I recently purchased a SC400 with 100,000 miles. I have rattle in the frontend. I am replacing the shocks all around. The noise only happens on broken pavement.
Could it be the Rack&Pinion? Or the Tie rod ends? The bushings on the A-Arms appear to be OK.
Does anyone have a suggestion?

David

 

Had the same problem on the drivers side of mine. Just had new springs and struts installed and at that time I had the control arms replaced. The bushings are known to go on them and of course lexus doesn't sell just the bushing. THe Supra control arms are the same and the bushing actually looks to be of higher quality. They are ~$100 less each to go with supra arms. Have them installed at the time as the springs to save quite a few $$ in labor. Hope this helps.

Later
James

 

james or anyone-

do you mean upper or lower control arm (#3 or #4 in the illustration)??? i know the upper control arm has bushings but the lower control arms has somekind of rubber gasket/bushing i can see that is also deteriorated in my car. i have the same front end knocking except it's only on the passenger side. my rear also only knocks on the passenger side.

david-

you can check out parts.com for some prices of the control arms i think it's $211 for the upper and $2something for the lower.

does anyone know if parts.com sees genuine lexus parts or copies???

 

808 I wasn't 100% sure so I just called the shop that does all my work. Its the lower control arm. I believe the cost of the lexus part was about $400 and the supra one was ~$300.

Later
James

 

thanks for the info! i take it you went with the supra lower control arms? if the supra and sc400 arms are the same, then maybe toyota sells the bushings alone and not the whole arm? guess i'll have to do some reasearch and live with the banging/rattle noise. maybe an aftermarket manufacturer sells poly bushings for the supra because i'm pretty sure no one makes anything for the sc but there's a high probability that they sell something for the supra. food for thought!

unfortunately, i'll probably have to take the bushings to a machine shop to put in and take out of the control arm even if i find the bushings alone (damn special service tools!!!).

 

Where is that diagram from? Do you know of an online shop manual or did you scan the pic from your own? Any help appreciated.

 

got the illustration from parts.com.
laterz..