Woozy

I have a 91 LS400 and there is a rattle in the right front fender. Is there anything mounted behing that fender? I have had my mechanic look for it many times, and I even took it to the lexus dealer and they could not find it. All the suspension bushings are good. Its most obvious when driving over "washboard" type ripples in the road. Its not associated with suspension travel in any way. It really sounds like its coming from behind the fender, but before I have that taken off I thought I would ask here. Any Ideas?

YoshiMan

I bet it actually IS your suspension. The Strut bar bushings to be exact, which affects ALL LS400s. i have the same issue with mine as well.

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Edit:

I apparently skipped over the part about the dealer checking them out..

timmy0tool

iTrader: (7)

it could be a loose bracket inside the fender, or debris has fallen and is rattling. if you had the bushes checked already, it's time to pull off the wheels and remove the fender liner. no accidents prior?

johnnyg66

Probably not your issue but I had a rattle coming from the front right fender area looked all over turned out to be the well cover one screw popped out allowing the cover to rattle. It popped out after I hit a big puddle.

Woozy

Thanks for the input guys, as I said I had it at the Lexus dealer, could they have missed the strut bar bushing? My own mechnic has looked at it numorous times also and he found nothing. Is this bushing hard to detect when it goes bad? I have also checked out the fender lining and that seems fine, What kind of beackets are behind the fender, is there anything mounted behind that fender?

sha4000

iTrader: (1)

You can usually see the tears in the strut bar bushing and I'm pretty sure yours are toast if they have never been changed. That would give off a clunking sound when braking or going over bumps just like your describing. Mine were most noticeable when braking over small bumps before I changed them out along with the ball joints.

Kansas

I have assumed that the strut bar bushings were a problem only on the gen 2 LS400 since the ones on the 90 LS I drove from new to 183K never needed replacing but the ones on my 2000 LS had to be replaced at around 83K and need replacing again as I near 175K.