kctiger75

Hi all,

My 99 LS (192K mi) had been giving me fits with a vibration (a kind of wobbling) at highway speeds for the last 3 years or so. I tried several different sets of tires, sonar balancing, road-force balancing, installed new front struts and a transmission mount all to no avail. The problem simply wouldn't go away.

A few weeks ago my local Lexus service people mentioned that I needed new front brakes. I found this surprising and decided to get a second opinion before proceeding. On the way home, I stopped by a local Midas shop so they could have a look.

Somewhat to my surprise, the man said my brakes were fine. I then described the problem I had been having with the vibration and told him everything I had done to try to fix it. I asked him to drive it and let me know what he thought.

Thirty minutes later, he called me and told me he thought the problem was the carrier bearing (which I had never heard of) and it would cost around $650 to replace it. I asked him how sure he was and he said, "about 80-90%". He explained to me that the carrier bearing was an integral part of the driveshaft and that mine had too much play in it when they put the car up on the rack after the test drive.

I had them do the repairs and am I glad! I finally have my car's ride back.

If any of you are dealing with this type of problem, I hope this helps.

KCTiger75

PS. The guy at the Midas store is now my mechanic for life........

skperformance

iTrader: (6)

Was it stronger under acceleration than coasting?

RA40

iTrader: (6)

Happy to hear they nailed it down.

TropikalLS

You know, I think I have this problem on my 98 LS. This vibration causes a kinda light bass/booming at certain speeds and seems to be more present when accelerating. Does this sound like your problem before you solved it? I feel like it has some wobble along with it.

sonyman

Carrier bearing? He meant the center support bearing.

ctuba

Did you ever find out what the problem was?

dc893

I had had one go bad in a tuck of mine before. Felt like a bad u joint. Kept breaking u joints for about 2 years until I replaced it. Glad you didn't go through all that to find the problem.

Jspec603

Carrier bearings (center support bearings, same thing) usually go bad and cause an excessive vibration like the above example, the assembly will have excessive vertical play in the housing assembly causing it to be sloppy and rotate untrue. Or they will start to whine, when the bearing itself starts to wear/dry out. It'll cause a audible rotational whine that is very noticeable under both acceleration and deceleration.