MikeX

Yep! Now, why don't you (and I) have the nasty problems that plague other HHR owners? Did we buy the lucky HHRs? Did the people on the line who made ours stop drinking that day?

solman98

Or maybe that's when they borught the tequilia out....

MikeX

In your thread, Grumpee says he's satisfied with his HHR. If it was a bad design, he would be having the same problems as others who claim it's a badly designed vehicle. The design is the design. It doesn't change to make some cars bad and others not.

87silver

I just don't understand the inconsistencies. Does Mexico have "siesta cars", similar to the Monday-Friday build syndrome? I certainly believe the experiences of the members of this group, but wonder why some report a ton of problems while others have none.

I have a black 2008 HHR SS (Sunroof, Manual Trans, LSD) and just turned 9,000 miles yesterday. The only time it's been to the dealership is when the Stage1 kit was installed. Otherwise ZERO problems. What gives with these cars?

The only thing that I do is periodically press in all the fuses, BCMs, circuit breakers and relays, but not because I had a problem, it's just a precaution that I read about in the SoCalHHR site and it made sense.

hyperv6

The fact is most MFG things will have some part of the design that needs to be addressed like the Brake issue on the SS so it is an issue that is resolved.

Also quality of parts suppliers can vary over a years time. So it is possible for sever hundred cars over a short period can have a parts failure the many thousand others do not have.

Factor in that in the past these problems were even greater but there was no internet for the many owners to come to and complain. So in the past many of these issues were no passed on to others and often not even noticed in some cases.

All MFG of cars and most other product have this issue as it is just part of mass production and the lowest bidder.

GM does take and try to correct much of these issue. I had a intercooler tube that blew out. It was a replacement after my accident. It was one of the very first ones made.

By chance I had contacted a GM performance engineer on a stage kit question and he had my intake tube that had been replace earlier. It had made its way from my dealer back to Detroit to see what the issue was and how to correct it.

Building cars today to make profit is difficult. You need to buy the parts as cheap as you can while trying to keep quality up.

Even Toyota has had issues on cranks, bumper chrome and other part quality issues over the last few years. This shows no one is immune. The fact is many companies get their parts all from the same companies.

09_SS

Parts built by the same person can also vary if quality control is not enforced. My dad is a supervisor at delphi in lower MI. GM called them about a cobalt that had only 2k miles or so on it and was having issues. My dads plant makes a socket that a part fits into. (don't remember what part it was) But the part kept slipping out. They were saying that my dads factory was making the socket to big and needed to do better quality parts. Come to find out the factory that made the part that fit in was making alot of them to small. lol.
Even though the mechines are automated the parts can come out slightly different sizes ect., reason for qualtiy control.

Doc brown

I believe the inconsistencies are caused by two things, 1) Poor engineering and or product redesign for cost cutting measures 2) Multiple vendors for the same parts.

#1 would make you think that every part that's an issue would be the same for all cars. However, there's a lot involved. A faulty part that fails for me at 5k, may not fail until 50k (or never) for someone else due to differences in driving habits, environmental factors (road conditions, gasoline quality, temperatures, etc).

I have 27k on my HHR now. I haven't had too many problems with it.
*Warped rotors at 10k, again at 25k (will replace with aftermarket now)
*Bad right sway link end at 27k
*A "wobble" when it shifts from 2nd to 3rd. This has since "magically" gone away after the dealer couldn't find a problem. They dropped the pan and I assuming replaced the fluid with fresh.

I'm not sure I agree with this statement. In some instances they might "fix" it. Others, not so much. I have an '03 Trailblazer. I spent over 1k last year on the electronics for the 4WD. There are numerous TSBs for the 4WD on these trucks, many dating back to 2002. And you know what? All those TSBs apply to every year they were made. Why didn't they fix that problems after all these years? It should have been a series of recalls, just like the warped rotors on the HHR should be a recall.

Marzipan

Care and maintenance are responsible for many of the complaints aired here.

Obviously there were faults with the early model years that would become evident to some owners.

Warped rotors are known to be caused by incorrectly tightening the wheel nuts. On a p/u I once had new tires installed. When I got home I could not remove the nuts without a lever on the wrench. I'll be installing my HHR wheels myself. I just don't trust the tire boys.

Smell in the cabin can be caused by loaded cabin filter. That has been reported here and it is evident that many of us do not rtfm. We post here first.

Door seal probems - the manual requires regular attention to the seals. How many of us are doing so? What is going to happen if we ignore this?

My advice - rtfm and do the preventative maintenance and don't buy any vehicle in its first 2 years of production.

06AmethystHHR

Maybe some of them had swine flu when some of these were built lol.

Doc brown

Maybe sometimes, yes, maybe sometimes, no. Some problems become chronic and well documented. Yes, incorrect torque can cause rotor warpage. But so many people have had this problem with early HHRs that it can't be blown off to improper maintenance. I haven't owed any other vehicle that needed rotors before 60k miles. Most go longer than that. Yet, many HHR owners have complained that it happened not only once, but several times within the warranty period.

I'm with you on the tire guy thing. I don't really trust anyone to work on my cars anymore. Sometimes you don't have much of a choice though. At least I know of two independent tire shops that I trust.