I have a rattle noise coming from the passenger side rear on my Spirit. It's gotten worse in the past couple of days and I can't figure out what's making it. The noise happens over light bumps, which barely even transmit into the body of the car. At higher speeds it seems to be less prevalent, but this could be just because of the wind and road noise drowning it out.
Here's what I've done so far:
-Tightened the fuel tank and exhaust. Visual inspection confirms that they are not moving when the car is jostled.
-Re-tightened wheel bearings. The bearings have less than two years and 8k on them on this side. They're Timkens, with new races to match when they went in.
-Torqued all lug nuts
A bit of investigation reveals that there is some play in the wheel (I checked by pushing on the wheel with the car on the ground, the triangular jack points in the rear are too decayed to safely support the car now, I need a better location), enough to make a clearly audible sound. There is a squeak from the top of the shock when it goes down and a clunk when it comes back up that can be felt in the body of the shock. Shocks are Monroe and are newer than the wheel bearings. I had to replace the bolts with hardened steel metric bolts of what appeared to be the same size from Lowes because the original bolts had to be cut. I did this on both sides, but only one is making noise.
I need a good solution to this one, I have sunk way too much into this car this summer and I don't want to put any more in for parts it doesn't actually need.