Forget Something?

The Emperor’s new shocks are just what his sub­jects needed. The last few months his majesty had a ten­dency to wan­der in his lane. I tried to tighten things up by adjust­ing the Koni Sport shocks firmer, but that just ended up mak­ing the car bouncy. We picked up the car on Tues­day, didn’t drive it on Wednes­day, but Thurs­day and then again Fri­day we did. On both days, me first, then Donna, noticed a kind of metal­lic rat­tle from the left rear when hit­ting sharp bumps. Won­der­ing if maybe some­one didn’t tighten some­thing up dur­ing the shock change, I decided to check it out today.

First thing I did was put the front of the car on jack stands. Front? Yeah, I also needed to change out that burnt out fog light bulb. And while it can be done while lay­ing on your back under the car, but it is much eas­ier to jack it up and take off the tires. Even though only one was out I opted to change them both because with my luck if I did just one, the other would fail within week. Seri­ously Syl­va­nia, fifty-four bucks for a pair of Sil­ver­Star Ultra H1 bulbs?!? I went with $7.75 ea Plain Jane H1.

With the front done I jacked up the back end and pulled both of those tires. A visual and shake check revealed noth­ing loose or out of place under there, so it was time to check in the trunk. My first thought was to just flat out empty every­thing out of the trunk and take the car for a spin to see if the noise remained. As I pulled out the faux car­pet cov­er­ing the spare I noticed some­thing, a 3/8 drive, 14mm deep socket sit­ting on top of the rim of the spare tire. That just might be it. Just in case I hunted around for any­thing else that didn’t belong and found noth­ing. But­toned every­thing back up and did a quick run around the block run­ning over every imper­fec­tion and man­hole cover. Didn’t hear a rattle.Big test will be the next time we go over some rail­road tracks.

I guess I’ll give Steve a call on Mon­day and see if he wants his socket back.