Toyota Steering and Suspension Guide Part 1 : Shocks and Struts

hello and welcome to the car care nut channel welcome back to another series that we're starting today this series will follow the theme of the how to maintain your toyota series but this series will be the ultimate guide to your toyota suspension and steering by the way this also applies to your lexus and sire models so we're gonna follow the theme of the previous series which i'm gonna give you my honest opinion without turns and sugar coating things nothing but the truth whether it's good or bad so this will be a multi-part series just like before today we're going to be talking about shocks struts coil springs and everything related to those components but before we get started hit that subscribe button give the video a thumbs up if you like it follow the channel on facebook and instagram so you wouldn't miss sneak peeks of future videos and without further ado let's dig right into this so starting with shocks or struts before we get started let me clarify what the difference is this is a shock shock absorber also this is a strut so the basic difference here is the strut actually has a shock absorber inside it's going to be housed right here here's a cap to hold it in place that's the basic design the only difference is the strut has this spring seat so the coil spring sits right here that's the only difference between a strut and a shock a shock is only a shock absorber this has a seat for the spring it also has the the mounting point for the sway bar link and it connects directly to the knuckle this is a very common design this style design of struts is called mcpherson strut it's used in a lot of toyotas i mean short of the trucks almost every single toyota will have mcpherson strut even the newer stuff usually in the front some of them in the front and back some of them will have front struts rear shocks now i can't even remember the last toyota that has front shocks separate and the spring would be mounted somewhere else probably really old stuff but we're mainly focused on your stuff not the newest let's say 90s and above so i'm gonna start by talking about struts first now the way the struts are assembled you have a strut there's usually a rubber insulator here then we got of course this is not the spring for this threat but this is for demonstration and you got the spring that goes in here then if it's a front strut the mount would have to turn as as you turn your wheel this will turn as well because it's connected to the knuckle at the bottom so you're gonna have another mount here which unfortunately i do not have for demonstration you're gonna have a little bearing so it would turn and then you're gonna have your strut mount which sits at the top and connects to the body of the car the strut mount itself does not turn that's a misconception always this does not turn what turns underneath is the bearing now there are some strut mounts that have the bearing built in and you'll have a little separate piece that turns at the bottom but this these three connection points they are fixed to the body of the car it just does not move the only thing that moves is the whole strut with the spring with the help of this bearing right here now let me start with the struts because i hear people saying well they told me in a shop oh i need you need to replace the struts if you don't ask why we have a problem houston we have a problem you always need to ask why do i need struts especially if you're in for an oil change tire rotation some coolant some maintenance all of a sudden oh you need struts why do i need struts do you have a problem with your car you got to ask yourself that question wait is my car driving perfectly fine rides great on the highway nice and stable no issues no noises no problems i can put seven of my friends on the car and it doesn't drop on the ground or start driving weird so why am i replacing the struts again just because someone like me said so oh no oh no you gotta ask that question so let me tell you why you actually do need to replace this truck and it seems to be another theme in the automotive business oh you need to replace your struts every five years or fifty thousand last time i checked stress were not coolant you don't need to replace them just because just because some mechanics says oh the last chrysler and dodge that's about when they go bad you bought a toyota ladies and gentlemen you do not replace a strut on a toyota if it doesn't have a problem period the end of that story i don't care what they scare into you i don't care what the mechanic says and their great grandma's blah blah's car had a problem no no don't fall for that if there's no problem with this truck you are not replacing it the end of that story now let me get into a few things that would cause this strut to need replacement the number one thing and this is remember toyota specific toyota lexus ion specific i don't know about other brands we don't drive those other brands for uh good reasons now the main thing is strut leaks even strut leaks just because the mechanic says all your strut is leaking needs to be replaced don't just run and replace it no there is a criteria by toyota that tells you how bad does the leak have to be for you to need replacement of the strut do you see this strut this is called the spring seat this is by toyota this is not my words or recommendations this is by toyota standard leeks will typically you'll see oil here only replace a strut when the leak is past the coil spring and i'll tell you a little insider secret if you get a tiny little drop here that's borderline i'm waiting for that oil that's inside the strut that leaked from here to be all the way almost at the bottom because i guarantee you before it reaches that bottom you're gonna have noise issues you're gonna all of a sudden hit a bump and you're gonna hear that constant knocking noise because the shock absorber is no longer i mean this thing you i really have to put all my force to to push it down i'm i'm pushing with all my force here and i can barely push it down granted this is a new one they get a little less hard as you drive on them but a bad one this won't even stay up this will i can push it with one finger or just go down because there's absolutely no pressure all the shock absorber does just like it says absorbs shocks so when your car is going into bumps it doesn't just transfer all that this will absorb the impact and make the ride softer for you the other reason you would replace a strut if you live in the rust belt welcome to chicago illinois where we like to destroy our cars in the winter well we don't like that but the government does anyways these things they're exposed rocks chip every everything is hitting them all the time so this beautiful paint that you see always gets chipped that's just the way it is these tend to corrode pretty badly and if this thing loses its integrity i've seen them snap in half yes even toyotas so looking at it if it has a slight rusty look that's not rust but if now if you're peeling layers off of it and it's ready to fall off and someone tells you hey that's kind of looking like pretty bad i would replace it but otherwise if it's not leaking past the coil spring mount i'm not even looking at it i'm not even about wasting my time i'm going away and if your mechanic insists then you insist that you need a new one you need a new mechanic sorry it's just the truth i've seen toyotas go two three hundred thousand miles on these struts and i've seen toyotas go 20 000 miles and they need four new struts it's just the luck of the draw they leak replace them move on they don't leak keep going don't waste your money now let's talk briefly about replacement before moving on this is an original strut yes it's super expensive but it's worth every penny i mean every penny and i mean this i have never had a single problem with noise issues whatever from an original strut it's expensive and it's worth every penny now i'm not gonna go out and say oh this is the only strut you should put on your car they're ridiculously expensive so when shopping for aftermarket shop for that brand name by the way i'm looking right here this says kyb this is made by kyb it comes in a toyota box and everything but it's made by kyb now when you go don't go run into the store and buy the cheapest kyb because it's the same that's not how this works kyb manufactures the strut for toyota according to those specific standards that doesn't mean you're going to get the exact same standards when you go by the kyb labeled strut however when it says kyb on the original chances are when you buy a kyb strut it's probably going to be a good one or close to maybe not going to last as much maybe not going to have that beautiful finish or whatever but i'm not i'm not endorsing kyb here there's saks there's monroes there's a lot out of the brands i'm not very friendly with monroe because i've had horrible experiences with them but that's just me you might have good experience the best thing about struts is they all come some of them come with some pretty crazy warranties always look for warranties because i don't care if it's the worst strut in the world if it has a lifetime warranty you need to put it on the end of that story so again shop prices read reviews when it comes to buying struts yes the original is the best and likely when you're replacing your original one the car is 10 15 20 years old so think about that this strut lasted this long you think the aftermarket one that costs half is gonna last the same probably not but again if your car is 20 years old how long do you plan to keep it here because i'm pretty sure the rest of the car is falling apart at this point so why are you putting best threats when you're only going to keep it for two or three years but that's up to you so that's the struts let me go briefly about the shocks the shocks are exactly the same because remember what's in here is basically this with a fancy dress this is the same thing you can push it down again it's very hard same thing with leaks if you got rear shocks most toyotas will have rear shocks some of them will have struts in the back so this applies too but if you have rear shocks again uh you need to replace everything no is it leaking and how much is it leaking with shocks according to toyota standard if the leak is not past the middle point of the exposed part do you see how this is like the cap this is the part that compresses you see it when this the shock will sit in your car just like this when the leak is not past half this i'm not replacing it that's as simple as that now if your leak is all the way at the bottom you really need to replace them then you're usually going to start making noise by that but if you have oil at the bottom and you have no noise no concerns no problems car rides good you do the little bounce test and it doesn't keep bouncing up and down i see nothing wipe it down move on if that makes you feel better but i wouldn't bother why are you replacing original struts with some aftermarket whatever because someone decided they're leaking bad enough there's no concern there is no need for fix if it ain't broke never fix it apply that to every car and you're gonna have drive one of the best cars for the lowest maintenance and repair cost ever one thing i'm going to mention about struts for diy mechanics because this is a mistake i see all the time if you are a diy mechanic whenever you replace struts i don't care if you're buying aftermarket whatever the case may be you always put a new nut this nuts sits right here in the mount it threads onto the strut you always put a new nut you do not know how many times i get a car some chopped it shocks or struts sorry this only applies to strut by the way i just said sucks put new struts did a beautiful job but they were too lazy to run to the to the dealership and get new nuts and the reason i say you need new knots these are lock nuts they has actually a teflon ring inside this is a one time used nut you take it off put it on you need a new one stand up as simple as that or if you're really in a bind and you really need to do something please put medium strength threadlock don't worry some people will tell you what are you saying no i'd rather be safe than sorry i'd rather be cutting this throat off the next 10 years later when i'm replacing it than have you drive with one of these that gets loose this is dangerous always replace the snot no matter what and i also recommend you get the original one they're very cheap even if you're putting aftermarket struts just get original not it's very cheap it's not really worth it by the way if you're buying an original strut it does come with it moving on to my best friend over here i say best friend because i probably replaced hundreds if not thousands of these and every single one there's always that voice in my head it's gonna pop and smack you in the face and until you you gotta after you're done with this video go watch some videos of what happens when this pops it's scary anyways coil spring now this could come assembled on the strut if you have actually a strat setup when you have shocks this will be standing between either some part of of the frame and the body or some control arm in the body depends on the setup of the car that's i'm not going to go into every single car but this will give you a general idea now one misconception about these is what do they do this controls your ride height this is very important because i see people oh my car's sagging let's put some struts or shocks that's not going to do anything this is actually what your car is standing on this only absorbs shocks your car is standing the height of your car is determined by this spring now the spring has a few reasons you need to replace it if a mechanic comes to you again hey you need new springs why there's only a few reasons that you need to replace a spring otherwise you just reuse it if you're replacing struts for example again if you live in the rust belt these tend to grust and crack or break if that does happen you'll notice your car will lean on one side because this determines the height the shorter it is shorter the car sits the higher it is the taller the car will sit that's why when you get it lowering springs that's why they're shorter and they lower the height of the car now the first one first reason you would replace one of these if it's cracked broken super common with toyotas in the rust belt especially heavier cars minivans suvs even some camrys avalon is famous for that now another reason you'd replace this if you drive and as of the filming of this video this i don't know how long this video will go if you're driving a 1997 camry which is the best camry ever made my opinion these are probably gone we're in 2020 now 23 year old car the whole weight of the car has been sitting on these things for probably 23 years they're sagged you notice older cars they dropped now these you get them aftermarket we might have problems and and i'll tell you what you should watch for usually you get a spring from a camry and you get a spring from an avalon they're the same height they look exactly the same i mean you can interchange them in a second but here's the problem there's something called spring compression rate avalon is a long car it's designed to be a softer car more relaxing more touring style car camry smaller shorter wheelbase it's more nimble and drives around different spring rate how much force what's the rebound of this spring when it's coming up and down they're very different that's why there's different part numbers even though you can learn to interchange them physically and make them fit and they'll work great it's not the same i've seen so many after-market companies oh i i have one spring for all these cars it's the same thing no it's not and we see this all the time i got a stiff camry or a super soft and crazy weird avalon driving avalon because if you put camry springs in an avalon where you have problems and if you put avalon springs in a camry we have problems and if you put four cylinder springs in a six cylinder camry where you have problems and vice versa i'm thinking you catch my drift here each spring is designed for each car if the spring is not broken if the car's not lowered itself or by its own don't replace it the end of that story there's no reason you're wasting your money at that point keep it simple if you live outside the rust belt you're likely never replaces for your 10 15 20 year old truck or car sorry i said truck keep it simple that's don't waste your money on this stuff moving on to another little guy here this is called a strut mount and if you own any early camries or avalons i'm talking late 90s you know they were notorious for these now the strut mount actually has rubber inside of it and it kind of absorbs some of the final vibrations of this system because this spring makes a lot of vibration now it also houses the bearing because remember if you have a strut setup the top turns the inside turns the top is fixed but the whole strut turns so there's also a bearing in here now the bearing comes separate be honest with you this bearing unless it makes noise i'd never replace it this is not a wheel bearing all it's doing is moving a little bit here a little bit there it's not 3d unless rust gets in on inside of this which does happen sometimes but not that common usually i don't replace these unless i take it apart and the whole thing comes apart and it just looks looks bad then i'd recommend it otherwise if it's original keep it original mounts a lot of problems with mounts lately and so let me go into this a little bit mounts on siennas 2011 and up sienna notorious to go bad and and the noise this will make when the rubber insides starts separating or the whole mount rots and this is notorious on some cars mainly the siennas um this will rot right here and now this whole thing is just loose just and eventually it'll break actually and that's that's a bad disaster so i recommend you actually get original mounts and here's why i've seen so many aftermarket mounts never fit on the strut right and they make noise from day one so why are we replacing it to begin with these moms are not very expensive if you shop around you can find them cheaper than just full retail prices shop around again if you're going to put aftermarket don't buy the cheapest one don't this is let's say this is 85 for one you go online you find two for 20 bucks do you think that's a good idea i i wouldn't think that's a good idea this is not oil this is not an oil filter this is not stuff that you're going to be replacing every year every two this is the kind of stuff that you might replace once twice in the life of the car over at 15 20 year old period so always think of that what am i replacing and how often am i going to replace it is this a good investment for me to put expensive good quality parts or hey i'm getting rid of this car in two years let's just put cheapest stuff available i don't care about noises they make they're safe let's move on that's the whole idea that now i almost left out this guy and this is a rubber insulator this basically sits right here and most of the time when you're looking through the wheel well this is what you're gonna see you're gonna see this guy covering this now this over time it will tear and it'll make a giant mess people will tell me oh i gotta fix this this doesn't look good i'm sorry you're gonna spend all this labor just to replace a little rubber boot now yes the intention of this is to protect dirt and debris from getting in the strut and accelerating its failure but if the insulator is torn and you're going to pay the labor to do all this take the straw tail apart alignment and all the mess just to replace this guy to protect a strut that you just paid the labor to take apart that doesn't make sense if this boot is torn you're going to pretend it's not torn please so many people will insist and insist no no it's turning i got it no please don't if it's torn this threat is going to fail what if it fails in 10 years how do you know that because i've seen this case too 15 20 year old car these are gone completely gone and these struts are still fine so i'm gonna take my chances on this one never replace this just because it's torn and everything else is fine now when the strut is bad and you're gonna take it apart to replace a strut or you got a broken spring or a bad mount and yeah throw one of these they're super cheap throw one of these on so you can protect your new investment but we're not gonna take all this just for this that's that doesn't make sense at all now i'm gonna talk about one last elephant in the room quick struts i will be honest and i will admit i have a big problem with quick struts i don't like them but that's my personal opinion now i'm going to tell you my professional opinion a quick strut is a fully assembled strut mount spring everything the whole line you are beautiful you just take your old one put this one in you'll be done in 15 minutes that appeals a lot to diy mechanics because they don't want to deal with compressing the spring and that's needs more special tools and all that so let me talk about quick struts from a professional view let's say you assemble the whole struts from toyota it's seven hundred dollars and believe it or not they do go that high sometimes unfortunately but i don't make the prices that's toyota let's say seven hundred dollars per strut now you go online google quick quick stride for whatever camry whatever avalon hey this quickstart's 150 the whole thing 700 150. usually the first impression and i'm with you on this one let's go with the how i'm fitting how bad can it be but hold your horses there because why do you think do you think toyota's trying to rob you there they're not now the problem with these quick struts is they're quick struts quick on quality too most of the times i mean you put the quick strut first thing you'll notice your eye quality is completely different second thing you'll notice they're noisy most people will say at this very moment they get upset and they will say no it's not noisy go put an original quick strut 700 one and you'll see the difference night and day most of the quick struts will have the one size fits all spring like we talked about so look they're good if you're on a budget if your spring broke and the car is sitting on the ground if your shock is so bad that every time you hit a bump you feel like the whole suspension is going to fall on the ground and you're only keeping the car for two years ah let's put the quick struts it's noisy anyways at least it'll be safe but if you have i see people they have a four or five year old camry one strut goes out of sudden some outside shop oh let's put all four quick struts you'll never have a problem they have lifetime warranty well you just ruined the ride of that car forever that's the bottom line replace the one strut if you have a bad strut don't go quick strut if you're a diy mechanic get the right tool it is a challenge when you tell a mechanic i have compressed a coil spring before you earned a lot of cred and respect yes because it's scary be very careful when you do one but i encourage you to learn how to do one because you can save so much money and the car will drive nicer when you go buy a quality strut it's cheaper than a quick strut and if you replace only this bad part it's better in the long run now one thing i will say about quick struts shop around don't buy the cheapest ones some of them are horrible i mean just flat horrible i've seen them break in half i've seen them leak after two days now there are some quality ones monroe makes good ones kyb makes good ones shopper it's all about shopping around people we've said this in the how to maintain our toyota it's all about shopping around you gotta shop around here another website i'll recommend that have like 15 20 different strut and quick strut selection is rockauto.com i don't endorse them i buy a few things from them here and there but they seem to have a pretty good selection and the prices seem to be okay so folks if your car is a nice 2015 16 14 12 less than 10 year old toyota please don't consider the quick struts now if your car is older but it's in good shape and you plan to keep it that 10 more years invest in quality parts do the repairs right don't do what's easy do what's right and remember if it ain't broke don't fix it no toyota strut will need replacement every five years or fifty thousand no if it ain't broke don't fix it the end of the story of of the struts and the shocks so one more thing i wanted to talk about for the springs if you would now some of the really really really old stuff had a torsion spring in the front again bulletproof there is so little problems with torsion springs toyotas that it's not even worth mentioning to be honest and the other one is leaf springs now some of the trucks they have especially the pickups they have leaf springs in the back not your regular coil spring now the leaf springs with toyota unless you live in the rust belt you won't even know what a leaf spring is because they'll never go bad exception we had a recall on some of the tacomas but again they were recalled for a reason and the updated part have a nice day you'll never hear about it again the only thing that could really happen with leaf spring is it develops cracks usually from rust overloading stuff like that again they're huge they're expensive but they rarely go out i mean you were we don't when the tacoma recall came out it was like a shock to toyota mechanics like wait a minute there's a leaf spring in the back of trucks we've never done that before because they just don't go bad so again if you have a leaf spring in your truck mechanic tells you it needs new leaf springs the first question is why do i need new leaf springs just because i need to pay my mortgage on time the mechanic telling you that is not a reason you need leaf springs if your leaf spring have a crack or break or separation or the truck is sagging down you need new leaf springs they're expensive yes is it worth it probably but that's up to you honestly i cannot recommend i cannot tell you aftermarket is good or not because i we rarely replace leaf springs you're likely not going to have a problem with leaf springs so there is that for you now this will wrap today's video for the shocks and the struts and everything i hope you learned something new i hope this was informative for you if you liked the video give it a thumbs up just consider subscribing to the channel if you haven't already follow the channel instagram and facebook for some sneak peeks and update and we will see you guys on the following part of this series may the lord bless you and keep you and you have a wonderful day

Channel: The Car Care Nut

Views: 19,311

Rating: 4.9789028 out of 5

Keywords: toyota steering, toyota suspension, toyota strut, toyota quickstrut, toyota strut mount, toyota shocks, toyota springs, toyota lowering springs, tacoma leaf spring, toyota strut diy, strut mount noise, camry strut noise, avalon strut mount noise, toyota repair, toyota noise over bumps, toyota strut replacement, rav4 prime, sienna hybrid, toyota mechanic, toyota maintenance, rav4, highlander, toyota quick strut, corolla, sienna

Id: GFBmt337veA

Length: 32min 11sec (1931 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020