Loud banging noise in the front end of my '94 Jimmy SLT...

[Mean Green]

How's it goin'. I've got a bit of a pickle here. My Jimmy has been making a rather loud bang whenever I have the misfortune of being forced to tackle a decent-sized pothole or moving up the angle of a driveway, pretty much any movement other than normal driving/turning. The noise is coming from the front end, seems like it's under our feet. Now I'm not entirely a car expert, mostly general automotive knowledge, the kind of 5-minute diagnosis knowledge, (I work at Autozone). I THINK it's the torsion bar, but not quite sure. Any thoughts?

 

[Molson02536]

How's it goin'. I've got a bit of a pickle here. My Jimmy has been making a rather loud bang whenever I have the misfortune of being forced to tackle a decent-sized pothole or moving up the angle of a driveway, pretty much any movement other than normal driving/turning. The noise is coming from the front end, seems like it's under our feet. Now I'm not entirely a car expert, mostly general automotive knowledge, the kind of 5-minute diagnosis knowledge, (I work at Autozone). I THINK it's the torsion bar, but not quite sure. Any thoughts?

It's going to be your Torsion Bar Insulator that will need to be replaced. There are two of them on ether side of your Jimmy, the drivers side is easy to replace but the passenger side is harder to replace.

With stock exhaust, You can't jack up the cross member high enough. As for unloading the torsion bars, here's what you need to do. Jack up the opposite side from the Jimmy from the one you're changing.

If you have access to a cut-off tool, here's the trick for installing the passenger side, once you destroy the old one getting it out. Cut about 3/8" off the stud. It'll fit in with the clearance you've got. I hear if you can find MOOGs, they actually have two part numbers, a left & right. The Moog's has the shorter stud by design. The TRW's didn't. So out with the air tool to cut down the studs.

Good luck and will take about 1.5 hours to 2 hours, from start to finish depending on your level of tool use.

 

[Mean Green]

Much appreciated, I'm going to see about ordering the parts and finding a free day, a buddy for the tools I don't have and a case of beer for said buddy. Should be an intersting afternoon, I expect some swearing. Thanks for the info Molson. -Nod- I'll see about posting an update after I tackle the truck.