I want to completely refresh the rear suspension on my 2011. There is a noise that I’m pretty sure is a worn bushing somewhere, and I figured why not do them all.

the one thing I’m not sure how to accomplish is changing the rear suspension knuckle bushings. There are 3 pressed into each knuckle.

is it possible to use a c-clamp bushing tool to remove the old ones and install new ones with? Or, am I looking at bringing them to a shop that has a press to remove and replace them for me?

 

It’s very possible and doable to change out the rear knuckle bushings as long as you have a wide mouth c-clamp.

if you have the tiger tool c-clamp that costs $300, then it will be no problem for any of the knuckle bushings. If you have the regular $50 c clamps from Amazon, it’s possible, but you will have to bend/deform your brake shield and it will be a tight fit. Still doable but more of a pain imo. Good luck!

 

Thank you very much; I will look into a c-clamp style tool for sure. I thought I had one, and I do, but the cups are huge. It was my father in law's he used on an F150.

Any idea what the bushing outer diameters are? I've been googling, but it's not easy to find info. I might just have to take a wheel off and measure myself.

 

Lexus has never sold these bushings or ball joints separately due to the nature of aluminum knuckles, but it's relatively common to do in the aftermarket for other brands.

Here are the general dimensions:

Lower Fore Bushing
Outer Shell: 35.3 mm Outer Diameter x 34 mm Long
Inner Core: 12 mm Inner Diameter x 40 mm Long
Example Aftermarket Part Number: Febest TAB-238, JIKIU BH21217

Upper Fore Bushing
Outer Shell: 43.3 mm Outer Diameter x 33.5 mm Long
Inner Core: 14 mm Inner Diameter x 44 mm Long
Example Aftermarket Part Number: Febest TAB-245, JUKIU BH21224

Lower Aft Ball Joint/Bushing (It's a ball joint from the factory, but aftermarket bushings exist for this position as well)
Outer Housing/Shell: 45 mm Outer Diameter x 25 mm Long
Inner Ball/Core: 14 mm x 59 mm Long
Example Aftermarket Part Number: Febest TAB-244/TAB-244Z (ball joint), JIKIU BH21223 (ball joint), Febest TAB-244RUB (rubber), JIKIU BH21222 (rubber)

I can't speak to the design/stiffness of any of these options, or how durable they are, but they exist, so that's something.

​​​​​​​Jeff

 

Thank you for the very detailed info.

two questions: if you had to get a bushing to replace the lower ball joint, is there one you would get over the others? Or would you just suck it up and get new knuckles?

 

I thought I should pop back into here and post an update in case anyone was going to attempt doing this for themselves: mission accomplished; I replaced all 3 bushings in either rear knuckle (the ones that have rubber in them/the ball joint one).

It took me about five weeks to do everything after work/whenever there was time; the job would (of course) have been MUUUUUCH shorter had I access to a lift, but alas: my garage ceiling is too low, so I put the car up on wooden cribs to give myself more room than jackstands would have allowed. I had about 18" of space to play in.

Here is a list of what I did:

- removed old suspension arms (all 10 rear arms)
- replaced with new (aftermarket Mevotech and Delphi) suspension arms
- removed and replaced the old wheel bearings (Timken rear bearings)
- removed old rubber and ball joint bushings from the rear suspension
- replaced with new from eBay (I saw Jeff's response too late before ordering new stuff)
- replaced the antiroll bar drop links
- replaced all suspension bolts with new from Lexus (I reused the nuts and washers)
- replaced the rear toe alignment bolts
- ground off corrosion inside the wheel arches and on the subframe, treated with phosphoric acid, primed, and painted with POR-15
- replaced the rotted-out brake backing plates
- new Bosch handbrake shoes and hardware
- welded in new metal to replace a couple of clip retainers for the fender liner that had rotted off (%@$! winter!)

For tools, I used;

- 10-ton manual bench press (and the cups and discs from a manual screw-type bushing press kit), some sockets to push things through
- hydraulic floor jack
- wooden cribs, axle stands, and some ramps I made from 2x4s to get the car high enough to lift up the front end with the floor jack
- screw drivers and pick tools
- box-ended crescent wrenches
- sockets and ratchets, extensions, crow's feet, and an impact-rated flexible joint for hard-to-reach bolts to take out
- an angle grinder with aluminum oxide cutting discs (to cut out seized suspension bolts)
- an oscillating multi-tool with carbide blades (also to cut old bolts)
- POR-15 chassis paint and top coat
- Rubberized asphalt undercoating
- self-etching primer
- an air compressor and blow gun attachment for clearing sand and debris, or drying stuff off
- an electric impact gun, and my air-powered one (which has a shorter body and could fit into things better)
- channel-lock and needle-nose pliers
- rotary and handheld wire brushes (brass wire to avoid munching away too much metal; brass should actually not harm steel since it's way softer)
- loads of brake cleaner
- Sil-Glyde brake lube (I cleaned and lubed my brakes using this, and I also used it to slide the speed sensors back into the knuckles)
- copper anti-seize (to coat the shanks, never the threads, of the new suspension bolts - this will help me if I ever have to take any of this shizz apart ever again)

It is not an easy job to do, but I am very glad to have done it. The car is no longer clunking, and feels super solid. I also discovered that the creak I would hear while stepping out of the car was some rather rusty right-side handbrake hardware - glad I replaced all of that.

If you google around or ask people how to do this sort of work, you will get many different answers. Some people, for instance, said that using a sawsall would be a good way of cutting through suspension bolts. Maybe on an F150 or something, but the IS is way too small for a tool like that, and it'll just buck and punch you in the chest. I found that using a combination of carbide blades on a multi-tool, or aluminum oxide cutting discs on an angle grinder were the best ways to eliminate seized suspension bolts. Out of the 20 holding the rear suspension in, only 4 of them willingly stepped aside for me. The rest had succumbed to the orange monster we call rust.

Removing the old stuff is definitely the hardest part of the job. Suspension bolts are extremely hard steel, and they're almost all in really crappy places back there if you're like me and you have to work on the floor. Cleaning and correcting corrosion were the second most difficult because you need to be thorough and use the right products. Assembling everything was a doddle because it was all new bits.

Using factory instructions for reassembly is critical. Things need to be torqued properly. There was a post elsewhere on ClubLexus that had a link to transcribed service manuals that worked really well for me.

Ideally, I would have used Lexus OE parts for the entire job, but they won't sell the bushings separately, and the cost for suspension arms and the bearings was way, way higher than the stuff on Rockauto, so I did some research and landed on Mevotech and Delphi for arms, and Timken for the bearings.

If anyone has questions about any of this stuff, I would be happy to try and help out.



My IS after its first wash in 5 weeks