Last night I reached a local minimum, as they say in calculus. It’s not my absolute wrenching low point, since I’ve been through worse and I suspect I’ll go through worse in the future, but last night was bad. Anytime you’re wielding a sawzall at midnight, lying on your back on an oil-soaked driveway, swearing to the heavens to just let the damn blade cut through the damn broken bolt, you know things are bad. Adding to the pathetic nature of my current situation is the fact that this HHR, which I recently acquired, is my ride to a Ford press event tomorrow, and then to New York the following day. That’s over 1,000 miles in the cards, and I have to get it ready, like, right now. I am screwed.
It Seemed Like A Nice Car That Would Help Two People Out. So I Bought It
A number of months ago, a friend of a friend who’d recently flown to the U.S. from France to work for Stellantis needed a car. He’d been renting during a hot renting market, spending loads of cash each week for some sad econobox, and I just couldn’t bear it. I set out to find him a reliable, cheap, and economical car. To do so, I followed my own advice of buying an “Ugly Stick,” and the ugly stick I chose was the Chevrolet HHR. I figured it’s got a stout 2.2-liter Ecotec engine in it, a good Getrag five-speed manual transmission, and cheap, easy-to-replace bones. (That last part, I’d later find to be only partly true).
Anyway, the French engineer drove the HHR for a few months, and then unexpectedly had to leave Michigan. He put his car up for sale, but struggled to get a buyer despite the fact that the car is almost entirely rust-free, and has only 127,000 miles on the clock. After a number of months, he texted me saying he was having issues parting ways with his HHR, and — as I felt guilty being partly responsible and didn’t want him taking a bath on the car I’d recommended he buy — I bought the vehicle for $3,000, or $200 less than he’d spent.
I’d test-driven the car eight months prior, so I didn’t bother driving it before forking over the cash. I planned to thoroughly inspect the vehicle, then drive it to my good friend Bobby‘s mom’s house in upstate New York. She’d been looking for a good, reliable car, so I figured I could help two folks out at once by being an intermediary. The problem was, the HHR began crumbling, just as many cars tend to at around 100,000 miles.
I’d been through this before when I bought a 2009 Nissan Versa for my brother’s girlfriend. It seemed nice, with only 98,000 miles on the odo, but nothing had been maintained. And this is why I consider cars with between 80,000 and 130,000 miles to be “high risk” purchases, only in that they tend to command a premium over “high mileage” cars, but they don’t necessarily present an advantage from a reliability standpoint. I think it’s safe to say that people tend to defer maintenance as long as they can; that’s the layperson’s strategy, at least. And the reality is that original parts like water pumps, tie rod ends, wheel bearings, ball joints, struts, and spark plugs can hang in there for 100,000 miles. But usually not much longer. In the case of the Versa, I had to replace all of these parts, and this HHR is going down that same path.
I’d rather have just bought a 150,000 mile HHR. At least then I’d have paid less, and I bet the big things like the motor and transmission would have been just fine, as those tend to last well into the 200,000 mile range. Of course, the body likely would have been rustier given that I live in Michigan, so my $3,000 purchase wasn’t a bad one from that perspective, though it is ruining my life.
Let Me Tell You The Idiotic Situation I’m In Right Now
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This HHR needs to be not just in running condition by the end of the day, it has to be in “capable of driving 1,000 miles”-condition by the end of the day. Why? Because I have the pleasure of driving the new Ford F-150 Raptor R on the west side of Michigan tomorrow. From there I’m driving to New York to hang out with my friend Andrew Collins. Then I chill with The Autopian’s publisher Matt Hardigree before we head into New York City to fly to SEMA in Vegas.
Clearly, getting the HHR driving is important. A Ford event, a Halloween party with Andrew, an opportunity to hang with Matt’s awesome family, and SEMA all rest in the (control) arms of this HHR. I already changed the oil, ground the rust off the bottoms of the doors and repainted them, swapped serpentine belt, and threw in spark plugs as well as an air filter and cabin air filter. It’s noon, and I still have to do all this:
- Replace both wheel front bearings
- Replace both front control arms
- Replace both inner and outer tie rods
- Replace both sets of brake pads
- Mount winter wheels to steelies (with new tire pressure sensors)
- Mount all-season tires to sick Saab alloys I got at the junkyard (with new tire pressure sensors)
- Get an alignment
- Have car professionally undercoated (I could do that early tomorrow)
That’s a lot of work, but definitely nothing I couldn’t knock out in a few hours plus whatever time it takes my local shop to mount and balance my tires. The problem is, I live in Michigan, so these simple jobs aren’t actually simple. They’re ruinous.
Chevrolet’s Poorly-Designed Lower Control Arm Fastening Strategy Means I’m So Deeply Screwed
Things are bad, and it’s because of poor forethought on GM’s part. I’ve managed to get all the tie rods and even the wheel bearings off the car, but the one thing that’s holding me up are the dastardly control arms, whose rear bolts thread into a captured nut on the car’s body. Usually what happens is people put a huge breaker bar on the bolt, and when they go to spin it, they break the cage holding the nut free from the body, and the bolt and nut both spin together. Removing the bolt then requires use of a sawzall to cut between the control arm and the control arm brackets on the subframe. In my case, I didn’t break the weld nuts, because the bolt was seized into the metal sleeve in the control arm bushing. Here’s a look at the situation:
Basically, the bolt goes up from the bottom, through the subframe, through the sleeve in the center of the control arm’s rubber bushing, through the subframe again, then through the HHR’s body, where there’s a nut that’s held to the body via a welded cage. Usually folks put a breaker bar on the bolt head shown at the bottom, spinning the bolt (in blue), breaking the cage off the body, spinning the nut to no end.
Here’s a closer look at that bushing and its metal sleeve:
Here’s the cage that is supposed to keep the nut from spinning. I found this poking out from a hole in the unibody, so clearly someone had tried to remove this bolt before, and broke the cage’s welds:
That leaves just the square nut atop that section of the body:
In my case, the bolt (in blue in the diagram) seized to the bushing’s metal sleeve (in red), which itself is being squeezed between the two bits of subframe by the clamp load. The result is that the square nut above didn’t spin since the bolt and the clamped sleeve are one thanks to rust. Nope, what happened is, I sheared the bolt head right off:
This happened despite copious amounts of PB Blaster poured all over the weld nut, and despite tons of heat from a MAPP gas torch. I anticipate a similar result on the driver’s side.
So what do I do about it? Well, I’m going to have to sawzall the crap out of the bolt. Here I am trying to do that last night, but to no avail:
I’m heading to Home Depot now to buy the best Sawzall on the market. Then I’m going to get the best cutting blade on the market, at which point I will try to cut that stupid sleeve and bolt. It will take forever.
Once I’ve done that, I’m going to have to hammer the welded cage (if it’s still there on the driver’s side) with a punch, hopefully breaking the welds so I can slap a regular nut on the back side of the new bolt that I buy from a Chevrolet dealer. This is all going to take a lot of time, and oh [looks at clock] it’s already 12:15. I’m running very late. I leave tomorrow around 11 A.M. for the west side of Michigan to drive that Raptor R.
Anyway, I’m off to get this sawzall, hopefully cut some things, buy a bolt and nut, and maybe cobble all this stuff together while a tire shop installs tires onto wheels. While I’m gone, I’ll leave you with some videos from other poor bastards who have had to deal with this horrible GM design:
This guy says “do not despair,” but I disagree. Despair:
And here’s another poor bastard:
Oh, and it’s going to rain tonight and tomorrow morning. Something tells me I’m not taking this HHR anywhere tomorrow.
Why, GM? Why?!
I do not envy your landlord when you move out. You’re definitely not getting your security deposit back, since it sounds like the property is a Superfund site with all the automotive waste products.
He is the mechanic for his landlord and has probably done more than his deposit in free work on his landlord’s car. Don’t think it’ll be a huge issue.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’d rather deal with draconian California smog check laws than this crap any day.
Good luck, David. Maybe I’ll see you at SEMA. I’ll be working the Bilstein booth for a least a couple of days.
Perhaps I missed it but was there actually anything wrong with the control arms? You said it was crumbling but no specifics were provided. This kinda feels like a case of don’t fix what ain’t broken. You opened the can of worms and now they’re coming to kill you.
The bushings were gone. The car was undrivable.
Another day, another David Tracy post where he makes me feel glad for not living in the rust belt.
Sooner you move to Cali, the sooner you can rest. Get on with it, man!
Can you get the beloved Wheel o’ Death in there? Lowe’s sells a 3&1/2” diamond blade for angle grinders that cuts through stuff that sawzalls won’t touch. There’s also a grey & black Bosch blade I can’t remember the name of for sawzalls that I’ve used on hardened & carbide steel before.
Might be time to invest in a small oxy-acetylene rig. The ones sold at HVAC supply places were ~$400 a couple years ago.
As an aside, these situations are why I absolutely don’t believe in telekinesis: as much as we will it, these situations still continue to plague us.
I wish you luck, man—and feel your pain
No good deed goes unpunished
I just did a front driver side control arm, outer tie rod and wheel bearing on a 2017 Forester (ran a curb/I’m dumb) and was scared I might run into similar problems, but newer car and being Subaru the design was very helpful in getting everything replaced quite easily (no power tools, no experience, no breaker bar – except adjustable wrench attached to the back of my rachet).
This is why flat-rate makes being an auto mechanic horrible.
Take your HHR to a shop. The labor book says R&R Control Arm = 1.2 hours. You pay $65 * 1.2 = $78. The mechanic gets paid $12.50 * 1.2 = $15. Of course the bolt shears off. THEY ALL DO. So the mechanic spends 4 hours bleeding all over your rusty POS and gets fifteen bucks for the job, no matter how long it takes.
Honda calculates labor times by having a factory top pro mechanic do the job three times in a row on a brand new vehicle, and the third time becomes the flat rate for the job. So they’ve done the job twice already. Tools are already out. Fasteners already cracked loose.
No comment other than to express how grateful I am to have lived in an area where automotive rust is a non-issue. It just adds another insidious layer on top of whatever other problems might be hiding in a used car.
uh? are you avoiding admitting failure in the land of OZ? nobody cares about the HHR, you have a fleet of hoopties, surely one can get you to a press junket.
Maybe it’s time to take a leaf from your Australian experiences and buy a cheap plasma cutter – ‘I’m not asking anymore’.
I worked on a 2010 Subaru Forester on Saturday. It was actually quite relaxing, not a drop of penetrative fluid was needed!
Stuff like this makes me glad I fled the land of road salt almost 30 years ago. Here in semi-desert Central Oregon the orange stuff under the car is volcanic rock dust
Okay so…. cut the control arm near the stuck bolt. Cut the frozen nut off the top of the bolt, assuming you can reach it with a blade? Then pry bar to remove the remaining portion of the control arm from the frame.
If you have access problem with a sawzall, a dremel oscillating tool with a metal blade also works in cutting stubborn bolts.
David, you have like eleventy cars. I am sure more than one are running (J10, Holy Grail Jeeps, Mustang; unless that hedgehog had more of a grand time than you reported).
I wish I kept my David Tracy Mad Libs post from back at the beginning of Project Cactus. It would work well here. Nobody suffers like David to bring us the content we crave.
You’re a good man David. Going through all this work to sell the car to someone else. You’re a good Man!
This is pretty common, especially on ones that have seen a number of winters. Pain in the ass to get the old cage nut out, but at least you can use a regular nut and get a wrench in the cavity to hold it when reassembling.
Other than this, these cars (including the Cobalt and Ion, which are basically the same thing) are incredibly easy to work on.
These cars were never designed to be worth this much time and money after they hit 100,000. How often do you even see an HHR on the road today, let alone one that doesn’t look like it is barely clinging to life? All of these oversights and poorly thought out maintenance areas come from GM’s philosophy that these cars would go to the junkyard once something major failed. We know they can build things to last because of their trucks. Small cars were something that GM was happy to neglect as long as they could push them to fleets and individual consumers who wanted a bargain.
This one isn’t worth the aggravation David. Even doing the work yourself, you need to ask how much of your time on earth you are willing to sacrifice to a disposable car.
There’s loads of HHRs around – they’re all chilling with the Azteks and Rendezvous at beach-adjacent 55+ trailer parks
Rent a car for the trip and move on…assuming nothing else you own is driveable.
“…assuming nothing else you own is driveable.”
What an utterly ridiculous insinuation! *clears throat, looks off to the side*
I think the concern is that he agreed to deliver the HHR to a buyer in NY rather than how David is going to transport himself to NY. At this point, though, it would probably be worth it to just tow the sucker behind the J10. Then he can have an excuse to wrench with Andrew Collins.
He needs to stop selling working cars that he doesn’t have.
But of course, if he’s not under some sort of deadline he would just buy another junker instead fixing the broken ones.
OOOOO!!! The Autopian/The Drive crossover event!!! I’m in!
David doesn’t comprehend the concept of renting anything when you can BUY.
David, Forget that nonsense. The obvious answer is buy another rusty Jeep, HHR, Fiat, Renault or some old Chrysler for a few hundred bucks. You’ve still got time. Problem solved… Your welcome.
GM’s gonna GM.
David, please listen to the voice of experience (in my case bolts seized in the sleeves in the control arm bushings for the rear axle of a 78 Mercury – an exactly analogous wrenching situation) – you can’t cut through the sleeve, don’t bother trying. They’re made out of carbide steel, which means they are as hard or harder than any saw blade or drill bit you care to try.
The correct answer to this dilemma is 1) break off bolt head (you’ve done this successfully) 2) apply air chisel w/ the punch bit to the bolt WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE and drive that damned bolt out through the sleeve. The relentless hammering *will* eventually break the rust-bond between the bolt and sleeve. I promise.
In your case you could also probably try drilling the bolt out lengthwise, but don’t try to fight the sleeve – the sleeve will win.
Seconded. Mr. Smith knows what’s up. If you’re already going scorched earth, which is the only viable choice, this is the way to execute it.
I agree, but sadly I don’t have an air chisel. Somehow I’ve made it this far using brute force [flexes].
So, Harbor Freight sells a fairly cheap nut splitter.
Is that not an option for some reason?
Actually the bigger issue is that there’s no room to push the bolt through the back side of the bushing. The body is in the way.
Oh, I see. The frame holds both sides of the bushing. As it does on pretty much every single other frame and bushing setup in existence. Silly oversight on my end.
Death wheel grinder? Shotgun?
I’d probably cut off the top with a grinder, cut the aluminum enough to break the bushing enough to get it out, then attack the metal sleeve and cut it out with another death wheel.
Or once the control arm is out of the way via death wheel and the lid , you might have enough clearance to wiggle the whole bolt and sleeve out intact.
I’d have to see it to know the spaces available to work.
Good luck!
I’ve got a cheapo Campbell Hausfeld, but Hobo Freight sells their store brand one for $12.99, and the chisel set for another $7. You’ll be surprised how often you use one! Plus, they have tie rod and ball joint pickle fork attachments that’ll change your life.
Now be honest, how many blades did you dull trying to go through that sleeve?
(But please don’t do this at 1AM)
I’m kind of impressed that the HHR has, what appears to be, a forged aluminum control arm. That’s nice at least.
Well, until you need to replace bushings AND you don’t have a press. (Side eyes Evo in the garage)
Either someone replaced the control arms before, or the HHRs all got the FE3/FE5 cast aluminum lower control arms. On the Cobalts, at least, the FE1 (non-SS/Sport) cars got stamped steel/welded lower control arms. FE3 (SS/NA & Sport) and FE5 (SS/SC & SS/TC) cars got these.
Can I ask what the point of owning a dozen vehicles is if a single one is a failure point preventing a road trip?
Speaking for myself the point is that I’ve run out of room for more.
Well, I’m dropping the car off in New York at Bobby’s mom’s house. So it has to be the HHR.
“Can I ask what the point of owning a dozen vehicles is if a single one is a failure point preventing a road trip?“
You must be new around here. They do it for our entertainment and/or because someone told them inhaling rust would keep anemia at bay.
David, I’ve been reading your stuff for a long time, here and over there, on that Russian site. I’ve enjoyed your experiences and stories.
However, you are either a closet masochist, or you’re headed for an early forties, stare at your feet and sob unceasingly, wander the darkened streets like Hamlet, forget your own name, breakdown.
Buy two sticks of dynamite for the HHR and afterward, walk away. Find a place near the sea, introduce yourself to a nice person, take up surfing or roller skating, and learn to cook. Never buy anything but new cars again – and only one at a time. Live well.
This man speaks with straight tongue. Are you chasing the dragon or is the dragon chasing you?
Why would I have a breakdown?
(Bad crankshaft position sensor, I’d guess?)
David,
You bought another car? (said like the Ambassador at the end of Hunt for Red October)
Ah, Jeffery Pelt, National Security Advisor. When he’s not kissing babies, he’s stealing their lollipops.