New OEM shocks, strut tops and ball joints installed
04-21-06, 04:44 PM
#1
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New OEM shocks, strut tops and ball joints installed
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
First, before I get to my observations, I owe quite a few people many, many thanks for helping me out and for listening to my endless ramblings over the past several months on this topic. I'm not going to mention anyone by name for fear that I'll leave someone out, but you all know who you are (hailing from Florida, Michigan, Iowa, Arizona, California, Bensenville, New Jersey and elsewhere).
I've got a 99 GS4 that just turned 80k miles. Over the last few months, I've been stockpiling suspension parts in the garage that I purchased from DD at Sewell Lexus (big
for him). This crap is expensive, so I tried lessening the pain by spreading out my purchases over several months. I bought new OEM shocks all around, new front strut caps, new ball joints, and new outer tie rod ends. The total for all of these parts came to just shy of $600 if my memory serves me correctly.
The reason I bought all of these parts is because over the past several months, my car's ride quality has deteriorated significantly. Not only am I feeling every bump in the road, but on the highway, the handling is pretty dreadful. Over moderate to sharp bumps (and particularly expansion joints), the entire front end of the car would shake, shimmy and shudder. And here's the kicker. I'm currently running stock 16s with no suspension modifications whatsoever. Something just had to be wrong.
So this morning I took my car into Lexus in for an oil change. While I was there, I figured I may as well have them swap out the ball joints and take apart one of the front strut assemblies to check out the condition of the shock. I went back around noon to bring the guys lunch and to see how they were doing. When I arrived, the ball joints had already been replaced and they had just taken apart the front right strut assembly.
First, the ball joints were completely shot. I had them give me the old ones so I could post pictures. Not only did they have no lateral resistance (i.e., they could be twirled around like an old, broken in Atari joystick), but they had an incredible amount of vertical play (i.e., like a pogo stick). If I had to estimate, I would say that the left ball joint easily had about 1/2 an inch of vertical play and the right one slightly less than that. And mind you, the ball joints were inspected just a few months ago while they were on the car and Lexus told me they looked fine. Go figure. As for the outer tie rod ends, my tech inspected them and said they looked perfectly fine, so he didn't throw on the new ones (even though he was right there, he felt it was overkill because there was nothing wrong with them).
Now to the shocks. Like I said, my tech had just taken apart the front right assembly when I arrived back at the dealership around lunch. We put the old shock and the new shock next to each other and performed a comparison test. They both compressed at about the same rate/pressure, however, when we released them, whereas the new one rebounded to its fully extended position immediately (like within 3-4 seconds), the old one barely budged an inch. After about 2-3 seconds, it slowly began to trickle back to its fully extended position. If I had to guess, I would say that it took approximately 15 seconds (easily 3-4 times the amount of time the new one took to extend). The difference was truly astonishing. I'm not exactly sure how that translates to ride quality, but I believe what was happening in my case was that I would hit a bump, the shock would compress, and it would get stuck in the compressed position such that it wouldn't be able dampen future bumps. As a result, for the most part, I was riding on the springs, which would explain the horrible ride quality. Just my opinion. Anyway, we were running out of time, so we decided to just replace the two front shocks and strut caps, and to hold off on doing the rear ones until next week.
Now on to the review. Whoa. That's all I can say. F-in A, whoa. The difference is like night and day. The front end shimmy, shakes and shudders are completely gone. The suspension is just soaking up the bumps. Whereas before I used to avoid bumps, now I seek them out. Seriously. I'm sure I'm in a bit of a honeymoon period, so I'll provide an update in a few weeks, but right now I couldn't be happier. I know there are a lot of people on this site who claim that OEM shocks should last well past 100k miles, but this is proof positive that that's not necessarily the case. My car has been adult driven throughout its life, has never been lowered, and has, for the most part, been running on 17" OEM rims, yet the shocks were clearly toast after 80k (and probably earlier).
Anyone who is considering doing this, I HIGHLY recommend it. I'll provide an update next week after I get the rear ones done. If anyone has any questions, post them up and I'll respond.
First, before I get to my observations, I owe quite a few people many, many thanks for helping me out and for listening to my endless ramblings over the past several months on this topic. I'm not going to mention anyone by name for fear that I'll leave someone out, but you all know who you are (hailing from Florida, Michigan, Iowa, Arizona, California, Bensenville, New Jersey and elsewhere).
I've got a 99 GS4 that just turned 80k miles. Over the last few months, I've been stockpiling suspension parts in the garage that I purchased from DD at Sewell Lexus (big
for him). This crap is expensive, so I tried lessening the pain by spreading out my purchases over several months. I bought new OEM shocks all around, new front strut caps, new ball joints, and new outer tie rod ends. The total for all of these parts came to just shy of $600 if my memory serves me correctly.The reason I bought all of these parts is because over the past several months, my car's ride quality has deteriorated significantly. Not only am I feeling every bump in the road, but on the highway, the handling is pretty dreadful. Over moderate to sharp bumps (and particularly expansion joints), the entire front end of the car would shake, shimmy and shudder. And here's the kicker. I'm currently running stock 16s with no suspension modifications whatsoever. Something just had to be wrong.
So this morning I took my car into Lexus in for an oil change. While I was there, I figured I may as well have them swap out the ball joints and take apart one of the front strut assemblies to check out the condition of the shock. I went back around noon to bring the guys lunch and to see how they were doing. When I arrived, the ball joints had already been replaced and they had just taken apart the front right strut assembly.
First, the ball joints were completely shot. I had them give me the old ones so I could post pictures. Not only did they have no lateral resistance (i.e., they could be twirled around like an old, broken in Atari joystick), but they had an incredible amount of vertical play (i.e., like a pogo stick). If I had to estimate, I would say that the left ball joint easily had about 1/2 an inch of vertical play and the right one slightly less than that. And mind you, the ball joints were inspected just a few months ago while they were on the car and Lexus told me they looked fine. Go figure. As for the outer tie rod ends, my tech inspected them and said they looked perfectly fine, so he didn't throw on the new ones (even though he was right there, he felt it was overkill because there was nothing wrong with them).
Now to the shocks. Like I said, my tech had just taken apart the front right assembly when I arrived back at the dealership around lunch. We put the old shock and the new shock next to each other and performed a comparison test. They both compressed at about the same rate/pressure, however, when we released them, whereas the new one rebounded to its fully extended position immediately (like within 3-4 seconds), the old one barely budged an inch. After about 2-3 seconds, it slowly began to trickle back to its fully extended position. If I had to guess, I would say that it took approximately 15 seconds (easily 3-4 times the amount of time the new one took to extend). The difference was truly astonishing. I'm not exactly sure how that translates to ride quality, but I believe what was happening in my case was that I would hit a bump, the shock would compress, and it would get stuck in the compressed position such that it wouldn't be able dampen future bumps. As a result, for the most part, I was riding on the springs, which would explain the horrible ride quality. Just my opinion. Anyway, we were running out of time, so we decided to just replace the two front shocks and strut caps, and to hold off on doing the rear ones until next week.
Now on to the review. Whoa. That's all I can say. F-in A, whoa. The difference is like night and day. The front end shimmy, shakes and shudders are completely gone. The suspension is just soaking up the bumps. Whereas before I used to avoid bumps, now I seek them out. Seriously. I'm sure I'm in a bit of a honeymoon period, so I'll provide an update in a few weeks, but right now I couldn't be happier. I know there are a lot of people on this site who claim that OEM shocks should last well past 100k miles, but this is proof positive that that's not necessarily the case. My car has been adult driven throughout its life, has never been lowered, and has, for the most part, been running on 17" OEM rims, yet the shocks were clearly toast after 80k (and probably earlier).
Anyone who is considering doing this, I HIGHLY recommend it. I'll provide an update next week after I get the rear ones done. If anyone has any questions, post them up and I'll respond.
Last edited by e-man; 04-21-06 at 06:25 PM.
04-21-06, 05:41 PM
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E-man
You are in the same position I am right now. I have a 98 GS 400 with 124K. Had it about 5weeks. The last owner was 55 years old or so. Checking the service records they gave me showed one, yes one shock replaced not that long ago. My car wanders all over the place and worse as speeds increase or wind picks up. The first thing I did with my car was 4 new tires. This clearly helped get rid of some noise and some of the wondering. Second I put on a STB from TRD. Can't notice any diff but that is probably b/c I don't get into any curves now b/c it is just not enjoyable yet. Next was the ball joints and outer tie rods. Ball joints weren't horrible but the repair was justified and the tie rods prob could have left alone but I didn't want to have to think about it later. It appears now that I should have ordered and replaced the control arms b/c one bushings is really badly ripped, the other mildly. From what I can discern the ball joint needs to come off again to replace the control arms. In the future I will consider the Daizen bushings. Thankfully the bjoints and ties were done by my father in law (no charge). But for all those reading this, these 3 things should be done together to minimize time and or expense/effort. After doing the joints and ties I realized only a little improvement. I think the control arms are going to be my culprit. To hear your content with doing just the struts is good to hear. I have purchased a set of KYB GR2s for the front and back along with a set of Sportline Springs and new strut tops for the front. I am eager to do this upgrade. I plan on having the steering pretensioner tightened as I have read this will help with vibrations. I think to finish things off I will look to upgrade the stock swaybars with urethane bushings to hopefully take out the slop in the curves. Your post prompted me to tell others my situation since it is similar. I will report back once I do the shocks, struts, springs, arms, pretensioner and lastly urethane bushings to inform what had the most impact. Although each car is different, this can be my 2 cents. I can't wait to say WOW, my car rides controlled and smooth at 75mph.
You are in the same position I am right now. I have a 98 GS 400 with 124K. Had it about 5weeks. The last owner was 55 years old or so. Checking the service records they gave me showed one, yes one shock replaced not that long ago. My car wanders all over the place and worse as speeds increase or wind picks up. The first thing I did with my car was 4 new tires. This clearly helped get rid of some noise and some of the wondering. Second I put on a STB from TRD. Can't notice any diff but that is probably b/c I don't get into any curves now b/c it is just not enjoyable yet. Next was the ball joints and outer tie rods. Ball joints weren't horrible but the repair was justified and the tie rods prob could have left alone but I didn't want to have to think about it later. It appears now that I should have ordered and replaced the control arms b/c one bushings is really badly ripped, the other mildly. From what I can discern the ball joint needs to come off again to replace the control arms. In the future I will consider the Daizen bushings. Thankfully the bjoints and ties were done by my father in law (no charge). But for all those reading this, these 3 things should be done together to minimize time and or expense/effort. After doing the joints and ties I realized only a little improvement. I think the control arms are going to be my culprit. To hear your content with doing just the struts is good to hear. I have purchased a set of KYB GR2s for the front and back along with a set of Sportline Springs and new strut tops for the front. I am eager to do this upgrade. I plan on having the steering pretensioner tightened as I have read this will help with vibrations. I think to finish things off I will look to upgrade the stock swaybars with urethane bushings to hopefully take out the slop in the curves. Your post prompted me to tell others my situation since it is similar. I will report back once I do the shocks, struts, springs, arms, pretensioner and lastly urethane bushings to inform what had the most impact. Although each car is different, this can be my 2 cents. I can't wait to say WOW, my car rides controlled and smooth at 75mph.
04-21-06, 05:52 PM
#4
Lexus Fanatic
glad to hear it's riding so much better e. I told ya.......oh nevermind seriously, though. glad to hear you're feeling an improvement from your front end tune up.
are you getting the rear shocks done next week?
04-21-06, 06:09 PM
#5
I'm looking forward on doing this mod myself.. My car has a few more miles to go before i start replacing stuff.. Glad to hear it worked out for you.. Keep us posted... I'm sure many of us still need to do this down the road including me..
TOny
TOny
04-21-06, 07:20 PM
#6
i had the same thing done in LA, CA this past weekend with Todd at TM Engineering (Thanks Todd!). I was really worried about my ball joints breaking so I wanted to get them swapped. I had the lower control arms swapped in Jan and I had the tie rods replaced, the ball joints replaced, a tein CS setup installed, and daizen sways swapped for the stock ones at Todd's shop.
Afterwards- the ride is amazingly soft - like stock. Now I don't feel guilty when my parents ride in the car because the ride used to be really harsh (bilstein/eibach combo) and the car turns so flat. it's amazing.
I went from TRD 18"s to OEM 17"s for now though so the ride is still kinda squishy when I turn. I sold my rims to 4Grainr and bought a set from FutureGS400 so I could have set of wheels on the way back.
I picked up a set of Work Termist TM1s while I was out there too so those will go on this summer. Woooo!
Afterwards- the ride is amazingly soft - like stock. Now I don't feel guilty when my parents ride in the car because the ride used to be really harsh (bilstein/eibach combo) and the car turns so flat. it's amazing.
I went from TRD 18"s to OEM 17"s for now though so the ride is still kinda squishy when I turn. I sold my rims to 4Grainr and bought a set from FutureGS400 so I could have set of wheels on the way back.
I picked up a set of Work Termist TM1s while I was out there too so those will go on this summer. Woooo!
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although i'm not doing the same parts as you - glad to hear your car is like new 
anyway
04-22-06, 03:20 AM
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Originally Posted by chuckb
e is not responding because he's out driving around in his new car 
04-22-06, 03:34 AM
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Originally Posted by e-man
You're not kidding, Chuck. I drove around all night looking for bumpy roads. When I couldn't find one, I took her off road to see how she would handle the bumps. After that, I cruised parking lots to see how fast I could go over speed bumps. My wife thinks I'm nuts. She's probably right.
04-22-06, 03:42 AM
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Oh man, I can just see e getting pulled over by some Illinois cops while cruising the parking lots and him explaining how "I just got these new front suspension parts, see, so I was out looking for speed bumps...". Let us know if you need a character reference bro. 
04-22-06, 06:36 AM
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Originally Posted by chuckb
e is not responding because he's out driving around in his new car