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Comments
mlm4, Grand Am GTs have four wheel discs and even SE models with the rear drums probably still have the same front discs. To me, rotors are not a major problem. Sure it's annoying, but as someone else mentioned, I'd get a good set of aftermarket rotors and be done with it. To me, major problems are things like engine, transmission, or suspension/chassis problems.
Regards,
mcrrt
My grinding noise is finally fixed. The grinding noise is very common in all Alero's and Grand ams with the 16 inch Aluminum wheels and the Goodyear Eagle RSA and LS tires. Oldsmobile put these tires on to make the car more sporty and attractive, but apparently it was not designed for these tires in conjunction with the 16 inch rims. In order to stop the grinding noise you must inflate your tires to the MAX PSI which I believe is 44. Amazingly the grinding noise will go away. The following is a direct quote from an Oldsmobile maintenance announcement:
"The {grinding}condition may be caused by raised ribs on the tire sidewall contacting the rim flange and creating an audible noise during vehicle cornering maneuvers. The rubbing action may cause minor cosmetic chafing on the rim flange, but will have no negative affect on the tire/wheel performance or durability"
If anyone has any further questions please place a posting and I will be happy to elaborate. If you have the grinding noise try MAX inflating your tires and hopefully the noise will go away.
ryanroseberry : Interesting. I'm sure the OEM rotors are not the best on the market, but I'm not convinced they are as bad as your mechanic says.
The cause of the rotor warping tells a lot. They were fine for many thousands of miles until I had to heavily brake from above 70 mph. Right after that I could tell the rotors were warped. It is obvious that the rotors couldn't take the heat input rate. Whether it was the material or the thickness or a combination, it doesn't matter. They weren't up to the task, period.
:^/Running tires that are good at 30 psi up at 44 psi is bad news. Your contact patch will be all hosed up with the attendant bad (scary) handling and they will ride like rocks. I would also advise caution about their wet road grip. Tell us if they don't slide around.
My advise is save yourself a lot of aggravation and replace the tires. They obviously aren't worth keeping and they sure sound like a safety problem.
Did you see my earlier posts where I had to dump the BFGs at 32000 miles because they were making all sorts of road rumble? Some people think it was a bad set since they had good experiences with them. No other Alero owners have reported this. But they are history anyway.
As for the rotors, hopefully mine last. Who knows, I'm not going to stay up nights worrying about it. If they do go at some point I will have after market ones installed.
Still love our Alero. The Ecotec is just amazing.
Anyway, the same mechanic did an oil change and rotated my tires. Strangly enough, the noise went away for the most part. I believe that an increase in air pressure helped to almost eliminate the noise.
Surely new tires would probably eliminate the noise entirely, but the short term answer is to increase air pressure.
And on a third note, I do think they put less than adequate rotors on the vehicle. I think many users have a serious complaint with the warping rotors that GM should address.
Best of luck to all! I hope to sell my '00 Alero with 55K miles next year.
Please feed me back on the manual transmission of the Alero.
I just had my 2002 Alero six weeks ago. I picked the manual transmission mostly for the fun of driving but also for the end of season deals. I have driven manual transmission for few years but my last car was automatic. At the beginning, shifting particularly to first or second gears was not fully smooth meaning I have to push the stick a little harder and the timing is not perfect for those two gears. I attributed that to a new car and that I have driven an automatic car for the past few years. Today after six weeks and about 1500 miles I still feel something is not right. Shifting to first or second gear is not as smooth as it is for the third gear from second gear, say, clutch is a little touchy meaning the power is not transmitted very smoothly while in the first gear, I have to be very careful and watch for the exact position of the clutch or the car will stop. Again, I used a manual transmission for few years and feel that is not right. Last week I tested a Camry and an Accord with manual transmission and they were both smother than the Alero, particularly for the first gear operations. I understand every manual transmission can be different from the others but any suggestions?
Magdy
infinia : You have one incompetent garage working on your car. Have you ever tried bringing it somewhere else?
One thing to note about Alero...you need less accelerator pressure than on some cars due to the higher low-end torque. I also had this problem with my Pickup truck several years ago, when trying to shift smoothly into 1st.
Depending on how much difficulty you are having, I'd give it some more time to break in. Otherwise, Dindak is right. Good luck with your Alero. Question: What color and model did you get?
It's amazing that it's not like this everywhere. Make all the difference in the world.
Let us know if you ever find resolution to your problem.
Regards.
<rant>Bob Lutz said that he was going to do that over a year ago...
:^(And I'm not happy with it!I bought my Alero BECAUSE of the richer standard equipment!
IMO, it's a misguided strategy. He's wondering why people don't buy GM, prefering in some cases imports, looks at the price and at the standard features lists and thinks that people prefer to personalize the cars they buy. Well, the fact is that most imports have neither ABS nor alloy wheels, so I believe that it's not why they buy them.
What I think will actually happen is that people will defect GM. He's not asking the right question: why are people buying GM cars?
</rant>Just glad I bought an 02. I did notice the GLS Alero still has 4 wheel discs though.
8^O:^(The vibrating mirror on the Alero is typical what I dislike most about GM. Overall, the engineering is fine, but there is always a weak point in the quality of the parts that ruins it all. For example, the motor for the power mirror will probably last the life of the car, but the plastic pieces that connect the motor to the mirror itself will fail prematurely, and guess what? You have to replace the WHOLE unit! The mirror vibrates because it is mounted on nylon posts that are too flimsy to hold it steady.
mlm4 : I have seen no such flaws on my car but it could be that the part you speak of was faulty from an outside supplier. Is it just people with power mirrors that have the vibration issue?
On the several GM vehicles I have owned with power mirrors, the design usually involves the mirror mounted to a gimbal that allows it to rotate up/down/right/left. The motor drives two set screws in and out for the up/down and left/right motions, or the motor drives a set of nylon gears. The set screws are attached to the mirror either with a somewhat flexible nylon fastener or simply by contact against spring-applied pressure. In other words, there is not much substance in the materials that hold the mirror in position, allowing it to vibrate more easily than the non-powered models, which are more rigidly mounted. (The non-powered mirror also uses a gimble mount, but it requires a fair amount of force to move the mirror. The power mirror is more loosely mounted so as not to put too much resistance on the motor. There, the gimble itself is not enough to hold the mirror in position, it only acts as a pivot point for the mirror.)
On my Bonneville, both side mirrors vibrate a little bit mostly as low frequency noise is transmitted from the car body (as opposed to being buffetted by the wind), but not enough to bother me. On my Tahoe (also with dual power mirrors), only the driver side mirror vibrates, and that is due to the wind and a very large surface area (and a no-so-aerodynamic housing design).
I would presume that the quality of the parts varies even from the same supplier, but my contention is that it is poor quality materials (and to some extent bad design) that cause these problems. If your mirrors don't vibrate, consider yourself fortunate.
I have never heard of this issue anywhere but in the Alero forum.
Reportedly the lubrication of the IS with the heavier grease has been successful to date with only a couple of cases where they had waited too long before the fix and the units had worn.
GM promotes the Dex cool for 100,000 miles use, but the service manager said that the PH goes acidic long before that and requires coolant flush and replacement. At $750.00 or so to replace the water pump on the 2.4 liter engine, I'll be checking the coolant Ph and changing out when it goes below 7.
What is the intermediate shaft? I am not familiar with that component.
Why is it so expensive to replace the water pump? Is it the labor, due to the many parts that need removed to get to it? It has been a long time since I had to work on a water pump, but it used to be a fairly simple, inexpensive repair.
The water pump is down on the bottom of the engine and driven by the cam chain. Replacement requires removing things like engine mount, cam chain cover, cam chain, etc, etc. just a lot of bolt twisting. Of course we must keep the twin cam timing. I don't have a service manual yet. I was just wondering if the counter rotating shaft is driven by the cam chain also. But with luck and coolant change the mtbf should be around a 100,000 miles.
Regards,
mcrrt
GM products have a long service life because you can't tell when they are worn out. They knock shake, vibrate, feel loose, and squeak from day one instead of being like a quality vehicle where these noises come on after 200,000 miles or so. The best of four GM products we own is my wife's 77 El Camino.
Burdawg: Thanks for the water pump input.
My question is: Did the front brakes wear prematurely? If so, would the defective rotors have caused the premature wear of the front brakes? Should I go after GM to cover all or part of the cost of the front brakes (and labour)??
Ya, Toyota engineers just better with sludge problems in their engines.
rebrab : If you do a lot of city driving, 45K is not really premature for brake pads. Is this the case?
I called my Oldsmobile dealer and am going back tomorrow, but probably not going to get any satisfaction. The service manager says that they are all like that.
When my old 87 LeBaron sounded like this does, I replaced the steering rack (gear) with a rebuilt unit from Pep Boys and the noise was completely gone after that.
GM installs worn out components at assembly???
Sadly, and apparently they do.
I raised up the car and inspected underneath, and I could feel slack in the right hand side inner tie rod end. Not good with only 24,000 miles on the vehicle.
I looked at 2000 and up Toyotas and the steering doesn't knock and clunk, but the price of one is about the price of two Aleros, so shake rattle and roll it is.