Pothole aftermath on '95 E420

[y2kimmel]

I hit a big pothole yesterday, unavoidable given the road that i was on and traffic at the time.

I heard a loud BANG and the passenger rear began to clunk over bumps.

I was close to home, and parked the car - not thinking about it until this morning.

On the way to work - the clunking was still bad - getting worse. The rear suspension felt really weird going over bumps as well. Upon reaching the parking garage at work - I started to investigate.

I could see the chrome arm of the shock when examining the right rear wheelwell, but not on the left. Hmmmm...not good.

When I opened the trunk, I could see two hex nuts on the right side sticking up through a section of ripped trunk carpet. I pulled the carpet out, and found about 5 inches of the chrome shock arm sticking out of the body, with 2 nuts and a washer on top.

I believe that I need to install a new mounting washer to fix this. My question is - is it dangerous to drive the car like this? There is NO shock action on the right rear side - the shock just wiggles around. it doesn't appear that the mounting surface on the body has been damaged (thankfully). I believe this to be a quick and cheap repair - am I right?

Thanks,
Troy
1995 E420