Numerous postings on LS400 forum regarding steering mechanism slop, noise and clunk. (As opposed to front suspension components)

At the tail end of the steering column is what appears to be a roller bearing staked in place.

After removing dash undercover and ducting, was able to audibly (clunking) move the steering shaft at this location.

Because visibilty is limited, I have attached images of a donor column from a 1999 LS400 visibly depicting tolerances. The area in question at the bottom mounting flange (above u-joint )
Lower steering column bearing... Not sure WHAT kind of equipment was used at factory to stake bearing, but author attributes this to the problem .The 80,000 mile donor column is also clunky.
Lots of visible tolerance between shaft and bearing
Image taken of column in vehicle..loose.
Column will have to come out to replace bearing...will have to be unstaked and restaked..possibly can be done without further disassembling the column...Bearing does not appear to be offered by Lexus as a separate service item. It is unclear whether replacing bearing only will solve problem or if shaft requires attention
45201B (lower) is a clip at 45082 where bearing located. Will see how easy or difficult to remove bearing from donor column...and identify bearing #

 

There might be a design defect in the 98-00 LS steering column. My 99 has the same steering column clunking, especially when braking on a highway speed.
My 96 LS with a quarter million miles does not have this problem.

 

I was wondering whether you could tap-weld the bearing ring to the shaft, an easy fix.

 

Just so the readership is clear, did you mean "tack" weld?
Colin ; )

 

Is the looseness within the bearing itself, or did the staking work loose? If staking, you could carefully crimp the staking in using a pin punch to tighten its grip on the bearing outer race.

Edit: Sorry, I didn't see the looseness between the inner race ID and the shaft. Loctite makes a product to fill clearances like this, 660: http://na.henkel-adhesives.com/produ...=8797714251777

 

The bearing is tightlly staked into the steering column, albeit a sloppy stake job..

Considering the excellent build quality,, this is the worst workmanship I have ever encountered on a Lexus...

In both columns, there is inordinate tolerance between the shaft and inner bearing race, and the internals of bearing do not appear tight tolerance either....certainly not a sealed bearing.

Will extract the bearing from the spare column and advise bearing condition and toletances...

The 1998 and earlier columns had more robust construction, although the 99+ columns internals offered smoother telescopic and tilt function..

 

I have a 1997 that has a good 10 degrees of dead-zone in the steering and an audible clunk-tap when the wheel finally reaches the end of that dead-zone and actually turns the steering shaft. Is this what you all are talking about? It's been driving me mad and puts a serious damper on driving pleasure, I'd love to know what sort of sockets I need to lose and fingers I need to pinch to fix it.

 

I have a 97' as well with over 285k and I don't exhibit any steering column "clunk". I did have to space out the plastic gear with a hose washer in order for the tilt mechanism to function properly, but that was an easy 5-10 min fix.

When inserting and removing the key, you don't hold on to the wheel when its tilting/teloscoping up/down do you? I can see more play developing over time if the driver adds strain to the column and using it as a pivot to get into and out of the vehicle.

 

i have a 98 with 273k+ and i get a clunking sound when i turn my steering wheel all the way to the right or left at parking lot speeds. It still has the original steering rack though :/

 

The bottom steering bearing appears to be in good condition...

Lots of tolerance betwen the inner bearing race and column shaft...

Not sure why such tolerance here...not gonna be easy to remedy...

Fixing will require extracting and dissaambling steering column...

Either replacing steering shaft and or machining, rebushing, or resized bearing will be necessary.

Lexus abuts a spider type centering washer retainer at the bearing...

It is possible that replacing this item would offer slight improvement. Spider washer..notice fingers sit inside inner bearing race and shaft....lost tension could result in clunking?
Roller bearing on spare column appears to be in good condition

 

do you know if you can swap in 98 and older columns to avoid this issue again? I’ve had this issue since I bought the car and ever since I got it. I’ve replaced every bushing in the front end. After doing a steering rack driving for a few weeks I shut the car off at my bank came back out started it and turned the wheel to leave and it kept spinning either way so i immediately looked under my dash and the slip joint popped out in the u joint section of the steering link. After wiggling it back in and limping the car home I noticed that little retaining clip on the column side wasn’t snapped in and loosely flopping around.. after removing the u joint shaft section i noticed that shaft in the Column was missing the notch for that clip…I must of bumped the shaft up and now it won’t come back out anymore to where I can pop that clip back on. Cars been sitting for weeks now. I need the clunking noise fixed permanently. Picture I have attached is before I removed the shaft. I can’t get it to pop back to this point.

 

Was working on swapping rack and pinion due to seals being bad, all went well, went to reattach lower ujoint and pushing the lower column and it sent itself up into the cabin , so checked inside and noticed that the upper ujoint was higher and that the upper column was pushed up aswell behind the bearing , took off the joint and tried pulling with no luck, went to put joint back on and the column fully pushed in to behind the bearing and into the inside of housing , any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance, new to the forum so sorry if I posted this wrong

 

try a strong stick magnet to slip it through then once it’s through you’re gonna have to rank pretty hard to get the shaft to pop out all the way. There’s a raised/taper part in the shaft where a clip goes to hold the shaft from popping in.

 

I ran into the same issue but mine just popped past this grove part. Idk how you got yours that far in. Did you hammer the shaft off the rack and it forced it way up there?? Putting this clip back on is VERY hard and make sure it’s on the right way. This clip was popped off before I changed my rack so to “prevent” it I put a big nut on after with a hose clamp and two zip ties as “safety” measures. I mean what else could you do to fix this clip from popping off without removing the entire column?

 

I never applied to much pressure from the lower area because I was worried of something like this happening, I didn’t use a hammer or anything, just pushed on it with my hand to get the gap to slide the ujoint on.