Trock

Complaint filed.

jj_stl

This is an epic fail for NHTSA. Last year I had to replace my rear rotors and pads at around 20,000 miles. I filed a complaint with NHTSA, had my congressman send a letter to them, wrote my senator and David Shepardon of the Detroit News (dshepardson@detnews.com) after seeing some articles from him re: issues with NHTSA. I compiled stats from the NHTSA complaints (as of 11/10/2011) :

For 2008 Cobalt SS, there are 76 total complaints, and 67 (88%) concern either the parking brake or hydraulic brakes (NHTSA category “SERVICE BRAKES, HYDRAULIC).
For 2009 Cobalt SS, there are 169 total complaints, and 145 (86%) concern either the parking brake or hydraulic brakes.

For comparison:
On the 2008 non-SS Cobalt, with rear drum brakes - 199 total complaints, and only 6 (3%) concern the parking or hydraulic brakes.
On tThe 2009 non-SS Cobalt, there are 122 total complaints, and only 8 (7%) concern the parking or hydraulic brakes.

After my congressman's letter to NHTSA, the reply I got back from Chan D. Lieu, NHTSA Director of Governmental Affairs, Policy and Strategic Planning, said "NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) is actively monitoring all avialable data concerning premature rear brake pad wear in Model Year 2009 Chevrolet Cobalt SS vehicles; however, no determination has been reached at this time."

I cannot believe a real person, much less an engineer, has reviewed these complaints and determined it was a normal, expected wear situation. If this doesn't warrant a NHTSA investigation, I can't imagine what would. Oh; see below:
During my letter writing crusade, I noticed that NHTSA initiated a formal investigation of 2003-2004 Infiniti M45's for the GAS GAUGE, based on 43 complaints!

Good thing NHTSA has their priorities straight.

emiller

Guess which one is a safety issue? Running out of gas in traffic or early brake wear.

If your brakes are properly adjusted they work just fine.

sponge14

Seriously? Tell that to the hundreds who take care of their brake systems yet still have things wearing unevenly and prematurely.

turbosmart4

iTrader: (18)

My rear brakes are toast

CudaJoe

iTrader: (1)

Yeah im replying to an old post but I thought I should respond to it lol.

There arent that many Cobalt SS's. I mean if roughly 300 complained thats like almost 10% of the Cobalt SS populace. lol. That to me is pretty huge!

jj_stl

I don't think it's accurate to say early brake wear isn't a safety issue, when it involves the rear (parking) brake on a manual transmission vehicle. Somebody's parking brake is going to fail and when their Cobalt rolls out into the street and someone is killed or maim, GM will regret not fixing an obvious issue. And the sad part is that the fix is probably something simple, like a stronger spring for the parking brake on the rear calipers.

"If your brakes are properly adjusted, they work fine" - so the hundreds of Cobalt SS owners with complaints filed on NHSTA are remiss in not having their brakes properly adjusted? And somehow *just* the inside rear brake pads wear down disproportionately due to no design flaw? Right.

CudaJoe

iTrader: (1)

What he meant by properly adjust is that all the really concerned owners on this forum went out, bought their own brakes + pads + grease, and took care of the issue themselves. Its such a known issue that most owners before they even drive their car 10 miles somehow find out about the brake complaints via this forum or some posts of some sort or google... so they take care of it before it happens.

He was not saying "Well if you had just taken care of your brakes then you wouldnt have this problem" No its beyond that. We ALL know that GM failed miserably when it came to putting the brakes on this car. It was a big joke till we realized that 90% of the time they werent warrantying it.

09sscalicobalt

iTrader: (1)

so i went in today to gm and my front and rear brakes are both pad and i have under 30k told him about this thread/complain and he tried to look it up and couldnt find **** anybody know about a actual service bulletin or anything out yet i can show him?

Powell Race Parts

iTrader: (3)

Mikey listen up Bro' lol.
You track your car. Often enough.
You have 30 k miles and need pads? ZOMG Whodathunkit? You are really doing very well!!

I go through pads every three full track days at the front, and the rears go roughly 50% longer. Be happy shop for the pricing, and learn to replace them yourself. Cali cars dont have rust and changing brake pads and rotors is easy enough, the rears are the most difficult,as the rear piston has to be wound back in. But once you have done it, you will be set.

09sscalicobalt

iTrader: (1)

haha k k thanks john

cranemaster

My rear breaks have finally pissed me off enough with their shitty metal rubbing sounds... !! bah! new rotors and pads eventually !

GeforceXtreme

I just bought an 09 SS TC Sedan and it has 120K on it. I checked the history of the car and it looks like ti was taken in 3 times to the dealer to fix the E-brake and also had the calipers replaced around 20K. After buying the car, the brake petal appear to be squishy and the E-brake isn't holding for crap. I suspect I am having this issue as well?

Eurasianman

Good luck with the e-brake. I had the exact problem with my old 2010 SS/TC. Rear pads and calipers were replaced as well as the e-brake line within the first 20,000 - 25,000 miles. The service department manager, as well as the general manager, kept trying to tell me that the e-brake was never designed to stop the vehicle from moving. Took me about a month to get them to finally fix it right to where 3-4 clicks, and the e-brake was rock solid.

80vetteL82

Has there been any sort of resolution with this!?

The problem is absolutely absurd. My rear brakes just went bad again a couple days ago. No squeaking or warning at all, just started grinding out of the blue, now after a couple of days it sounds like its metal on metal. Like always its only the rear INBOARD pads, on both sides. The inner pads wear away while the outter still have plenty of life.

My car is an '08 SS/TC that I bought brand new with 3miles on it. The rear brakes started grinding subtly almost right away. They were replaced under warranty at 5k miles. The went bad again at 15k miles and were once again replaced. When they went bad again arond 25k miles I was still working full time as a mechanic and decided to do them myself... even though the cost would be out of pocket I wanted to try aftermarket pads and rotors to see if I'd get any better results. I got quality aftermarket replacement rotors and ceramic pads through my shop, those have lasted me until... a little better than the dealer stuff, but still ONLY 20k miles out of them!

I understand brakes are a wear item, but getting 5-20k miles out of rear brakes is upsurd, especially when the majority of the braking force is on the front brakes. Also, there is clearly an issue seeing its only the rear inboard pads that are wearing EXTREMELY PREMATURELY! I don't drive overly aggressive, and have never gone through brakes like this in any of my cars! Plus, the rears have now gone bad 4 times, yet the fronts are still originally.....clearly NOT my driving!

Has anybody come to any sort of conclusion either through GM or on your own? I just filed a complaint with GM Customer Service. They scheduled an appointment for me to bring it to my local dealer and have it "diagnosed", with the diagnosis fee waived.

I am sick of throwing a couple hundred bucks into my rear brakes every year or so!

Tomtwtwtw

I had one side of my rears at metal on metal at 20k. Replaced under warranty and now at 68k with lots of material left. Will probably get over 100k on these pads. I'd say my dealership fixed it, and yours just keeps replacing pads. Have you tried elsewhere?

80vetteL82

I havent tried any other dealers, but I did do rotors and pads myself the 3rd time they went pad. While I was in there I inspected everything and didnt find any obvious causes. The slide pins did seem pretty dry though, so I lubed them real good... I dont know how they were drying out that quick.

co-balt

Is the problem associated with the rear brakes simply the pad selection?

Not sure anything is wrong with the rotors.

If it is the pad selection that is a problem, I doubt a recall is going to happen.

Rear pads are easy to get. I recommend placeforbrakes.com in Miami. They are a great mail order house.

metroplex

I have 4300+ miles on mine, so far the rear rotors look brand new with the cross hatch patterns. I swapped out the stock pads for Hawk HPS as soon as the car came from the factory and was in my garage.

cfsnipers

Mine get replaced for free by Gm every 11 months haha. They NEVER last the full 1 yr warranty period

blackbird

To provide a five-year update, the first year I had the car at around the 20k mile mark my stock rear pads were down to metal-on-metal on one side of each pad and had grooved up the rear rotors. At the time I was planning for an auto-x and wanted to take it into the dealer anyway to have them checked so I slapped on a set of AutoZone Duralast pads (cheapest ones they had). I pulled the caliper slider pins and they didn't have much grease from the factory but I left them alone and didn't change the rotors when the new pads went on as I was hoping the dealer might replace the calipers or find something else wrong.

Fast-forward to today and some 60k miles later, the dealer didn't do anything and I've been running these cheap pads on the bad (grooved) rotors and they show very minimal wear to the pads. That pretty much confirmed to me that the main issue (at least on my car) was the stock pad material being too aggressive for street use. Considering the track ability of the car and what it was designed and validated too I can understand their decision even if it was an inconvenience and expense I didn't plan on. At least GM wasn't like Nissan and a lot of their performance and other models in recent years where owners complained about brake dust and noise so they installed pads to combat those issues but would completely fade out after a couple hard stops from speed.

metroplex

I swapped out the stock pads as soon as the car from the dealership, and the Hawk HPS pads are still looking like brand new. Nice to know that someone had long-term test results indicating the OEM pads were at fault.

Nissan's problem wasn't the pads, Car and Driver did a test and concluded that the aerodynamics of the car reduced the cooling effectiveness of the rotors. They tried different brake fluid, pads, hoses, etc... I believe this is also the same problem on the new Mustangs and GT500 where the brakes fade after several hard stops. In that same article, the Porsche 911 and Corvette were the cars that could maintain consistent braking even after multiple torture tests (couldn't get them to fade). Ford experimented with brake cooling ducts on the Boss 302, but for the 2013 GT500 they just deleted the front dust shields altogether. In the Boss 302 supplement, they said to remove the rear dust shields at the track.

If you look at the Cobalt SS Turbo, there are no brake dust shields.

emiller

I've got over 50k miles on OEM pads and rotors with no uneven wear or grooving.

blackbird

Side note, I know a now former VP for a couple car lines at Infinity here in Southern California that did mention the pads were changed to a different compound due to customer noise and dust concern even on the performance models which did end up leading to some suffering almost catastrophic brake fade. I could definitely see brake design, thermal capacity and cooling issues also being problematic on many of their cars though and now that you mention it I think I read that article.

On the Cobalt I've ben pretty happy with the braking performance even with the rear stock pad issues. I put some Porterfield R4-S pads and nicely coated Centric rotors on the front about 20k miles ago (car had around 60k miles at the time) and have their pads and some other rotors for the rear standing by but wanted to see how the cheap pads would hold up and if they'd have bad wear issues like stock. I'm pretty satisfied that the while not the greatest choice in design, considering the cost saving a common GM rear sliding caliper design offered, when well maintained and with a good set of pads they shouldn't be a long-term issue on the '08+ SS.

wendy

Hi ,
SO.. grateful to see others want to make a stand for this issue Thank you for starting petition....
I am very new to this type of forum ,so forgive me if make mistakes .and I'm not up on all mechanical terms..and do not visit forum much .
I have owned my 2009 Cobalt SS since 2010 (new) and have had huge issues with rear brakes ,rotors ,calipers ,swing bars ,...Have been replaced 4 times and always having issues with noise from rear from the very start ..I could go one but I know ,you know what I am referring too Yes have been done under warranty but have seen many that haven't,,,but why is t still happening after been fixed so many times .?(supposedly)
I have been through dealership many times and after last visit thought was time to go upward
I have been in contact with GM as am tired of this issue , My first NEW car and this ,,,so have complained ,complained Complained..
After seeing this forum ,I have mentioned that there are people with same issues ,same year of car are not being heard ,..........her answer was they NEED TO CALL GM and make them aware ,,,I said many have and been turned away from get go and like get now where ....I am hoping that giving you her name and number that maybe this can be handled at some other level ( LIKE SHE SAID) as well as the petition and hopefully something can be done and we can be heard ,the issue dealt with and no one saying we haven't heard of this ....
So please along with SIGNING PETITION .....
PLEASE CALL THIS NUMBER 1-800-463-7483 EXT. #2629 Jeanne
and tell her your issue with this
With hopes it will help see they need to recall this car