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took car out for spin yesterday, streets, bumps and freeway tests. seems normal to me. sudden stops nice and controlled, no nose dives. hard corners, nice and flat (For an ES350, it aint no Porsche), fast freeway bends, no feeling of rolling over. I like it. straight down the freeway is controlled, but smooth. cant really say much more. now I need to get back to fixing the front center dash speaker. thought I had it, but it started rattling again yesterday.
Got around to swapping out the four struts this weekend. Not difficult at all. One of the old rear ones was leaking, the rest were just plain old (192k miles). They are still settling a bit. Ride height is almost back down to normal. I assume after a couple weeks, it should be all good. The ride is much nicer on the way to work. A bit stiffer than I expected, but again I think that will soften just a bit as new the components get broken in. Thanks Jim for being the guinea pig!
Bought car at 60K, now has 145K - mostly trips on highway 25 miles or more.
Condition was:
Front Good: outer tie-rods ends, ball joints. Front Bad: Control arms and sway bar links(torn boots). Front SoSo: inner-tie rods OK, but not firm, also, one boot torn.
Back Good: trailing links and swaybar links. Back Bad: All other bushings I could wiggle by hand, although they looked good on the car.
swaybar bushings all the way around were OK but not new, but cheap enough to replace anyway. I always say these give you the biggest bang for the buck (on a performance handling car.)
After driving awhile with the new struts, I feel like I might need to go back and revisit some of these bushing soon. While the ride is definitely smoother than the old ones, I still feel like bumps are not handled correctly. The rear has only what I can describe as a hollow sound when going over rough pavement. I suspect that maybe that movement is getting lost in bad bushings and not allowing the struts to do their job. The front as well, but I'll probably just start with the rear.
Last edited by craig72; 01-22-21 at 04:36 AM.
Reason: include quote
Craig - you may be able to use a pry bar and see if something is loose. never tried on a Toyota before, but can definitely do it with front control arms of a BMW
So I looked over the bushings and nothing glaring was jumping out at me that would explain the harshness I feel with these new units. Even my bride has commented on how much worse the ride is. I don't have a lot of 'suspension smarts' to understand if its the springs or the damping that is causing the change from the original factory units (at least when they were working properly). The ride used to be so smooth and quiet, now it's noisy and harsh. I'm half tempted to grab a set of low mileage salvage units for the rear just to see if that changes the behavior. Any thoughts?
hard to really know, harsh is a relative word. before I changed mine, the suspension was spongy (another relative word). maybe that is what you are looking for. maybe try test driving a 2020 model and see how it feels in comparison
Give a couple of weeks and a thousand miles to break in and loosen up. I think you will find the ride gets better with some mileage on the new struts and springs.
Give a couple of weeks and a thousand miles to break in and loosen up. I think you will find the ride gets better with some mileage on the new struts and springs.
2nd that. One other thing, I recall you used the same sway bar links, I switched to the new model links because they were slightly different. see earlier posts.
Give a couple of weeks and a thousand miles to break in and loosen up. I think you will find the ride gets better with some mileage on the new struts and springs.
Originally Posted by w84me
2nd that. One other thing, I recall you used the same sway bar links, I switched to the new model links because they were slightly different. see earlier posts.
Yeah, I've had these on for ~4-5k miles now (installed back in Nov). I'm hoping that with the warmer weather, it will be a bit more agreeable.
I had swapped out my sway bar links on the front with MOOG units earlier last year when I did the CV axles. I didn't do anything to the rear links.
So does the spring or the damping of the shocks (or both) play a roll in how 'soft' the ride will be? Compared to the old units, these hold corners much better, but every bump is felt much more through the seat and steering wheel. Just curious, as I doubt I'd waste any more effort/money on this.
w84me, did you only look at strut assemblies, or did you also consider standalone struts?
I've put some cheap strut assemblies into an old Camry and found that the spring rate was significantly different. The car rode a lot higher.
But they weren't KYB, which I'd anticipate doing a much better job at matching stock spring rate.
10-09-20 | 10:00 AM
