Well good luck.....and I'm glad your idea is better than some of the crazy "stuff" I use to do in my "teens".....just glad I survived , I got lucky is all I can say.......hood off and my butt on the cowl as a friend is driving down the road, at least cars in the late 60's early 70's had a ton of room for that kind of stupid stuff.

 

Here's a video of the noise.


The noise appears to happen when the suspension is dropping and the shock is lengthening.

In the video, note the noises at the following times:

0:12 sec
0:25 - 0:35
1:00
1:06
1:12 (for this one I drove slowly off a curb).

I pulled the lining out of the trunk. I also pulled the spare time out a couple of times to see if it made a difference ... it did not.

I have removed the rear sway bar and end links to eliminate them as a possibility.

I have double-checked the tightness of the top mount bolt to ensure there is no play. I even added an additional washer on top of the primary fender washer, just in case the threads on the post weren't cut down enough.

I've banged away at the suspension links from underneath the car, both with suspension loaded and hanging. Everything seems tight under there except for a bit of vibration I was able to get out of the shock every now and then.

And, no, I haven't left the jack and tire iron loose in the trunk ... although that's pretty much what it sounds like

The shocks are Koni STR.T that I bought two years ago. When I bought them the gas pressure wasn't much. When I removed them recently to replace the spring and shock mount rubber I tested the compression-rebound by hand ... the shock on the left side had almost no rebound and on the right had no rebound.

So ... unless someone has a better idea, I'm thinking the rear shocks lost their gas and are now shot. What do you think?

Thanks. John

 

My front shocks and struts are making the same noise. Time to replace I got 140k out of my stockers. Only 2 years on yours doesn't sound like a good deal.

 

The Konis have a lifetime warranty, so I'm going to be able to send them in for a replacement.

In order to do that, I picked up a set of Sensen for under $100 and put them in over the weekend. it cleared up some of the noises, but now I think a lot of it is coming from other things like a loose bumper, etc. This weekend I'm going to pull the rear bumper and drive it around a bit. At that point there won't be much left to rattle around.

Fyi the Sensen shocks don't have nearly as much damping as the Koni and I can feel it -- the car waddles and generally feels less rooted to the ground. However I am pretty sure the Koni rears were defective -- maybe even out of the box -- so I am still going to return all four for warranty repair/replacement and put them back on the car.

 

Not trying to hijack your thread, but what would you recommend for shock strut combo? OE or better comfort I was looking at monroe quick strut. ($150 ea.)

2007 Accord SE K24A8 auto trans.

 

If you have stock springs and they aren't sagging then right now, and if you want to stick with stock level comfort, then I would say the Sensen shocks are going to cost you $100 all around and seem to be fine for stock damping. If you are DIY'ing it then you probably won't beat this price for new shocks.

I know nothing about Monroe shocks ... I would assume they have stock damping as well.

 

Okay, today I pulled the bumper off the car, refastened the left side wheel well liner to the body flange so it wouldn't flap around, zip-tied some loose taillight wiring (I installed aftermarkets a while back) in the trunk lid, and drove around again. Fewer noises than before, but the big noise was still there.

So, car back on ramps, banging around everywhere with a rubber mallet ... and I found two big items:

1) This probably won't pertain to most of you -- our car was hit in the right rear quarter panel about a year and a half ago, and I always suspected that some sheet metal was flexing or vibrating over those bumps. However I could not locate anything that was loose, until today. There is a stiffener brace inside the right side of the trunk wall about six inches to the left of the jack holder, that pushes against the quarter panel outer sheet metal. With the impact this stiffener was pushed in a bit, and had separated enough from the outer skin that if I banged in the right place on inside of the quarter panel, it would vibrate loudly.



I cut a piece of felt padding and shoved it in between the brace and outer skin. One more noise taken care of ..

2) banging on the tires, I started to hear the rattling again. from what I could tell it was coming from the shocks. Finally I got the brilliant idea to try tapping the spring. Bingo ... big noise. Stuck a screwdriver gently in between two of the top coils -- noise stopped. I guess the top coils on these progressive springs are so close together that, at least on the one side they will vibrate loudly when tapped. The left side doesn't do it, so the top of the right side spring must not be seated quite perfectly ... or else the spring is bad.


A quick Google search produded the "coil-spring-noise-abatement" cheat of cutting a spiral coil out of a piece of flexible clear tubing, and wrapping it around one full circle of coil on the spring. I did this on both sides even though the rattle was only on the right. It seemed to do the trick of pushing the coils together a bit more, which was enough to remove the rattle when the suspension was at rest. Now the road test ...

Drove around again, and this time all of the "easy bump" rattling was gone. I can still get the springs to bang around on either side when I go over a very sharp bump or drop in the road, so the Eibach Pro Kits either have a problem, or were just designed that way. But with the coil spring insulator tubing in place, and with the other corrections I made on the car, I think I have the bulk of the problem taken care of. I will be calling Eibach on Monday morning to see what they say.

 

Hope you find out the cause of all your noises. I replaced my struts with monroe quick struts and still have that noise you have but from my front and rear pass.

 

Sorry, I actually hijacked your thread. My thoughts are below ...

* If you installed the quick struts, then you have stock grade springs, new spring seat and insulator rubber, new top shock mount bushings, and the top shaft mounting nut should be torqued correctly.

* You might want to check the tightness on that top shock shaft nut just to be sure ... you have to hold the shaft from turning while you turn the bolt. It should be 22 ft/lbs, plenty tight enough that you will have a hard time turning it any more with a standard box wrench while holding the post with a crescent wrench. Loose shaft top nuts will result in a big clatter from the shock/strut over small imperfections in the road.

* If you have not installed quick struts, then for the rear shocks look look at the positioning of how the spring seats on the bottom of the shock, and the condition of the bottom rubber insulator. Make sure the edge of the spring isn't pushing into the beveled edge of the shock seat .. but it should be sitting comfortably on all seat pads.

* One of the most common sources of these noises seems to be the sway bar bushings and end links. All of our Accords have a front away bar bushing, and the EX's have a rear one.
- Get a rubber mallet and start banging away on the bar near the bushing to see if it feels loose at all.
- Then inspect the end links ... the front end links on these cars aren't very well designed and if they become loose you'll end up with another source of loud clatter. If the rubber looks look old, squished and cracked, you may want to the replace the rubber.

* Bumper to fender attachment. Check the ends of the front and rear bumpers where they attach to the edge of the wheel well. Bang on it with your fist. I had a huge clatter in the front, thought it was coming from inside the dash or the wiper assembly, and turned out to be a loose bumper bolt.

Unfortunately there seems to be no shortage of loose parts on these Hondas. Next up for me is the rear doors ... both of my rear doors have a rattle inside -- I'm thinking the lock rod -- that I have to look at sooner or later.

 

Called Eibach this morning. Evidently this is a common issue on progressive rate springs where some of the coils are very close together.

They will be sending me some of their coil insulators.

From what I understand, each insulator should cover one full rotation of the coil. You should insulate every other coil, on the closely spaced ones, so that no two coils will ever touch.

I'll try to remember to send photos when I install these. Looking forward to (finally) having some peace and quiet in the suspension.