What Is That Sound When I Hit A Bump

[93LSOwner]

My 1993 LS400 has this noise in the rear left when I hit a bump. The sound is like if you take two paint cans and hit them together on top of each other. I am suspecting that may be the left muffler is loose. Because my friends Acura Legend had this problem but the sound was little different. I checked the muffler to see if it clamped right and it seems like it is. So, I don’t know what the problem is?

[UCF3]

Try jacking up your car in both sides, and try to shrug all components. See if anything else rattles.

It also wouldn't be a bad idea to take off your driver's side rear wheel. I'm thinking it's probably your shock/strut tower. Either it's your struttower that needs to be tighten or you might need a new shock/strut. If you have to replace your shocks, you have a lot of options.

[jbatast]

Try this....coast at 2-3mph at hit the breaks. Does it make the same noise? If it does, it is likely the STRUT BARS which are the bar that prevent the wheeels from moving back and forth. In fact, if the bars are bad...have a friend do the break thing and you will see your wheels move back and forth.

If it is....newlexusparts.com charges $100.00 per bar. Replace both. Labor at a real local mechanic should be 2.5 hours

Good luck.

[93LSOwner]

No, there is no noise at 2-3 mph after breaking. The noise comes when I am going at about around 40 mph and hit a bump or a new rough road patch.

[K9crew]

It could be control arm bushings or sway bar bushings/links etc. My '99 "knocks" in the front when I drive over speed bumps ... even if I go slowly! I have 60k miles on the OEM suspension and these LS cars are heavy so bushing wear is to be expected.

:)

[93LSOwner]

I had my mechanic look at it, and he couldn't figure out the problem. How would you physically tell that the sway bar is damaged.

Yeah you are right they are very heavy, that could be the problem!

[UCF3]

I beleive your mechanic(providing they looked at it throughly) would have noticed a leaky bushing. It could be your control arm, that needs to tightened, or a sway bar connection.

[VMF]

i still think its a bushing. they may b just worn

[tds]

I had a similar noise in my passenger door. It turned out that one of the welds holding the window electric motor bracket had broken. Lexus drilled it out and put a bolt in. Problem was solved.

I now have a similar noise in my left rear door. I have to take off the door panel and fix it myself this time. There is another post somewhere on this site that showls you how to do this.

[blake918]

Try this....coast at 2-3mph at hit the breaks.  Does it make the same noise? If it does, it is likely the STRUT BARS which are the bar that prevent the wheeels from moving back and forth.  In fact, if the bars are bad...have a friend do the break thing and you will see your wheels move back and forth.

If it is....newlexusparts.com charges $100.00 per bar.  Replace both.  Labor at a real local mechanic should be 2.5 hours

Good luck.

Yeah, my car does this. If I slam on the brakes(but faster than 2-3mph...more like 40-60 for me), it feels like the car want's to keep going, but the wheels want to stop(really aggrovationg)! If you don't have to do any emergency braking, you'd never know the broblem existed! It also makes the bad clunking noise when I hit a bump really hard. I can't wait to get this fixed.

What year is your car, and did you do this yourself, or did a mechanic do it? Most likely the strut bars? I'll look into this. thanks