Right Rear
 

About a month ago my 2008 HHR SS started making this god awful metal clanging sound when ever I go over any kind of uneven payment. Pot holes and speed pumps will make you cringe. My car already koni race struts in the front along with a strut brace bar and another front suspension mod that the previous owner did. For reason unknown to me even though I have spoke with the gentleman that owned it never actually had a reason for why he only put mods on the front.

My question is should i replace the rear struts with the same koni product that are on the rear or go the cheap route and just use oem style strut? I dont autocross on a regular basis but have done it once so i think that the koni is sorta overkill for my daily driver. (The sound is from the passenger side rear as i forgot to mention that earlier) Also is there maybe a full set of struts you recommend? Any advice will be greatly appreciated

If you think the noise is coming from the back, it might be the SHOCKS (the car does not have rear struts).

It would be your choice in which to choose for the replacement. But if you have Koni's in the front you probably should consider the Koni's for the rear.


But my honest advise is to absolutely determine what is causing the noise before you start swapping parts. Might be a broken spring or broken or missing tail pipe hanger, for example. I would crawl under and at least see if the shocks have any indication of leaking. And since they are shocks, you could employ the old bounce method to see if they are just weak.

The shock did have signs of leakage after the noise first started but i had just moved from Ky to kissimmee florida and did have the money to fix it right away. But good points, Im gonna doublr check tomorrow to make sure

X2 what Snoopy says. You have to find out what's broken before you can decide what parts to replace.
Fwiw. OEM is not going the cheap route. The FE5 suspension is a very good setup and not considered cheap.