Friends with Ford SUVs and trucks have had many.

The issue here seems to be the variable cylinder management 'feature' on the previously proven 5.3. My Sierra had the 5.3, but back in 2017 you could plug in an OBD gadget that would turn off the cylinder management without changing anything in the ECU. This is what I did.

Some time since 2017, GM got clever and buried the cylinder management 'feature' so deeply into the ECU that you can't get to it to override it. I honestly didn't even know this Yukon had cylinder management, they don't seem to mention it much anymore because it's causing problems. There's nothing on the dash to show you the 8/6/4 cylinder drops. Back in 2017 they were proud of it, now they hide it and it can't be disabled.

It ticks me off that bowing to these MPG requirements manufacturers are just disabling reliably engineered designs to comply. It's not good, the consumer ends up paying the freight. Now the question is whether or not my lifter issue will just happen again because of the cylinder management putting stress on the first dropped cylinder, or if they actually designed a more robust part. My worry and expectation is they didn't.