Hey Y'all,

Over these last two weeks my car has been in the body getting the stone chip problem on the rear fenders taken care of. Well, they did a really poor job and I went back today to report some more problems with the way it was taken care.

While I was discussing some of the problems I also showed the body shop guy the bottom of my driver side passenger door. The area where the seam is from the folded over sheet metal has had some small bubbles in it since as long as I can remember. I never thought to bring this up before because I thought it might just be a problem with the metal being a little rough being in a non visible area. He looked at it and said that was from rust forming behind the panel.

We looked at the other doors and my passenger front door is affected as well. So, my HHR will be gone again to the body shop on Tuesday probably for another week to be refinished due to the previous poor job and to have this rust problem fixed.

If you don't check out the bottom of the door area or you don't wipe down your door sills and such after washing your HHR I would suggest you check that area for rust.

Oh, and mine HHR is a 2006 purchased in Sept 2005.

 

Wow

 

Hey Calgary......

is it possible to capture the rust with a couple of pictures? I'd like to see that.

Is it visible rust or under the paint? Is the dealer sure it's not the "Super Glue" the factory uses in place of welding? If it's under the paint, poking at it with a sharp, but small, instrument would reveal the difference.

 

Man, I live in the RUST belt, I hope I don`t get affected, but I did get the 10 yr. treatment, I will be checking tommorow at bath time, (the Cruck)..

 

I'll try to remember to take a picture tomorrow morning before I drop it off at the body shop. Gonna have to snap some pics with my smartphone though because my camera went swimming with me this weekend and is broken now.

 

So things take a while to get done in my world. I took a picture on Tuesday and finally got around to uploading it.

I spoke with the manager of the body shop at my closest Chevy dealer. He said they were going to strip the bottom, inside part of the door, do whatever they do to the rust and then respray. This is going to happen in Mid August.

Here is a picture:


You can see along the edge of where the exterior panel was folded over some of the paint has chipped off and above that there is some bubbling, that's the rust problem. It's occurring on the rear driver side door and the front passenger side.

 

You drive in a lot snow, right? I wonder if that's the reason for the rust.

Also I wonder if those with running boards need to remove them to see if they have the same rust problem. That could be really bad if left unrepaired for several years. I couldn't see any damage on mine but Florida is very kind to the underside of a car. The paint is a whole other issue!

 

His rust is on the inside edge of the door so one would not need to remove running boards to check.

I just checked all four of my doors and they are perfect...and I too drive in lots of snow.

There are drain holes at the bottom of each door, two for each front and one for each rear, just above that seam. Calgary, are yours blocked?

This type of rust, is one of the reasons I have my HHR annually treated with Krown Rust proof (Rust Check is another brand). It displaces moisture from areas like that and helps prevent rust. Now I know many here believe that on new cars, after-manufacture rust proofing is not needed. Maybe you are right, but my cars operate in a harsh climate plus I park in a garage (so there is constant freeze/thaw in the winter which leads to moisture inside car panels) so I prefer to error on the side of caution.

 

There is typically a lot of snow out here during the winter but I wouldn't say I drive in snow too often. I typically don't use my vehicle much, it has an average on 800 miles per month although a good portion of those miles have come from summer trips.

I haven't noticed if the drain holes are plugged but I might have a peak at that.

I do wash my vehicle very often, at least once a week and sometimes more often in the winter. I always dry the vehicle and I dry the inside parts of the doors and frames and everything.

I'm pleased that this problem will be taken care of and I just hope that they do a better job with this than the rear fender work they did.

 

I couldn't really tell exactly where the damage was. No matter, it should be covered under the corrosion warranty.