Sources and fetch status
FaultCrate holds records published by public agencies of the United States and Canada, and a publication GM issued for technicians. On top of them it adds what it has written from reading the documents.
Sources and how reliable they are
| Source | Published by / written by | What it holds | How far to rely on it | Shown as of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recalls (US NHTSA)NHTSA RecallsOfficial page ↗Terms of use ↗ | Filed by the manufacturer, published by the U.S. NHTSA | The safety defect, what it can lead to, and the remedy. Where the repair documents are published, they are read and digested. | Public agency recordAn official record. Cause and remedy are stated; the most certain of what is held. | 2026-10-05 03:57 UTC |
| Recalls (Transport Canada)Transport Canada Vehicle Recalls DatabaseOfficial page ↗Terms of use ↗ | Filed by the manufacturer, published by Transport Canada | Recalls of the Canadian market: number, vehicles and model years, description. | Public agency recordAn official record. It covers vehicles built for Canada. | 2026-10-05 04:17 UTC |
| Manufacturer communications (US NHTSA)NHTSA Manufacturer CommunicationsOfficial page ↗Terms of use ↗ | Sent by the manufacturer to dealers, published by NHTSA (49 CFR 579.5) | Technical service bulletins and other communications. Mostly a summary is published; where the document (PDF) is, it is read and digested. | Manufacturer document (published by an agency)The manufacturer’s own document: the symptom, and how to check and repair. | 2026-10-05 03:49 UTC |
| GM TechLink (GM’s monthly for dealership technicians, 2000–2008)GM TechLinkOfficial page ↗ | GM’s monthly for dealership technicians (2000–2008) | One article is one record. Only the heading and the quoted passages are held; the full text is neither stored nor shown. | manufacturer’s publication (quotations and citation only)The manufacturer’s own technical information: how it diagnosed and repaired at the time. | 2026-10-09 02:55 UTC |
| Owner complaints (US NHTSA)NHTSA ODI ComplaintsOfficial page ↗Terms of use ↗ | Reports by owners and others, published by NHTSA | A free-text account of the fault, with vehicle, model year, date and component category. | Unverified reportWhat owners actually experienced. The content is not verified; a stated cause is the reporter’s view. | 2026-10-05 03:57 UTC |
“Latest” means the latest state a source has published, fetched and shown here.
What FaultCrate writes
What is added on top of the records. Each stands on a passage of an original. None has been reviewed by a specialist.
| What | What it is | How it is checked | Caution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digests of documents712 manufacturer communications, 226 TechLink articles, 15 recall campaigns | The text of a document, read and set out as: applies to, condition, cause, checks, repair, parts, cautions. | Checked mechanically: the passage is in the text; figures, codes and part numbers are in the passage; the figures agree in both languages. | Whether a point says more than its passage is not checked mechanically, figures apart. A scanned document is used as its recognised text. |
| Known-issue cards154 cards, 1,184 statements (193 sources) | One fault: symptoms, mechanism, checks, repair and cautions, gathered from the manufacturer’s documents and investigation reports. | After the mechanical check of each passage, a reader other than the author judges statement by statement whether it goes beyond its passage. | Not made from counts of records. A card’s count is the records tied to it, not how often the fault occurs. Five of the cards’ sources are copies on third parties’ sites, no publisher’s copy having been found; the source’s publisher line says so. |
| Causes, remedies and their results read from complaintsfrom 1,191 complaints: 1,583 causes and remedies, 249 results of a remedy | From the text of complaints: the component named as the cause, the work done, and what the complaint says happened after it. | Checked mechanically: the sentence is in the text and its figures are the original’s. Each result of a remedy is judged by a second reader. | An owner’s view or what they were told, not an established fact. Work whose result is not stated is “result not stated”: neither a fix nor a failure. |
| Part numbers and the numbers that replace them97 part numbers (78 with a name, 27 with a replacing number) | The GM part numbers a document prints. The name and the replacing number are what the pages of GMPartsGiant, a reseller of genuine parts, state. | The numbers are picked mechanically from the statements. The replacing number is the reseller’s, recorded as it stands. | The name and the replacing number are the reseller’s statement, not GM’s. Confirm the fit for the vehicle (VIN) before ordering. |
| Unit conversionsDistance, speed, length, torque, pressure, volume, temperature | After a quantity given in miles, inches, lb ft, psi and the like, the metric value is added as “(= 96.6 km/h)”. | Computed with the defined factors (1 mile = 1.609344 km, 1 inch = 25.4 mm). | The original does not state the equivalent. A mileage with no unit is given as read in miles, marked “(as miles: …)”. |
What FaultCrate adds
- 1Records are stored as written and can be traced to their source and record. No cause, work, outcome or figure is added that the original does not state.
- 2Complaint sentences are sorted automatically into symptom, stated cause, repair, outcome and so on. Only sentences on which two classifiers agree are sorted; the rest stay unclassified, as written.
- 3Japanese text is machine translation and has not been reviewed by a person. When a figure in the original is missing from a translation, the translation is not kept and the original is shown. Check the original before acting on it.
- 4A relation between vehicles (such as a shared platform) is shown as confirmed only when a manufacturer or government document confirms it.
- 5Counts are numbers of reports or communications. No failure rate or probability of a cause is calculated.
- 6The digests and the known-issue cards are written by reading the documents. Each statement carries one quotation, and it is checked mechanically that the quotation is in the source.
- 7Editions of one document (a revision letter apart) and items printed month after month are shown as the newest one. Their contents are not merged.
- 8A record that touches the generation only in a model year in which the old and the new generation were sold under one name (2000 for this vehicle) does not say which it means: it is not counted for this vehicle, and is listed apart.
- 9Records taken in for the first time, and past material added later, are not counted as newly found.
Credits and terms of use
| Material | Credit and terms |
|---|---|
| NHTSA records | Complaints, recalls and manufacturer communications use data published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). NHTSA's terms of use state that information on its site is public information and may be distributed or copied. NHTSA does not endorse or guarantee FaultCrate's content. |
| Manufacturer’s documents | The documents of manufacturer communications, recalls and defect investigations are read as NHTSA publishes them. The copyright in a document written by a manufacturer is the manufacturer’s. FaultCrate shows digests and short quotations with a link to the document. |
| GM TechLink | GM TechLink is a publication of General Motors (© General Motors). FaultCrate shows the headline of an article and short quotations, naming the issue as the source; the articles themselves are not reproduced. GM does not endorse FaultCrate. |
| Part names and replacing numbers | Part names and replacing numbers are as stated on the part pages of GMPartsGiant (a reseller of genuine parts run by Genuine Parts Unlimited, Inc.; not GM). Each number carries a link to its page and the date it was read. |
| Transport Canada recalls | Canadian recalls use Transport Canada's Motor Vehicle Safety Recalls Database.Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada. |
| Background and other images | Background and other images on the site are illustrations generated for it. They are not photographs of real vehicles or workshops. |
Vehicle photographs
Vehicle photographs are from Wikimedia Commons. They show a vehicle of the same model for reference, not a reported vehicle. Each was cropped and resized.
| Photograph | By | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| 2003 GMC Yukon (24818149601).jpg | GPS 56 from New Zealand | CC BY 2.0 |
| GMC Yukon XL GMT800 (Orange Julep '10).jpg | Bull-Doser | Public domain |
| 2010 GMC Yukon XL SLT -- 05-06-2011.jpg | IFCAR | Public domain |
| 2004 GMC Sierra 1500 SLE Crew Cab in Silver Birch Metallic, front left, 09-18-2026.jpg | Cutlass | CC0 |
| 2004 Chevrolet Tahoe (6354988817).jpg | Spanish Coches | CC BY 2.0 |
| '03-'06 Chevrolet Suburban.JPG | Bull-Doser | Public domain |
| Chevrolet 1500 Silverado Z71 2004 (28209028937).jpg | RL GNZLZ from Chile | CC BY-SA 2.0 |
| Chevrolet Avalanche Z71 2004 (15701680009).jpg | order_242 from Chile | CC BY-SA 2.0 |
| 2005 Cadillac Escalade Front.jpg | Bejara70 | CC0 |
| GMT800-Cadillac-Escalade-ESV.jpg | IFCAR | Public domain |
| 2004 Cadillac Escalade EXT in Black Raven, front left, 3-24-2022.jpg | Cutlass | CC0 |
| 2003-2007 Hummer H2 01.jpg | OSX | Public domain |