Truckette

Hello, all!

A few weekends ago, I helped the other half swap the transmission and clutch in his '08 HHR. It worked out and we got the car back on the road. I thought I'd post some notes about the process, to either embolden or scare anyone else who might be contemplating this job. :)

tl;dr: It drove into the garage on Friday evening and drove out very early Monday morning. We also ended up replacing two of the subframe bolts and both lower control arms. When we got it all back together, it wouldn't start; I messed with the connectors under the big fuse box under the hood and got it to start. It's been driven daily for a couple of weeks now and seems to be running OK.

The patient: A 2008 that he bought used with about 80,000 miles on it in 2015. It now has 150,000+ miles. (130,000 km and 240,000 km respectively.) Getrag F23 5-speed transmission.

The symptoms: Started out as popping out of first gear when driving. Advanced to not wanting to go into first at all if the car was not moving; would still go into first if the car was rolling. It would also grind when trying to go into first with the car rolling, like the syncro wasn't doing its job.

Things we tried that didn't work: When it was just popping out of gear, we thought maybe problems with the shifter inside the car, or the shift cables, might be causing it to not go all the way into first. When working on something unrelated right after he first got the car, we had both noticed that one of the rear bolts that holds the shifter down inside the car was missing. When it started popping out, he took the console apart and discovered that the bolt was missing because there was a chunk missing out of the bracket that the shifter base bolts to. (I thought the shifter base was bolted directly to the floor pan, but it's not; there's a big plastic bracket that holds the shifter base up off the floor a few inches.) He got a new bracket and installed it, and adjusted the cables at the shifter, but no change.

Sticker shock: He took it to a local transmission shop. On the phone, they were optimistic that they might be able to adjust something or otherwise do an inexpensive repair. After putting it on the rack, their verdict was, "nope, transmission is damaged internally, needs a new one". They quoted $2,700 for a used transmission with their standard warranty, $3,100 for a used transmission with an extended warranty, or $4,400 for a rebuilt transmission with their standard warranty. He said "thank you", declined the work, paid the $50 diagnosis fee, and drove it home.

Research: We found some used transmissions in various junkyards with a variety of prices. (Some of them had more miles on them than the one already in the car...)

The gear ratio in the HHR F23 is unique (per the Hollander interchange manual and discussions here), so you've got to get a replacement trans from an HHR. Some other GM products of the same era also used the F23, but with different ratios.

He also found engineer's writeup, right here at https://www.chevyhhr.net/forums/how-...ent-how-55921/ . This turned out to be quite helpful!

The local public library has something called "EBSCO Auto Repair Reference Center" available. You have to log in to the library's web site with your library card, and then you can read it at home. It's basically a GM factory manual, somewhat oddly reformatted, and broken down into lots of individual procedures as PDFs. It also has random sprinkles of owner's manual stuff - if you click on a link that says "clutch", you might get the R&R procedure, or you might get one sentence that says "Do not put peanut butter on your clutch pedal". I downloaded all of it from the library and we perused the procedures.

Pulling the trigger: He found a used transmission a couple of states away that the junkyard claimed had about 30,000 miles (50,000 km) on it. I believe it ended up costing $650 or so, delivered truck freight to his workplace (they have the ability to unload from a box truck). He then brought it home in the back of the HHR. Protip: There is probably still oil in a used transmission. The back of the HHR was anointed with the new fragrance from Detroit, Eau de Dexron.

He also ordered a new flywheel, clutch disc and cover, and slave cylinder (all Luk), new flywheel bolts and clutch cover bolts (GM), a new intermediate steering shaft (GM), and got a new transmission input seal at the car parts store. There wasn't anything wrong with the existing clutch or flywheel, other than that they had 150,000 miles on them. The existing steering shaft was sloppy in the joints and it's real easy to change when you're pulling the transmission.

Tools we used: I already had a transmission jack from working on an RWD car several years ago. I got it somewhere else, but it's similar to Hazard Fraught Harbor Freight part numbers 61232 or 39178. This ended up working out well for removing the old transmission, but not as good for installing the new one.

He got an engine support bar from Harbor Freight, 96524. This worked, but it really wants to sit on fenders that are parallel and not tapered like an HHR. If you get one like this, cinch the "legs" that sit on the fenders as far inboard (towards the engine) as you can before tightening the legs down; this makes it less likely to slip off of the fenders. (Also, in true HF fashion, the clamp bolt hole in one of the legs wasn't threaded right; I had to chase it with a metric tap to get the bolt to go.)

We used a chunk of 1.5" (38 mm) iron pipe about five feet (1.5 m) long, plus a chain and some bolts, to get the transmission back into the car. There is a lift eye cast into the top of the transmission housing and it's pretty close to the center of gravity of the trans. We took one of the unused (welded) chains from the HF engine bar and attached it to the transmission with a nut and bolt. We then jacked up the trans to a little shy of the right height with the transmission jack, ran the chain straight up through the engine compartment, and looped it around and bolted it to itself. I then put the pipe through the chain, put the back end of the pipe on the cowl, and stood in front of the car holding the front end of the pipe. This let me lift the transmission up or down by pulling up on the pipe. He laid on the ground under the car and aligned the transmission to where it mated to the engine and he could get a couple of the bolts started.

I had a seal puller already, and we rented a seal driver set from the car parts store to install the new transmission seal.

Hints and kinks part 1: Some of the written procedures imply that you can just loosen up the underhood fuse block mounting bolts and tie it off to the side. We decided it was a lot easier and gave a lot more access to just remove the whole thing. This bit us a little later on, though... see below.

From the factory, there are plastic clips plugged into some of the brackets underhood; they have a fir tree on the bottom and a curved "seat" on the top. The wiring harness then sits on that curved seat, and a zip tie holds the harness to the clip. Some of these will probably break when you try to free up the harnesses - we used generic replacements from the car parts store.

You need to get the car fairly far up in the air to clear the trans - it comes out under the left wheel well. We jacked it up with a $20 car parts store jack and put jack stands under the two rear subframe bolts. Then, we put the jack on top of a chunk of 4"x8" wood (100 x 200 mm), giving us another 4 inches (100 mm) of lift. We jacked up the car again until we could move the jack stands under the "frame rails" on the body, just behind where the subframe bolts on. That ended up being enough height.

You have to take out all of the plastic splash shields and inner fenders. This isn't difficult, but some of the plastic clips might break when you do so. In my experience, NAPA has a better selection of these than most other chain parts stores.

The right rear subframe bolt was rusted to hell and gone. It came out OK with a piece of gas pipe over the breaker bar, but it wasn't reusable. He reported that the water drain from the air conditioner dumps right on top of this bolt, which might be a factor. The left rear subframe bolt came out of the body OK, and the exposed part wasn't rusted, but the bolt was seized pretty good to the metal sleeve inside the lower control arm bushing. We ended up going to two different Chevy dealers to source two new subframe bolts, as they each only stocked one. The two front subframe bolts came right out and looked good, so we re-used them.

If your subframe has never been off before, there will be some thin metal retainers on the subframe bolts - they're like a washer with tabs that engage the bolt threads. I think they were used at the factory so they could lift the subframe into place without the bolts falling out. Re-use these if you can; they make your life easier when re-installing.

We used the transmission jack with a piece of 2x6 (50 x 150 mm) about five feet (1.5 m) long to help get the subframe down and back up. Transmission jack goes right in the middle of the car left-to-right, but a little towards the back of the subframe front-to-back - it's back-heavy because the steering rack is still on it when you drop it. 2x6 goes left and right, on top of the transmission jack. It helps a lot to have two people to horse the subframe around.

(Continued in next post... forum disallows long posts. It also disallows short tags - what?)

Truckette

Oldblue

Welcome to the site, hope he enjoys that HHR for many more miles

Truckette

Hints and kinks part 2: The right control arm already had bad bushings. We screwed up the rubber on the rear bushing of the left control arm trying to get that stuck subframe bolt out. We got new bushings at the car parts store, but then realized we didn't have a good way to press in the rear bushings - the steel outer rim of the bushing is pressed into the cast control arm. So, we returned the bushings and got new lower control arms. (We also changed the sway bar bushings that bolt to the subframe, but those can be done with a wrench and ratchet.)

The flywheel-to-engine bolts are torque-to-yield, which I have fairly well convinced myself means that you shouldn't re-use them. The clutch-cover-to-flywheel bolts are not, so you could re-use those, but we got new ones.

If you want to drain the new transmission completely, it's a lot easier to do it before it goes in the car. Once it's in the car, the drain plug ends up with very short clearance to the subframe - an Allen bit with a 3/8" or 1/4" square drive socket will NOT fit, and an L-shaped Allen key MIGHT NOT fit. We ended up finding a screwdriver bit in a $7 bit set at the hardware store that had the right metric hex on one end, a 1/4" hex on the other, and was only about an inch long. This bit can be put into the drain plug by itself, and then you can use a 1/4" wrench on the exposed end.

If the trans peed a little oil out of the axle holes when the axles were removed, or while the trans was being shipped, some of it might collect on the lip on the transmission case that's right underneath the axle hole. Clean this up real well with a rag or equal before you put the axles back, so you won't trick yourself into thinking the seals are leaking.

There is a plastic oil filler cap on the top of the trans; it's buried when the car is completely assembled. To fill the new trans, he took out the "fill" plug on the side and watched the hole, and I took off the cap and used a long funnel up top, slowly pouring in fluid until he said "whoa" and put the fill plug back in the side.

Once you think you've bled the clutch enough, bleed it some more. After our first bleed, you could drive the car, but you had to put the clutch pedal nearly to the floor to disengage the clutch. We bled it again a couple of days later, which improved the pedal action.

The underhood fuse box: We got it all back together and he tried to start it. Some of the dash lights came on, but nothing else happened when you twisted the key all the way to "start". We poked and prodded a little at the harnesses we had disconnected, but couldn't find anything obviously wrong. He had to go to bed, so I kept poking at it.

At the wheel, I turned the key on, and tried all the stuff in the car... some of it (like the headlights and the radio) worked, and some of it (like the heater controls and I think maybe the wipers) did not. I then poked around in the underhood fuse box with a test light. What I found was that all of the hot-all-the-time stuff (circuit 30 in the old country) worked, but some of the hot-with-key-on stuff (circuit 15) wasn't getting power. I was playing with the "RUN/CRNK" relay in the underhood fuse box, which powers some of the hot-with-key-on stuff, and found out that by pushing the relay sideways with my fingers, I could get things to come on, but as soon as I let go, the power would go away again.

I suspected the connectors under the fuse box, and that turned out to be right. On the bottom side of the fuse box, there are four giant connectors that together cover the entire bottom of the box. Two of them are rectangles, about 2" x 4" (50 x 100 mm), and two of them are squares, about 2" x 2" (50 x 50 mm). There is a "well" for each connector molded into the top of the plastic fuse box bracket. I think the factory assembly procedure was that they clipped all four connectors into their wells, with the sockets facing up. Then, they slapped the fuse box down over the whole thing, starting all the connectors at once. Finally, they tightened those four tall bolts that stick up among the fuses and relays; those engage with a nut in each connector face to draw them all the way home.

What I did was take the fuse box all the way out, and start two of the connectors into the bottom of the fuse box by hand - one of the square ones and one of the rectangular ones. I pushed them in as far as I felt comfortable doing. (Because of the way the harnesses come out of all sides of the fuse box, I don't think you can start all four of them by hand - maybe you can if you cut more zip-ties on the harnesses than I wanted to cut.) I then laid the box down over the bracket, as straight as I could, and pushed it straight down to engage the other two connectors. I tightened all four bolts, went in and tried the key. I got a lot more love from the dash lights, and when I turned the key all the way, it cranked and fired up. I drove it to the gas station and back for a celebratory bag of Fritos, and then he drove it to work and back later on Monday morning.

Tip on relays: I also discovered that it's possible to plug in some of the relays in the underhood fuse box BACKWARDS - 180 degrees out from how they should be. You can't do this with the 5-pin ones, but you can with some of the 4-pin ones. Some of the 4-pin ones will hit a nearby fuse or relay if you try to plug them in backwards, but some have enough room around them that you can plug them in the wrong way around. (And no, they weren't clever enough to arrange the pinout so that it didn't matter.) This turned out not to be the problem I was having, but I figured I would note it. IMHO, this SHOULD NOT HAPPEN on any car designed past about 1930. So, pay attention to what you're doing if you are swapping relays around in the underhood fuse box.

Total cost:He's got all the paperwork on it, but I think with all the parts and tools we ended up using, we were at around $1,200, plus or minus.

Total time: Wall-clock time was about 2.3 days, but we didn't work on it continuously. We started stripping it down after work on Friday. We stripped it some more on Saturday, bought parts, got the new flywheel on the engine, got the new clutch on the trans, and tried to mate the trans to the engine. That didn't work, so we called it a night. On Sunday we started out by hanging the trans from the pipe and that worked better. We didn't work as long on Sunday because of a prior commitment Sunday evening; we worked on it together after that commitment, and then I worked on it some by myself.

Overall, it wasn't anything really complicated... just a lot of work.

This is probably far more than anybody wanted to know about it.

I am not affiliated with any companies mentioned.

Truckette

RJ_RS_SS_350

Hi Truckette, to the forums!!

You weren't kidding about tl;dr! You could probably publish and sell it on Amazon!

Good tips, though. If I have to replace my trans, I'll look for this thread.

donbrew

Moved to the tutorial library.

Could you write a new one about the fuse box? That is where a lot of gremlins live and nobody believes it. The best we have found is a youtube that is not exactly accurate.

Oldblue

You can knock the rear bushings if the LCA’s with an air chisel or cold chisel and BFH , threaded rod and pipe work too!