2000 or 2001 SSEi READ THIS!
 

After my horrible experience with the noises in the front end of my car I have come to find out the following stuff. You can read about the problems in this forum under "Steering BOING".

It turns about that GM has redesigned them after 2001 and never issued a TSB or anything. DO NOT BUY THE AFTERMARKET SPRING SEATS they are the wrong type. In 2002 (from what I am told and have found out) GM redesgined the spring seats to be wider and have a larger lip on them to hold the spring in place. On my car (2000 SSEi) the spring seat does not have a big enough lip on it to hold the spring in and after a while the spring wears through the rubber insulator, slips up and over the seat and rides on the side of the spring seat making the creaking/squaking noise you hear.

I just replaced my entire front sturts, bearings, seats, and mounts with the aftermarket ones. They lasted 3 days before wearing through and popping up and over the side of the spring seats. After much frustration and ever part store not carrying the spring seats we decided to go back to the dealer. We ordered the parts and compared the spring seats. The new ones are built so much better. There is a substatial lip that they spring sits in and the shape is different now (the older ones being almost an oval, whereas the newer ones are almost perfectly round.) So after close to $1000 :evil: on the front end now, hopefully it will be right this time. Save yourself time and frustration if you have this problem and do not buy the aftermarket spring seats!

Thanks for the heads up on this.

WOW. Nice of GM to let us know about this... :evil:

WOW,.......thanks for the inside info on the spring issue! I AM making a complete note of this for any future problems that I may experience with the sping-seats......and better believe that GM WILL be putting out the $$$ to fix/replace mine if they happen to self-destruct......