My 2005 Silverado 5.3 has a "Engine Hours" selection on the dash and while I understand the function for larger commercial vehicles like I drive at work use it to schedule maintenance on the big diessel engines. What exactly is the purpose of it on our light duty 1500's? I think its cool don't get me wrong. But am I missing something? None of the literature Ive seen has used it as an indicator to trigger service?

 

I am just guessing here,
but lets say your truck has 150,000 miles on it when you decide to sell it.
you are asking for $8,000 but nobody is interested.
you buy a used dash that only has about 30,000 miles on it and you can now
probably get $8,000 for it in 1 day. If your ODO reading is 30,000 than you should
have about 500 engine hours, but if your ODO says 30,000 and you have 3,000
engine hours that would be a red flag to the buyer that something is not right.

or maybe engine hours is there just as another way to keep additional track on the
engine instead of solely by mileage.

just my 2 pennies

 

Another guess is if the trk was used in an application where it did a lot of idleing you might want to go by hours instead of miles.

 

Interesting. My next question is my truck is a 2005 and it has 80800 miles on it and my engine hours are at like 2400. Does that seem about right?

 

For the bay area ya that seems right.
The prior owner did a lot of city driving or
A lot of time commuting in slow traffic.

 

My 2004 Chevy Silverado 1500, which I bought used early in 2010, has 88,000 miles on it - but my "hours" are showing just over 3,000. This tells me that its previous owners probably did a lot of idling or city driving. (My truck at work - a big 2006 International tractor with a 12-liter Cummins turbodiesel - has about 360,000 miles and 7,000 hours! Most of it is on the "open road" - not much city driving.)

I am the fourth owner of my Silverado and my mileage is 2/3 highway and 1/3 local driving. I had a "BG Service" flush done on the fuel injection system, the automatic transmission and the cooling system last spring. I also replaced the front tie rods, all four shock absorbers (with Monroe GasMatics) and (a month ago) all four tires (with Michelin X Radial LT2 rubber). I also got the front end aligned before I bought the new skins.

Soon after I hit 90k, I will do the spark plugs and perhaps the rear differential.

My 5.3L V8 runs strong, even with that many hours on it; and I use nothing but 5w30 synthetic - that gets changed (along with the filter) every 3,000 to 3,500 miles. A GM-certified mechanic went over my truck and said that it appears to have been well cared-for.

When you buy a used vehicle, it is a crap shoot. Even so, sinking some payola into a used rig is still a lot less painful than getting a new one.......though I know we would all like to be able to own one!

Anyway, "engine hour" meters are not just good on heavy trucks. They come in handy with police vehicles, small parcel delivery trucks (UPS, FedEx, etc.), refrigerator units on trailers, diesel generators or even postal vehicles that are driven very slowly and do hundreds of stops in a single day.

Keep in mind that 3,000 miles of stop and go operation is probably harder on a vehicle and its components than 10,000 miles on the open highway. PROPER MAINTENANCE and FREQUENT FLUID CHANGES will add to the life of any type of vehicle.

 

MY 2004 SAYS 64k WITH 301 HOURS.

 

64,000 miles divided by 301 hours equals 212 miles per hour. That is a lot of highway driving!

 

For sure. All I think of is lots of ga$