Quadrasteer?

In my continuing half assed search for a bigger tow vehicle, I have found a very nice Suburban locally, which has quadrasteer.

From reading, all the reviewers love it, and I haven't heard of major issues with it. It was rare as it was expensive, but seems really desirable with something as big as a Suburban.

Has anyone here had one or dealt with them?

It's amazing. I loved it in press cars.

Quadrasteer is like owning a broken Porsche.....

Ranger50 wrote: Quadrasteer is like owning a broken Porsche.....

Old 924s make superb dog houses or semi-dry storage for other Porsche parts. I guess I take your meaning as a broken suburban could hold like... 50 more dogs.

We've got a customer at work who has quadrasteer on her daily driver which we service occasionally.

She's never had any trouble from it and it makes the truck a lot more nimble, it just takes a bit to get used to it.

Shawn

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:

Ranger50 wrote: Quadrasteer is like owning a broken Porsche.....

Old 924s make superb dog houses or semi-dry storage for other Porsche parts. I guess I take your meaning as a broken suburban could hold like... 50 more dogs.

No, more like when it is running, it is the greatest piece of sliced bread on the planet... But when it's broken, you are berkeleyed.

From the people I have talked to that have it on their Sierra, they love it.

However, unless there is someone in the aftermarket that makes parts, OEM stuff could be obsolete in the next few years.

I'd rock it....

From what I've read when it 'breaks' it goes to normally centered, so is it really a big deal?

I've driven a GMC with the system. Really neat, turn way tighter than expectedfor such a large truck.

Any time you cut 10 FEET out of a vehicle's turning radius, that's a good thing. The turning radius on my C2500 HD is horrible. A 10' reduction would make it "decent." I've seen Suburbans with quadrasteer for sale and wouldn't be scared off if the truck seemed to be in decent enough shape otherwise. Seems like a great feature.

In other words, do it.

I dunno, I'm a big fan of not berkeleying up a vehicle with added complexity. Especially when it comes to trucks. Ive owned and driven 4 suburbans and the quad cab dually 3500 and never really found them all that un-maneuverable. I have also towed cargo aircraft so my frame of reference may be horribly skewed.

If all else about the truck is good I probably wouldn't let it skew my decision either way, but it's probably not a feature I'd actively seek out.

i remember when this came out on the sierra denali back in the day. iirc, it's turning circle was 1 foot larger than a honda civic at the time. i also remember that there was a "normal" and "towing" mode, so you wouldn't actually run into your own trailer.

they seem to be fairly trouble free, but there were so few of them sold, who knows what the long-term issues could be. i do know that the group TwisTex that was on storm chasers had a denali with the quadrasteer that i'm sure they put a ton of miles on, so how bad could it be? they are easy to spot in traffic because the quadrasteer system required the rear end to be wider, enough that it required cab marker lights.

hotlink:

They were rare. I worked on the assembly line as a summer student for four years during the life of Quadrasteer. I would gestimate we did about 10 per shift out of 450 vehicles. They are out there though.

We were building gmc/chevy extended cab trucks. I imagine suburban numbers to be similar.

Strizzo wrote: they are easy to spot in traffic because the quadrasteer system required the rear end to be wider, enough that it required cab marker lights.

Not just the cab lights, but the the wide fender marker lights as well. At first glance you think its a stepside, but then you see the fender lights and you know.

At a press intro, we ran Quadrasteers through a tight, tight autocross-like course. After navigating the first 180, I said, Touche, you win, Quadrasteer.

Either the upper or lower balljoints are NLA from GM, can't remember which.

There is an aftermarket company making them though.

Shawn

I had always wondered what those sorta-stepside trucks were. Now I know.

I have an 05 Sierra crew with QS. I absolutely love it. Not a daily driver by any means (31k miles)!

I am thinking of selling it because I need a bigger truck. GM really screwed up by not making 2500hd w/ diesel.

I know a couple of folks have Quadrasteer trucks now. These have piqued my interest recently due to the heavy duty rear end and 6.0L that come with it. They also don't hold much more of a price increase over regular 1500's as they hover between $5-8k.

How bad are they to maintain now? I'm not seeing a lot of failures, but the ones that do fail don't have any parts support. Should I stay away?

I remember reading of a discontinued critical part and Google brought me to this... 

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/finding-discontinued-part-quadrasteer/131028/page1/

I thought Dean had one. Or he started a how-to-identity thread here (I may be wrong).

Edit: Ignore this and click on Johns link above.

I work at a GM dealership. I think of the 10 Quadrasteer trucks I've seen there was only one that I've seen working. And then that one stopped working when the module died and there is none available anymore. And while someone has mentioned that it does indeed default to straight-ahead when it fails, there is still an extra 2 tie-rods and 4 ball joints that need to be maintained and now provide no added benefit.

Mine still works.  It had a few weeks where it would switch back to 2ws and then one day it had an error code that cleared itself with a drive cycle and then it has been fine ever since.   164k miles, I replaced the outer tie rods once (readily available Moog part and it was an easy job), and fixed a broken ground wire that probably had something to do with the weird behavior it had for a while. 50% of my use of the truck is towing and it is quite good at that, maneuvering with a trailer is notably easier with the quadrasteer.