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It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted here regularly but I still daily drive my 2001 GS430. The car now has 165K miles and has developed a nasty front end creaking that I’m starting to investigate.
The car has the following suspension
- Megan coilovers
- SPC adjustable upper control arms (~50k miles)
- MOOG ball joints (~50k miles)
- MOOG tie rod ends (~50k miles)
- Poly sway bar bushings (~50k miles)
- Poly bushings in control arm #2 - caster bushings (~50k miles)
I started off with greasing the sway bar bushings which didn’t make any difference.
I made a short video so you can hear what the creaking sounds like. It’s most noticeable at low speed over uneven surfaces. There is no noise if I stop the car and turn the steering wheel left and right.
I will have to get under the car and have someone bounce the car up and down while my ears are listening closely.
My guesses
- Coilover shocks are failing
- lower ball joints
- upper control arm ball joint
based on my research and help from forum members, I’m suspecting the upper control arm bushings (particularly because they are SPC brand and in the Tacoma world that brand has had quality issues for years)
Some of you may have followed my earlier posts where I was complaining about the front-end noise (see video above) since 2019 or so. I had the car up in the air multiple times and never found anything conclusive. I also took the car to a local Lexus mechanic who noticed that the driver side control arm had a bend but it wasn't obvious to them if the noise was related. Although the noise was annoying, the car drove OK and I didn't want to start throwing money at it if I couldn't conclusively point to the culprit. Additionally my day job was extremely busy, kids took up a lot of time and I just didn't have free-time to chase this problem. This all lead to living with the annoying problem for 3yrs.
A bit of history: Back in 2014, I installed a pair of SPC upper control arms on my lowered 2001 GS430. These were expensive arms (around $800). The arms allowed me to get back to alignment specs and were fine up until 2019 when this problem started. Discussing with SPC, they confirmed that the arms were redesigned with a heavier tubular design and improved ball-joints sometime around then.
Fast forward to Dec 2022. I had few days off for the holidays and finally was able to find a day to get the car up in the air and rip the old design SPC upper arms off to investigate. Here is what I found:
a.) The passenger side upper SPC balljoint had just a tiny bit of up/down play. When pulling up and down on the stud, you could hear a faint clicking. Somehow this wasn't obvious until the arms were removed from the car.
b.) The driver side upper control arm was badly bent (see pic). I don't know when or how this happened. I don't know if this contributed to any noises but it didn't help with tire wear on that corner.
c.) It was hard to tell if anything was wrong with the upper control arm bushings themselves. I have to conclude that they were OK as I don't see anything to suggest otherwise.
Anyway, I swapped the upper control arms with the redesigned SPC units and happy to report that the problem is solved. I'm back to silent operation driving down the road and going over bumps. Thank you to everyone who helped. See pics below.
SPCs are kinda notorious for clunking after not too long. The ones on my GX are clunking after less than 10k but thats in the bushings and not the ball joints. Those look like they have the same "redesigned" bushings so hopefully you don't have the same problem
I've been playing with and modifying cars for two decades. My gripe with aftermarket parts has always been that they just never last as long as OEM (of course given these companies have major investment into R&D and reliability testing). Anyway, I hope these redesigned arms last longer than the 1st gen.
07-22-22, 10:19 PM
Guess the front suspension creaking - Video
