Arlo55

As my wife drove up the street a week ago, or so... I could HEAR the clatter as she ran over expansion joints, irregularities, pothole, etc....so I KNOW she was not exaggerating about the noise. I could hear it , too... and it was NOT constant, either. When she got home from work, the next day, I crawled under the car and found a tear in the heat shield, was allowing the heat shield to lay right on the pipe, making plenty of noise. I fixed it by adding a thin, wide washer under the nut,and it covered the torn section of the heat shield too. THIS HAD TO BE THE NOISE that I had been looking for, nothing else was loose or missing!!! So, when I said I was done and she could drive her car now, without the noise, she took the car to the store, and , as she drove up the street, I could hear the clatter coming from under the back of her car!!!! I said to her, when she returned, "I'm sorry , Honey, I heard the noise as you drove up the street, and I just DO NOT KNOW WHAT to do, I thought that I found the problem , and I DO NOT know what to check now...." So, last Tuesday night, after dinner, I had her back the car up the ramps and I took a wrench to anything and everything, and if it didn't have a place to attach a wrench or socket to it, I took a hammer and banged on it, looking for ANYTHING.....and I also checked EVERY part of the heat shield that Chance or Robb could have reached when they replaced the shocks a week and a half ago. I even bent the heat shield in places where I already checked, and tried to give it just one more millimeter of clearance in any section that I previously determined that the spot in question had enough clearance. And, again, I crawled back out from underneath my wife's car and apologized to her, saying again that I could not find ANYTHING, so, she suggested that I climb into the back seat, roll the windows down, and listen.....and, maybe hear something that I couldn't while under her car.....I agreed, saying that I had nothing to lose, and when we drove up the street..... NOTHING!!! The noise was GONE! And I said: "But, I DID NOT DO ANYTHING.... I DON"T UNDERSTSAND..... I then said " Don't say any more, you don't want to JINX IT!!!! If it is really gone, you will know by the time you get home from work tomorrow." When she returned home from work the next day, she said it's "STILL GONE" GO FIGURE..... I give up! So, back to the topic of wagons..... I was 25, single, and I had a nice, 2 year old 280Z that I did not like putting any commuting miles" on, so, I bought a 2 door 1970 Corolla 1200 wagon, m 1st wagon, for $300 that needed a motor rebuild. It was a GREAT little wagon, and it spared my "weekend car" a lot of unnecessary wear and tear. So, for some reason, I have never been interested in any SUV's, but my wife and I haved loved all of our wagons, especially the AWD Subaru's....until 2010, when they just got TOO big for my wife, like the SUV's we have avoided....

OK I grant you that many people here grew up with SUV's, while I, and my wife grew up with their Dad's wagons. In my case my Dad usually bought a new wagon about every 3 years, using it for his business during the week and for the family on the weekend. I was born in 1955, and Dad had a '56 Ford Sedan Delivery, a '59 Ranch Wagon, a '62 Ford Ranch Wagon, a '65 Impala Wagon, a '67 Country Squire Wagon, and , finally, a '70 Chevy Kingswood Estate wagon before he switched over to the larger but more usefull full sized GM vans. My wife, had similar experiences with her Dad's wagons, but the only one she remembers is the mid '70's Mercury wagon with the fake wood, like my Dad's '67 Country Squire. I, on the other hand, have had about 30 or so vehicles of many types the last 40 years or so, my first car at age 17 (1972) was a '67 Mercury Cougar with a bone stock 289 2 barrel carb, 3 speed manual trans. my 1st wagon was a '70 Corolla 2 door that I bought for $300 in 1980, needing an engine rebuild. I used it as a work/commuter car so I could leave my 280Z safe at home. My 2nd wagon was a 1986 Olds Ciera FWD wagon, that I bought from a family from church when I blew the motor of my 1990 Ford Probe, when I started a new job in Reno after a bad job change (my fault, I should have known that the LOW SENIORITY employee would not work FULL TIME...) cost us our new house in So. Cal and we took the opportunity to escape California and start over in Reno. We soon learned why we saw SO many Subaru wagons in Reno and Tahoe....and we bought 2, and our son bought a Legacy GT sedan, too...We now have a 2007 Focus Wagon, which is adequate and a decent enough and presentable car for our needs, now that I am "retired" a bit early due to Parkinson's disease...

I do have an issue that probably belongs in another section, but, maybe someone here will know... I just replaced the rear shocks on our Focus, "MONROE SPECTRUM" shocks, quite straight forward, but the squeaking noise the car made with the old shocks has been replaced with a "clunking" noise , as if the mounting bolts that I re-used were too small in diameter and may need to be shimmed somehow? And, yes, I checked...all 4 are still in place and tight..oh, I almost forgot....when my wife says a car is "too big" I usually know it would be before I ask her.....because we've been married 27 years and her logic is not crazy, just includes height and width, as well as length. When we met in 1990, she LOVED her '86 Maxima and everything larger than it was too big....our 2002 Subaru was as big a she felt comfortable with and that was the vehicle she compared every potential new car to... but, then, I too preferred cars that were not too large as well, I loved my '85 Chevy (Suzuki) Sprint which was as tiny as you could find in the US, with its 1.0 litre 3 cylinder motor, and the terrific gas mileage that came in handy when I commuted 140 miles a day. In contrast, at work, I preferred the biggest vehicle in the yard , like this "9 axle" or "34 wheeler" which meant that I was in for a long distance, single load/ single unload day, meaning more driving time and less "outside" time in the weather....

I realize this topic is a few years old, but I find it interesting that it is still controversial... I grew up in the 60's and 70's and my Dad had wagons until the full size vans came out in the early 70's. Those big vans were much better suited to his needs in his business. I liked his '67 Country Squire the best with it's torquey 390 V8. I came to wagon ownership much later in the late 90's when my kids were still small. I bought a used '86 Olds fwd wagon which was decent in the snow here in the mountains, but Subaru Outbacks and Legacy wagons were everywhere and a few years later we had one in our driveway too. Now, in mid 2016, the kids are grown and my wife needed a wagon to haul dogs and work supplies. She wanted a Jetta wagon TDI but they seem to have vanished ...The Outback and Escape are too big for her but I found a nice clean low mileage '07 Focus wagon...and with a 2nd set of winter tires, AWD isn't needed.