Tortuga

Hi all:

Just joined the forum - I bought a 97 LS about six months back from a friend. I'm the second owner, and I have all the records.

The car needed a little love:
- Valve Covers were leaking
- Timing Belt was due
- Power Steering leaking
- Tires were eight years old
- some cosmetic damage, dings and what not.
- rotors felt warped, and front pads due for a change
- a/c squeaking a ton when the car was cold.

I paid 2,000 for it - which seems pretty good given it had 150k miles. It was quite well maintained overall, so I think it's worth investing some more $$ into so I can get it up over 200k!

I've done some of that work, and now I want to refresh the suspension since I get the clunking and steering oddities that many have reported.

I want to keep it (almost) all stock, so I thought a nice concise thread documenting the before and after of a stock suspension build might be handy for the forum.

My parts list looks roughly like this:

Front:

- Strut Rods (might just do the bushings)
- Stabilizer Bar Bushings, Links
- Lower Ball Joints
- Upper Control Arms (going with Dorman....)
- Lower Control Arm Bushing
- KYB GR2s, bumpers, mounters, insulators, etc

Rear:

- Stabilizer Bar Bushings + Links
- Carrier Arm BUshing (maybe..)
- KYB GR2s, bumpers, mounters, insulators, etc

I will likely stick with my stock springs, but might try some H & R springs to firm up the ride a bit.

Question - If you were going to do all the suspension work listed above, what else would you do while everything is apart? I'm inclined to do a big refresh of everything that is bad, or might go bad soon, since I have two kids under three, I'm 40+ years old, and I can barely find time to work on the car!

Great forum BTW.

Thanks, Tortuga

RA40

iTrader: (6)

Welcome to Club Lexus and congrats on giving love to the LS. Others can chime on the suspension, I think you covered it well. May also consider the engine and tranny mounts. With the suspension refresh, the car would be feeling very For preventative, the ECU fix.

j2b4o

I plugged the acv on the ps pump, cleaned the solenoid and flushed the system while I had the car apart doing the suspension. I would reccomend maybe changing the thermostat and flushing the cooling system also. Just good maintenance and fairly easy to do while the car is in the air. I'm fairly sure you mentioned all the usual suspension goodies. It's always nice to detail down there. Makes everything look nice and new.

Tortuga

Ah, good call on the mounts - they were on another "to fix" list. I'll add them to the pile. If I'm going to do suspension, might as well do mounts to get the ultimate smoothness possible. I'm still on my originals at 160k miles.

Is the ECU the kind of thing one waits until a problem crops up, or is it too late by then? I don't have unexplained weirdness in the car, so ECU wasn't high on my list.

Also, I'm not too hot on soldering either, so to speak.

Tortuga

Yep, good suggestions for sure. Coolant is due to be replaced, and I have no record of the thermostat ever being replaced.

Looks like the PS stuff is well documented here, eh?

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/ls4...ystem-diy.html