1998 Civic EX Stock 390K, nearly no visible rust.....

My old girl is getting ready for semi retirement......I will stop using her as my daily driver (32K miles a year) and have my son use her for his commute to work about 2 miles......

I have never changed any of the shocks or struts.....I am getting a fair amount of squeaks from the passenger rear area....I assume its the strut, doing a visual inspection everything looks fine.......it makes noise at very low speeds....pulling out of the garage.....could the noise be from anything else? chassis to body connections?

Looking at you tube it looks like changing the rear is fairly straight forward....how big a job is the front?

Thanks
Rick

 

Did you carefully inspect the exhaust pipes and muffler?

Try manually pushing the rear end up and down while your son tries to pinpoint the noise under the car.

 

Ron
Thanks for the feedback......no I haven't he's been away a college.....just heading out on his first real job.......We will try that.....I just kinda assumed that the struts must be getting tired by now.....

 

Removal and install is pretty straight forward.

Just becareful not to snap the rear lower shock bolt head off. Spray WD40 or PB Blaster 1st.
I know MI winters and all that salt are hell on cars.

 

you're not kidding! I'm here and that salt/winter is mayhem on the car! Oh and that lower bolt for the shock? I had to use a torch to heat it up enough to get it out of there! wouldn't come out with pblaster, anything! So just be aware when you go to remove the rear shocks what you're up against. I had to also remove the inner bolt to relax the lower control arm. I did NOT remove the bolt on the trailing arm! (bolt on the rear subframe middle) Little trick to help you. that trailing arm bolt is always seized in there..