Good evening folks, my first post on here but I felt as though I owed it to y'all as much as your knowledge and posts have helped me through a bunch of these issues. I apologize I advance for not noting the name or referencing the specific posts that helped me in other wise dismal times. I do not take my stuff to folks to work on it. When I do they never fail to disappoint. With that I have a good grasp of most things automotive, obtained through a variety of proper learning, high performance blunders, and going everything wrong to get me to the right place.
​​​​​​This car, 08 HHR, was my dad's love, not mine. I would personally never buy anything designed by Bryan Nesbitt as I can appreciate his design for manufacture, I also had the privilege of maintaining 2 pt cruisers and realize minimal consideration was given to the technicians that would keep these machines going. While you may strongly disagree with me, i am fully ok with that as I feel I have enough data points to form a personal opinion. The biggest issue I run into is the lack of manuals at the shop level and sometimes jaded information and videos that are often plain wrong. With that in mind this is now my first stop with all things HHR.
When pops passed, this jewel was passed to my son and it actually came at a great time because I was fighting some overheating problems on the wife's car .
1st problem- car would not start. Had been sitting a while, battery was hammer dead, jumping did nothing. This was pre HHR site for me and this was a unique issue I hope y'all don't have the opportunity to deal with. I'm guessing pops got this thing from a shady lot but he paid cash and loved it. He occasionally had issues similar to it not cranking and we would fiddle our way through it and it would somehow start and go months without issue. I could write a book on possible issues as I don't think they were all the same. This time it was serious about not starting and failing to admit defeat I spent a lot of time crawling around that thing only to finally discover a LoJack type box apparently installed by the dealer despite the cash purchase and it had somehow defaulted to kill mode. Snatched it out and all was well.
2nd problem-car would take 3-4 turns of the key to bust it over but was seemingly fine after. Through reading yalls posts , I picked up a fuel pressure gage and it would maintain 0 pressure at key off. A fuel pump and abot 3 times as long as I felt it should of taken and good to go again.
3rd problem-wife was driving home and lost all things power. She was in gear, stopped at a light so there was no putting it in neutral and getting it out the road. I thought I knew what it was and made it there before the officer had a wrecker pick it up. Not being what I thought it was I somehow got it going again, gave her my truck, grabbed my tool bag and proceeded to drive it home. About half way , same thing and I managed to get it into neutral and muscle it into a parking spot. Some reasons and proving and a little anger helped me with this. I slammed the underhood fuse panel lid on it and I heard a bunch of relays activate. After some good instruction from some of these posts was able to determine faulty connections under the panel was the culprit but not the end. After tearing it down, cleaning it up, and reinstalling it I could not replicate the failure. That's when the headaches started. I feel dumb I didn't read further and just replicate what one the the members posted. I instead spend several hours a day with a meter and test light. The issue was I think a 1672 code, maybe not the code but the jist was several of the main components did not see the same voltage and would cause the car to go into a reduced power state. Against my better judgement, despite just being in the panel, I listened to the masses that said this is always the ignition switch. Even though I had no proof and couldn't convince myself that was the issue, I replaced the good ignition switch with another good one which did nothing to help my problem. I had some truely odd things happening. I could connect my test light to the + terminal on the box and while not one single fuse blew , I could touch off on several fuses and get it to light up. One of the many things that had me stumped. After a week I tore it out and reinstalled everything. Same issue, reduced power, but different circuits seemed affected. Could not replicate the previous readings from prior to reinstalling. Some more digging through the site and I came across my guardian angel and hate I can not recall his name to thank him, but he had some similar issues after a trans swap if I recall. He said instead of pushing the panel into the 4 connectors, he hooked them to the panel and then pushed them all down. When tearing the panel back down I also noticed some of those pins would pull straight out. Granted I had everything in place without the top part on the panel so I could get to everything with the meter. Took it down one last time, a little more care , a little more grease, carefully connected all 4 plugs to the panel prior to clipping it into position and the doublecheck all the fuses and relays. That was it. 100% of everything worked. That was a big one.
Last issue- low air flow from AC motor... after building some confidence in the repair I was about to pass it back off to the wife and get my truck back, I noticed air blew crazy cold but there just wasn't much of it. I came straight here and was surprised to popular answer was the under dash filter. With doubt in my heart I pulled the filter and what appeared to be a sock that ran through the outer cycle on a blender fell out. Cleaned out the tray and tried it out and that was it, nail on the head .
Sorry for such a lengthy read but did want to let y'all know you are helping folks and wanted to say thanks.

 

to the forums! Glad we could help!

 

Thanks for your follow up and welcome to the site!

 

Now I have a headache. Pleas consider double spacing in future long posts. I tend to ignore walls of words.

 

Now Donbrew , he’s thankful we helped him clear up a problem with his HHR

 

Oh, quit trying to be nice and just come out and say how your really feel...

Here, I fixed it for you. Well, for me, too. Not pretending I put a lot of effort into it, so it may not be the best job. I really don't know, because I really haven't read it all yet. The interweb has twaddled my attention span.

 

I guess, thanks again...???😂