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Shock mounting 89 GMC

While working on the exhaust manifolds of my truck, I took a look at the suspension to see if I could figure out my rattle noise that I hear

from the front end when I hit bumps. Besides noticing that all the tie

rod ends are shot, the aftermarket shocks and how they are mounted has me baffled.

What I see is on the top mount, about 6 washers were stuffed in between

the mount along with the shock so it would be wide enough to span the inside of the mount and on the bottom they didn't even bother, looks like the mount is actually bent from them cranking on the bolt. The end of the shocks looks small to me about an inch or so. My question is for anyone who has a similar vehicle, are the shocks supposed to span the whole interior portion of the mount(implying that i have improperly sized shocks) or are there supposed to be bushings in there?

I just got the truck recently and this is not the first thing that I've had to fix so I guess I wouldn't be surprised either way. I don't

care if I have to replace the shocks/bushings/etc, just want to get it back to the way it should be from the factory.

Thanks, Ed

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89GMC
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I cant remember for sure on the trucks, but I do distinctly remember the Olds toranado and caddy eldarados those years having large resin spacers on ether side of the shocks at the upper mounts. This was to allow more "flex" in the mount as the suspension moved, and less chance of the flange it mounted to hitting the body of the shock which was rather large in diameter.

Whitelightning

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Whitelightning

Ok, have some more information, maybe someone can do me a HUGE favor and take a look at their setup, it would be very much appreciated. Went to the local parts house and looked at a new shock, the new one spans the whole inside of the top mount(good thing!!) but and this is hard to explain so I'll do my best.

The middle part of the mount looks like any other shock, about 1 1/2" in diam. From there it thins down to just 1/2" or so bigger than the mount bolt to go out to either side. And it has rubber pads about 1/4" thick in the center where the thinner part meets the thick part. This suggests to me that there should be two bushings(metal?) that mount over the thin parts of this thing and push up against these pads holding this in place, wish i could draw a picture, that desc sux. I have one bushing on one side now and the other is washers, what i'm wondering is, should there be two bushings? If so are they the same size? I'm sure I could make one, I just desperately need to know the length of it. If anyone could measure theirs for me I would certainly appreciate it. I see no pics of this in my factory service manual.....

Thanks again, Ed

Reply to
89GMC

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