My HHr has 58,000 miles in it. I have not encountered any problems with the motor or trani. At what mileage will be the best time to replace the timing belt? Can anyone enlighten me on this issue? I will greatly appreciate it.

 

You are in luck! HHRs do not have a timing belt, but rather a timing chain that will last for a very long time.

 

This car is not like a lot of cheap imports with the belt.

Like stated the chain will last longer than most people will own thier HHR.

 

There's people on the ecotec forum that have over 300k on their motors with no porblems on the OEM timing set

 

Really good to know this!

On my 87 Olds Firenza I had the timing belt break on a Sunday afternoon while I was driving to to Atlanta to finish my move to GA back in 1992. There was no warning or performance degradation to warn me this was happening. I lucked out that a state trooper showed up less than 10 minutes after it broke and called a 24hr 7day garage to get me going. Still it cost me half a day....

I've been scared the last few years I owned my BMW 325i that I would have the same thing happen to me in the middle of the night coming back from Lake Tahoe and I would get stranded in the middle of nowhere.

Great to hear I don't have to worry about this with my HHR in the future.....

Fred

 

Yeah thats something you really have to watch on cars with a belt. Most are hard to check, so you have to replace them at intervals. When they fail, some will just stall on the road if you are lucky, but a lot of cars have interfering valves. That means if the belt fails, the valves hit the pistons and the engine is severely damaged.
One of the main reasons I got my Cavalier, then the HHR.

 

I'm so happy to hear this about my HHR, I just bought a 2008 2LT last week with only 10K miles but didn't know if it had a timing belt or a chain. In 1990 I bought a brand new Mitsubishi Eclipse and my then-wife was driving it when the timing belt broke. The fortunate thing was that it was 1500 miles from going out of warranty on the powertrain. The engine was severely damaged but it was repaired under warranty (about a $4000.00 repair job back then from the dealer in San Francisco) and they even supplied a loaner vehicle!

 

Hi guys mines a 2009 LT with 246k I use for work had some issues early on but other that a great car it use no oil and driven hard all day long gotta replace the lower control bushing but no big deal and a inside door handle bust ed but a real good car

 

Years ago I had a timming belt break on a 85 Audi 4000, it was 3 degrees at 9PM in Dec. Luckely the engine was a clearence engine so it did no damage. The good thing that came out of it was it broke down across the street from a grarge. It turned out I found an honest and reasonable mechanic that I have used for the last 15 years to do the jobs I can't or don't have the time to do. But with the HHRs we haven't need him to do anything. I still take my mother's 86 Accord to him. By the way she is 92 and still drives a 5 speed.

 

Something to add to this old thread. Although our cars have a timing chain instead of a belt, there is a timing chain tensioner that can cause problems. Mine started making a rattling noise on cold starts due to slack in the chain. I replaced the tensioner and all is good again, its an easy job. I put a post in the how-to section.