I need to replace the front struts on my 06 HHR LT, and am curious if anyone here has experience replacing them yourself? I have found some OEM front struts that have a new spring attached; apparently called quick struts. I am thinking of going this route since I am the second owner and I can replace two parts and do it myself without dealing with a spring compressor. Any thoughts?

 

If you haven't replaced struts before or if you do not want to deal with a spring compressor, a quick strut is the way to go. If this has not been done before on your HHR, you may also want to invest in new end links. I had to sacrifice the ends of my links when I removed my struts. Moog has a great product with greaseable fittings.

 

Moog? Are you serious?

I've had poor luck with Moog and am on this site to find something better to no avail.

I've replaced worn out Moogs (after 3,000 mi) with new Moogs and had one of them bad when I put it on!

They do have a good warranty, but I fear the place I purchased them may be geting sick of seeing me every 4 months...

 

You might give this thread a read kmcrae476, some useful info here....

https://www.chevyhhr.net/forums/show...t=quick+struts

 

Read the fine print, MOOG is the "cheap Chinese" product now. A 2006 probably could use the new springs and mounts anyway. I have a pair of the OEM quick struts in the garage right now, I'm just waiting for some other parts to arrive.

Would somebody please describe the exact problem with the Monroes? I cannot see where the spring can possibly come into contact with anything, maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. Every place I look seems to have the same part listed for new front springs Cobalt/HHR.

 

I am curious too about why this happens with the quick strut. I have had mine on since Feb. 2011 and put 13000 miles on them before I started having noise which is being caused by the drivers strut spring rubbing on the forward area of the wheel well.

I looked up part numbers for the cobalt and hhr at rockauto and the acdelco numbers for the springs are the same, however the struts are different.

 

The Cobalt and HHR springs are different in a couple of ways. The top of the HHR springs diameter is narrower than the Cobalt springs that come on the quick struts. Also, the spring rate is different. Do not put the monroe quick struts on an HHR, you will have noise and eventually the spring will wear and could fail. Monroe is not going to be responsible as they no longer catalog the quick strut for the HHR, it is for the Cobalt only. Just buy the struts and strut mounts and either do it yourself(pretty easy actually) or take it to a garage for them to compress the springs.

 

Actually they are still available at http://www.monroe.com/catalog/e-Catalog

 

They really need to change that part listing. I talked with the Monroe tech people pretty in depth about the problem with the quickstruts on the HHR and they were quick to say that they know that there is a problem and I should switch the springs back which I did and now I have no problems. If you have quickstruts that are installed and you didn't save your old springs, I dare say the only way to assure that you fix the problem is to buy the OEM springs from the dealer. other wise, just buy the struts and mounts and replace the parts as you would normally do.

 

So did Monroe offer any recompense for your having to switch out springs that they knew there to be a problem with?