Category Archives: Warranty and Repairs

The best time to shop for a new Cadillac is

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This will seem like core common sense to some of you, but I feel it bears repeating, especially in the car market:

The best time to look for a new Cadillac is while your current Cadillac is still  doing well and going well.

You don’t want to squeeze the deal by depending on selling your Cadillac just in time to have the cash to buy or help fund your next Cadillac.  You want to be in a position to have some cash set aside that you can use to buy the new or new to you Cadillac, and to have time to sell your Cadillac at your leisure.   This way you have no pressure on the acquisition — no timers — and can wait for just the right deal to come along for your perfect next Cadillac.

I am chatting with Darin Partin over at Crest Cadillac to get help in finding my next Cadillac, which hopefully will be a nice used 2010 Cadillac CTS Premium model with under 15K miles, in Crystal Red Tintcoat.  But my shopping journey didn’t start with looking up and realizing my 2005 Cadillac CTS was about ready for replacement.

My shopping journey started as soon as I made the last payment on the 2005 years ago, and started putting funds away to help pay for the next Cadillac.  Almost all cars will need to be replaced at some point — unless you are able to keep a lot of cars — so one should plan ahead for this eventuality and budget appropriately.    It simplifies the deal if you have money in hand and know what Cadillac you want to buy.

If you have ever made payments or leased a car, then you have enough funding to save up and purchase a new or used car with cash.  All you need now is the will to do so and a plan.

My 2005 Cadillac CTS has been a great, reliable car.  But I know I will be getting a replacement, so I have planned and budgeted ahead to do so, and am shopping for the next Cadillac while my 2005 still has lots of miles left.  That’s the best way to shop for a new Cadillac — with money in hand and time to wait for the right deal.

Cadillac CTS Seat Experiment – conclusion of part 1

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Got my 2005 Cadillac CTS back from  Crest Cadillac in Plano, Texas today with the Service Air Bag light corrected from The Great Cadillac CTS Seat Experiment.

Literally drove the Loaner CTS in to the Service Drive, was whisked in to the Cashier, and my Cadillac CTS was pulled into the Service Drive almost immediately.    Could not have been faster service unless we practiced together a lot more lol.

I enjoyed the 2010 Cadillac CTS loaner car; it gave me pause about my plan to purchase a Generation 1 V-Series model, but I think I am still planning on the V.

The air bag light is fixed.  The diagnosis was it needed new seat belt pretensioners.    The seat belt pretensioner is a pyrotechnic device that takes the slack out of the seat belt immediately before the airbags fire.  In my experience seat belt pretensioners are electronically sensitive or fragile, so I am not that surprised anytime one needs replacement.

The receipt lists part number 89024402 Belt Kit and 89024405 F-Belt Kit and 1.8 hours of labor.

On to the next part of the Seat Experiment — now my Driver’s seat thinks it is part of a memory seating system, but my CTS doesn’t have a control panel to select the memory seat positions.  So in part 2 I plan to add this control panel from a CTS that does have one.  Stay tuned!

Finding those small odd Cadillac parts

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Ever need a small part for your Cadillac, but wonder if they even offer that part separately, or if it is part of an assembly?

Ever reach into your car to move something, and manage to break a part off in  your hand?

The nice people at CompNine.com have a solution for you.

At their site from the home page on the left under the heading “vehicles” you can click on Cadillac.  Then drill down to your year and model of Cadillac.  Finally, choose the diagram that seems to contain the part or section of the Cadillac that you are looking for.  For example, let’s look for the lean-back lever on the manual passenger seat in a 2005 Cadillac CTS base model.

Drilling down to 2005 CTS, we can see that the seats are on diagram 14.

Drilling down through the images within that section, we can see the manual seat leaver is on 2005-2007 DM,DN69 SEAT ASM/PASSENGER (EXC POWER ADJUSTER AH8)

Comp Nine Seat Lever Image

In this diagram the seat lever is marked as item #14.  In the table below the diagram we can identify item 14 as HANDLE,P/SEAT RECL(INCLS 15)(NEUTRAL)

There are actually several #14’s, one for each interior color.  The GM part number is 88897411, and clicking on that part number in the table tells me which other vehicles this part is used on.

Finally, I can see that CompNine offers this lever for sale for $44.89.

All in all these diagrams are a nice service, as they give another source of information for how the vehicles are put together, which parts are available separately as opposed to part of a larger assembly, and the approximate cost of each individual part.

CompNine has become one of my favorite reference sites.