BayAreaLex

Hi guys,

I don’t post as much as I used to but still pop in here front time to time to show some clublexus love and support.

Some of you guys might remember me and my white 2001 GS430 from years ago (at one point the car sat on redrilled style95 wheels). I bought the car with about 90K miles in 2011 and currently have about 150k miles today. I’m still daily driving my Lexus.

Since i’ve owned the car, I replaced pretty much every front suspension component at one point or another so no component has more than 50-60k miles. The car also has Megan coilovers.

Over the last few months, I started hearing a noise when going over bumps and uneven surfaces at low speed. It’s gotten progressively worse. The best way I can describe it is something between a squeak and a groan. If I get out of the car and bounce either front fender up and down, I can reproduce the sound on either side. The passenger side noise is slightly more pronounced than the driver side.

If I turn the wheels from left to right while parked, it’s silent, so I’m ruling out tie rods.

I jacked up the car last weekend and got under the car to poke around and try to find something obvious. I grabbed the wheels at 12/6 o’clock and also 9/3 o’clock and gave them a good shake. Nothing obvious. Sway bar bushings look ok. Lower ball joints feel tight, boots are intact. One of the upper ball joints does have a torn boot and pretty messy with grease, so that could be a clue.

The upper and lower ball joints have about 50K miles.

I posted a YouTube video below from a drive today to show what’s happening. How does this sound to you guys?

My next plan is to get the car up on ramps with the suspension loaded and have a friend bound the fender while I try to sniff out where the sound is coming from underneath the car.

My leading bets:

- Upper control arms (bushing or ballpoint)
- Sway bar bushing
- Could it be front shocks

I look forward to your thoughts and recommendations.

Thanks.

firelizard

iTrader: (1)

Do you have polyurethane sway bar bushings? If yes, I'd bet on that first, followed by a dry ball joint.

captainva

iTrader: (1)

Thats a strange noise. My vote would be on the coilovers. A GS400 I had for a bit had some old Tein coilovers and they made similar noises. I think it was probably the top mount on those but I'm not sure. If its not the sway bar bushings that would be my next place I'd look. Also a trick you can use to find the noise is to have someone push on an open door to rock the car easily and you can then use a mechanics stethoscope to pinpoint the noise.

BayAreaLex

Updating this post, it turned out to be the sway bar end links.

I replaced them with MevoTech endlinks from RockAuto ($18 a piece) and the car is silent now.

What’s odd is that the old links didn’t have any play. However they were pretty loose and articulated with very little resistance which probably is what lead to the noise.

I had previously ruled out the sway bar bushings and end links but after watching this video linked below, I decided to just replace them for good measure. Glad I did.

https://youtu.be/0S8JBe_jn6g

If you have the sound in the video link and you can’t find the culprit, replace those links as they are cheap and easy to replace.