Recently I began to hear some slight clunk sound when I go around a tight corner (ie: full turn of the steering wheel both to the left or right). It occurs just once in a while and not every time. I have checked most of suspension parts but nothing seemed to be wrong as far as the car was stopped. It can be only heard intermittently while driving and I'm wondering what is causing the problem. It's a 98 Celsior about 160,000km/100kmiles.

I visited a shop where I sometimes help the owner fixing ECUs and other electronics related problems and asked him to help. He quickly checked my Celsior but he could not find anything wrong. Now I need your advice. Where and how should I start to check the clunk sound source?

 

check your lower control arm bushings, compare them with a new one if you can ...

my bushings are worn and allow the arm to shift forward and backwards under hard turns..

report back if you can,. Lexus will not sell the bushing alone so I have ordered a pair from (Amazon) Febest ( Germany) in hopes they work..

 

I second the LCA bushings. I have the same exact problem on my 97. I already did the LBJ, SRB and my outer tie rods and UCA bushings are fine.

I posted a video in Billy's thread on the bushing so you can see what's going on with my car.

My Febest bushings should arrive either today or early next week and I'll take measurements and pictures of them for documentation before I install

 

WE WILL BE WATCHING, mine are on the way too.

 

Please take several close up pictures of febest bushings and extracted original control arm bushings....

While the OEM strut rod bushings are a separate service item with Lexus, the lower control arms are not..but you already knew this.

I mention because the Lexus Shop Manual provides specific indexing instructions for OEM replacement strut rod bushings...

Is there an indexing tab on the original lower control arm bushings and, if so, does febest's part provide for indexing??

Perhaps you ask febest whether they know whether the OEM indexed their lower control arm bushing, and whether they do too

 

I had a similar noise, solved by re-torque the front sub frame bolts/nuts. having loosen/retightening them in the air doing engine mounts, The frame apparently settled/shifted after a while and required re-torquing...

 

Thanks guys for suggestions. I will be checking LCA bushings and front subframe bolts and nuts carefully again with a help of a shop owner who runs a shop very close to my house.
I'm not inclined to deal with mechanical affairs but a local shop owner helps me a lot in return of my electronics related assistances.

 

It was the stabilizer bush that caused the noise, I finally found. Applying the silicon spray to it completely stopped the noise. Now I need to replace the stabilizer bushes.

 

ahh yes, those were initially bad on mine, enough so that the entire sway bar would be able to move side to side, laterally, by simply tugging with your hand.

I replaced those sway bar to body bushing as well as the endlinks and that solved the problem. Aftermarket parts will suffice. But I'm sure some Toyota purists will be up in arms.

I also had to replace my lower balljoints since they had about a 1/4" vertical play. I went with Lexus OEM here since it is a major critical suspension component which I didn't want to put made in China crap in for that, and because the Lexus parts girl gave me a huge discount making it close enough to the aftermarket Beck Arnley ones.

 

Currently getting some clunking and 'popping' when I turn sharply in reverse or move turn forward at low speeds. I'm gonna take a look at my sway bar tonight and see if that's the culprit.

 

Initially, I tried to duplicate the problem setting up my Celsior as is sown in the photo below. As you see it, a thick plywood and papers are there under the both front tires. The plywood is set on the concrete blocks so that the tires are about 5 inches / 12.7 cm above the ground. The reason to use these is to make it easy to turn steering wheel and also you can see suspension parts moving under the car. I asked my wife to full-turn the steering wheel to the left and right. She did it more than 30 times and said, "I'm tired". While she was turning, I checked the noise carefully and I also checked the play of suspension parts. But this could not duplicate the problem at all. I also could not find any play neither.

As I asked members of Celsiorup.com about the problem, one of members informed me his popping noise experience and replacing two stabilizer bushes fixed the problem.
http://celsiorup.com/cgi/ita/itacel....0&space=0&no=0

Then I tried to apply the silicon spray and found there's no more noise. I also noticed that it's a bit quieter at speed bumps.

 

I feel we may have the same issue. The popping noise I hear from my car is coming from the front end when I turn the vehicle tightly. I wiggled the sway bar end links on mine and was able to turn them side to side fairly easily. AFAIK they should be pretty firm so I'm not sure if I should try to replace them or just tighten them up to see if they are the culprit. I haven'5 got around to checking out my sway bar bushings yet I may try spraying them down with silicone as well to see if that makes a difference. I have a good suspicion that they need to be replaced but I won't know til tomorrow when I can jack up the car and take the dust cover off to inspect further. This clunking noise is driving me nuts whenever I'm reversing out of a parking spot. In the meantime turning up my radio will be a temporary solution

 

Yesterday, I confirmed this was the exact same issue causing clunking on my '91. I would hear clunks when making low speed, very sharp turns. Sometimes I would even feel them under my feet - this now makes sense since the cross-member bolts into box beams that run under the footwells.

I replaced the engine mounts 9 years and 30k miles ago, so it's a little odd that it took this long to notice it (had been happening for the last few months, getting worse). The engine mount job was the only time I loosened those bolts.

When checking them yesterday, they moved pretty easily. I was able to get about half a turn on them before getting the torque wrench to do it carefully (59 N-m, per the service manual, which does not seem like much). All 4 were loose like that. I quickly tested all other nuts/bolts in the vicinity and none of them moved at all.

A few days ago I replaced the lower control arm bushings, hoping that would fix it. Although it did not fix the clunking, that job did greatly improve the handling - a problem I did not not know I had - so I'm glad it made me do that other job.

 

Did it sound like this @Yamae ?

 

Yes, mine also sounded just like that.