Top 5 Problems Cadillac Escalade SUV 3rd Gen 2007-14

In this video, we're gonna be going over the top five problems on this third-gen Cadillac Escalade. I just wanna emphasize there's nothing wrong with owning one of these cars or buying one. These are just the problems that we've found on the '07 through '14s. Number one, door handles. The outside door handles like to break right in this area. If you grab it over here and pull too hard, it's gonna come unattached from the actual door. The fasteners where it fastens will break. It's very sensitive so make sure you always pull from this side, but it is common. Also the inside door handles. These tend to break. Sometimes the chrome will be peeling off on the handle part, and actually it gets pretty sharp and it could cut you so it's a good idea to replace those. You can get the handles separate. You don't have to replace the whole inside door panel. Number two, wheel hub bearings. There's a couple of symptoms you may find with wheel bearings that are bad. When you're going down the road, you may hear a humming. It might be coming from the right or the left. You might not be able to determine which side it's coming from, but while you're driving, if you turn the wheel slightly, it may go away either direction or it may get worse. That's a good indication that it's probably a bad hub bearing. Also, you may have some play in the front end. If you grab the wheel with the vehicle jacked up a little bit and just shake up and down, you may have some play there.

Now there could be a ball joint. It's a good idea to have someone checking the ball joints to see if there's any movement in there while you're doing that, but most of the time, it's just a hub bearing. While you're shaking the tire back and forth, what you could do is put your finger near this caliper bracket right here and in between that bracket and the brake rotor, and if you feel movement there, like the rotor is getting closer to the bracket, that means that the play is actually in the hub bearing because the hub bearing's attached to the rotor, the bracket's attached to the knuckle. So that'd be a good indication that that needs to be replaced. Number three, engine reduced power mode. You may have a problem with the throttle body or the throttle body sensor or there could be a problem with the accelerator pedal. Both the throttle body and the accelerator pedal, both have two sensors that monitor where the blade is or monitor where the actual pedal is, and it tells the computer that those sensors need to agree with each other, and as long as those agree, there won't be a problem. But once one of the sensors gets messed up, whether there's a wire that's messed up or a connector or the sensor itself, then it goes into engine reduced power because it doesn't know where the blade actually is and it doesn't wanna open up real quick and have the vehicle accelerate by accident.

So, that's why it goes into engine reduced power mode. So if you have a correlation code, that is those two sensors not agreeing with each other, and most of the time it's just the throttle body or throttle body sensor, and you can replace that or the whole throttle body or it could be the accelerator, the whole sensor. It's always a good idea to check the wiring and check the connectors. Number four, heating and air conditioning door actuators. Anytime you adjust your heating or air-conditioning system, whether you're adjusting the temperature or you're adjusting where the airflow is coming out of, the mode, it's gonna move an actuator that is gonna move the door to reposition the air. The mode door actuator is located on the driver's side right above the gas pedal. You can see it right there. And that's gonna control where the air flow comes out, whether it comes out the vent right here, the defroster vent or even the foot vent. The heater vent actuators are right here. They're kinda hard to see. There's one on the top of the HVAC box. There's one underneath the HVAC box. There's a panel. You take that panel down, and that one's a little bit easier to get to, and then also the clean air or the fresh air actuator is back here behind the glovebox.

So if you're unable to change one of the modes, whether it's the heat or the mode or whether it's the fresh air, it's not working, chances are the actuator's bad. And number five, service suspension system lights. So you may be driving down the road and something may not feel right, may feel like the whole suspension is stiff, something solid, you hit a bump, and the whole vehicle just jumps up and down. Sometimes these front shocks will actually lock up and you won't get any movement out of them, and at that point, they're just gonna have to be replaced. We're under the rear of the vehicle and you have the rear air-ride assist shocks. This is the air bag that holds the air. If you grab on this and it's real weak while the vehicle's level on the ground, then there's something wrong with the air ride system, whether it be the shocks or the compressor. The compressor is located right here. So what you wanna check is the motor, the pump. If there's a lot of corrosion here, a lot of times this will crack, and then the pump has to be replaced, the whole pump assembly, and sometimes you'll get some codes for the exhaust side of this. There's actually a valve in there that opens to evacuate some of the air pressure, and those will go bad.

So not only the pump but the air shocks but also the wires. Check the wires. These wires have rubbed on the metal right here and you can actually see where they need to be repaired. You can see the copper coming through. So that needs to be repaired. That's a very common problem. So those are the top five problems that we have found with this vehicle. We actually sell a lot of those parts to help repair those issues at 1aauto.com.

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