I took the 2001 Cruiser to the garage to get the required PA inspections. I asked them to see if they could find a reason why the m.p.g. had severely dropped. They did. You could hardly turn the front wheels by hand. It seems the calibers had frozen and the wheels were "braked" all the time. I needed new calibers, new rotors and new pads. This of course freed up the wheels and freed up my wallet from a lot of cash. Throw in a tie rod end, cutting a lip from the rear drums, a couple other parts and you're talking a big repair bill. The odometer is just getting ready to turn 40K. I never put the amount of money in a vehicle that I've put in this one before with this low mileage on it. Well, at least I'll get those 3-4 m.p.g. back.
I was just talking on sunday with friends who made a similar point. Their Chrysler product had more problems than they were willing to deal with, and the dealer seemed to go out of his way to find loopholes in the warranty that made THEM pay for repairs.* They recently bought a Honda because the warranty listed a host of things the Chrysler warranty would not cover.
Most recently, a sensor, or somehing, on the tranny. Because it was ATTACHED to the tranny instead of being IN the tranny, the dealer claimed the warranty wouldn't cover it.
GM did the same thing to my on my 1995 Corsica. 60,000 km bumper-to-bumper, and after that just "drive train". At 60,500km the alternator blows up (like most of the GM piece of shit alternators that they use now!). I was livid. To me an alternator is a major engine component, and there is no way in hell that it should blow at such low mileage. To me it is an integral part of the drive train. The car is basically not driveable without it. BUT NO! To the weissels at GM, the "drive train" is the engine block assembly, the tranmission, and MAYBE the axels. Just as you state, all supporting sensors and electrical / electronic bits are NOT covered! What HORSE SHIT.
After protracted arguements with GM, they deferred the matter to my local dealer service manager. HE was at least willing to do SOMETHING. He gave me the part, but I had to pay them to put it in the car. The tow and the install was just over $100, and that ain't bad these days!
So I was happy with my local dealer, but still pissed off enough that I simply do not buy GM products any more. Their quality has gone down into the dummper over the last 15+ years, and I see no reason why I should throw away my money buy supporting thier crappy cars. And, based on GMs loss of market share over the same period, it appears that the motoring public agrees with my sentiment! GM is now reaping the rewards for their lack-luster designs, and their poor quality.
On another note, while on holiday, the people camping next to us had a
1952 Chevrolet with a 235 CID straight six. I asked him what mileage he gets, figuring it must be pretty bad... 18 MPG City, 25 MPG highway!!!!!!! I barely get that in my 2002 GC with 3.3!!!!
I have a lot of bells and whistles, but the auto industy has NOT improved the basics in over 60 years! What a rude wake up call. And with todays gas prices, what a slap in the face to the motoring public!
You could have done worse, buy a Ford and change heater cores on a regular basis. (which requires removal of the entire dash board, steering wheel, air bags, and purging/opening of the A/C system)
Sorry you had such trouble. I head up a PT Cruiser club with over 130 members. I've yet to hear of a problem like this. It certainly isn't common. Most in our club will agree with me, my PT has been THE MOST trouble free car I've owned. I will have owned my 2001 6 years in October. Almost 90,000 miles and the only thing replaced was a PVC valve. It is as squeek and rattle free as the day I bought it new. One member has 155,00 miles and he has had regular maintenance on it and his is as trouble free as mine. Of these 130 members, 2 have had to have their transmissions replaced and both were under warranty (good for them, it aint cheap).
Normal gas mileage is not wonderful. But we have members reporting consistant gas mileage in the 23 to 28 mpg range. Us with heavier foots do get less.
Likely all you needed was a new set of pads and clean and lubed caliper pins. I had an identical issue with my Chrysler mini-van while in Florida and a local brake shop quoted me a $1,200 charge stating that the calipers, rotors, and pads were shot. [Let us pray for those retired folks down there who get this treatment from service shops every day].
I drove away after rejecting their repair offer and drove to a local parts shop. The rotors looked fine, no cracks or warps, and were still thick enough to continue in service. In their lot I changed out the pads and lubed the pins with synthetic brake lube and it was like new. That repair lasted until I traded in the vehicle a year later. Cost: $62.00 and change. Time:
55 min. (By the way, even the old pads looked fine and likely could have stayed in service). From then on I lube my caliper pins myself once a year, an easy task.
I wish I could echo your good fortune; however, I have to side with the original poster.
My 2001 PT (delivered June 2000) has 52k miles on it and has had to have the front brakes redone (at approx. 38k) because of sticking calipers, requiring warped rotors to be replaced as well.
The fit and finish of my PT is the absolute best I have ever seen. But, fit and finish is not everything; in addition to the 2 (or is it 3) recalls, my car has seen the dealer more than any other MoPar I've had. First time was for terrible gas mileage; dealer had no idea why. Three days later I returned to tell him of the milage related TSB I learned of through a PTC online group; dealer reprogrammed the computer and mileage improved quite a bit.
Driving along one day, with about 20k miles on the car, smoke started coming from the steering column, especially from the control stalk on the left side. Pulled over, turned off ignition and the problem continued. Fortunately, a dealer was not far away; with visions of my car bursting into flames, I quickly drove the quarter-mile to a dealer, explained what was happening and they pulled it in, repaired the problem in less than an hour, no charge, just hassle. I wish my dealer were even half as responsive, apparently trustworthy and competent; too bad this dealer is too distant to become my new dealer.
Radio failed; while it would play, it could not be turned on or off (except by turning ignition on or off) nor could the volume or station be changed. No charge, but a hassle.
Power steering leaks fluid in cold weather, but let it warm up (like in the dealer's service write-up area) and doesn't lose a drop. I expect the dealer will be able to find the problem shortly after my extended warranty is up or, it won't be covered by extended warranty.
Transmission fluid leak at 47k; dealer found it but not covered by extended warranty.
The rear sway-bar bushings and links are shot; dealer couldn't find a problem until the warranty was up though I first reported the problem at 33k miles. The dealer kindly offered to repair the problems for $300 with MoPar parts that had not been reengineered, thus are likely to fail again in 30K miles or so.
My other vehicle is a 2004 Dakota, with 20k miles. So far, the only problem has been poor handling initially - then I noticed the rear sway-bar (clearly noted on the window sticker) was NOT installed. 4 weeks after ordering them, the dealer received the parts - not the correct ones, those took another two weeks; handling is much improved now that the sway-bar really is on the truck.
My father worked for Chrysler for 30+ years; Chrysler products were all we owned for my entire life (58 years) and most of them were well engineered cars. The employee/family discount made them easy to buy; but, now, all car makers give that pricing to anyone who walks in at the right time. Perhaps most makers are turning out high-maintenance vehicles today; but our next vehicle will likely be a Honda. I don't know anyone who thinks their Honda is high-maintenance, even my ex-wife, who finds fault with everything ;-)
I was sitting in a Ferry line-up last year. In the lane right beside me was a fellow who had a spanking new - driven off the lot 2 weeks ago (at that time) PT Cruiser. It could barely run. He had the hood up and was looking around. After some playing, he believed that he had discovered the problem as when certain plug wires were disconnected, there was no change in engine perfomance! Well, not that I think much of his troubleshooting methods, but he was "FED UP". The earliest his dealer could see him for a "warranty" look at the vehicle was 3 weeks! Yet if you called the same dealership for "non-warranty" work, it could be serviced the same day!
Man am I ever glad I did not live anywhere close to that dealer!
But there are lots of anecdotal stories in my general area, and the unofficial consensus is that the PT Cruisers are "junk". Most people I have run in to that have them would never buy them again.
Admittedly all this is second hand, but is it persistant enough, and pervasive enough, to make me think twice about ever purchasing that particular vehicle.
I am very glad to hear that there are pe>Sorry you had such trouble. I head up a PT Cruiser club with over 130
"Better Things for Better Living...Through Chemistry." DuPont adopted it in 1939 and was their slogan until the 1980s when the "Through Chemistry" bit was dropped; in 1999 it was replaced by "The miracles of science".
Timothy Leary probably said, "Better Living Through Chemistry".
Sorry to hear of your opinion of PT's especially being that they had the highest initial quality of any Chrysler in history. I see many, talk to many, read lots of forums messages from PT groups worldwide. And that opinion is not what most have. There have been some with problems as there are with any car. Crapola happens. A friends Infiniti was taken back as a lemon. There have been a couple recalls, one very minor since it involved child car seat hook up.
Mine may disintegrate in the middle of the street tomorrow, but is has been more than 99.9% trouble free for almost 6 years. I wouldn't hesitate to buy another. I wish the Audi's, Volvo's, Oldsmobiles, Chevy's, Honda and Buick's I've owned had been at least as half trouble free as my PT.
Anyone else here old enough to remember the Saturday Night Live skit featuring a spokesman for the chemical industry who kept repeating a chemical industry slogan "Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible" (no doubt in mocking of the DuPont slogan). As the skit progressed, the spokesman (sorry - I don't say spokes-person - sounds effected to my ears - I'm old school), while speaking to a group of people (maybe a group of students), asked for a drink of water, after which someone handed him a glass of liquid identified to the man as good old refreshing H2SO4. He drank it quickly, and as he was choking and dropping to the floor, the person who gave him the glass said "Remember
- without chemicals, life itself would be impossible!" That was considered humor back then on SNL. (The sixties were good to us, eh!?)
Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')
Brake jobs are gravy jobs, that is why so many people out there do them. Tire shops, oil change places, grocery stores, you name it. And most of them use overpriced components. And overcharge for labor.
Brakes are very, very easy to do. I've done mine for years. And I would not let anyone else do them anyway, since most of the shops doing them out there put their greenhorn techs on them, since they are so easy.
Brake components are marketed along the lines of Marvel Mystery Oil and other fancy stuff that there's no proof it does anything. I can walk into a el-cheapo auto parts place like AutoZone and get a Chinese-made rotor for $30. I can get the same thing at the dealership for $150. And the two parts look identical. They sound identical when dropped on the floor. Yet, there's loads of people out there that claim the steel is bad in the Chinese rotor, etc. I don't see how that is, they weigh the same, look the same, feel the same, and wear on the car the same.
And as for brake pads, well here's how that works. Brake pads come in ranges from soft to hard. The harder ones last a lot longer. But they have a lot of side effects. First they are much more prone to squealing. Second they tend to wear out the rotor faster. Third they tend to get a lot hotter which can help warp rotors. What people forget all the time is that brakes can only disippate kinetic energy by heat or by sloughing off material - either material from the pads or the rotors. But most people think they are saving money if the pads last longer since they don't have to be changed as often so they go for the expensive long lasting pads. Then they bitch come brake time since now the rotors are either deeply grooved or warped.
As for calipers, well here's the deal on them. Yes they can seize. Most common I've seen is due to old brake fluid. Brake fluid is very hygroscopic and will suck moisture out of the damndest places. That moisure gets into the system and rusts the master cylinders and caliper pistons, which then stick and seize in the bores. Well there's two ways to fix this. First is replace the caliper. Second is to remove the caliper, fill up the master cylinder, start pumping the brakes, put more fluid in the cylinder, pump the brakes more, etc. As the pressure builds up, eventually even the most stuck caliper piston will be blown free of the bore. Across the shop floor at high velocity unless you have had the foresight to put a shop towl in the caliper to catch the piston when it comes out. Once the piston is out it is a very easy matter to clean all the rust and crud out of the bore and the piston with just clean brake fluid and a shop rag. Most of the time you will end up with a piston that might have a few rust pits in it. If the caliper isn't pitted too bad then it can be reassembled and the brakes bled. Sometimes the caliper might weep a bit of brake fluid for a bit until the seals readjust themselves. Most of the time the caliper will end up just fine and the seals will hold and it won't leak.
What you got to understand, though, is that cleaning up an old caliper is what is called a "repair" Unbolting it and putting in a brand new one is what is called a "parts swap" What the deal here is, though, is that repairs are only done by real mechanics. Parts swaps are what are done by the minimum-wage greenhorn techs that most of these places employ. And if your the shop, would you rather employ a real mechanic and pay him $40 an hour in salary, then bill the customer 2 hours for him at a shop rate of $60 an hour to repair a stuck caliper, or would you rather pay a parts-changer $12 an hour for 1 hour, charge the customer $60 an hour, and get a 20% markup on a $200 new caliper into the bargain?
Most shops out there have figured this out by now. There are still a few old-timey shops out there, thank God, that have a real mechanic that owns the place, and when you call them you get an answering machine, and when you drive around there with your car, the guy comes out, wiping off the grease from his hands, to take your keys and gives you a verbal estimate because he is too busy doing work to bother with a write up. But, most of those have disappeared and been replaced by repair shops where you walk in and there's a receptionist behind the counter who has never touched an engine in her life, and there's a nice waiting room with a TV and magazines.
You may be right in particular instances of putting a premium price on cheap parts, but there's all kinds of variations in quality of iron/steel and processing. If the processing (combined with the quality/consistency of the iron/steel) leaves a lot of residual stresses in the iron/steel, guess what's going to happen when it heats up.
You're oversimplifying. For example, the binders can be very gummy when hot causing uneven filming of a given hard or soft pad onto the rotor and mimicking rotor warping when the rotor is not warped at all. That's one example.
I have never understood this claim. The laws of physics say that for a given weight of vehicle slowed from y mph to x mph in a given amount of time will create z amount of heat in the friction components. I have not been able to come up with a credible explanation from the laws of physics to explain why a harder pad will inherently create more heat than a softer pad for the same deceleration of a given vehicle. (Saying that one may stop the vehicle quicker or not as quick doesn't help - I'm assuming the driver is applying whatever pedal pressure it takes to give the desired (same) deceleration of the same vehicle in the two cases.)
And, again, given that the deceleration is the same (pedal modulation assumed to close the loop for same deceleration), the heat generated in the friction materials will be the same. The softer pad will have to shed (break molecular bonds) more material than the harder pad to create the same amount of heat (i.e. create the same deceleration, i.e., convert the same amount of kinetic energy).
OK - so what you're saying is that the softer pad material sheds more easily (i.e., creates less heat) than the harder pad material under given conditions, so the rest of the heat (to be created to burn off energy for deceleration) has to be made up by more rotor material coming off. Hmmm - I'll have to think about that - you may have a point.
I am of the opinion that uneven filming (crappy binders combined with certain driving situations) is the real cause of pulsating brakes much more than is realized (i.e., true rotor warping is not always, perhaps seldom is, the cause).
Or by DIY'ers whose time is worth something. Say if a caliper costs $40...? Evan a "real mechanic" on the clock may swap for new or rebuilt in that case.
But if the caliper only costs $35-50?
Yeah - but she's a lot prettier!
I don't see many TV's in the shops around here. The magazines are usually hot rod magazines or car repair trade magazines showing you how to increase profits by taking on new types of repairs. And there's always the display rack of aftermarket wheels to look at (I guess that's why they don't have the TV - would decrease sales of wheels).
Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')
I gotta chime in on this aspect of this thread....
When I had my new Chevy Corssica, it came time to get "the brakes" done. Brakes, as they are components that wear out through use, are not covered on warranty unless they truly prove to be "defective'.
Well mine wore out. No surprize there.
So, since the car was still on warranty, I got GM to do the job, merely for the sake of keeping everything "all GM". My reaosn being that if there was a problem after this, that GM could NOT point the finger at me and say "oh no, the problem is related to that OTHER shop, you better go talk to them....".
GM charged me $185 (about 8 years ago) to CHANGE THE PADS (front disc brakes). THAT WAS IT! They did NOT lubricate the calipers. They DID NOT resurface the rotors. The ONLY thing that they did was swap in new pads.
When I asked about the rotors, they told me that the rotors are so thin when NEW in newer cars that they, effectively, cannot be "resurfaced" anymore! Apparently, if you resurface them when you replace the pads, often they are then below the "minimum thickness". Even if they are not at the time of service, they then quickly wear below the minimum. As they wear, they are then more prone to warping because they cannot disapate the heat properly.
Fair enough.
When I asled about the caliper lubrication, GM considers that a "preventive maintenance", and they wanted to charge me an extra $59.95 to do it! WHAT HORSE SHIT! What kind of idiot would simply swap pads and not do a proper servicing of such a critical system!!!???? Answer: A DEALER!
When it came time for the SECOND brake job (after warranty expired) I called a few local parts stores and brake shops, and GM. One local parts store was selling "United" brand brake parts, and that rotor was $25.
At this time "Wagner" was selling at most places for $90 - $115 dollars each.
GMs price for a "GM" rotor (they had NO IDEA who the hell made them) was $165 each!
When I told everyone about the $25 rotors, they all said the same thing "OHHHH NO! Those cheap ones made in China! They will only last about a year!"
"OK. But let us examine the facts!" I told them...
"If a GM brake job will be:
$185 for pads installed $330 for rotors $85 for one hour labour to install
Total $600
And by everyone's own admission the rotors are all the same physical dimensions when new, and they are so thin that they cannot be resurfaced....
Even a local reputable brake shop was going to charge $300 to do the job!
If the Chinese made rotor lasts a year and costs $25, then I can afford to install new rotors EVERY SINGLE YEAR!"
They guy at GM was so stunned he was speachless.
Compared to Wagner at an average price of $100, that is 4 new rotors, or 4 years. That wagner part wont last 2 years.
Compared to GM $25 x 6 is $150, or 6 years. Again the GM rotor wont last 2 years (assuming my level of vehicle useage at the time).
I did the brake job myself. As has been mentioned, EASY to do. An easy job to do at a leisurely pace on a sunny saturday morning in my driveway.
Costs:
2 Rotors: $50 Front Pads: $35 (mid grade)
Total Cost $85
That is 700% less than GM and 350% less than the brake shop. And you know what? Those "cheap" chinese parts lasted as long as the Original GM ones with NO problem whatsoever.
In the OLD DAYS, the quality of the rotor made a HUGE difference! On my old 1979 Chevy Malibu, the FACTORY rotors were replaced at about
250,000 kms! There were MANY brake jobs done to that car, and the rotors were resurfaced EVERY TIME. The diameter of those rotors was over double the size. And they were almost twice as thick. They just don't make 'em like that any more! When they did, you would be a fool to buy "cheap" parts.
NOW.... everything is "throw away". You are crazy to buy premium components for everyday use since, in the end, they go into the trash bin just as fast! The main difference is the dent they make in your wallet.
And I would not be surprized if GM was buying the chinese rotors, and just marking them up obscenely. And most litte sheep just drive in and get taken for a ride.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
True about the heat. However, if the pad is harder, and the hardness of the steel in the rotor stays the same, then the result is that the rotor will wear at an accellerated rate and the pad will wear at a decelerated rate. The net effect is that you will wind up replacing parts less often, but you will more than likely have to replace both the pads AND the rotors.
In brake shop terms, pads are way cheaper than rotors. So if they can pawn off BOTH to a customer, then they make more money.
If you do the job yourself, and use the $25 rotors, then who cares if you have to replace them?? At that price it makes little difference. But at brake shop prices, it makes a huge dent in your wallet, and a great addition to their bottom line!
Yeah. There is "re-service" and "customer satisfaction" to consider - not to mention potential safety and liability issues.
A Caliper for $35 to $50???? Who is your supplier! I want to look them up!
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