1997 GMC SIERRA Owners Manual

Care of Your Cassette Tape Player
A tape player that is not cleaned regularly can cause
reduced sound quality, ruined cassettes or a damaged
mechanism. Cassette tapes should be stored in their
cases away from contaminants, direct sunlight and
extreme heat. If they aren’t,
they may not operate
properly or may cause failure of the tape player.
Your tape player should be cleaned regularly after every
50 hours of use. Your radio may display CLN to indicate
that you have used your tape player for
50 hours without
resetting the tape clean timer. If this message appears
on the display, your cassette tape player needs to be
cleaned. It will still play tapes, but
you should clean it as
soon as possible to prevent damage to your tapes and
player. If you notice a reduction in sound quality, try a
known good cassette to see if
it is the tape or the tape
player
at fault. If this other cassette has no improvement
in sound quality, clean the tape player. Cleaning
may be done with a scrubbing action,
non-abrasive cleaning cassette with pads which scrub
the tape head as the hubs
of the cleaner cassette turn. It
is normal for the cassette to eject while cleaning because
your unit is equipped with a cut tape feature. To
temporarily override this feature for vehicles with
Automatic Tone Control (for one insertion), turn on the
ignition then turn the radio off and press and hold TAPE
AUX until the tape symbol flashes on the display, then
insert the cassette again. For vehicles without Automatic
Tone Control, press both
SEEK arrows within five
seconds of inserting the cassette with the ignition and
radio
off. Insert the cassette at least three times to ensure
thorough cleaning.
A scrubbing action cleaning cassette
is available through your
GM dealership.
You may also choose a non-scrubbing action, wet-type
cleaner which uses a cassette with a fabric belt to clean
the tape head. This type of cleaning cassette will not
eject.
It may not clean as thoroughly as the scrubbing
type cleaner.
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The cassette tape player is able to detect a broken tape.
Some cleaning cassettes may appear as
a broken tape. If
the cleaning cassette is ejected immediately from the
tape player, follow these steps:
1. Turn the radio off.
2. Turn the ignition on.
3. Press and hold the TAPE-AUX button until the tape
4. Insert the cleaning cassette and the radio will turn on
5. Eject the tape after the tape player has been cleaned.
When the cleaning cassette has been ejected, the broken
tape detection feature is active again.
symbol
flashes.
in cassette mode.
After you clean the player, press and hold EJECT for
five seconds to reset the CLN indicator. The radio will
display
--- to show the indicator was reset.
Cassettes are subject to wear and the sound quality
may degrade over time. Always make sure the cassette
tape is in good condition before you have your tape
player serviced.
Care of Your Compact Discs
Handle discs carefully. Store them in their original cases
or other protective cases and away from direct sunlight
and dust. If the surface of a disc is soiled, dampen a
clean, soft cloth in a mild, neutral detergent solution and
clean
it, wiping from the center to the edge.
Be sure never to touch the signal surface when handling
discs. Pick up discs by grasping the outer edges or the
edge of the hole and the outer edge.
Fixed Mast Antenna
The fixed mast antenna can withstand most car washes
without being damaged.
If the mast should ever become
slightly bent, you can straighten it
out by hand. If the
mast is badly bent, as it might be by vandals, you should
replace
it.
Check every once in a while to be sure the mast is still
tightened
to the cowl.
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Section 4 Your Driving and the Road
Here you’ll find information about driving on different kinds of roads and in varying weather conditions. We’ve also
included many other useful tips on driving.
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4-6
4-6
4-9
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4- 12
4-13
4- 14
4-27 4-29 Defensive Driving
Drunken Driving
Control
of a Vehicle
Braking
Steering
Off-Road Recovery
Passing
Loss
of Control
Driving Guidelines
Driving
at Night
Driving
in Rain and on Wet Roads 4-32
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4-45
4-45 City Driving
Freeway Driving
Before Leaving
on a Long Trip
Highway Hypnosis
Hill and Mountain Roads
Winter Driving
Loading Your Vehicle
Camper Wiring Harness Pickup Conversion
to Chassis Cab
Towing a Trailer
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I ” 1
A
Defensive Driving
The best advice anyone can give about driving is:
Drive defensively.
Please start with a very important safety device in your vehicle: Buckle up. (See “Safety Belts”
in the Index.)
Defensive driving really means “be ready for anything.”
On city streets, rural roads or freeways, it means
“always expect the unexpected.”
Assume that pedestrians or other drivers are going to be
careless and make mistakes. Anticipate what they might
do. Be ready for their mistakes.
Rear-end collisions are about
the most preventable
of accidents. Yet they are common. Allow enough
following distance. It’s
the best defensive driving
maneuver,
in both city and rural driving. You never
know when the vehicle in front
of you is going to brake
or turn suddenly.
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Drunken Driving
Death and injury associated with drinking and driving is
a national tragedy. It’s the number one contributor to
the highway death toll, claiming thousands
of victims
every year.
Alcohol affects four things that anyone needs
to drive
a vehicle:
Judgment
Muscular Coordination
Vision
0 Attentiveness.
Police records show that almost half
of all motor
vehicle-related deaths involve alcohol.
In most cases,
these deaths are the result of someone who was drinking
and driving. In recent years, some
17,000 annual motor
vehicle-related deaths have been associated with
the use
of alcohol, with more than 300,000 people injured.
Many adults
-- by some estimates, nearly half the adult
population
-- choose never to drink alcohol, so they
never drive after drinking. For persons under
2 1, it’s
against the law
in every U.S. state to drink alcohol.
There are good medical, psychological and
developmental reasons for these laws. The
obvious way
to solve this highway safety problem
is for people never
to drink alcohol and then drive. But
what
if people do? How much is “too much” if the
driver plans to drive? It’s a lot less than many might
think. Although it depends
on each person and situation,
here is some general information
on the problem.
The Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) of someone
who is drinking depends upon four things:
0 The amount of alcohol consumed
0 The drinker’s body weight
The amount of food that is consumed before and
during drinking
The length of time it has taken the drinker to
consume the alcohol.
According to the American Medical Association, a
180-lb.
(82 kg) person who drinks three 12-ounce
(355 ml) bottles of beer in an hour will end up with a
BAC
of about 0.06 percent. The person would reach the
same BAC by drinking three 4-ounce
(1 20 ml) glasses
of wine or three mixed drinks if each had
1-1/2 ounces
(45 ml) of a liquor like whiskey, gin or vodka.
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It’s the amount of alcohol that counts. For example, if
the same person drank three double martinis
(3 ounces
or
90 ml of liquor each) within an hour, the person’s
BAC would be close to 0. I2 percent. A person who
consumes food just before or during drinking will have a
somewhat lower
BAC level.
There is a gender difference, too. Women generally have
a lower relative percentage of body water than men. Since alcohol is carried
in body water, this means that
a
woman generally will reach
a higher BAC level than a
man
of her same body weight when each has the same
number
of drinks.
The law
in many U.S. states sets the legal limit at a BAC
of 0.10 percent. In a growing number of U.S. states, and
throughout Canada, the limit is
0.08 percent. In some
other countries, it’s even lower. The BAC limit for all
commercial drivers in the United States is
0.04 percent.
The BAC will be over
0.10 percent after three to six
drinks (in one hour).
Of course, as we’ve seen, it
depends on how much alcohol is in the drinks, and how
quickly the person drinks them.
But
the ability to drive is affected well below a BAC
of 0.10 percent. Research shows that the driving skills
of many people are impaired at a BAC approaching
0.05 percent, and that the effects are worse at night, All
drivers are impaired at BAC levels above
0.05 percent.
Statistics show that the chance of being in a collision
increases sharply for drivers who have a
BAC of
0.05 percent or above. A driver with a BAC level of
0.06 percent has doubled his or her chance of having a
collision. At a BAC
level of 0.10 percent, the chance of
this driver having a collision is 12 times greater; at a
level of
0.15 percent, the chance is 25 times greater!
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The body takes about an hour to rid itself of the alcohol
in one drink. No amount of coffee or number of cold
showers will speed that up. “I’ll be careful” isn’t the
right answer. What if there’s an emergency, a need to
take sudden action, as when a child darts into the street?
A person with even a moderate BAC might not be able
to react quickly enough to avoid the collision.
There’s something else about drinking and driving that
many people don’t know. Medical research shows that
alcohol in a person’s system can make crash injuries
worse, especially injuries to the brain, spinal cord or
heart. This means that when anyone who has been
drinking
-- driver or passenger -- is in a crash, that
person’s chance of being killed or permanently disabled
is higher than if the person had not been drinking.
‘A I CAUTION:
Drinking and then driving is very dangerous.
Your reflexes, perceptions, attentiveness and
judgment can be affected by even a small amount
of alcohol. You can have a serious
-- or even
fatal
-- collision if you drive after drinking.
Please don’t drink and drive or ride with a driver
who has been drinking. Ride home in a cab; or if
you’re with a group, designate a driver who will
not drink.
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Control of a Vehicle Braking
You have three systems that make your vehicle go where
you want it
to go. They are the brakes, the steering and
the accelerator. All three systems have to do their work
at the places where the tires meet the road. Braking action involves
perception
time and
reaction time.
First, you have to decide to push on the brake pedal.
That’s
perception time. Then you have to bring up your
foot and do it. That’s
reaction time.
Average reaction time is about 314 of a second. But
that’s only an average. It might be less with one driver
and as long as two or three seconds or more with
another. Age, physical condition, alertness, coordination
and eyesight all play a
part. So do alcohol, drugs and
frustration. But even in
3/4 of a second, a vehicle
moving at
60 mph (100 km/h) travels 66 feet (20 m).
That could be a lot
of distance in an emergency, so
keeping enough space between your vehicle and others
is important.
And, of course, actual stopping distances vary greatly
with the surface of the road (whether it’s pavement or
gravel); the condition
of the road (wet, dry, icy); tire
tread; the condition of your brakes; the weight of the
vehicle and the amount
of brake force applied.
Sometimes, as when you’re driving on snow or ice, it’s
easy to ask more
of those control systems than the tires
and road can provide. That means you can lose control
of your vehicle.
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