Find Reviews by Make:
Thanks to kamikaze2b for the link
32 Comments on “What’s Wrong With This Picture: Them’s the Brakes New Camaro Edition...”
Read all comments
Latest Car Reviews view all
Latest Product Reviews view all
Recent Comments
- Lou_BC: @Carlson Fan – My ’68 has 2.75:1 rear end. It buries the speedo needle. It came stock with the...
- theflyersfan: Inside the Chicago Loop and up Lakeshore Drive rivals any great city in the world. The beauty of the...
- A Scientist: When I was a teenager in the mid 90’s you could have one of these rolling s-boxes for a case of...
- Mike Beranek: You should expand your knowledge base, clearly it’s insufficient. The race isn’t in...
- Mike Beranek: ^^THIS^^ Chicago is FOX’s whipping boy because it makes Illinois a progressive bastion in the...
Car Reviews By Make view all
New Car Research
Who We Are
- Tim Healey
Managing Editor - Matt Posky
News and Social Media Contributor - Timothy Cain
Sales Analyst - Murilee Martin
Junkyard Finds Author - Matthew Guy
Contributor - Chris Tonn
Contributor
- Adam Tonge
- Bozi Tatarevic
- Corey Lewis
- Jo Borras
- Mark Baruth
- Ronnie Schreiber
How much more of this damn thing are we going to see before they actually start appearing on the road? The car can’t possibly live up to all the hype! Then again, a freaking Ferrari would have a hard time living up to the hype the new Camaro’s gotten.
This sure helps with the Google ads . . . I count 11 Camaro ads and 1 Mustang ad. Clickity-click.
Is something actually wrong with them?
Hint…it’s the chunks of lead glued onto the caliper….
I thought those metal hershey-bar-lookin things on top of that caliper were supposed to be counterweights for the tire pressure monitoring system, and are supposed to be on the rim, opposite to the valve stem?
Please correct my ignorance.
Yeah, those are the weights used to balance the tire.
The Picture maybe tells all of us that things are just not right in GM land eh? Lead does serve a purpose in the right area of any Wheel, this picture seems out of place I would think?
What about the nine week summer vacation for US GM plants eh?
The assumption is that is is a band-aid type fix (ghetto?) for squealing brakes on some of the Brembo equipped models. It seems that the other models do not have this bit of “engineering.”
The thread is here:
http://www.camaro5.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19161
are those wheel balancing weights attached to the brake caliper? wtf?
Stuff like this happens, probably far more than most people know.
BMW X5s with Parking Distance Control (radar) had a problem with the signal bouncing off of the front license plate holder.
The fix was to take the holder off, heat it with a heat gun/hair dryer, and bend the ends so that they were no longer 90-degrees to the bumper.
Similarly, the “fix” for a squeak on E46 3-series convertibles where the lower edge of the top rubbed on the body was to grab the top frame and bend it slightly.
I’m not surprised GM is taping on some wheel weights rather than re-engineering the caliper.
They’re wittle? Is that it?
You know how you can tell a GM egg car from a Toyota egg car in the parking lot? Look at the rotors. Especially the rear.
COULD IT BE…..
perhaps a way to decrease harmonic resonance that causes brake squeal?
Did they leave the bar code sticker there on purpose?
@superbadd75
Hasn’t GM been hyping this Camaro since 1997 or so?
I’m suddenly reminded of my crappy 1971 Opel 1900, one of the few cars I’ve bought new. This bucket was a 4-speed, and at any speed above 40 or so the shift lever vibrated and buzzed like crazy. The dealer I bought it from, also the one in a neighboring city, were very helpful: “They all do that.”
I found that if I duct-taped a 3-inch-long piece of one-inch bar stock to the shift lever the buzzing decreased quite a bit.
There have been a lot of positive comments by other B&B’ers about this model, but imo it was a German Vega.
It is on the road where do you think the pics came from?
superbadd75: I saw one being unloaded from a truck today at my local GM dealer. I live in a tiny town out in the frikking sticks in the upper left corner of the country (NORTH of most Canadians) and if it is here, I have to assume the new Camaro is everywhere by now.
Not that I’d ever buy one.
–chuck
ummm…
is it that there are no Lamborghini models squatting down in spindly black high-heels changing the tire with their bare hands, sweating off their nutrogena healthy glow into a profuse glisten, and inadvertently wiping wheel-well dirt across their foreheads with the back of their hands while hitching up the sides of their designer dresses -for $400, Alex???
I see several trucks of them on the highway every day..so they are pumping them out for those who are asking…
I think that this caliper is backwards. A right caliper on a left rotor.
I saw VISIBLE RUST on the frame of a BRAND NEW Chevrolet SSR in the middle of the show room back in late 2005. Being as fresh as I am, I pointed it out to a salesman. He did not have an answer for me.
Funny how everyone jump on GM’s shit for hyping the Camaro and yet NO ONE is saying anything about Ford and them hyping the Fiesta for just as long.
At least GM has an excuse…seeing as the Camaro has a all new interior and exterior. Ford has said that they are hardly changing anything on the Fiesta…so why is Ford dragging their feet?
Wow… Wasn’t it GM’s Bob Lutz who kept complaining that Americans were stupid for not realizing that GM now makes the best cars in the world?
And then they go and put crap like this on their new halo car.
So how long does GM expect these weight to stay glued on there? What happens when the weight breaks off and goes who knows where? Was this a stop gap measure and they plan to force all the new owners to return their cars for corrections?
Of course GM says nothing. Nothings to see here folks. Keep moving along.
GM is so SSDD (Same S**t, Different Day).
Agreed with kamikaze2b that it’s probably a last minute addition to dampen out resonances in the brake caliper block.
First year cars have issues. Exs; ’04 Malibu Maxx had cardboard reinforcements added to its rear sunshade surround to prevent shades from flexing the plastic and popping loose. It took a year before newer plastic reinforces showed up.
’09 VW Tiguan had to have its engine controller reprogrammed just after the first ones were sold in the USA. There are many others.
It looks like a quick fix to dial out some minor squeak or something. i cant remember where, but i have seen wheel weights on a brake caliper before….
A guess.
The tyre/wheel balance station lineside is by the wheel assembly station. Lunch hooter goes, the tyre balance guy has some weights is his mouth (lacking three arms). The parts tray is the other way from the exit, where to put them till aftr lunch?
When the brakes are used, the glue on the weights will melt and they will fall harmlesly to the ground.
Yes, it would be wise to let the ‘early adopters’ buy the new Camaro SS – others should wait until GM re-designs the caliper mounts. Among other things, I suppose.
Still, it’s a lot of car for the money, and most who tested them tend to agree. In ‘normal’ times, this car would be considered a success, but under the scrutiny raised by GM’s own hype, any anomaly will be magnified.
Farago,
For some real news, try to catch them doing something correctly.
It sounds like an F-up to me and the weights really don’t belong there. If not, and this is GM’s idea of a fix, it truly does not bode well for a car that has “existed” for the last three years yet couldn’t be bought. This kind of thing is the last thing GM needs at this 11th hour.
Now we know why this thing weighs more then my 2002 Cadillac Seville.. little lead weights stuck all over the thing.
HA! Well, BMW charges 10k more for the same thing!! Check it : http://blogs.edmunds.com/roadtests/2009/04/2008-bmw-135i-suspension-walkaround.html#more
Camaro5 posted a reply from a GM rep/engineer:
Some early Camaro customers noticed that there are weights on the Camaro SS calipers. With high-performance vehicles like the Camaro SS, minor brake noise is not uncommon. The weights act as a damper to reduce noise in certain driving conditions. This was done after careful evaluation and validation by our engineering team. These weights will only be added to early builds of the Camaro SS.