I am sure this has been hashed out in here before but I am currently too hacked off to search.

I have a 2011 Silverado that I bought new that year. It only has 37,000 miles on it and for the most part it has been a great truck.

Last night, while going home from work I had a blowout from hitting some debris. What should have been a 30 minute tire change (I am a bit rusty at doing them) turned into an epic 6 hour "bend me over how wrong can this go session." The spare tire would not unlatch and even with the help of roadside assistance and finally a wrecker driver, we could not get the spare to drop.

So, I had to have my truck towed 45 miles from work to the dealership. Both the roadside assist and wrecker driver commented on this happening very often with GM vehicles and even the internet forums are thick with complaints of this.

I went to the service department today and had a discussion about them fixing the problem. Even though my truck is out of warranty, IMO this is an item they should be responsible for. It has never been used and obviously left the factory without a proper function check. Am I wrong on this or is there a better way to get my point across. I am severely pissed but thankful it happened to me and not my wife and daughter. That would have required and entirely different conversation with the service department.

I've never experienced this issue.

What exactly wasn't "unlatching"

From what I could tell the shaft going from the bumper to the crank was not quite inline. When I could get the jack handle on the crank to lower, it would turn and feel like it was engaged but nothing would happen. From what I am reading there is a secondary retention latch that prevents the tire from suddenly dropping on its own that is causing part of the problem. So it is probably a 2 part problem but something is definitely not working with the mechanism.

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From what I could tell the shaft going from the bumper to the crank was not quite inline.

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Common, just move it over.

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When I could get the jack handle on the crank to lower, it would turn and feel like it was engaged but nothing would happen

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What did you hit it with?

Mine is like this too. I had a flat and could not drop the spare, got it to Discount and they could not drop it either.

The cable would drop but not the tire.

Never figured it out.

Hit that motherfcker

They did multiple times on mine, yanked it, hit it, still wouldn't budge.

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They did multiple times on mine, yanked it, hit it, still wouldn't budge.

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Hit that motherfcker

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Government problems.

This thread made me LOL.

Never had a problem with mine, sounds like a crappy ordeal

Honestly sounds like something that needs to go on your PM list for being lubricated every so often, just a shot of WD40 every few months would save a lot of trouble down the road.

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Honestly sounds like something that needs to go on your PM list for being lubricated every so often, just a shot of WD40 every few months would save a lot of trouble down the road.

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Or GM could issue another recall on their ****ty product.

Wouldn't be an issue if you had gone with a lift and big tires like God and Nature had intended. Then you'd have to carry the spare in the bed Baja style.

I had a 2009 that had a similar problem with the crank bar being out of line. Actually the tire would get in the way (it cranked up too high and interfered with the bar). Chevy had a fix in the form of a flexible bar ( kind of like a stiff piece of cable). If that is the problem, surprised the service people didn't know about it.

Work truck did this. I crawled under truck and beat the hell out of the spare and it finally dropped.

Ruined a good dress shirt too, oh and it was 5 am on 59 heading to rockport.

Sounds like I was right

Not sure this is the issue, but my 96 had a pin that connected the shaft between the spare winch and the bumper. When the pin fell out, the crank would just spin without dropping the spare. Being cheap in college, I just stuck a coat hanger in there. A few years later, I bought a .99 pin and fixed it the right way.

My wifes 07 yukon has this problem. I tried dropping the spare about 6 months ago and couldnt get it to come down all the way, the cable would allow it to drop about 1/4 of the way, then the cable would keep dropping but not the spare tire.

I pushed, hit, beat, kicked, everything i could to try to get it to "unlock" and never could. I followed what the manual said about raising it back up and trying again to no avail.

I should probably get this fixed.

Recommend getting it down and disabling the secondary latch, it's not difficult.

FYI - found a procedure here

I'm gonna try it this weekend.

Only problem I had changing a tire on a 13 was that I was on soft sand at the beach. Luckily I found a solid 2x8 that had drifted up. Took me two tries to get it in the hole (yes haha) just right when lowering the tire. Other than that it was pretty routine.

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Never had a problem with mine, sounds like a crappy ordeal

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Me either, but I drive a Ford

My tires know better than to go flat on me.

Did this yesterday. God i want to find the engineer that did this and punch him in the nuts. I had to take the whole assembly off the vehicle which is just one 15mm bolt...with lock-tight on it. It was a pain.

So when i got it down, i cut the "hook" off and now it cant latcH.

So I will prolly lose my spare going down the highway...