the US Government for fuel economy reasons.

We do not want or need AFM/DFM, the roller lifters should have had bushings rather than needle bearings, the Auto Stop/Start should be turned off or disabled. All of this trash has added more moving parts to fail and at the end of the day the overall vehicle reliability has suffered greatly.

If I had a time machine, and I would not lived in the snow belt and had a nice place to keep multiple cars, I would have kept all of my late 60's and early 70's muscle cars as well as my 1987 Buick Regal T Type with the port injected 3.8l turbo. These cars would run for ever without anything other than good maintenance.

While I like my new Yukon and it may be safer than some of the cars listed above, I am not sure it will last unless I maintain it like a late 60's muscle car!

 

[jfoj]

I got a recall notice that states my vehicle has a recall (even though I don't own it anymore). My buddy has the exact same spec Denali I had and he received the recall notice as well for his vehicle (both are 2022's). No where in the notifications does it say it's only for dealer inventory. However, I agree that it does say that if the vehicle is on the lot that they have to quarantine it and are not allowed to release it.

The first release of the info was pretty much for new, unsold vehicles, I expect they may?? roll out something for vehicles already delivered. I still have nothing for my 2024, but maybe they have 750,000+ VINs to process?

As for the 2025 models, do not hold your breath. Understand that the "Investigation" was started in late 2024, possibly before any of the 2025 were even sold and if they were sold, they had not been on the road long enough to have failures.

If GM VOLUNTARILY includes the 2025 models without external pressure, they are then admitting their is a clear problem with their oil recommendations. This then opens the flood gates up to everyone else that has had higher mileage failures that had to pay for engines and other models that have the V8 engines, not just he 6.2l. It is Pandora's box and GM will hide like any other manufacturer would behind doing only what they are forced to do.

The engine issue is pretty simple as long as damage has not started, change the oil.

The transmission valve body problem is a MUCH bigger issue and there appears to be not end to it at the moment.

 

[Jay P Wy]

Since the 19 & 20 Silverado & Sierra have the L87 6.2l engines and they are not included (at least not yet) there must more going on than just an oil problem. Must be a parts or assembly/manufacturing issue on top of the change in oil from 0W20 to 0W40.

 

[rjhorst14]

My question is, with a 5.3 that has 9k miles in its first year, would you go to something like 0W-40 or 5w-30? I’ve been changing the 0w-20 every 3500 miles, but I still feel like it’s too thin in the Florida heat. Only reason I’m hesitant to change is this is my first new vehicle with a warranty, and I’m afraid the dealer would screw me over if I used a thicker oil than factory.

 

[viven44]

So why not change the oil to that in 2025? Or diesels ? Or any other vehicle that uses 0w-20?

Yes this is the band-aid up to 2024, whatever damage the engine has suffered from 0W-20 is there to stay. I think it would be safe to say that anyone that has a 2021-2024 6.2L is well advised to pay attention to this recall and determine what they want to do next.

This is specific to the 6.2.... so I'm not commenting on other engines like the diesels or the 5.3. Shoot, I don't plan to change what I am using on our 2024 5.3, will continue to use 0W-20 until GM makes a recommendation otherwise.

As far as 2025 goes, I would guess they have applied the actual fix on their end, we don't know what that was yet. To be honest, and from personal experience, these corporations are quite dumb when it comes to doing the right thing so I wouldn't be surprised if nothing has changed in the 2025 year model but they haven't made the recommendations yet from internal politics (fleet avg economy, etc).... I have worked in several in engineering functions, and one shouldn’t be surprised how poorly they communicate within the company, and how much the 9-5 employees care to do anymore, or afraid to do the right thing. A whistleblower is nice to have from time to time.....

 

[DuraYuk]

The first release of the info was pretty much for new, unsold vehicles, I expect they may?? roll out something for vehicles already delivered. I still have nothing for my 2024, but maybe they have 750,000+ VINs to process?

As for the 2025 models, do not hold your breath. Understand that the "Investigation" was started in late 2024, possibly before any of the 2025 were even sold and if they were sold, they had not been on the road long enough to have failures.

If GM VOLUNTARILY includes the 2025 models without external pressure, they are then admitting their is a clear problem with their oil recommendations. This then opens the flood gates up to everyone else that has had higher mileage failures that had to pay for engines and other models that have the V8 engines, not just he 6.2l. It is Pandora's box and GM will hide like any other manufacturer would behind doing only what they are forced to do.

The engine issue is pretty simple as long as damage has not started, change the oil.

The transmission valve body problem is a MUCH bigger issue and there appears to be not end to it at the moment.

Or the new ones don't suffer from a tolerance issue that the thicker oil helps hide or address.

Still a bandaid to a bigger underlying problem otherwise everything would be getting the thicker oil.

 

[viven44]

Reading the FAQs, I'm cringing at the remark below as it takes me back to situations like this before a few times at places I've worked when we had quality issues on products shipped to customers. I'm sure they had a large quality/engineering team drafting this, and the team couldn't agree on the wording. I'm going to guess this is what the seniors said, and was typed in verbatim

Increased further ??? Really.... that makes no sense, but I'm sure someone wanted increased, and another wanted further, so they merged both of it and it since it made no sense and like gibberish and it works because no one can infer anything from it... and it certainly gave them an "increased further" level of protection from hiding the real issue

Why is the oil being changed in the vehicle?
The thicker viscosity oil offers an increased further level of protection.

 

[jfoj]

I pretty much feel the 2025 is no different than the earlier version engines.

So the 6.2l apparently suffered at least "Oversize Lifter Boards" and problems with insufficient main bearing crush on earlier engines.

The real problem with 0W20 is it offer almost ZERO safety margin especially when it comes to fuel dilution. Why some of the earlier trucks did not have these problems, who knows, could be anything from basic ECM and TCM tuning to overall vehicle configuration like rear axle and so forth. The 6.2l is not suffering overall from some tolerance problem or part problem. Clearly there have been a few "machining" issues that have been reported over the past few years. Who knows, maybe even GM's oil supplier screwed up at some point, but they may or may not have ever caught this if it did occur.

Maybe there is far more to the story and GM decided to take the "Cheap and Easy" way out, change the spec, a new oil fill cap and sticky piece of paper with different wording, update the electronic owners manuals (wonder if they can update the owners manuals in the Infotainment system remotely, maybe that has not even occurred to the crew!). I mean the oil cap and adhesive printed piece of paper probably will cost GM about $3 in bulk? But then multiply this by 750,000 this is $2,250,000.00. Toss some dealer labor time in there, who knows maybe this is a $5 million problem at the end of the day. Oh well the shareholders will just get lower dividends.

Also curious of GM can perform an over the air update to change the OLM algorithm, this is something they probably have considered as well and may have already done for some of the 2025 models??

Bottom line, 50% of OLM oil change interval and run either 5W30 or 0W40 you will be FAR better off in the long run than with 0W20.

 

[viven44]

If I had a time machine, and I would not lived in the snow belt and had a nice place to keep multiple cars, I would have kept all of my late 60's and early 70's muscle cars as well as my 1987 Buick Regal T Type with the port injected 3.8l turbo. These cars would run for ever without anything other than good maintenance.

Definitely move to west coast or better the south for that. I paid $2.44 for 87 gas yesterday.

I daily my 78, and 84 big block trucks.... Put about 6-8K miles per year... Shortly after we bought our 2024, I bought the 02 Yukon, as a backup for Wife's 2024 for short trips as my wife won't drive my old trucks. Both of these carbureted trucks have high mileage engines in them (~193K in one, and >250K in the other)... one has the original retarded smog timing set, the other I put in a double roller non-retarded set... and they are torquey. ~375ft lbs of torque as low as 1000 rpm... Cheap frame mount fuel pump keeps the carb fed.. I keep some spares.... a $40 ignition module, voltage regulator, coil, a few jumper cables, belts, fuel pump, distributor cap, rotor, brake master cylinder in the cab... the edelbrock carbs I'm using are practically maintainance free... simpler in many respects...