Hello all,

We bought my wife a 2008 HHR SS 5 Speed in June of '08. We love the car, and it's been trouble free for the most part. I'm looking for any input on the times it's not trouble-free, like right now. It's at the dealer, but the problem is not getting fixed, so I thought I'd turn to those with more experience.

About a month ago, my wife exited the freeway, heard a squeal, and the car stalled at the light. It restarted, but there was "engine noise". My first thought was that it was just the DI, and she was noticing it more because the windows were down. When she got it home, it sounded a lot like a VW TDI.

I take it to the dealer, they give me a nice Cobalt to drive, and we go on our way. The diagnosis is that there was slag from the engine casting that blocked the oil port to the head. 12 days later they have it all back together.

I pick it up, and it kind of stumbles back to life, and is running very poorly. It turns out they power washed the engine, and got the MAP sensor wet. They reseat it, clear the codes, and send me on my way. When I pulled out of the dealership, it ran fine.

I hit the freeway, set the cruise at 70, and headed home. All was great until I hit the first hill. It can't climb it. I get no boost, and it won't rev past 4,000 RPM.

I take it back, they give me another Cobalt, and keep it 4 more days. This time they replaced the MAP sensor, the Mass Airflow Sensor, and the turbo downpipe. They drove it over 55 miles, and assured me it was done.

I load the family into the Cobalt, switch everything around, and head home. Less than 2 miles down the road, the MIL kicks on. I again have no boost, no power, and won't rev past 4,000. I turned right around, and it's throwing another Mass Airflow sensor code. Now I have an Impala to drive.

The car has 33K miles, and has always run great. There are no mods whatsoever. I had the oil analyzed when I changed it at 30K miles, and the number were fine.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

 

take it to a different dealer

 

I had a similar problem, the other day mine felt like I lost the turbo and could barely get up to freeway speed. All the way home it wouldn't go into boost, the engine felt like it was tumbling at a stop, looked at it that evening for any obvious signs and found nothing. Decided I was going to try to take it in the next day, then the next morning it was back to normal! The only thing that happened out of the ordinary was that I was pulling out of a parking lot with the wife and kid from picking up a pizza. As I straightened out I looked in my rearview and saw an Exploder coming up on my bumper real fast, so I laid on it spinning the wheels (only out of the ordinary b/c I never do that with the wife and kid in the car! lol) to get out of the way and the guy still ended up passing me. We got about a mile down the road to get on the freeway and that is when I noticed I had no boost or power and couldn't even get it up to but about 60mph and struggled up a hill that is normally easy. When I was stopped I felt the engine acting goofy as well. But, like I said, the next morning and since it has been fine, never had any lights or other indicators of any problems.

 

If you put it into perspective, you might see it stephenm's way. They might be nice guys, but maybe the LNF is over this dealer's heads.

I had a dealer diagnose a knock in a 4.3L Astro some years ago with about the same mileage (33k under warantee at the time) as a fuel filter. Paid 60 bucks and when I got it on the road, it still had the knock. It was after work, so the service dept was closed and it was Friday.
When I was changing the oil over the weekend, I noticed the arrow on the filter pointing TOWARD THE TANK! I reinstalled it properly, but didn't go back to that dealer. The service mgr was pissed because I gave them a poor survey rating (go figure ) I took it to a dealership service dept in another state that had a good service reputation. They diagnosed it as piston slap and ended up replacing the engine (short block) instead. No more knocking with the Astro and they extended my powertrain warrantee (which was 36k in those days).

Again, get another opinion...

 

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Just picked it up today. The reason for the codes was apparently that the airbox was loose after it was reinstalled. It seems to run fine. We'll watch it carefully.

 

Often it is the simple things that will cause a issue.

 

Mine took a dump again today. Got a CEL driving to work, tried to check it with a code reader which never seems to work on this car. Ended up getting a Service ESC light and the ESC was turned off. Then later it felt weird when I was driving home from work, at a light the gauges went crazy, it said I had low fuel when I have 3/4 of a tank, then everything went back to normal with a weird feel in the engine, even now I'm not sure what is going on, so it is going to the dealer tomorrow to see what is up.