My wife go rear-ended in our 2007 Dodge Durango Limited 2WD. It had about 94,000 miles on it when she was hit. She was hit while at a stand-still by and F150 going about 45 mph when hitting her. The bumper, tailgate, tow bar, and left reflector was replaced. When it was hit the spare tire came lose and was swinging. My wife drove it home and I drove it to the body shop with the tire still swinging.

After everything was fixed, I started hearing a popping sound in the back rear wheel area. That popping would go away after driving it a few miles. Now I am on vacation and there is a continuous squeaking and creaking in the back left tire area. The car was never hit in the wheel and was inspected and showed no axle or wheel damage. The local Kaufman tire thinks I need new shocks since they are so old and that is possibly what is causing the sounds. Are they correct in their assessment? They could not reproduce the sound at Kaufman, but that was before the continuous creaking/squeaking started while I am on vacation right now.

I think it is probably the left rear shock also, but before I go through the money of getting it fixed I wanted to see what you all think. Is it possible the spare tire swinging caused damage to the shocks or something else to cause the squeaking? Is it possible the accident caused the damage? The repair shop, Kauffman, and the other person's insurance all think that it is not possible for the shocks or suspension area to be damaged from a rear-end collision. All I know is it was not doing this before the accident, and now it is. Is it just coincidental that this happen? I need some hard evidence to go after the insurance company to fix the problem if it really did come from the accident.

Is the car safe to drive around while on vacation and 450 miles home with this noise, or do I need it fixed immediately?

 

check your coil spring i was getting a noise fromthere when i had some work done on the rear end and the coil was not sitting properly and it was making a noise going around corners, hope this might help.........

 

If your shocks are bad (regardless of what happened because of the accident) they need to be replaced. It is not safe to be driving a vehicle with bad shocks. Recommended replacement for shocks is about every 50k miles. Please note that your D has a high center of gravity and if your D is bouncing around due to bad shocks the risk of rolling your D increases dramatically. My shocks run me about 400 to 500 bucks installed (all four). This is with the Monroe Reflex replacements. On a side note, if they were damaged during the accident, I imagine you will have an extremely difficult time proving that fact to the insurance company as shocks are a normal wear and tear item. Good luck and safe driving.

 

Slick:

Sorry to hear about the crash, but glad to hear that both your wife and the D survived.

I recently installed a set of Bilstein shocks on my 04 D, and what a difference!

The spare tire is pretty close to the rear shocks. Removing it makes replacing them much easier.

Given the miles on your D, I recommend replacing them anyway. It is time no matter what. Unless you can see visible physical damage to one or both of the rears, my guess is that the insurance folks will say you are on your own.

www.shox.com will shop you a set of 4 Bils for your D for $269 shipped to your door.

That's a deal, and you will be SO glad you got them!

Don