tjdean01

We bought this 1999 es300 with the sway bar brackets missing. Turns out the nut welded to the triangle frame piece thingy that you screw into was stripped. You can see how I solved that in the pic: I drilled a hole through the stripped nut and stuck a bolt down through there. Now all I have to do is attach the nut. First two pics are mine of the finished job with a lot of aluminum grease on there to keep things from wearing and rusting.

Either way, you simply can't buy these sway bar brackets easily. I ended up buying the ones in the photo with the bigger hole. They are for a 1994 es300. (The ones for the 1999 are the ones with the tiny hole. No way those will fit my 15-16mm way bar!) These brackets all seem to long to me, but that's all I could find. Are yours that long on your 1999 es300? Can that affect anything? The bushing that came with them were not only garbage and cracked, but they seemed really loose. Isn't them getting loose the reason for them to start clunking later on down the line? Anyway, we bought some more bushings (for the 1994) that fit really snug. Too snug, actually.

Okay, so now that the job is done, it feels like the back of the car is super stiff! Before we got it the guy had new struts and links put in, but that was 3-4 months ago now. It shouldn't be this stiff. And plus it's making all kinds of racket. I'm 99% sure he used an off-brand "quick-strut," meaning that the strut mounts would also be near. Anyway, what is causing this clunking? All the tie rod arms and everything are also new!