My ’98 ES300 currently has 190K miles on it. I bought it when it had roughly 90K miles on it. I’ve been having a handling problem. My steering has been rather erratic on the highway. When I say erratic, I mean that it feels like I’m directly behind a tractor trailer and I get the sensation that the car is buffeting around or wind blown. Hopefully this makes sense to you.

My front suspension was getting pretty tired (clunking a lot), so I decided to replace it. While I was at it, I decided to replace some other front end components in an effort to rectify my handling problem. Accordingly, I changed the following:

New front struts (KYB)
Strut mounts
Struts bearings
Strut bumpers
Lower ball joints (Moog)
Tierod ends (Moog)
I needed new tires (Michelin Primacy MXV4)
Then I had an alignment done

After all this, the car ride smooth, it tracks well, but I still get this buffeting sensation. My rear suspension appears to be fine, but it is probably original.

What am I missing? Are there other components that I should look at?

Thank you!

Regards,
Tom

 

possibly rear struts as well. now you have new tight front struts and sloppy loose rear struts; that can definitely cause a weird handling situation.

 

I had a similar sensation on my SC when I bought it. It turned out to be a bent rim; the previous owner apparently drove over something large and trashed a rim. He then moved it to the back, giving me a frequent sensation, similar to the jetstream blowing the **** of my car around.

 

I think rear struts could be the problem as well. Mine acts very similar to yours behind big trucks and such. My rear struts are trash at 85k so......

 

Well, I just ordered my rear struts and strut mounts. I should hopefully get them installed sometime later next week.

 

I installed my new rear struts last night........no change!

Since this all start when I had the first set of new tires installed on the rear, I suspect that one of my new tires is bad.....maybe a loose belt. I'm approaching my 30 day trial period for the tires. I called the tire dealer on Sat and told them to order me a set of "V" rated Michelin MXV4's to replace my "H" rated tires. I'm getting them installed tonight.

I've spent a lot of money on parts lately. Luckily I've installed everything myself and didn't have to pay a fortune in labor. With all said and done, the suspension was tired and in need of replacement.

Tom

 

weird. well at least you now have a good suspension underneath it again. hpe the tires work. i've seen tires cause weird things...

 

Back to the drawing board! The latest set of tires did not affect my handling.

The only other thing that I think it could be is a worn steering rack. If I drive down a straight road, I can move the steering wheel about an inch without a response. Does that sound bad? If the steering rack is worn like that, would that be responsible for my car wandering on the highway?

If this sounds like the culprit, I can get a rebuilt rack for around $200. Does anyone have experience changing out a steering rack?

 

I have exactly the same problem you are experiencing, just had the front suspension on an alignment rack to check it out, and Lexus says everything is in good shape (tie rods, bushings etc). The problem is so annoying and really ruins the whole driving experience; having to constantly make small steering corrections is not cool. While searching, I found a GS thread where they tighten their rack pretensioners and everything seems to just go away. Anyone know if our ES racks have a pretensioner, or if our racks can be tightened/adjusted.

My steering wheel also has a bit of play where there is no pressure on it and I can feel the front end wandering from side to side in the free play I can feel through the wheel.

Lexus told my that my rack was not the stock rack and they hadn't replace it and that it was probably the problem. They didn't mention anything about having the rack tightened though.

Anyone else have any experience with this situation?

Thanks,
Kev


Edit: FSM as detailed and diagrammed walk through of steering rack removal. Doesn't look to difficult, just time consuming.

 

Kev,

Thanks for sharing your experience. Yes, it is very annoying and frustrating, especially after replacing all the parts I did!

What is FSM?

 

fsm= factory service manual.

 

Sounds like your steering rack bushings are blown out. I've been driving like this for a while on my ES. If you only need the bushings it shouldn't be that much to fix but a whole rack could get pricey. There also is a common problem with a bolt coming loose on the steering rack which I had fixed once. It was a noticeable difference between blown out bushings which gives you a mushy steering response whereas the loose bolt kind of just threw the car side to side when cornering.

The free play in the wheel is the sure sign of the steering rack so get that checked out asap.

 

Have you ever found anywhere to get bushings for the rack? I have been having a hard time finding any.

 

I'm not sure what bushing you are referring to. Here's a link showing the steering rack and parts list. If the link doesn't work, cut and paste it into your browser.

http://www.lexus-parts.com/assembly....l=197&year=159

I'll go back to one of my questions, wouldn't it be worth it to buy a $190 AC Delco rebuilt steering rack and install it yourself. I'm just not sure about the complexity of installing one.

 

Sorry, try this link.

http://www.lexus-parts.com/assembly....l=197&year=159