by ironi » Mon Apr 04, 2005 5:36 am
OK, here's the poop.
I got my Tokicos and Teins installed. There's no rattle as of now. In the process of taking off my stock struts, I confirmed that my rear right strut was completely shot, which may well have been the reason for the rattle. However, some things happened during the install which force me to think otherwise. My mechanic made a mistake installing the rear struts at first. It was an honest mistake, since he's never worked on Solara struts before. There is a spacer under the top nut on the stock struts, which is not very obvious to a cursory glance. The Tokicos come with the top nut but for some reason, the spacer is not included, which further assures the probability of forgetting it. Anyway, he forgot to take the spacer off the stocks and install it on the Tokicos. As the result, there was not enough pressure between the mount and the bottom spring seat and there was a horrible rattle coming from the rears. So we took the rear struts off and put the spacers on. result - no more rattle. Anyway, this made me think. There was a post on this forum earlier where someone claimed that the top nut on camry and solara struts sometimes gets loose which causes the rattle. i think this is entirely possible, since the rattle i experienced when the spacer was not installed sounded almost exactly the same as the rattle i had in my rear right stock strut prior to the install. If you have the rattle problem, i suggest you check out this possibility. It is by far the most likely cause that i can think of.
Anyway, good luck guys. Keep this post going. I'd like to know if anyone else ends up fixing the problem.
...baby, you're like cross-town traffic...