Spare some change?

Like many older B-bodys, my Impala jingled down the road.  Whenever you hit a bump, you'd hear a sound like spare change jingling in a jar.  While it's festive in the holiday season, it's embarrassing the rest of the year.  The problem is the sway bar end links.  Over time the rubber deteriorates and falls off.  When that happens, the washers on the end link bounce around causing the jingling sound.  The rubbers on my car were long gone.  Plus, the spacer was rusted to the bolt, and the spacer it's self was starting to crush on the ends from the sway bar smashing into it as the body rolled.  From the extent of the damage to the spacers, the guy must have driven it like this for the past decade.

The easiest thing to do is to just replace the whole end link.  Because the sleeve was stuck, I ended up having to sawzall through the original bolts anyway.   I replaced my end links with the Energy Suspension 9.8125G kit.

Since we're here anyway, another matter that should be addressed is the front bump stops.  The originals are just that, a hard rubber bump stop.  Not only was the original rubber pretty deteriorated, they don't really do anything to help handling.  There's a cheap upgrade here too.  GM used a special type of bump stop on their S-10 ZQ8 package.  Instead of just being a static piece of rubber, it's a urethane foam that is meant to be an active part of the suspension.  It's meant to always be in contact with the frame, and help control jounce.  It helps the car handle better for around the same cost as the original rubbers and the ZQ8 bump stops are a direct bolt on for the Impala.  GM no longer makes them, so Dorman has picked them up(any new GM parts are the same part in a GM box).  The Dorman number is 31064.  Here you can see the new ZQ8 bump stop next to the original:

With the sway bar loose, and the bump stops not doing much, the Impala floated down the road like a 70's land yacht.  I wouldn't say it handles like it's on rails, but it doesn't wallow down the road anymore.