When to call it quits on a vehicle..

[Martinjmpr]

Sounds like you got a bad apple in the flavor of a lemon. In the three that I have owned, non of the issues you speak of. Maybe I just got lucky.

Except for the weak 4L60 transmission my Suburban was solid. Most likely I killed the transmission by towing a 3500# trailer through the mountains multiple times. Other than that, no issues and my Suburban had every bell and whistle you could get except a sunroof and a DVD player (neither of which I wanted.) I think the GMT-800 trucks (1999 - 2007 pickups and 2000 - 2006 Tahoe/Suburban/Yukon were some of the best made trucks out there. If you can get a 2500 you avoid the problematic 4L60 in favor of the much more robust 4L80.

Parts are easy to get and reasonably inexpensive and they are surprisingly easy to work on.

I would avoid the early GMT-900 trucks as they had issues with the multi-displacement engine feature.

Sold my '04 Suburban for $5500 last month with 189k and a still-under-warranty transmission.