Control arm bushes - life expectancy?

[g00se]

Hi all,

So whilst fitting my new front MTEC drilled and grooved disks and brembo pads yesterday I noticed my front lower control arm bushes were pretty perished.

I know the car is 8 yrs old.. but with only 49k on the clock i was a tad disappointed to see them in that state.. they looked like this (not my pic):-

So I guess now that this will be my next fix instead of tinkering with the fun stuff :-/

Has anyone else had this issue?

Thanks,

goose

 

[RXJasonRX]

Hi. I have my RX400h serviced at Lexus Birmingham and after the intermediate service that I had last week they said the bushes on mine were slightly deteriorated but nothing needed doing to them for awhile yet. They show me the photographic evidence and the video, mine has done 85000 miles and is is 9 years old, that's not bad I guess.

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[tom123]

Mine were marked as 'amber' by Lexus Birmingham at 86K and about 9 years old. The next time I had the looked at approx. 3 months later, a different Lexus dealer marked them as 'red' (needing immediate replacement). See my thread above, picture below. I noticed that the steering felt much tighter after they were replaced.

Lexus quoted about £1100 for the repair, and a Toyota garage about £700.

[g00se]

16 minutes ago, tom123 said:

Mine were marked as 'amber' by Lexus Birmingham at 86K and about 9 years old. The next time I had the looked at approx. 3 months later, a different Lexus dealer marked them as 'red' (needing immediate replacement). See my thread above, picture below. I noticed that the steering felt much tighter after they were replaced.

Lexus quoted about £1100 for the repair, and a Toyota garage about £700.

£700 - ouch!

Was that for whole new wishbones, with bushes pre-fitted, both sides..  and did they also do the ball joints at the same time?!?

Seems quite high...  Parts should come in circa £150/200, so I guess the rest is labour + VAT.

Think I'll keep an eye on this, and think about doing it myself in the Summer.

Cheers, Goose

[rayaans]

Yep needed doing on my RX at 7 years old too. Mileage doesn't affect them btw, its more to do with time.

[tom123]

1 hour ago, g00se said:

£700 - ouch!

Was that for whole new wishbones, with bushes pre-fitted, both sides..  and did they also do the ball joints at the same time?!?

Seems quite high...  Parts should come in circa £150/200, so I guess the rest is labour + VAT.

Think I'll keep an eye on this, and think about doing it myself in the Summer.

Cheers, Goose

 

The £700 quote was for one arm replacement with new bushes. A second Toyota dealer actually quoted slightly higher than Lexus did. I'm not sure about the ball joints, but I don't think mine were replaced. 

Because of the labour costs, most garages will just replace the whole arm with the bushes already fitted. I think the part (arm with bushes) on its own was about £225 from Lexus if I remember correctly. 

There is a step-by-step walk-though guide with pictures on one of the US Lexus forums if you search. Replacement of the control arms is supposed to be a bit of a bugger, so most recommend leaving it to a garage to do.

[ChrisKaye]

Mine (13yr old RX, 110k miles) didn't look as bad as the pics, and I have been using silicone spray on them to hold off the rot. Most look pretty grubby but if they ACTUALLY have splits in them like in the picture, I'd start to budget for replacing them.

Usually they can get pretty bad before you start noticing noises (knocks over bumps and uneven roads etc) - if you don't have any noises at present just treat 'em to some silicone spray :)

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[ChrisKaye]

PS, I think the font of all Lexus knowledge, Mr ColinBarber, may have kindly posted some pages from the Lexus service manual that explains (with diagram, from memory) how to diagnose if they are really bad on a post a while back...

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[tom123]

4 hours ago, ChrisKaye said:

PS, I think the font of all Lexus knowledge, Mr ColinBarber, may have kindly posted some pages from the Lexus service manual that explains (with diagram, from memory) how to diagnose if they are really bad on a post a while back...

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I think I posted that actually...

 

CP-0017L-0110-EN_IR TSB Lower Control Arm Bushes (1).pdf

[ChrisKaye]

Thanks Tom, so much great info here thanks to everyone, it's hard to keep track of!

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[g00se]

Thanks all - that's great!

Good to know that my slight cracking is "normal" and doesn't need replacing as yet...  so I can carry on tinkering with other things :)

Cheers, goose

 

[g00se]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R62cw--wl1E

He makes it look so easy!

goose

 

[ChrisKaye]

Yeah gotta love crazy Scotty! Check out EricTheCarGuy, he's more sane!