Well about 5 days ago I picked up a clean black 98 GS400. It had just passed an out of province inspection as well.. but any ways as i was driving through a parking lot going about 10 km\hr , my ball joint snapped. My car has about 300 000 km, so about 185000 miles. What i dont get is how it passed the out of province .. there didnt seem to be any warnings either, no creaks or popping noises either. Anyone else have anything similar happen? and also the fender seemed to have gotten pretty messed up, any one know someone parting one out ?

 

this is actually a very common occurrence on our cars. there are actually a few threads about this exact problem. sorry to hear it happen to you, but the bright side is you were going slow and in a parking lot and are safe.

 

yeah, the odd thing is just about every person I know that this has happened to has always happened going real slow like that....thankfully.

 

Curious... what is the "out of province" inspection. I see that you are not in the states so I'm not sure what gets tested during inspection.

Here's some fenders but this guy looks to be selling the pair:
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/2ge...rs-silver.html

 

well basically the out of province inspects everything. it is one of the hardest inspections to pass other then the salvage one, however most of the time it appears to be a money grab for the mechanics

 

That sucks... At least you joined the right site just a lil late to catch this issue. Good luck

 

Common with the ****ty Oem ball joints. That's the first thing to change out to Moog. Read the sticky above or even google search to see multiple failure pics. Lexus GS has lbj failures dated back to 93 with the 1st gen. Probably cheap china steel used.

 

I dont know about this out of province inspection but for normal safety certifications they can be easily faked. So could there be a possibility that yours was too? Or did you take the car to the inspection yourself?