[jammadave]

Today after Autoshow In Motion, we dropped the top for the ride home, and left it down because we were going back out tonight.

We left this evening to go out, stopped at the gas station and noticed some heavy cloud cover and dark spots, storms were about to roll thru per the news anyways.

Went to put the top up and - bing - roof cycle timeout. Tried cycling the ignition and all that, then backed it into a space...

To make a long story short: My roof is mechanically stuck in the down position - I say mechanically because the switch and motor appear to work fine. When it tries to go up, driver's side sticks down hard while passenger side tries to lift. I notice a joint when looking at it, that doesn't match on either side - it's like a spindle or wheel in a u-shaped metal cutout - on the passenger side the wheel is totally out of the cutout, on the driver's side it's lodged in it - there's a spring attached to the rear of said metal cutout and the wheel/spindle is at the bottom corner of the front roof panel's mounting hardware when the roof is stowed, if anybody wants to take a look. The whole kit's twisted up such that the tonneau doesn't even close all the way.

Anyways, rain was imminent and we had to get out of dodge. Home was not an option - no garage or carport, I have a townhouse. Service departments are all closed by this time, but just to try, we hauled over to the local chevy dealer - completely unhelpful, they told me I could use their cleanup bay and try to fix it if I wanted. Which I did try. No avail.

So then I hauled A$$ around the beltway for 15 miles to Tyson's Corner and dropped it at a dealer who opened his service lanes for me to stow the SSR - and not a moment too soon - the sky opened up as I was writing up the drop-envelope for Monday service.

I haven't been able to enjoy this machine for more than 2 or 3 days consecutively since I bought it. I called my purchasing dealer as soon as this happened, of course, and I had just picked it up from there LAST NIGHT after 3 days of other service. He (my sales guy) said "this is ridiculous, you're probably getting close to lemon designation here" - I doubt it highly, but at this point it is nice to feel like the sales guy shares my sentiment. I'm not angry, I'm just sad - sad that I've got this one big issue now to cap off what I thought was just little expectable stuff.

Tomorrow morning I pick up my rental, which will be reimbursed by the purchasing dealer, as the dealer I dropped it off at doesn't "do" loaners.

Wish me luck in the next few days.

 

[subman576]

Bad luck jammadave. Hope it gets better for you. Keep us up to date on what they find. :cool :cool

 

[HePaid4mySSR]

Manual labor

Today after Autoshow In Motion, we dropped the top for the ride home, and left it down because we were going back out tonight.

We left this evening to go out, stopped at the gas station and noticed some heavy cloud cover and dark spots, storms were about to roll thru per the news anyways.

Went to put the top up and - bing - roof cycle timeout. Tried cycling the ignition and all that, then backed it into a space...

To make a long story short: My roof is mechanically stuck in the down position - I say mechanically because the switch and motor appear to work fine. When it tries to go up, driver's side sticks down hard while passenger side tries to lift. I notice a joint when looking at it, that doesn't match on either side - it's like a spindle or wheel in a u-shaped metal cutout - on the passenger side the wheel is totally out of the cutout, on the driver's side it's lodged in it - there's a spring attached to the rear of said metal cutout and the wheel/spindle is at the bottom corner of the front roof panel's mounting hardware when the roof is stowed, if anybody wants to take a look. The whole kit's twisted up such that the tonneau doesn't even close all the way.

Anyways, rain was imminent and we had to get out of dodge. Home was not an option - no garage or carport, I have a townhouse. Service departments are all closed by this time, but just to try, we hauled over to the local chevy dealer - completely unhelpful, they told me I could use their cleanup bay and try to fix it if I wanted. Which I did try. No avail.

So then I hauled A$$ around the beltway for 15 miles to Tyson's Corner and dropped it at a dealer who opened his service lanes for me to stow the SSR - and not a moment too soon - the sky opened up as I was writing up the drop-envelope for Monday service.

I haven't been able to enjoy this machine for more than 2 or 3 days consecutively since I bought it. I called my purchasing dealer as soon as this happened, of course, and I had just picked it up from there LAST NIGHT after 3 days of other service. He (my sales guy) said "this is ridiculous, you're probably getting close to lemon designation here" - I doubt it highly, but at this point it is nice to feel like the sales guy shares my sentiment. I'm not angry, I'm just sad - sad that I've got this one big issue now to cap off what I thought was just little expectable stuff.

Tomorrow morning I pick up my rental, which will be reimbursed by the purchasing dealer, as the dealer I dropped it off at doesn't "do" loaners.

Wish me luck in the next few days.

If it had started raining--you could have raised the top manually--takes two people though. Hope they get it fixed soon!

 

[jammadave]

If it had started raining--you could have raised the top manually--takes two people though. Hope they get it fixed soon!

Nope - tried to raise it manually with FOUR people in the first dealer's cleanup area - the thing is jammed hard. If I could have raised it manually, I would still be driving it until I could get it serviced, but it's effing BROKEN.

 

[mikepowell]

damn that sucks :cuss
good luck on a speedy repair :flag

 

[dan66]

I haven't been able to enjoy this machine for more than 2 or 3 days consecutively since I bought it. I called my purchasing dealer as soon as this happened, of course, and I had just picked it up from there LAST NIGHT after 3 days of other service. He (my sales guy) said "this is ridiculous, you're probably getting close to lemon designation here" - I doubt it highly, but at this point it is nice to feel like the sales guy shares my sentiment. I'm not angry, I'm just sad - sad that I've got this one big issue now to cap off what I thought was just little expectable stuff.

Dave
Good Luck - it seems you're going to need it! This situation and quote regarding not being able to enjoy the truck for more than 2 or 3 days consecutively and to further say that you're not angry - just sad??????? This is just the most recent commentary about the truck that I've seen on this board that has me completely confused. Why is everyone so tolerant of this vehicle?? It's almost like parents who have a holy terror for a child and just sort of roll their eyes and make excuses for him. If all of us who have problems would unify and scream bloody murder to GM maybe they would sit up and take notice - - they're never going to if we just kick back with a sort of good natured "oh boys will be boys" (or in this case, "SSR's will be SSR's") attitude. It's a vehicle we paid top dollar for and should expect performance commensurate with what we paid. I know that I did not shell out my hard earned bucks for a museum piece - I wanted to use it!
Confused and dissatisfied,
Dan66

 

[jammadave]

Dave
Good Luck - it seems you're going to need it! This situation and quote regarding not being able to enjoy the truck for more than 2 or 3 days consecutively and to further say that you're not angry - just sad??????? This is just the most recent commentary about the truck that I've seen on this board that has me completely confused. Why is everyone so tolerant of this vehicle??
Confused and dissatisfied,
Dan66

Thanks for addressing that, Dan, maybe I can clarify. I was already angry by the time I had to drive a loaner for a second time period within 2-3 wks of purchase - Last night I was *plenty* angry as I drove to avoid the rain and get it under cover. But at this point I'm so far past the anger that it's just sadness, disappointment to be more precise. And that's only because I find that being angry just doesn't help matters any.

Hope this helps - I am dissatisfied as well, especially for the price.

Dave

 

[houtex]

Thanks for addressing that, Dan, maybe I can clarify. I was already angry by the time I had to drive a loaner for a second time period within 2-3 wks of purchase - Last night I was *plenty* angry as I drove to avoid the rain and get it under cover. But at this point I'm so far past the anger that it's just sadness, disappointment to be more precise. And that's only because I find that being angry just doesn't help matters any.

Hope this helps - I am dissatisfied as well, especially for the price.

Dave

Don't know if this will help, but I had a series of problems when I first got mine in January of '04. At that time, there were no parts available at all - just from Lansing off the line. Went thru traction control switch problems, top wouldn't go down and seat heater that wouldn't go off. Dealer dealt with them one at a time - not fast enough for me, but probably as well as he could. Been driving now for 23,000 miles and it's been incident free for quite some time. Hang in there - should get better.

 

[freezer]

The roof has down capture latches to keep it from moving when it is stowed. It sounds like one of your latches doesn't release. There is a cable that is mechanically actuated to release these latches. It sounds like there is an issue with one of these cables or the latch itself. This should be easy to fix. Hopefully nothing else got damaged.

 

[jammadave]

Freeze, buddy, the dealer called today and said it'd be the better part of this week before it gets fixed, apparently stuff in there is BENT... so I dont know what else could have been damaged. It's funny, I only dropped the top for Sat afternoon because neither me nor my fiancee could feel or hear if the AC compressor was working, and the air coming out wasn't quite cold, so I was going to take it in to get that checked anyway.

At this point I'm just documenting it all. Bought April 23rd, officially recorded as 4/25, by the time this one's done (if Thursday as projected) it will have been in the shop for service a total of 15 days, out of 26 owned days. I am even leery of a replacement, should we start talking lemon or buyback. (and i've gotten used to *not* driving the damn thing already.)

=0(

 

[jammadave]

Roof appears to be fixed

Okay - well, yesterday I picked up the SSR from the shop.

Root cause - and the winner is, Freezer, with the capture latch cable failure theory! I don't know what else was damaged from the attempt to raise the top, but that capture latch cable was indeed the cause of the problem.

The shop had to completely remove the top assembly from the car to wrench on it, I do know that much.

Today I have to take it back in, the tonneau is now out of alignment and there's a decent-sized leak on the driver's side (there's a gap between the roof side and windshield side stripping at the top of the door), but the nightmare issue itself is done.

Oh yeah, and there's now a washer sitting on my dash. I have to ask where that came from.

All in all, I'm relieved to not be driving a rental, but I can't shake that sour feeling about my particular SSR. Maybe I can get GM to gimme an 05 to console me.

So, happy-ish, sad-ish, angry-ish, I'm drivin' a cool ride again at least.

Dave

 

[cruzned]

I found that when I purchased the Helm manuals for the SSR and loaned them to my body shop guy, the quality of work improved tremendously. He really appreciated having them to study for a while and he has done a fantastic job on my SSR. His name is John Bowen at Priority Chevrolet in Chesapeake. It is worth the drive out there to have this one guy fix all my probs. I too have been problem free for some time after all the prior inconveniences and it has been well worth it.