2003 GMC SIERRA DENALI Owners Manual

Care of Your CDs
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 side without writing when
handling discs. Pick up discs by grasping the outer
edges or the edge of the hole and the outer edge.
Care of Your CD Player
The use of CD lens cleaner discs is not advised, due to
the risk of contaminating the lens of the CD optics
with lubricants internal to the CD mechanism.
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.
XMTM Satellite Radio Antenna
System
Your XMTM Satellite Radio antenna is located on the
roof of your vehicle. Keep this antenna clear of
snow and ice build up for clear radio reception.
DAB Radio Antenna System
Your DAB antenna is located on the roof of your
vehicle. Keep this antenna clear of snow and ice build
up for clear radio reception.
If your vehicle
is purchased in Canada and driven into
the United States the DAB radio antenna system
will not function. DAB radio reception is available in
Canada only.
Check occasionally to be sure the mast
is still tightened
to the cowl.
If tightening is required, tighten by hand.
then with a wrench one quarter turn.
3-84

Section Driving Your Vehicle
Your Driving. the Road. and Your Vehicle .......... 4-2
Drunken Driving
............................................. 4-2
Control
of a Vehicle ........................................ 4-5
Defensive Driving
........................................... 4.2
Braking
......................................................... 4-6
Locking Rear Axle
.......................................... 4-8
Steering
........................................................ 4-9
Off -Road Recovery ....................................... 4-13
Passing
....................................................... 4-14
Loss
of Control ............................................. 4-15
Operating Your All-Wheel-Drive Vehicle
Off
Paved Roads ............................................ 4-16
Driving in Rain and on Wet Roads
................. -4-30
QUADRASTEERTM
....................................... 4-10
Driving at Night
................................ ..... 4-29
City Driving
.................................................. 4-33
Freeway Driving
........................................... 4-34 Before Leaving
on a Long
Trip ....................... 4-35
Hill and Mountain Roads
................................ 4-36
If You Are Stuck: In Sand, Mud,
Highway Hypnosis
........................................ 4.36
Winter Driving
.............................................. 4-38
Ice or Snow
.............................................. 4-42
Towing
.......................................................... 4-45
Towing Your Vehicle
..................................... 4-45
Recreational Vehicle Towing
........................... 4-45
Loading Your Vehicle
................................... -4-45
Truck-Camper Loading Information
.................. 4-48
Trailer Recommendations
.................. ...... 4-50
Pickup Conversion to
Chassis Cab
............................................. 4-50
Towing a Trailer
........................................... 4-51
4- 1

Your Driving, the Road, and
Your Vehicle
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: They Are for
Everyone
on page 1-8.
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.
Defensive driving requires that a driver concentrate on
the driving task. Anything that distracts from the driving
task
- such as concentrating on a cellular telephone call,
reading, or reaching for something on the floor
- makes proper defensive driving
more difficult and can even
cause
a collision, with resulting injury. Ask a passenger to
help do things like this, or pull off the road in a safe place
to do them yourself. These simple defensive driving
techniques could save your life.
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
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, more than
16,000 annual motor vehicle-related deaths have been
associated with the use of alcohol, with more than
300,000 people injured.
4-2

Many adults - by some estimates, nearly half the adult
population
- choose never to drink alcohol, so they
never drive after drinking. For persons under 21,
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 eliminate the leading highway safety
problem is for people never to drink alcohol and then
drive. But what
if people do? How much is “too much” if
someone 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:
The amount of alcohol consumed
0 The drinker’s body weight
The amount of food that is consumed before and
during drinking
consume the alcohol.
0 The length of time it has taken the drinker to
According to the American Medical Association, a 180
Ib
(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 (120 ml) glasses
of wine or three mixed drinks
if each had 1 - 1/2 ounces
(45 mi) of a liquor like whiskey, gin or vodka. 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 0.1 2 percent. A person
who consumes food just before or during drinking will
have a somewhat lower BAC level.
4-3

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 an increasing number
of U.S. states, and
throughout Canada, sets the legal limit at
0.08 percent.
In some other countries, the limit is even lower. For
example, it is
0.05 percent in both France and Germany.
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!
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.
“1’11 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.
4-4

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.
Drinmnn,,d and then driving
is verb ..angerous.
Your reflexes, perceptions, attentiveness and
judgement 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
i driver who will not drink.
Control of a Vehicle
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.
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.
4-5

‘\, Braking
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 3/4 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 (I00 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. Avoid needless
heavy braking. Some people drive in
spurts
- heavy acceleration followed by heavy
braking
- rather than keeping pace with traffic. This is
a mistake. Your brakes may not have time to cool
between hard stops. Your brakes will wear out much
faster
if you do a lot of heavy braking. If you keep pace
with the traffic and allow realistic following distances,
you will eliminate a lot of unnecessary braking.
That means better braking and longer brake life.
If your engine ever stops while you’re driving, brake
normally but don’t pump your brakes. If you do,
the pedal may get harder
to push down. If your engine
stops, you will still have some power brake assist.
But you will use it when you brake. Once the power
assist is used up, it may take longer to stop and
the brake pedal will be harder to push.
4-6

Anti-lock Brake System
Your vehicle has anti-lock brakes. ABS is an advanced
electronic braking system that will help prevent a
braking skid.
When you start your engine and begin to drive away,
your anti-lock brake system will check itself. You
may hear a momentary motor or clicking noise while
this test is going on. This is normal.
If there’s a problem with
the anti-lock brake system,
this warning light will stay on. See
Anti-Lock
Brake
System Warning
Light on page
3-35.
Along with ABS, your vehicle has a Dynamic Rear
Proportioning (DRP) system.
If there’s a DRP problem,
both the Brake and ABS warning lights will come on
accompanied by a 10-second chime. The lights
and chime will come on each time the ignition is turned
on until the problem
is repaired. See your dealer for
service. Let’s
say the road is wet and you’re driving safely.
Suddenly, an animal jumps out in front of you.
You slam
on the brakes and continue braking. Here’s what
happens with ABS:
A computer senses that wheels are slowing down.
If
one of the wheels is about to stop rolling, the computer
will separately work the brakes at each front wheel
and at both rear wheels.
4-7