2003 GMC DENALI — Complaint #915071
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about SERVICE BRAKES, AIR:SUPPLY:HOSES, LINES/PIPING, AND FITTINGS filed April 18, 2012
NHTSA complaint #915071 (ODI reference 10455716) concerns a 2003 GMC DENALI and was filed on April 18, 2012. The owner reports the failure occurred on April 15, 2012. The vehicle had 47,500 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to New Jersey based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as service brakes, air:supply:hoses, lines/piping, and fittings, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same GMC DENALI cohort independently describe similar service brakes, air:supply:hoses, lines/piping, and fittings failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2003 GMC DENALI shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
WITHIN ABOUT 10 MILES OF A MODERATE BRAKING SITUATION AND REACHING HOME, BRAKE PEDAL BECAME PROGRESSIVELY SOFTER AT EACH SUCCESSIVE STOP UNTIL COMPLETE BRAKE FAILURE OCCURRED NEAR HOME. THE EMERGENCY BRAKE WAS USED TO SLOW AND STOP VEHICLE IN DRIVEWAY (HOME). RIGHT FRONT STEEL BRAKE LINE WAS FOUND TO HAVE BURST DUE TO EXTENSIVE RUST/CORROSION. EXTENSIVE CORROSION OF MOST BRAKE LINES WAS FOUND AND REPAIRED AT CONSIDERABLE COST AS A PREVENTIVE MEASURE TO HELP AVOID ACCIDENT OR INJURY. THE LOCAL GMC DEALER WAS NOT AWARE OF A RELATED RECALL FOR THIS VEHICLE AND WOULD ONLY REPAIR THE SUV AT THE PREVAILING RATE SINCE A WARRANTY WAS NOT IN EFFECT. THIS VEHICLE SHOULD BE RECALLED AND REPAIRED BY THE MANUFACTURER TO ADDRESS THIS POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC DEFECT. *JS
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 915071 |
| ODI Number | 10455716 |
| Date Filed | April 18, 2012 |
| Failure Date | April 15, 2012 |
| VIN | 1GKFK66U93J |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.