I am getting a clanging (metal on metal noise) coming from the rear of my car. I think it is coming from some part in the suspension some where because when I go over bumps I get a clanging noise coming from the left rear. This noise go a lot worse after I auto crossed the car a little over a month ago. Since the auto cross I have replaced all of my struts and taken off the rear sway bar and I am still getting a clanging noise. It sounds like something is loose but I can not make the noise happen when crawling under the car and hitting parts with a rubber mallet. Has anyone else had any problem like this? What was it? I am pretty much out of ideas.

This is on a 95 maxima lowered on Ground Controls with AGX's.

 

side to side or up and down causes the clanging?

 

from what I can tell it seems to be up and down.

 

Do you have a rear sway bar?

 

My guess would be that maybe you have a bushing that is completely shot....

 

In my first post I stated that I already took that off.

97- that's one of the things that I was thinking...but where? I was looking around with a flashlight and did not see anything that looked messed up. But it defiently is a pretty loud metal clanging noise.

 

can you get it to clang if you have someone jump on the rear door sill?

 

I can try that. It seems that it happens on more abrubt/harsh bumps. When I was under the car I was pushing the rear up and down and it would not make the noise.

 

Are your top hat nuts properly torqued?

 

I assume so. This started and got worse on my old set of struts. I have since removed those and replaced all of the struts, everything in the strut set up is nice and tight. Still I get the same noise, as I did with the blown struts.

 

It's not something silly like your spare tire bolt is loose causing the spare to bang around in there.......

My trunk rattles right now because I occasionally cram a dual stroller in there and am not really careful and think I have bent a support for it......

 

I'll check the spare tire and well to see if anything is in there knocking around.

 

Have somebody sit in the rear seat and go over a bump somewhere to verify exactly where the clang is. Maybe it's a loose speaker in the rear deck, jack or stand not screwed down tight, exhaust hanger broke, maybe a blown AGX? I also like the idea of the top hat nut as that would explain a clang under hard compression back there.

 

I would be odd if it was a blown agx, because the noise is exactly the same as when I had the old struts now I have brand new struts. How tight does the top hat nut need to be? I doubt it a speaker because its very audible from the outside of the car (irishJ) could hear it when he was following me though DC. I was smacking the exhaust with a rubber mallet and I cannot get it to replicate the noise. I can try getting some one to ride in the back. If I can convince some one to ride in the back while there are no rear seats and everything is out of the trunk I may have a better chance to find it.

 

open up the ski pass through while you're driving......might help....

 

you ever figure this out?

 

nope, any ideas

 

Blown strut maybe. Im getting the same noice on my front right side! It must be a blown shock.

 

I have chaged the strut and the noise is still the same.

 

Long shot but maybe it's your b-pipe clanging against the underside of the car or that steel support bar that goes under it? My beater does this over bumps because the hangars are worn out/broken but the noise comes more from underneath than back in the back.

 

I thought of that, and I could not make it clank when I was shaking it and hitting it with a rubber mallet.

 

not much progress to speak of. I have been on vacation. One thing that I have done is turned my dampining on my AGX's in the rear from 4 to 1, and now the clainging is increasing. It will now clang going over bumps that it did not do before. I am going to try turning up the dampining all the way up to 8 and see what that does.

As for the bushings I do have one that is eaten up. Its closer to the right side of the car connected to the rear beam, there is just some rubber left at the top and bottom of the hole. I think I need to give this one a duct tape test.

 

ok so I changed the dampening to 8 in the rear, and the clanging is still just as bad.

 

it's your ECU...........

 

Thank goodness I have another one

I still need to try the duct tape bushing to see if that's whats causing it.

 

I changed the spring isolator rubber peice on the diver side and I am still getting clanging. Something I don't think I had mentioned before is that I recently put a new caliper on this side, but i don't recal if that was done before or after I noticed this noise. Also this noise cannot be heard when the windows are up, but it is quite loud when my windows are down. This leads me to believe that the noise is coming from the wheel well area.

 

Might also be a loose brake pad inside the caliper, weak pad spring if it has one. I had a ford torino that the pads clanked when going over bumps

 

That's an interesting though. The caliper on the driver side is new. I'll try to take a look at that one evening this week.

 

Thanks for suggesting this because after you suggested it I started hitting the brakes when I would go over bumps that would normally make the rear clank. It seemed as if it didn't clank when I was hitting the brakes, so I took it back to the garage to inspect things. When I jacked the rear of the car up and released the e-brake I realized that the pads on my driver side were moving around quite a bit when I tried to move them with my fingers. So I took the whole driver side assembly apart, cleaned and greased everything that needed to be, but I was still not seeing a problem. So I took the other side wheel off and pulled that caliper off to look at things. The first thing I noticed was that the caliper has some sort of metal clip on the inside of it...and guess what I did not have that same clip on the noisy side. So I went to advanced and picked up a brake hardware kit, and got the clip put on. I put everything back together and I have driven the car 3 times and still have not had a clank!! So thank you very much for your suggestion. I never even thought it could have been the brakes. Plus every time I was under the car hitting things with a rubber mallet trying to replicate the clanging noise I was having I always had the e-brake on (habit) so of course the pads were not clanging then! Anyway, moral of the story is to make sure when you are replacing your caliper, make sure you have put all of the old parts/new parts back on the caliper before you install it....and blame a new clanking noise on an auto cross that you just happened to run the day after you replaced the caliper!

 

I guess the good news is that nothing is really wrong with the car.......suprising it's that loud though

 

Irish heard it when we were driving through DC....it was really loud!