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Recently a clunking had been developing in the rear of my car. I've been listening to it on my commute every day, and it seemed to get worse as time went on. Last weekend I put my car up on jacks and looked around underneath. I couldn't find anything obvious, so I used it as an excuse to order some new Gaz adjustable shocks to replace my 270k mile OEM shocks, in case they were clunking.
Today the new shocks came in. While I was under the car, I noticed one of my springs had broken! It was on the side where the noise had been coming from.
These springs are a popular swap for ~30% higher spring rates and come from the Chevy Spark. A while back I had spoken to the seller (Scott at Jue Motors) about them showing very premature rust - they had a serious patina after just one winter, whereas my original year 2000 springs still looked practically new. Scott went way above and beyond and sent me a new set of springs at no cost, but I just didn't get around to installing them. That was maybe 2 years ago now?
The rust looked (and still looks) entirely superficial, so I don't think I can account for the spring snapping, but today I put the new set of (uncut) springs in. Unfortunately, that didn't fix the clunking, and the back of the car sits significantly higher than the front. I plan to cut them down to get approximately stock ride height (maybe up a quarter inch or so from the old springs), but I have some custom coilovers for the front coming from Fortune for the front that I want to install first.
I had my wife drive on some rough roads while I pressed my ear around in the back of the car, and isolated where it was coming from: the passenger side bolt holding the trailing axle to the frame had loosened, and I was hearing the torsion beam clunk back and forth. I realize now I never retorqued it after I installed my rear poly bushings, and the bolt must have slowly worked loose over the last 2 years.
As a side note, the first setting I tried with the Gaz shocks was 6 clicks from the softest setting. It doesn't seem to fully dampen on the first rebound at this setting, so I'll turn it up tomorrow, but man is the ride smooth in the back.
The OEM shocks are apparently also still good. I estimate they compress about the same as the Gaz at 11 clicks, which is ~50% their maximum damping.
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