Justin, Welcome to my own personal Terrain h e l l
This has happened not once, but twice on my vehicle. I have a 2010 terrain that has had nothing but problems, I have had so many things repaired but this issue is the worst.
At ~80,000KM travelling 120km/hour in -20 weather though the mountains my engine seized. I was towed back to the city ($300 at my expense) and the dealership found that the PCV had frozen, blown the real main seal and dumped all the oil. I had no warning lights and only realized I had a problem when going up a mountain pass engine made a horrible noise and stopped and I lost all power.
In this case it was still under normal drive train warranty and I got a new engine.
Fast forward ~60,000M after the new engine and the rear main seal blew again due to a plugged pcv valve. This time however I was going in for an oil change and it was noted that there was some excess oil under the engine. I did the oil change and went home. The next morning pulled out of my garage and saw a large pool of oil so drove right to the dealership. Luckily I caught it this time before I destroyed the engine but was still faced with a big bill. The dealership helped my out and ate some of the cost but I am still over $2K out of pocket.
I have been getting the run around from GM for almost a month now because I am fighting for them to compensate me based on the service bulletin but they too say that my VIN is not covered.. even though this has happened twice.
I am waiting for another call back from GM but if it is not to my satisfaction I am going to take this to the local media.
I hope you see this as I would like to discuss further with you. Looking through the web this seems to be a common issue and I really think GM is sweeping it under the rug.
A close family friend just experienced this issue as well with her 2011 Terrain. While the repair was made under the powertrain warranty (they basically cleared the PCV valve, replaced the rear main, and replaced the timing chain and actuator as they failed due to lack of lubrication and were throwing a check engine code), I'm very concerned about other internal parts that might have experienced damage due to lack of oil (twice in this situation before it was diagnosed).
I requested to the Service Manager that the powertrain warranty be extended. He ran this up to his GM rep and said it was denied due to the vehicle originally being sold in Canada. I don't buy that reason and neither did the Service Mgr, so he suggested I call GM Customer Service directly.
Customer Service first said "we have no ability to extend the factory powertrain warranty", this isn't what the Service Manager told me as he'd seen it done before.
She then says "she is the 2nd owner and we don't know how the original owner treated the vehicle".. What?? The failure was due to a documented issue, not relevant in the least.
In any case I'm extremely frustrated with GM and the owner of the vehicle has zero confidence in a truck she just bough less than 2 months ago. Particularly since this issue seems to arise in very cold weather driving and it's now March and given the fact that other internal engine parts were damaged due to lack of oil, I don't think asking for the warranty to be extended is out of line.
I'd welcome any other suggestions around how to get some traction with GM on this. I'll likely be in the market for a couple new vehicles over the next 1-2 years, at this point GM has removed themselves from consideration...
