Sunol, CA – What’s Making Your Cadillac Escalade’s Engine Knock Under Load?

An engine knock under load on a 2021 through 2024 Cadillac Escalade is a recall question before it’s a maintenance question. GM issued Safety Recall N252494000 in April 2025, covering roughly 126,000 Escalades and Escalade ESVs equipped with the 6.2L L87 V8 for connecting rod and crankshaft defects that produce knock, misfire, and possible loss of propulsion. Sunol Cadillac Escalade owners bring this conversation to Driven Auto Care of Fremont, CA, and a knock complaint on an L87 starts with confirming whether the vehicle falls inside the recall window.

Recall 25V-274 Covers Connecting Rod and Crankshaft Defects on the L87 V8
GM’s engine teardown analysis identified two supplier-level manufacturing root causes for the failures. Sediment in the crankshaft oil galleries damaged rod bearings, and a subset of crankshafts left production with out-of-spec dimensions and surface finishes. The combination of starved bearings accelerates wear and produces the rod knock under load that owners hear as a deep metallic thud on acceleration. All affected vehicles receive a 10-year or 150,000-mile extended warranty, whether the engine passes inspection or gets a full replacement.

GM’s Affected Build Window
GM identified the affected production period as March 1, 2021 through May 31, 2024. Vehicles built before or after that window sit outside the recall, and GM’s June 2024 manufacturing improvements moved the 2025 model year out of the affected scope. The dealer recall procedure scans for diagnostic trouble code P0016 (crankshaft and camshaft alignment correlation), with a stored P0016 routing the engine to replacement and an absence of P0016 routing the vehicle into the inspection-pass remedy.

Cold-Start Lifter Tick
A separate L87 issue, the valve-lifter problem affecting Dynamic Fuel Management hardware, produces a cold-start tick that grows louder over time and can bend a pushrod or collapse a lifter without warning. The lifter problem sits outside the rod-and-crankshaft recall, and GM addresses it through a Power Component Coverage Letter that extends warranty on vehicles with at least one prior valve-train repair. A 2021 Escalade can carry both issues at once, since DFM-equipped engines built in the same window sit at the center of both stories.

The Recall Remedy
For engines that pass inspection, GM specifies a permanent change from 0W-20 to 0W-40 Dexos R-approved synthetic oil, plus a new oil fill cap and an owner’s manual insert reflecting the new spec. Higher viscosity builds more film strength between rod journals and bearings under high load, which is the operating condition where the marginal manufacturing tolerances were producing failures. Going back to 0W-20 at the next oil change defeats the remedy, so the replacement oil cap exists to keep the next technician on the right product.

Put Us on the Calendar With Your VIN
A knock under load on an L87 Escalade gets answered fastest when we can scan the VIN against GM’s recall database, pull any stored fault codes, and confirm whether your engine’s serial number lands inside the suspect manufacturing window. Put us on the calendar at Driven Auto Care of Fremont, CA at (510) 270-3686, and the VIN tells us within seconds whether the recall applies to your specific car. The dealer procedure goes faster when the answer to that question arrives ahead of the appointment.