1Cleanbird

Hello friends, I have a 1995 LS with 220k miles. The front suspension is very smooth over any kind of pavement at any speed. It drives how it was intended to by the engineers at Lexus. However, at low speeds when braking, ie - coming to a stop light, if there are little ripples in the pavement or a slight gouge in the pavement, the front suspension is jarring (like BANG for no reason). I did a simple test where I picked a section of the road to drive over at 8 mph that had small ripples or unpredictable pavement gyrations. I did this off the brakes and it was silky smooth with no issues. I did a u-turn and went back and did it again, this time on the brakes and BANG... I've done some research already and have pieced together a half-baked theory of the strut rods being totally shot. The car has new KYB G2 shocks and new-ish upper control arms. The lower control arms have never been replaced as well as the strut rods. Thanks for the input

BNastee

Putting on the brakes loads the suspension in the direction the strut rod controls. Very typical sounds of a worn strut rod in my experience.


Rich

EthanS

ABS wheel sensors going bad, or not seated properly?
I don't mean to send you on a wild goose chase, but not too long ago I replaced my front left wheel hub on my 99 LS. Upon reassembly apparently I didn't seat the ABS sensor exactly right.
This led to ABS activating only at low speed braking (right before coming to an otherwise smooth and complete stop) which felt and sounded HORRIBLE.
I took the sensor back out, cleaned the threads and mating surfaces of the sensor housing and wheel hub, and made sure to torque it to spec. Fixed the problem.