Two problems related to underhood wiring have been reported for the 1998 Chevrolet Silverado. The most recently reported issues are listed below.
During normal driving conditions (fair weather, city driving) my pick-up died in the middle of traffic just after completing a left turn and shifting into second gear. I was in the left lane and managed to let it coast into a little used left turn lane. I had it towed to my local dealership (fisher Chevrolet, boulder, colorado), where they informed me that a wiring harness was routed past the exhaust manifold and had melted and caused a grounded crank signal. ( my father also has the same year, make, and model as I do, and his pick-up has a similar wiring pattern. ) the wiring and fuses were replaced and re-routed, and the crank signal circuit was repaired.
The dashboard in the truck caught on fire. We were able to extinguish the fire before extensive damage was done. The gm dealership determined that the cause of the fire was the wiring harness under the hood. We reported this to gm, and they said that they had no other reports and were not going to do anything about it because of the age of the vehicle. I looked on the NHTSA site and found 52 pages of other Chevrolet trucks with similar problems from 1996 to 2002. I believe someone could get seriously hurt or killed if this were to happen while driving. We were fortunate that we were able to put the fire out. Gm will not even investigate this problem, our extended warranty isn't worth the paper it is written on and our insurance company will only pay for ensuing damage. I think someone with some authoriy should contact gm since this is an obvious defect in design. Michael butori.