rear suspension bush

[lexus22]

There is slight play in the rear suspension bushes, no one appears to sell them and Lexus only sell the complete knuckle assembly, does anyone know of a place that sells just the bush?

Attached diagram with arrow showing where the bush is located.

[Farqui]

Nice diagram but which bush needs replacing?

Try looking at Rockauto for replacement suspension components, their prices for a whole rod are often similar to just a bush from eBay.  Shipping and delivery is quick and painless too 🙂

[lexus22]

The bush that needs replacing is the one that has the arrow pointing to it, tis inserted into the knuckle.

On a different note, should front bottom ball joints always be changed in pairs rather than just changing one side?

[Farqui]

Ah, I didn't see the arrow #duh

Is the bush part# listed on the far right of the screen print? - it's truncated in the diagram 😞

[Farqui]

This ?

https://www.rockauto.com/en/catalog/lexus,2004,is300,3.0l+l6,1426070,suspension,control+arm+bushing,7532

[Lwerewolf]

The famous knuckle spherical bearing, uniball, pillow ball, etc, etc - many names.

Options:

-OEM (whole new knuckle, not sold separately "because it is difficult to assemble/disassemble correctly")

-Febest/Jikiu/whatever they sell on eBay (made in china), if you go down this route I'd research sellers, some people over at my.is apparently had success (i.e. no failure in ~6k miles) with specific ones... can't find actual manufacturing info.

-RankOne https://rankoneperformance.com/products/lexus-is200-is300-altezza-rear-knuckle-poly-bush polyurethane (yup, apparently works)

-FIGS https://www.shopfigs.com/v3/bearing, knuckle, lexus, rear spherical bearings

-OEM bearing for a different car. I've been using jikiu's catalogue and its [url=https://www.jikiu.com/catalogue#/productsizemenu]search-by-size feature[/url] to look up bushings similar to mine (it's a 2is/3gs knuckle on the gs450h but same overall situation - not available separately OEM - not giving me problems but it's something to consider).

At any rate:

https://www.jikiu.com/catalogue/507254

...says that a bushing of the same size is used in the TLC Prado:

48830-60060

https://www.toyodiy.com/parts/xref?s=48830-60060&mE=on

https://www.google.com/search?q=48830-60060&tbm=isch

The link is still expensive, but is less than half the price of the whole knuckle. Whether the actual part that Toyota uses is the same in terms of properties other than pure sizing (mostly strength in this case) is another story - it is a sway bar link bearing in that application, not a lower control arm knuckle bearing... but then it's for a huge car... who knows, we can only speculate 😞

At any rate, using the "search by size" function with some slack (say, +-5mm on everything initially, then narrow down), you can check those "close fits" for available OEM counterparts and then machine adapters for them (or machine the knuckle itself, etc). Examples of such bushings sold as a separate part are the Toyota GT86 (which is a rwd Subaru Impreza, so no wonder - Subaru sells these separately), the JZA80 (MK4) Supra (and previous ones), and, well... there are others, I just haven't done much research yet.

 

Sorry for the wall of text.

 

EDIT: one thing that I forgot to mention - there's no way to identify whether the sizes in the jikiu catalogue are correct. It's just a place that I've found that has some actual measurements and a search-by-size function.

[lexus22]

Have sent picture to my mechanic, he should know if this is the correct part, hopefully it is! Many thanks for that

[lexus22]

The poly bush looks interesting...

[lexus22]

1. Thanks for your help, found and ordered a couple from fleabay.