I have a 2010 HHR, it just hit 13,000 miles. I can feel a slight vibration in the steering wheel, feels like the rotors are a bit warped. Has this happened to anyone else? If they are warped, is it covered under the warranty? Before this I had a 2000 Chevy Tracker that had over 48,000 miles on it and still had the original brakes and naver had any problem with them. 13,000 miles seems extremly early for the rotors to be warped! Anyone else have any problems with theyre brakes?

 

First of all welcome to the site. I see this is your first post. I have 70,000 on mine and still on original brakes. No shake at all. But there are plenty of people who have had issues with warped rotors. Since the rear drum adjusters don't really work on the HHR's your going to want to check and make sure they are doing some of the stopping and aren't to far out of adjustment.

 

Before you have the rotors turned adjust your rear brakes like swerv mentioned. A slight vibration that is just starting is likely to go away when you have your rear brakes adjusted properly. If you let this go long enough, however, it will warp the rotors bad enough to NEED resurfacing.

But for now you will more then likely be able to just adjust the rears and go on driving. This is what I experienced anyways. Once I adjusted the rears the vibration went away.

 

Its under warranty, make GM pay for the work. I had mine "fixed" twice under warranty. Since then I've replaced the OEM ceramic pads with cheap semi-metallic and haven't had a problem in 30k miles. I've never touched my rear brake adjustment and I've got over 70k on it.

People will tell you about all kinds of fixes to this issue. I believe from the anecdotal experiences here that there may be more than one cause to this issue. Three or four things seem to stand out as possible causes; bearing run out, failure to bed new ceramic pads, rear brake adjustment, and the use of ceramic pads in general.

 

GM considers brake components, such as the brake rotors, calipers and all attaching hardware to be warrantable components that are covered under the New Vehicle Bumper to Bumper Warranty. However, brake pads are considered a wear component and are not covered under the Bumper to Bumper warranty unless they fail due to a manufacturing defect.

You will want to get your HHR into the dealership to have things diagnosed and then they can let you know the particulars of where this will fall within the warranty.

Michelle, Chevrolet Customer Service

 

No offense to michelle....but IMO you should just go aftermarket. GM's rotors for the delta I platform are junk. between my brother and I, we've had two cobalts and two HHRs. the rotors have been replaced on all of them. there is some arguments as to wether its the rotors or the rear brakes not adjusting properly, but the cheapest rotors i could find were more durable then GM's... the OEM pads are pretty good though.

 

I've got almost 40K on my 2007, still on original brakes, and only the slightest vibration, you really have to look for it. IMO when the time comes to replace the front pads, I won't even try to re-surface the rotors, will just plan to replace them. I don't think the rotors are good enough to even try to save.

 

I have three HHR's one 06 and 2 07s. 06 96K+ 07 wife's 84K daughters 07 49K. All have OEM pads,rotors,drums and rear shoes that came on the when new. No vibration, no noise nothing. Don't overheat, don't hold down hard on pedal after a stop, keep them clean, lubed and adjusted .

 

Today I replaced the CV axles, rotated the tires, adjusted the rear brakes. Upon the test drive including multiple hard braking from 55 MPH the vibration was gone. In the past, I had blamed the intermediate shaft. Choose your own.