Wiring harness or short circuit on the 2009 Chevrolet Silverado
5 fires 5 of the 5 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 5 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 wiring harness or short circuit gets reported
There are 5 reports of wiring harness or short circuit on the 2009 Chevrolet Silverado, 5 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 88,000 miles. It is the 3rd most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 73,500 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, 5 a fire is 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 $400–$3,500 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 8 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2003, at a median of 30,000 miles, and latest on the 2001 at 290,000 miles.
By volume the 1999 carries the most reports, with 29; the 2009 has 5. 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.
On march 10, 2009 we purchased a brand new 2009 chevrolet silverado from nu car chevrolet in new castle, delaware. On september 25, 2009, while on vacation in ocean city, md, the vehicle caught on fire with us and our two young children (ages 2 and 5) inside, strapped in their car seats. We were able to pull them from their car seats (terrified) and get a fire extinguisher from the restaurant were we were parked to extinguish the fire. We had the vehicle towed back to nu car chevrolet on september 26, 2009 and it has remained with them ever since. The dealership and general motors determined the cause to be a defective wiring harness and has admitted fault (there was no after market wiring in the vehicle and no previous accidents). As of today, february 5, they have been unable to repair the issue and are now going back and forth with us trying to get us to pay more money for a new vehicle since they can't find a 2009 replacement model. We are refusing to pay any additional money and stated that we will accept a replacement vehicle with same features at no cost or we want a full refund of our vehicle purchase. *tr
Went out to truck to move it and noticed wipers up on windshield, tried to start it and only check engine light came on , looked under hood to find an electrical burning smell coming from fuse box. Disassembled fuse box to find it was melted and found evidence of combustion, wiring harness connector x2 pin n5 was melted and connector x5 pins g1 h1,2,3,4 k 4,5,6 and j 2,3,4 had melted this is all the damage that I found. *tr
Went out to truck to move it and noticed wipers up on windshield, tried to start it and only check engine light came on , looked under hood to find an electrical burning smell coming from fuse box. Disassembled fuse box to find it was melted and found evidence of combustion, wiring harness connector x2 pin n5 was melted and connector x5 pins g1 h1,2,3,4 k 4,5,6 and j 2,3,4 had melted this is all the damage that I found. *tr
Also reported on the 2009 Chevrolet Silverado
Other body or interior problem
Other electrical problem
Excessive oil consumption
No-start or intermittent start failure
Radiator or coolant leak
Airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 5 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 5 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 wiring harness or short circuit happen on the 2009 Chevrolet Silverado?
Across 5 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 75,000 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 wiring harness or short circuit on the 2009 Chevrolet Silverado?
5 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 1.7 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