Och

iTrader: (3)

Caster arms wont cause shakes. Maybe loose feeling over road mis-perfections, but definitely no shakes on smooth highway cruising. My caster arms are original, with 9 years and 125k miles on them, and the bushings are pretty worn out, with no adverse driving affects. My car glides down the highway smooth as butter.

90% of time its improperly balanced tires or bent rims. Those with oversized rims and low profile tires often do not realize how easily they bend.

As far as properly balancing wheels, our wheels are lug centric, but most balancing shops do hub centric balancing. Thats usually fine for OEM rims, as they are high quality and their hub center and lug center are most likely equal, but with low quality aftermarket wheels thats often not the case. With these, you need to find a place thats able to do lug centric balance.

This company manufactures lug centric balancing flanges, and according to their website, Lexus mandates their dealerships to use them for wheel balancing, so your Lexus dealer should be able to do lug centric balance.

Och

iTrader: (3)

Get your wheels checked out first, and get them balanced properly. If you get the car to drive smooth, but brakes still feel like your rotors are warped, then replace the rotors. If your rotors are original, with a lot of miles, it probably makes sense to replace them anyway.

pa06810

Daizen caster arm bushings cured my shakes 100% on a 99 Gs 400 ,55k, 17 inch stock rims. I am very happy.

JeffTsai

iTrader: (1)

Och, are you on stock wheels? I have found that on stock wheels with the meaty OEM tires, the car does not shake much even if the whole entire suspension is completely shot. I had a guy with a 2GS come to me with 200k miles. He had a shot suspension and had horrible vibrations after putting on 20s. The week before he had the OEM 16s and it was perfectly fine. So he spent quite a bit of money to refresh the suspension and it cured all of his problems. I did the bushings, coilovers, tie rods, and lower balljoints. Slapped the 20's on afterwards and it was perfectly fine.

If you are having a problem where the vibration develops soon after a alignment balance. Then the possibility that it is your bushings is pretty high. The reason is that with worn out bushings, the alignment will pull the car back into spec temporarily. However, with the worn bushings the car will re-settle into the "worn" position and throw off the alignment again. At least this is what I've noticed on the higher mileage cars.

The other big possibility is wheel balance as everyone else has mentioned. It is very important especially on a large rim. The center of gravity is further away from the center and you will be able to feel it. The problems in the balance of the wheel will be greatly amplified as you increase in wheel size.

timgs300

iTrader: (22)

I have only 33,000 miles on my GS300. Of course it's 9 years old. Bought a dial indicator. Checked lateral runout on rotors, hubs. Checked rims. Checked play in lower and upper ball joints. All within specs. Did the torque turn check on the upper and lower ball joints. Lower in specs, upper out of specs. Left upper and lower alone. Swapped wheels front to back, side to side. Had new tires balanced. Had new tires road force balanced. Bought new tires. Had them road force balanced. Bought Daizen polyurethane bushing set. Replaced them all. No shakes.

UncleRay

iTrader: (2)

I agree with Jeff, and just letting everyone else know to check those places out as well.

In my findings, I found that the passenger side caliper clamp had one bolt that wasn't working properly. It's where the clamp allows the brakes to open and close freely via the braking system. One bolt needed to be taken out, the housing was then lubed, cleaned, as well as the bolt. Everything was put back together, and I haven't had a problem since. It's started up again recently, but it's due to a wheel alignment.

Maybe that helps :]

sivikvtec

did you only change the bushing or the whole arm?

PHML

iTrader: (33)

maybe motor mounts.

Och

iTrader: (3)

Worn out bushings will not cause shakes, but they can multiply even the slightest vibration originated at the wheels.

I have 125k miles on my 2001, and like I said, it glides butter smooth without even a hit of vibration. All suspension parts are original except for lower ball joints - they were replaced at 80k.

In the winter im riding out 16" that came off LS400, with 215/60/16 winter tires. In the summer I have 3GS 17's with oversized 235/55/17 tires. No problems with either set.

ChampGS3

iTrader: (6)

[QUOTE=Och;5285877]"Caster arms wont cause shakes. Maybe loose feeling over road mis-perfections, but definitely no shakes on smooth highway cruising. My caster arms are original, with 9 years and 125k miles on them, and the bushings are pretty worn out, with no adverse driving affects. My car glides down the highway smooth as butter."

I have to disagree with your statement of "Caster arms Not being the cause of the shaking" many GS owners are experiencing. And while the shake is not "created" by the bushing itself, an old/worn or cracked Caster bushing is absolutely the Root Cause of the improper damping of the front a back(caster) movement of the wheels.
As you mention on a smooth highway this is mainly a non-issue, you are correct. However the weak/cracked rubber in these worn caster bushings create moderately uncontrolled oscillations under normal suspension travel and extreme vibration and oscillation under braking. This is the main reason drivers think their rotors are warped as under braking the terrible braking force creates a caster vibration that really gets the steering wheel going.
This is very similar to the vibration issues one gets when the motor mounts go bad. Under nice easy driving everything seems ok, but then you come to a stop and the engines load is transferred onto the mounts, the bad vibrations find there way into the chassis/cabin of the vehicle.
On another note, I don't know of any factory Toyota/Lexus wheels that are lug-centric?? Thats why hub centric spacers are whats recommended.

As a Final Statement, I have the Daizen Caster bushings and I Have No Shake.

Och

iTrader: (3)

Most people are experiencing shaking exactly at smooth highway driving. These are simply caused by improper wheel balance, not suspension parts. You would feel feedback from loose suspension if you drove over rough roads or gravel.

I used to suffer from shaking myself, and I also suffered from terrible shaking during braking. I replaced two bent wheels and got them properly balanced and shaking disappeared completely while driving, but persisted during braking. I replaced brake rotors, and shaking is gone under braking as well.

I haven't touched anything in the suspension or the steering system and my car drives absolutely smooth, with no hint of vibration.



Pretty much all Toyota/Lexus wheels are lug centric.

rikjames

For the Daizen Caster bushings..Are they included in the control arm bushing set or sold separately? If so anyone know that part number and where they ordered it from?

timgs300

iTrader: (22)

sewell lexus - use discount code clublexus
tm engineering

shvc1991

My shaking is inconsistent. Some times it shakes, some times it's perfectly smooth. I don't know what's going on. I had my tires replaced, balanced, and aligned. The shaking was gone for a week and then it came back.

CurlyG

Frozen (stuck, dry) front brake caliper pins. That caused steering wheel shake at 70+ mph during a 600 mile road trip last week. I pulled the calipers off, pulled hard to get the stuck pins out, cleaned the pins and pin holes, re-greased, and reassembled. Now %95 of the vibration is gone. Next steps: new rotors, and rebuild kit for the calipers.