hello -

i've recently acquired an 89 245, which has been a pleasure to own and tinker with. when i bought it (one previous owner), there was quite a bit of a rattle in the rear, as i've been told to expect (to a certain extent) with wagons. however, this rattle seems much worse than it should be, especially driving through the streets of boston. it's kinda got a pots-n-pans sound, and it appears that the majority of noise comes from the driver's side. even turning up the radio doesn't help much.

i've determined that the exhaust probably isn't causing the noise - it seems quite secure. i checked the shocks, however, and isolated a souce of the rattle coming from the driver's side shock absorber's upper mount. not sure how old the shocks were, and if it was just a problem with the shock bushing, i decided to replace the rear shocks with a pair of boge turbos. after replacing them, i've now got an absurd squeak coming from the driver's side shock, which is incredibly annoying. even after it is parked, i can still hear it squeaking, from whatever minimal residual movement is left in the car. the passenger's side shock is silent. is this a faulty shock? an error i made during installation?

on top of that, i've found that the rattle hasn't gone away. while replacing the shocks, i noticed that the torque rod's rear bushings looked suspect (though i have no experience with volvos and am not sure how they should look) - would this cause a rattling sound, though? i also noticed that the shocks' upper mounts seemed quite loose - i tried tightening the nuts, but they didn't want to tighten at all. when the shocks are off, these mounts can be rattled around by hand. is that normal?

sorry for the long post -- i've been browsing this forum for a while and this is my first post; any help is very welcome and appreciated.

cheers,
ian