Is this dangerous?

I was looking under my Jeep today trying to figure out what this annoying rattling sound is that I hear whenever I hit a bump. I discovered that on the drivers side of my rear suspension, the metal clamp that wraps around the leaf spring has come loose and is just sliding back and forth on it. The spring is not going anywhere, like as far as falling off or anything, but I don't really know the purpose of that part. It looks like it just helps keep the spring pack together.
Can I just tack weld it back on in the same position as the other side? Sorry about the newb question. I really don't know much about leaf springs.

It has felt rather unstable on the hwy lately, I wonder if this could be the culprit?

Don't weld on the spring. That clamp is there to restrict travel of the springs, so with it removed you can get a little more droop out of the leaf pack. That shouldn't affect your highway stability though...look at the rest of your fasteners and make sure nuts and bolts are tight - refer to FSM for real torque numbers

Not really dangerous and should not cause any handling problems either. It is there to keep the leafs from fanning out. Usually there is more than one on the leaf pack. Like one or two in front and another in the rear of the pack. A lot of guys remove some of them as it helps the spring packs work off road on droop. I even tryed to run without them but the springs do like to fan out without them. You can buy new ones at a spring shop if you want to. If you do decide to repair the clip you have just remember that the springs must be able to slide back and forth independent of each other.

HTH,
B-loose

Thanks for the replies, I didn't think it was anything to worry too much about, but I wanted to make sure. My XJ has just felt a little loose on the hwy lately and I just wanted to make sure it wasn't due to this. My alignment is out pretty bad which is more than likely the problem. I don't know what I was thinking about as far as welding on a spring though. That could totally mess up the spring.
Thanks :cheers:

You ought to be able to weld out toward the end of the spring and be okay. I don't know what you have to weld with, or what you would need to weld it with to get it to stick real well to the srping tho.

roXJeepr said:

You ought to be able to weld out toward the end of the spring and be okay. I don't know what you have to weld with, or what you would need to weld it with to get it to stick real well to the srping tho.

Click to expand...

First, those rebound clips don't want to be welded TO the spring, they just want to enclose it so the leaves can't fan out.

And you really can't wel anywhere along a spring without screwing up the temper, which affets the spring rate, which affects the handling and load-carrying capacity, which affets safety. NOT a good idea.