yeah yeah, I still have my HHR and it's still a love hate relationship.

Anyway, all of the gas stations here have switched over to 10% ethanol gas now. It used to be just our winter blend, now it's the every day blend.

My HHR when cold, idles like crap in one scenario. I leave my office every day to get my kids. I start up in the parking lot, pull out and stop at the light (always get stuck at it). I go maybe 200 feet. The idle then gets whacky. Some days are worse than others. The idle will go up and down by a few hundred RPM's and it's very noticeable. The other day it was up & down by more than 500 RPM's and almost stalled out. The AC was off, fans were off. No defroster, just the radio on.

It did this though not as bad all last winter and it went away when we got our summer blend of gas back.

Anyone else have this issue? ?? ???

 

We've been tortured with 10% minimum ethenol blend in IL forever . . . I really see no diff . . . my guess is your PCM/ECM needs to "learn" how to burn it effectively . . .

 

If you are up there on the miles, the throttle body may need to be cleaned. It's an easy fix.

 

Try running a can of seafoam in the tank to clean the injectors.

I see no differance in running E10. It's not enough to change anything. But if you filled up shortly after the station got fuel, you may have gotten some trash since it was probably stirred up. I still get 30+ highway with it. I even got 20+ highway with my '96 Silverado 5.7 with it.

 

Only thing I notice is gas mileage is lower, and on my truck, it runs and idles worse...so I switched to premium which helps it run better.

 

I get 26MPG with 10%E gas.

 

2006 2LT 2.4 Auto trans. I don't notice a difference with the E10 except possibly a reduction in mileage. I installed a set of E3 spark plugs yesterday and IMHO it made a difference. I saw a recent test on one of the car shows on Powerblock. I associated the mileage drop with a set of AC Irridium spark plugs and not the E10. I agree with using the SeaFoam or a cleaner made by Berryman which contains acetone. It's usually good to run a can through every so many miles. I have 68K on my HHR.

 

Honestly... the cars are very finicky. Your particular vehicle just may not like 10% ethanol that much. If you want to eliminate the idle surging... get the vehicle custom tuned. It isn't that difficult and will get you more power to boot.

 

We've had it in Missouri for a long time and it sucks! Don't really notice a performance difference, but we do seem to consistantly get slightly lower mpg's than others.

 

it did it all last winter. That wasn't time enough to learn?