Weird Car Stuttering Noise

For those who’ve ridden in my Honda Civic, you may have noticed that when I’m driving on bumping roads, my car would make a weird stuttering noise, as if something was loose. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure it out what was going on. Some have suggested maybe my shocks were damaged. Since it didn’t really affect my driving, I never did take it in to have it looked at. And since the noise came from the rear, as the driver, I never did have much of a chance to analyze where it came from while I was driving.

A few weeks ago when Liam came up to visit, Andrew was sitting in the back and obviously annoyed by the noise. Seattle streets tend to be hilly and bumpy. So he took some tissue paper and stuffed it between my rear windshield and my rear center stop light (not exactly sure what that’s called):

rear windshield + tissue paper

And magically and instantaneously, the stuttering noise was gone. The noise has plagued my car for years and Andrew resolved it immediately. Many others have sat in my rear seats and never did figure out where the noise was coming from, only to mention they thought it was abnormal. I guess what was happening was the fact that that there was space between my rear center stop light and my rear windshield and during bumpy roads, it would smack against each other.

I’m probably going to look for something more durable and less covering than tissue paper (probably cardboard), but it’s weird not hearing that stuttering noise now that I’m accustomed to it.

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