I just had a serious problem when I went to get my back wheels balanced. They put my car on a lift and raised the entire rear end and took the wheels off. When I started driving home, I heard a terrible knocking noise from the back. They took off one of the wheels, and I noticed that the spring had become unseated. While it was tight to put on initially, after breaking in it is short enough that it pops out when the car is on a lift. It took 2 people under the car to hold them in place while the car was slowly lowered to repair.

 

Well, Karen hasn't reported any problems like this with hers and she just got new rims and tires put on earlier this week. Maybe yours weren't as tight as you might like to think they were.

 

We lift these cars everyday and I have never seen that happen. When you say they lifted the rearend only, what type of lift were they using? Where were the contact points that they lifted from?

 

They used 2 floor jacks, one on each side to remove both back wheels at the same time for balancing. It would be the same as putting the car on a lift. Remember, I have the lower, leveling springs in the rear. Since they are shorter, that is why I had the problem. Lifting one side at a time was no problem (I had a flat a few weeks ago).

As I said, when I installed the springs, they had to be forced in a little. But over time, they compress when they get broken in.

 

There you go. I am going to have my techs check for the springs coming unseated on any of the lowered vehicles after hoisting. Good information I missed the load leveling notation in the original heading, sorry.

 

Not realy all depends were you put the jack you can lift the body and let the suspension hang and you can lift the car with the suspension loaded.

 

Exactly!!! That's the problem. If rear body is jacked up high enough to raise the wheels off the ground, obviously the suspension will be UNLOADED. That's how you change the springs to begin with! It's OK if it's done one side at a time, the suspension is not completely unloaded. That could happen with the factory springs also.

 

My whole HHR was lifted up and all 4 wheels were taken off, this was not the first time I rotate my tires every 5,000 miles and I have 29xxx on it. I have never had that problem. I just had my wheels replaced,,still no problem.
I have had leveling springs on for over 1 yr I belive.

 

That is NOT going to happen with the factory suspension, because the shocks bottom out in length before the spring gets loose. They design it that way so the springs DON"T fall out every time you go to a service place and put it on a lift, a frame lift that is.
The lowered car, if not using a shorter stroke shock, will then have the suspension stretch open far enough that the spring may become loose(since it is shorter).
PS: To change springs, you have to undo the shocks to let the suspension open up wide enough to get the original springs out, or you use a spring compressor to compress the spring and remove it.

 

I had the same thing happen when I raised the back of my car up a while ago to put in the spring silencers. It's normal with lowered springs if the suspension is allowed to unload. I've seen it on a number of different cars. No big deal. Just make sure you or whoever is aware of the spring locations when they drop the car back down. Problem solved. I think we should take this post as a heads up, keep an eye out suggestion, not an argument of whether it should happen or not.