Wilson2000

After tagging this to an old suspension thread, Double-D suggested I start a new one, so here it goes...

I took an 800 mile round trip in my 2008 SC with 68K miles. For the first time, I noticed a lot of wandering on the long, straight stretches. I researched the possible problems/fixes and inspected the car this morning from underneath. Usually, owners report control arm bushing issues causing this, but mine seem fine, as do my tie-rod ends. What looks worn is my ball joints. The dust boots are all torn and the grease inside them has oozed out. This is odd because the car has been garage kept, and not driven in rain or snow. Too, in all my years of driving Toyota/Lexus vehicles, many with much more miles, none have needed ball joints! Why does a flagship model need them at 68K? Granted, it's now 16-years-old, but it's had an easy life!

I looked up the ball joint parts costs on Bell Lexus and see I'm in a heap of trouble! It looks like the upper ball joints are only sold with the upper control arm assembly, which includes the two bushings, which is good, but they cost $400 ea! The bottom ball joint is more reasonable at about $115 ea.

Question: First, anyone experience wandering due to worn ball joints? Has anyone replaced their ball joints in an SC, and if so, is it a reasonably straight forward DIY job? Anybody using aftermarket front, upper control arms, or after-market lower ball joints? Would it make sense to replace any other suspension parts while replacing the ball joints. If I took it to an indy shop with a press, would they be able to replace the ball joints and control arm bushings, without buying the OEM upper control arms from Lexus? Any other advice? I'll be reading through the shop manuals to see what steps are involved and if any special tools are required.

LeX2K

Definitely, the entire strut, wheel and everything else is loaded up on the ball joint any play and the wheels will flop around. Try and buy from Amayama although availability is suspect. Aftermarket suspension parts simply don't last outside of a few exceptions.

Wallace2006

I have a 2006 SC430 with just under 100K miles on the clock. I have only owned this car a few months. When driving around town things are pretty normal, but when traveling at highway speed on a straight stretch, I too have the problem of wandering. In a slight curve at highway speed, the car seems to behave normally. I jacked up the front and pulled both wheels to inspect and discovered that the drivers side strut was fairly new, but the passenger side was clearly the original. The car has never been wrecked, so I am unclear why only one strut was changed. Neither strut was leaky, but I have always been taught you replace these kinds of parts in pairs. I assumed this was the problem and ordered OEM Lexus replacements. When attempting to perform the replacements, I started on the passenger side. I had the strut assembly loose and ready to come out, but the spindle assy was in the way preventing removal. I attempted to separate the upper control arm ball joint in order to swing the spindle down out of the way, but I could not get the ball joint to separate and did not have the proper tool to facilitate this. By this time I was pretty frustrated and considering it would likely need an alignment, I took it to an independent shop that told me they could do the work. I received several calls from the shop indicating they didn’t think the struts needed replacement. After several conversations, they informed me that if I wanted the job done anyway, they would need to replace the upper mounts, bumps stops, springs, etc which would run the bill way up. I went and picked up my car and I am back to square one. I had similar symptoms with my super low mileage C5 Z06 Corvette when I first purchased it, but this was resolved by replacing very old date coded front tires. I didn’t think that was the problem with this Lexus because it has fairly new (3-4 years old) Michelin Pilot Sports with tons of tread.

Wilson 2000: Did you come up with a resolution to your wandering problem?
Other Forum Contributors: any tips on how to remove the passenger side strut assy without separating the upper control arm ball joint? Any input or assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Raven01750

Wallace, you need to get her up on a rack. You could have additional bushings that are shot. But getting her off the ground is the only way to test all of those components because sprung weight keeps everything tight and you can't do a proper inspection. You can do it yourself, one wheel at a time. But it would be a lot easier to take it to a shop. Who knows, maybe you'll get Lucky and only need an alignment! LOL.

Tp be honest. The SC is a very heavy car for it's size. And it WILL blow through cheap aftermarket components in no time. For me, I drive around 20K miles a year. I have completely replaced virtually my entire suspension when I got the car and have had to replace some of those components 20K late. So... Buy from a trusted source. Good luck.

Paul

Lesly1

Before you go too far, have you checked your tires for the right pressure? my front ones are 245/35/19 and are 40 psi. Possibility one with slow leak? Have you also checked your wheel alignment.
Chris.....From OZ.

Wilson2000

It took me a long time to get my upper and lower ball joints from MegaZip, but I have the parts now and will be installing them soon. For the upper ball joint, one has to buy the entire control arm, with bushings. The lower ball joint comes attached to a component piece of the lower control arm. My lower control arm bushings look good. I'll report back after the job is complete regarding my results for eliminating the wandering.

I've had other Toyota/Lexus vehicles that have drifted (typically to the right) and have chased the problem with alignments and new tires with varying degrees of luck in eliminating the problem. Sometimes, I've had to learn to live with it, however, as professionals couldn't even help pinpoint the problem and chalk it up to poor design engineering. But, "drifting" one direction is a different animal from "wandering," If you are drifting, I would rotate the tires from front to back and see if it improves, or changes the direction of the drift. If so, you likely have a defective tire. You can also rotate side to side, but this is for diagnostic purposes only, and shouldn't be done routinely. If you can narrow down the problem to a single tire/wheel, you then have to determine if it is being caused by the tire or the wheel, but typically, it is the tire. All this assuming your SC is within spec on its alignment.

A good tech should be able to diagnose your entire suspension and make recommendations, but oftentimes they are just making educated guesses. This is evidenced by how many stories I've heard of people being led to replace all their suspension components, sometimes without results! So, proceed with caution. If someone in the past replaced a single strut, it might be because they smashed a wheel into a curb, or something. Insurance wouldn't spring to replace both struts, but they should. You are correct that struts should be replaced in pairs (both fronts, or both rears). Something happened causing a single strut to be replaced, and it may, or may not be related to your issue. If you decide it is necessary, my advice for replacing your struts is to only use OEM parts.

Wilson2000

[QUOTE=Raven01750;11780346]To be honest. The SC is a very heavy car for it's size. And it WILL blow through cheap aftermarket components in no time. For me, I drive around 20K miles a year. I have completely replaced virtually my entire suspension when I got the car and have had to replace some of those components 20K late. So... Buy from a trusted source. Good luck./QUOTE]
Agree with everything Paul. Seeing the multitude of reported problems with the SC suspension leads me to believe the design engineers under-sized the suspension components, considering the weight of the SC. It is a head-scratchier how my ball joints could be bad on a 2008 with 68K miles on the clock, but, all four boots are broken and grease has been oozing out for some time. My 2001 tundra with 130K drives straight as an arrow, and it was less than half the price of the SC new! One would think a "flagship" (the SC430) would be over-engineered, not under. In spite of this, however, I still love the car and feel it's worth the work to keep it driving straight!

Raven01750

Yea. I know you get it Wilson. You can't change too much because if something changes again for the better or worse, we wouldn't know what caused the change.its hard to say why all your joint seals burst though. Exposure to some kind of cleaner or chemical is possible causing the rubber to degrade. A bad manufacturing run of parts but that seems less likely. But I know I have had aftermarket bushings go out in 30k miles.

Paul