my ES is noisy
08-10-13, 08:10 PM
#16
Update on this. Finally did my brake job today, reman'd calipers, rotors and pads all around.
Noise is gone! I'm so happy to be rid of it very annoying. This was very hard to diagnose, I pounded on the brakes with the rubber mallet when I was diagnosing, I tried braking on a bumpy street to see if clamping down the pads made it go away, nothing seemed to indicate it was the brakes. But I had to do a brake job anyways
I figured sooner or later I would swap out the offending parts. This turned out to be it for me, I am psyched I solved it without having to get into replacing arms and ball joints!
Noise is gone! I'm so happy to be rid of it very annoying. This was very hard to diagnose, I pounded on the brakes with the rubber mallet when I was diagnosing, I tried braking on a bumpy street to see if clamping down the pads made it go away, nothing seemed to indicate it was the brakes. But I had to do a brake job anyways
I figured sooner or later I would swap out the offending parts. This turned out to be it for me, I am psyched I solved it without having to get into replacing arms and ball joints!
09-29-13, 07:26 PM
#18
Lead Lap
Thread Starter
Time to update this thread. Last we left off the brake job solved some clunk/rattle issue, but over time I began to hear more noise, as if solving one problem makes the next one easier to hear.
I definitely had an issue that sounded akin to strut nuts up front not being tight, if you have ever done such a thing before you'll know what I am talking about. It had gotten to be very annoying at which point I had something like this conversation with my wife
Me: It is clunking up front, driving me nuts.
Wifey: Well it is an old car can't you just live with that
Me: No I can't, besides something is wrong and needs to be fixed why wouldn't I fix it.
Wifey: What needs to be fixed
Me: I don't know, the Toyota dealer has no clue either.
Wifey: Its just an old car that makes noise.
Me: Maybe I should just lease new cars, I am too bothered by annoying quirks of old cars
Wifey: That is ridiculous can you hear yourself talking right now?
Me: OK well I am going to start buying parts and throwing them at the car until the clunk goes away that is cheaper than a lease payment.
Wifey: Whatever have fun.
Having gone through everything once, new end links, ball joints and bearings check out, etc. I decided to start with the struts again since the clunk/knock seemed to be coming from there.
I have replaced every part on the front struts, I built them up from new parts, some of them aftermarket, notably Moog strut mounts and spring seats, and Raybestos replacement stock springs. I reassembled with the JDM struts when I swapped the AVS system in. There were no problems I could see in assembly or operation. The only hard part here is securing the top nut, as the AVS struts have a wire coming out, you need special sockets to tighten it and you have no way to hold the strut shaft, just have to rely on the flats on the strut mount to hold the strut shaft.
I had to eliminate the aftermarket strut mounts as a potential problem. I bought new Lexus OEM strut mounts from Sewell. Swapped them in today, found a few interesting things Re: using aftermarket strut parts on these cars. Frankly, they are crap. Based on the bad shape of the upper spring seats and replacement springs, I actually pulled out my 100k stock parts and swapped this back on. The stock parts are well coated and cleaned up nice, where the aftermarket parts already had significant rust.
See below the rusty spring is the aftermarket unit with ~10k miles, the one on the left is stock with 100k.
Rust on the spring is bad, that is why OEM and most aftermarket performance springs are powder coated. Whatever coating there is on these Raybestos springs just flakes right off. The upper spring seats looked like this too, so I swapped the cleaner old stock seats back in.
The Moog strut mounts also had mangled flats where the 100k stock strut mount was fine. This could be installer error, I was very careful to compress the spring enough to put the new stock mount on and engage the flats of the strut shaft and tighten the top nut fully before decompressing the spring. See comparison pics of the strut mounts below
At any rate the problem seems to have been solved! I can't really say what the issue was, probably the strut mounts. The lesson seems to be to use OEM strut parts all around, and if you don't have the dough re-use the stock parts becuase they are better old and used than the aftermarket parts are when new.
I can hear the noise from the rear suspension now that I have fixed up the front end...to be continued...
I definitely had an issue that sounded akin to strut nuts up front not being tight, if you have ever done such a thing before you'll know what I am talking about. It had gotten to be very annoying at which point I had something like this conversation with my wife
Me: It is clunking up front, driving me nuts.
Wifey: Well it is an old car can't you just live with that
Me: No I can't, besides something is wrong and needs to be fixed why wouldn't I fix it.
Wifey: What needs to be fixed
Me: I don't know, the Toyota dealer has no clue either.
Wifey: Its just an old car that makes noise.
Me: Maybe I should just lease new cars, I am too bothered by annoying quirks of old cars
Wifey: That is ridiculous can you hear yourself talking right now?
Me: OK well I am going to start buying parts and throwing them at the car until the clunk goes away that is cheaper than a lease payment.
Wifey: Whatever have fun.
Having gone through everything once, new end links, ball joints and bearings check out, etc. I decided to start with the struts again since the clunk/knock seemed to be coming from there.
I have replaced every part on the front struts, I built them up from new parts, some of them aftermarket, notably Moog strut mounts and spring seats, and Raybestos replacement stock springs. I reassembled with the JDM struts when I swapped the AVS system in. There were no problems I could see in assembly or operation. The only hard part here is securing the top nut, as the AVS struts have a wire coming out, you need special sockets to tighten it and you have no way to hold the strut shaft, just have to rely on the flats on the strut mount to hold the strut shaft.
I had to eliminate the aftermarket strut mounts as a potential problem. I bought new Lexus OEM strut mounts from Sewell. Swapped them in today, found a few interesting things Re: using aftermarket strut parts on these cars. Frankly, they are crap. Based on the bad shape of the upper spring seats and replacement springs, I actually pulled out my 100k stock parts and swapped this back on. The stock parts are well coated and cleaned up nice, where the aftermarket parts already had significant rust.
See below the rusty spring is the aftermarket unit with ~10k miles, the one on the left is stock with 100k.
Rust on the spring is bad, that is why OEM and most aftermarket performance springs are powder coated. Whatever coating there is on these Raybestos springs just flakes right off. The upper spring seats looked like this too, so I swapped the cleaner old stock seats back in.
The Moog strut mounts also had mangled flats where the 100k stock strut mount was fine. This could be installer error, I was very careful to compress the spring enough to put the new stock mount on and engage the flats of the strut shaft and tighten the top nut fully before decompressing the spring. See comparison pics of the strut mounts below
At any rate the problem seems to have been solved! I can't really say what the issue was, probably the strut mounts. The lesson seems to be to use OEM strut parts all around, and if you don't have the dough re-use the stock parts becuase they are better old and used than the aftermarket parts are when new.
I can hear the noise from the rear suspension now that I have fixed up the front end...to be continued...
09-29-13, 09:38 PM
#19
Holy crap, I thought you replaced your old rusty springs with some new ones, not the other way around. I was shocked when I read up to it. I also have to give props to Lexus for building such great suspension parts. If I had figured out that my noise was not even suspension related, I would have still been riding on 200k struts with no issues.
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