Transcription
What's going on guys? We are back with another video. In today's video, we're going to be doing a one-year review on our 2023 Colorado ZR2. We're going to be going over the good, the bad, and the new issues that have arisen with the truck after the 10,000-mile review video that we had did.
If you haven't seen that video, make sure to go check it out after this video for reference. To give some context, the truck right now, after one year, has a little over 18,000 miles. Now, in those 18,000 miles, this truck is not daily driven whatsoever. This is purely our adventure vehicle, and all those 18,000 miles have have either been off-road or traveling to and from on-road to those off-road destinations.
So let's jump into what's good about the truck. Starting off with our first good, which is probably the most controversial good, and that is the engine choice of this truck being the 2.7-liter 4-cylinder turbo. After a year, I still love the engine choice. I think it's perfectly fine. Now, it's not the fastest truck out there. If you want something fast, Ranger Raptor, uh, in the midsize is your go-to. But to get the job done, I think this engine does a great job. It has plenty of power, even with our setup with the additional weight, to go up and down the highways and off-roading. Still plenty of power there. So I've been really satisfied and happy with the engine choice and the 2.7 here in the Colorado ZR2.
Going into the next good, and that is the off-road performance of this thing. After a year of wheeling and off-roading in all different terrains and all different levels of difficulty in trail, this thing is an absolute beast off-road. Not only with the DSSV shocks that have been absolutely fantastic, but the having the front and rear lockers have been working flawlessly, and we've been handle, we've been able to tackle some pretty big trails in this thing, though even with the way it's set up with the camper on top and stuff like that, it's honestly been a fantastic off-road truck.
Moving on to our last good that I wanted to discuss, and that is the interior. I feel like the interior of these new generation Colorados have stepped up tremendously in a good way over, especially the previous generation, and even after a year, I still feel strongly about this interior. I think it's so well laid out with the digital screens. Not only digital screens, but also keeping physical buttons for a lot of the things you use. I think is fantastic, such as all your AC controls are still all physical buttons, as well as your front and rear lockers have physical buttons, which is really great. And I feel like a lot of people take that for granted because especially with the new cars, everything has gone digital, and most of your controls now are typically in the screens of all your new trucks and cars. So it's really nice to still have physical buttons on the interior, and the overall layout of the interior, I think, I, I still love.
Moving on to the bad, or the things I dislike about this truck. So I have two that I've developed after a year of owning this truck. And the first being the skid plates. Now, in this scenario, I'm specifically referring to the Colorado ZR2, not the Colorado ZR2 Bison, as they have completely different skid plates. But if you are getting yourself a base Colorado ZR2, if you're planning to do any serious off-roading, the stock skid plates do not cut it. After a few months, I found my s every once in a while having to take the factory skid plates off and hammering them back into place because, quite frankly, they don't hold up to off-roading. Since then, I have upgraded to the AEV skid plates for the front diff and the transfer case/transmission, and those have been working out a lot better over the factory ones. So that's one thing that I wish even the stock ZR2 came with slightly stronger skid plates.
The last negative that I have about this truck is the transmission. Now, don't get me wrong, the transmission is actually pretty good for highway. It's really good for even for most of your off-roading scenarios. It's actually a really good transmission, and I've had absolutely no issues with it. The problem I have with it is when you put it in Baja mode and go hit sand dunes or you're having fun, and it puts itself in a performance shift mode, it's really not that fast of a transmission. It is pretty slow in shifting in between gears. It's very sluggish, and even with it being a perform in performance mode, it's really more so for holding the RPMs higher than it is actually better shifting. And I feel like that's the biggest downside to this transmission is it's very a slow/sluggish transmission. I really wish Chevy put the 10-speed in here that they have, but that's probably likely never going to happen, unfortunately. So that is my other negative. Again, the transmission has been super reliable this far. I've had no issues with the transmission itself. My complaint is having a performance shifting mode, and it's a really slow and unresponsive shifting.
Going into the new issues that we have ran into, and that is two new issues. One being the more major issue, which seems to be a common widespread issue amongst '23 and '24 Colorados, was the upper radiator hose leaking. So we were one of the ZR2s that was affected by this, but that part has now been replaced. And the good news is, uh, after, uh, talking with my service manager, this is a brand new part number. So it seems like Chevy realized that this was a flaw and has now addressed it, uh, with a brand new radiator hose that has a brand new seal. So going on out, I'm sure the '25s are going to have this brand new part number radiator hose. So I'm sure all the 2025 Colorado ZR2s are no longer going to have this issue, and it wouldn't surprise me if there's some type of recall in the near future for all '23 and '24s to replace this upper radiator hose.
The other issue we are having is here on the interior, and apparently it is a widespread issue amongst owners that I've seen, and that is there is a bug with the infotainment system. It doesn't happen all the time, but it happens whenever it's cold outside, so close to 32 degrees Fahrenheit or below, close to freezing temperatures. There's a prompt that pops up that says, uh, somewhere along the lines of "ice possible, drive with care." When you're driving when it's cold outside, there's a random chime that just randomly goes off with no notifications. And actually, I have a video of it, and this is what it sounds like.
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So as you saw, that chime randomly comes on. From what I've been able to kind of gather from my experience, it has to do something when it's cold outside and that cold weather prompt comes up. Hopefully, this is something that's going to be fixed with the next update. I'm sure it will with enough people complaining about it, but that is an issue that we are experiencing at the moment.
Speaking of issues, I want to address two issues that I had brought up in my 10,000-mile review that were now fixed after the previous software update. One of those issues was we had a weird glitch where sometimes when you turn on the truck, the all the infotainment and everything would have switched from Imperial over to metric without making any changes. I have not had that issue after the last software update we had, so it seems like they've fixed that.
The other big complaint that I had, and was more of a complaint rather than an issue, was the traction control was buried in the menu. You had to access three separate menus before getting to the actual traction control. Now, I guess they've listened to our complaints. When you go into the home screen menu here, now it's just in the controls, and boom, your traction control is right there. So, kind of a small quality of life update, but I would say it's pretty significant that seems like Chevy is actually listening to their customers.
One of the other issues and negatives that I had before, but obviously for our application has been fixed, was the low-hanging exhaust that comes from factory. We have since replaced that with an AEV high-clearance exhaust, as you can see there, and no longer have to worry about the exhaust hitting rocks and different obstacles when we're off-roading.
Well, I hope you guys found this video helpful and informative. If there's any issues you're having with your Colorado that I didn't mention, leave them down in the comment section below. If you like the video, make sure to leave a like and subscribe for more off-road and awesome content like this, and we'll see you guys in the next video.
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