Poor Rear Stability UPDATE: No rear sway bar!?

[CutlassSL91]

Okay, in the past 8 months or so, I've noticed the rear of the car seems to have a mind of it's own. When driving at slow speeds (under 20mph) the rear seems to shimmy from side to side quite A bit. On the highway, particularly the expressway doing about 65+ mph, the rear of the car wanders all over the place. When making a wide turn, the rear likes to swing out. This car REALLY oversteers. Everything goes to hell on wet pavement

 

I'm thinking either:

 

-The cheap tires i bought new back in Feb are really crappy

 

- The intermittant clunk comming from the rear strut mount has something to do with it???

 

 

I did a bounce test and it did fine. The struts were replaced early last year before i bought the car.

[Kalgorn]

Check your trailing arms. I would guess if they are snapped, your rear would slide around a little bit. I could be wrong though. I never really noticed anything when my left one snapped in half but I'm not sure.

[mihela816]

My car's rear struts are shot and it does the same thing you describe.

[CutlassSL91]

the bad struts would cause the side to side shimmy?

[CutlassSL91]

how does it do that?

[pwmin]

"How exactly does the posi-trac rear end on a plymouth work? It just does." (Joe Dirt)

 

just do a visual on the rear suspension. look for leaking struts, bad sway bar mounts, bad trailing arms or lateral arms, bad strut mounts, etc. what tires do you have?

[CutlassSL91]

they are just cheap tires like $220 at KanRock. everything is fine except i know i have a bad rear strut mount because there is a clunking evernow and then when i hit a bump. The struts are some cheap ones the owner before me had put on in '04.

[CutlassSL91]

I just checked today to see if i had a rear sway bar and sure enough i do NOT have one! Is this normal? I have FE1

[94CutlassSLCoupe]

yep...totally normal

 

I put a rear bar on from a lumina z34 and my car handles damn good for the springs it came with.

[CutlassSL91]

that's god to know. I'll have to check around at some junkyards. Are those difficult to install?

[94CutlassSLCoupe]

you need to take the passenger side rear strut out and also remove the nuts from the driver's side strut and it falls right in. Make sure to get the inserts that go into the rear subframe or it will cost you $25 to get them from the dealer. Other than that it was pretty easy...i installed it when i was putting new struts on anyway.

 

Pretty much every Grand Prix has a rear sway bar although the one from a 3.4 DOHC car is the one to have in my opinion!