2001 Mazda Protege Right Rear Strut Failure?

Travelling down the road today in my 2001 Protege and it sounded like something broke loose in the rear suspension, kind of a rusty crunchy sound. Now, I am getting a really loud, clattering clunking sound over bumps (the bigger the bump the louder it is) and when I grabbed the right rear strut, I could wiggle it a good 1/4 inch from side to side. No sagging of the suspension though. Any ideas as to what happened? It sounds like the strut is actually moving inside the mount. Did the mount or did the strut fail completely? How serious of a safety issue is this? Thanks for any ideas.

It sounds like the mount broke. I suppose if the strut still looks okay you could just replace the mount (a kit should come with the mount, nuts with the embedded bearing). From a safety standpoint its less scary in the rear, but I would definitely look into fixing it soon. Haha, my strut looked like this when I took it off in the front http://youtu.be/RFfrmqL-9vU Everything was toast.