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I have an 02 Trans Am ws6, not stock… long story kinda short. I have a moser 12 bolt with 4:11 gears. I recently replaced both front and rear shocks with Koni orange str.t and springs with Umi 1.5 lowered. I noticed a tiny squeak in the rear passenger top side so did some investigating and found the culprit. Re-assembled and the squeak was gone, everything was greased and lower bolts torqued back to 66 foot pounds. I deliberately avoided doing the driver side as there was no squeak coming from that side and wanted to see if general driving would cause that side to do the same. Well…. It did just as I expected so doing the same thing and I expect to see a similar abrasion on the driver side. Just curious with the force that the rear end delivers when I get on it, should I maybe have went with a different shock? My concern is bending these top bolts or worse, shearing them off. I have access to a cnc milling machine and am considering machining a 1/8” plate or 3/16 round plate from hardened steel (chromium - vanadium) with a bronze (pb1 phosphorous) insert bushing, to weld to the top mount passthrough additionally machining the center hole to accommodate the bushing contacts with the bushing. Or am I good with what I have? I’ll replace these shocks as scheduled but don’t want to risk it. I have a bmr torque arm with the relocate bracket and noticed there is instant and hard grip to the rear end. I don’t mistreat the car, just like the pull every now and then. Here was the metal to metal contact. Slight deformity to the pass through goes to the rear of the vehicle so obviously some pull from the rear end has caused this over the years. I used
a dremel and from the underside cleaned this up to correct the deformity. I used neon paint on the portion of the bushing that passes through to confirm the hole was milled just enough to allow that small lip to contact on both ends, closing that metal to metal gap. The little black mark over the lower top mount bushing is what caught my attention. (Cleaned up the grease and put back together for reference. There was no abrasion to either bottom or top bushing.
Nice observant detective work chasing that down. I would never have thought of that, it would be easy to assume a bunch of other things, most obviously the lower shock bushing.
Nice observant detective work chasing that down. I would never have thought of that, it would be easy to assume a bunch of other things, most obviously the lower shock bushing.
thanks! I’m actually retired Leo of 20 years, 8 of them were in the detective bureau. Some things you just never forget as far as observance. I did notice last night just as I suspected the driver side rear started the same thing, disassembly same situation so going to do that side tonight and see what happens.
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Koni shocks squeaking 
