I am posting this in order to help future folks searching for these issues.

My LS has lately been suffering from squirrely handling. Above 40mph or so, it often felt like the wind was tossing me around side-to-side. The car would actually tend to move laterally while driving, something that I had never experienced before (and I have owned a Buick!).

I recently changed my rear sway bar bushings and links, and then today I did the fronts. Now the car is nice and tight again, and there was zero lateral movement felt today.

On an unrelated topic, Rockauto sent me a part that was not correct (the manufacturer had misboxed it). The online return function was very easy to use and included a prepaid return label. All I had to do was drop it off at the Fedex store and they will be sending me a replacement.

 

Seems to be a common issue. When I told my indie in 2017 I had a clunk in the front end, on the phone he said sway bar end links. But when he saw the car, it was not, it was the shims being missing from the front pads when the selling dealership did the front brakes--they did everything incl the Lexus sensor and caliper bolts, but not the shims (there are 8).

Rock: As far as Rock goes, it's too bad that amazon seems to now go toe to toe on price with free shipping and easy returns (seems rock came up on many parts amazon used to be expensive). But even if you have to return a core to Rock, you get to use their FedEx acct. and it is dirt cheap. Listen, my UPS account has 25% off ground, 45% off air, and 40% off surcharges except fuel. Cheap. What's $19 to someone walking in the UPS store is like $12 to me. But when you see Rock Auto's rates for FedEx it might be like $8! lol

One of my centric rotors was clearly installed and taken off, it was dropped and had fingerprints and no plastic bag. I sent it back to rock the next day and 2 days later a replacement was thrown literally by fedex on my front steps. I heard the thud. But their logistics generates a replacement and tracking as soon as it sees the replacement has been dropped off, much like amazon gives refunds as soon as the return is dropped off at Kohl's or UPS....

edit for the jack pads on my BMW, rock was able to beat all the online German places for aftermarket (nobody see's it didn't feel like paying $23 just to have a BMW logo on it--rock was $11 for Vaico--nobody else had aftermarket for an E92 coupe, just OE over $20. aftermarket was easily had for sedans at all the online places for $9)



They always get damaged/ripped off because the vehicles are on the low side, this time by a manhole cover that was elevated