Radiator or coolant leak on the 2009 Chevrolet Silverado
4 crashes 4 injuries 8 of the 4 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
Only 4 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When radiator or coolant leak gets reported
There are 4 reports of radiator or coolant leak on the 2009 Chevrolet Silverado, 4 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 98,000 miles. It is the 6th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 38,500 miles | — | — |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 4 a crash and 4 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $350–$1,900 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 4 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 1999, at a median of 300 miles, and latest on the 2005 at 80,000 miles.
By volume the 1999 carries the most reports, with 9; the 2009 has 4. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
2009 chevy silverado lost traction on highway during slippery road conditions, vehicle spun out and hit a metal roped fence head on and also went across the median and slammed the front end of vehicle into a guard rail stopping it instantly from going into on coming traffic. The vehicles damage was on the front end directly in the center causing a wedge into the radiator, engine and bent the front of the frame. The impact was very loud and solid. The impact caused the truck to stand on the front of vehicle, slamming the back end of the vehicle on the ground with great force. The airbag didn't deploy which at the speed of around 60 MPH and the place the vehicle was hit in, makes me very concerned on the safety of this vehicle. My 5 year old son said his right arm was hurting after the accident and with in the hour of having the accident myself ended up in the hospital with a stiff neck and a very soar and bruised back, I was released with minor injuries and I consider myself lucky. Please let me know if anything can be done about this situation and the safety of myself and my son. *tr
2009 chevy silverado lost traction on highway during slippery road conditions, vehicle spun out and hit a metal roped fence head on and also went across the median and slammed the front end of vehicle into a guard rail stopping it instantly from going into on coming traffic. The vehicles damage was on the front end directly in the center causing a wedge into the radiator, engine and bent the front of the frame. The impact was very loud and solid. The impact caused the truck to stand on the front of vehicle, slamming the back end of the vehicle on the ground with great force. The airbag didn't deploy which at the speed of around 60 MPH and the place the vehicle was hit in, makes me very concerned on the safety of this vehicle. My 5 year old son said his right arm was hurting after the accident and with in the hour of having the accident myself ended up in the hospital with a stiff neck and a very soar and bruised back, I was released with minor injuries and I consider myself lucky. Please let me know if anything can be done about this situation and the safety of myself and my son. *tr
2009 chevy silverado lost traction on highway during slippery road conditions, vehicle spun out and hit a metal roped fence head on and also went across the median and slammed the front end of vehicle into a guard rail stopping it instantly from going into on coming traffic. The vehicles damage was on the front end directly in the center causing a wedge into the radiator, engine and bent the front of the frame. The impact was very loud and solid. The impact caused the truck to stand on the front of vehicle, slamming the back end of the vehicle on the ground with great force. The airbag didn't deploy which at the speed of around 60 MPH and the place the vehicle was hit in, makes me very concerned on the safety of this vehicle. My 5 year old son said his right arm was hurting after the accident and with in the hour of having the accident myself ended up in the hospital with a stiff neck and a very soar and bruised back, I was released with minor injuries and I consider myself lucky. Please let me know if anything can be done about this situation and the safety of myself and my son. *tr
Also reported on the 2009 Chevrolet Silverado
Other body or interior problem
Other electrical problem
Wiring harness or short circuit
Excessive oil consumption
No-start or intermittent start failure
Airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 4 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 4 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does radiator or coolant leak happen on the 2009 Chevrolet Silverado?
Across 4 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 40,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is radiator or coolant leak on the 2009 Chevrolet Silverado?
4 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 1.3 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed