Man, I hope thay had something in the waiting room to keep you entertained at least! And I have the same filter (E-1989) so I'll play around w/ the cover this weekend.

Later
Allex

 

killed the battery on my phone playing brick breaker.

next visit I will remember my PSP

 

Somewhere deep in a mountain in Montana is a GM Mr. Goodwrench class that explains how to work on an upgraded HHR SS.

1. Tell customer you don't know anything about the upgrade and try to refuse to do it.

2. If pressed, Install the upgrade using old electrical tape and the first software you find on the computer.

3. If the IC pipe doesn't hit the sensor, move it around until it does.

4. Deliver the car and wait for the customer to come back in limp mode.

5. Tell customer your sorry and put the car up on a lift.

6. Go to lunch.

7. Tell customer there is a tsb that says the problem is the wastegate actuator.

8. Tell customer the part is on backorder (it's on perpetual backorder).

9. Go have another lunch.

10. Wait for customer to get irate after waiting around 3 weeks for the part that will never come.

11. Give the customer a SPAC number and tell them to call GM.

12. By this point the customer usually gives in and either A sells the car, or B finds another dealer to repeat steps 1 to 11.

13. If the customer doesn't go away and demands you look at it again, do the install correctly which means, crimp or solder the "right wires", make sure there are no cracked tubes, keep the IC pipe away from the sensor, flash the memory and install the "correct" software.

14. The car runs as it's suppose to.

15. Act like you never mentioned the word Actuator.

That's the process.

 

Thats great. I just showed it to the tech who cant figure out what is wrong with my 09 ss. The lower sensor wire shredded after the sensor kept hitting the pipe.....but even before that ,the car was and is still very sluggish off the line. Not even close to as it was when the Stage 1 was first done.......and no one knows why.

 

It's not the car. It's an amazing little car, it's not the upgrade, it's great they came out with it, especially for the automatic transmission owners, it's the fact the dealers are reeling from low sales* and GM doesn't care about this car anymore and doesn't support it or anything that's not an Obamamobile.

In getting my install up and running it took 6 trips to the dealer, a mountain of paperwork, a dozen calls to GM (who gave me some 12 year old that said maybe it's the TSB on the glove box (true).

The result is they finally installed it correctly, for now it runs fine, and one chevy dealer tech lost his job, because he had a s__t attitude and I went to his boss.

*Now the reason for low sales is simple. Chevy doesn't know what they sell or how to market what they sell. How many ads have you seen for a HHR SS or any SS for that matter? How many people bought the SS and for the price, the performance, the amount of energy GM put into this car the sales should have been double, even in these economic times.

Actually the HHR SS is the car for the times. Great gas mileage, hauls stuff, hauls a__, has personality and regardless of the old Chevy faithful is just as much an SS as any car Chevy has ever made. Personally I don't care if the front or rear tires smoke when I punch it, I just want them to spin and go and the HHR does that, unless some dealer screws it up.

All GM had to do to make this car more viable was to look at the custom car guys, or look at their own car show versions of the HHR. For some reason GM wants to kill off any real excitement in cars, while across the street Ford is sticking turbos on Tauruses and bringing over the hot euro versions of their small cars (and is a lot more profitable than GM).

No wonder Bob Lutz left.

If Chevy had any sense they could have done this with every SS and made it something to envy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIXXqKhHO3M

This commercial made me buy an EVO that I still own because it hauls people, hauls a__, and the difference between the EVO and the HHR is the Mitsu dealers know how to make it fly.

Anyway, I would have gone the custom tune route, rather than the GM upgrade, (knowing what I know now), but didn't want to void my warranty. Now today, I just would buy another Trailblazer SS identical to the one I got my wife, or maybe an SRT8, They're fast, it hauls stuff and it's reliable.

Or I'd buy a ffffffford.

No probably not.

 

I hear you. Me, I work for our Chevy store as Parts Manager. Love the car, but I agree ,Chevy didnt market this car at all.GM has always done this,they come out with something that has the potential to sell....but they never market it and just discontinue it. My dealer didnt even want to stock one as they said it would never sell. We sold 3.Most people on the steets have no idea that an HHR/SS was even made.....and that includes many regular non SS HHR owners.I do have fun on the highway and on the street when some young punk in a Honda Civic SI comes alongside and I smoke him.Im convinced there is not an import who can beat this car. My tech did the install with no problems a year ago. It is a bad design by GM and it sucks many of us are having issues with the sensor hitting.

 

^^OK... but, I just want my car to run the way it did when the kit was first installed.

I don't think that is too much to ask.


Edit: there was a long post about GM before this, now its gone

 

You also have to consider that this car came along when GM had no money for anything. They could hardly market the main stream cars they needed to let alone a low volume performance model that was a couple years from the end of it's life. IF GM had money the HHR may have been gone already with the Orlando delayed as it was.

GM is not done with performance and their marketing is just coming on line. They now have money and will also soon pay the goverment off. They will also do their IPO soon and buy back the part of GM the goverment is holding.

Most of the repair issues come back to dealers with techs with poor or no training. It is the dealer who needs to make sure they have the people to take the training GM offers.

My Dealer has a tech that does all the turbo work and is good. He knows all about the ecotech turbo and never had any issues.

GM has a lot of Turbo's, AWD, RWD and more coming. I have seen a little of what to expect and you have not seen anything yet. Once the goverment is paid off things will happen fast. GM will make the last payment soon. We also will see the 2.0 turbo in many more case soon too. The Regal will get it starting next year in two levels.

From some of the comments I see many need to read up on what is really going on and not the non discript bickering they see on line. Look at what GM is really doing and watch for the clues they are setting out in plain sight like the Leno Camaro. It showed you the 3.6 Turbo and thenew Z28 at one time. Only the hood is not production. There is a Cruze SS in the works and the Turbo Aveo RS show car was 95% production.

Just look at the new Twin Turbo V6 they finally went public with. It was not a well kept seceret that they had one. Now the money is there to put it out. 365 Hp-425 HP is no problem for this engine. You will see it in 2012.

 

I'm not trying to jack the thread and some of what your saying I agree with, but the bottom line is a lot of true chevy fans paid an extra $700 to $1,000 to have a power upgrade that went wrong, in some cases very, very wrong.

If your on the "they screwed up my car end of the deal" you see it very different.

As far as the Cruze and Orlando (and I'm hope I wrong about this) but do you think anybody's gonna get excited over this car even in SS trim.

http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/...990002-480.jpg

Or do you think Chevy is gonna put 300 hp in this car, or will they just add more cupholders and another row of seats?

http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/...orlando-01.jpg

Like the GM manager says They don't write songs about Volvos, well they sure as hell don't write songs about Daewoos.

IMO

 

Before I brought my HHR SS in for the upgrade, I was seeing about 13-16psi of boost in the seasons of the year when air enthalpy in my region is at its highest. After the upgrade, I saw 19-22psi. This has fluxuated some, but I still get these numbers when energy content in the air is optimal per seasonal conditions. I have done nothing with the tubing (intake or exhaust).

If you keep the intersecting lines of a psychometric chart in the back of your mind when you're nailing the throttle and looking at the boost gauge, you'll be more apt to understand the discreet nature of boost pressures. (you don't have to memorize the chart, just understand it).

Hope this helps ease some anxiety...