2009 Lexus ES350 Rear 4 Piece Suspension Kit TRQ SCA66211

Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!

Use a pry bar or a large flat bladed screwdriver to remove the hubcap. I'm just going to slide it under the edge. Put that aside. Take a breaker bar and the 21 millimeter socket, and loosen the lug nuts while the car is still on the ground. I'm just going to use the socket to take them off. Removing the last lug nut, I'm just going to hold onto the wheel so it doesn't fall off. I'll take it right off.

There are two hooks holding down the rear seat cushion. They're hard to see. There's one right down here where my index finger is. Try to pull up on it. It's pretty stiff. Let's take this pry bar and very carefully place it right next to the hook and the pop it up. Then you repeat this for the other side. Then you lift the back seat cushion out and just place it aside.

On this Camry with the split fold rear seats we'll need to lower the passenger side seat, so we're going to pull the release that's inside the trunk. We have to fold the seat down.

Before we can remove the side bolster we need to pop the seatbelt out of it. It's got a little slot in here. Feed the seatbelt up through there and to the side. Down under here there's a 12 millimeter bolt that needs to be removed. Then this can be lifted outwards and up off the pin that it sits on. Lift it out a little bit. At the same time I'm going to slide it up so this sits in your middle tab here. You don't want to pull it this way because you'll break this. It's just going to gently come up, and then slide it out.

This side bolster out, you can see the three studs on the top of the strut. Now that we have access to that, we can go on the outside of the car and start removing the strut. You're replacing the strut. You should have the sway bar link on hand because it's very easy to damage when you're taking it off, especially when they're rusty. You can get brand new sway bar links from 1aauto.com. You need to remove the sway bar link from the strut.

In a perfect world, this wouldn't be too rusty and it should come off easy, but this looks pretty rusty. You're going to spray some rust penetrant on here. Take a wire brush. Try to knock off some of the rust. This will ideally help the nut turn. 14 millimeter box wrench and our five millimeter Allen key. Fit it in there. Try to kind of hold these as I remove it. Can see some rusty bits coming loose. Let's spray some more rust penetrant. Try to brush it off, just to help and to help this nut spin off of this ball joint part of the sway bar link.

These are typically locking nuts, so the opening in them is kind of an oval shape. Makes it difficult to spin it off. I almost had it. It stripped. This is typically what will happen. It will kind of start to move on you and then it just strips out the Allen key because they're so difficult to remove. The next step you get some locking pliers, put it back here, hold the little part that's exposed to keep it from spinning and keep taking the nut off. Get it loose. I can take it off with my fingers. Just pull this out. Place that aside.

There are two bolts here on the strut. One is holding the brake line on—it's a 12 millimeter. One is holding the ABS line on. This is a 10 millimeter. I'm going to spray some rust penetrant to the backside of these bolts. I'm going to start by removing the brake line. Spray a little bit in here. Use a 12 millimeter socket. Put that aside.

Switch to a 10 millimeter socket for this bolt. Put this aside over here. The strut is mounted to the knuckle. These two large bolts in here: one down here, one up here, our 19 millimeter nuts and 19 millimeter bolt heads. I'm going to spray rust penetrant on them before I try to remove them. Use a 19 millimeter socket and a large ratchet or a breaker bar. If you have a large ratchet, might give you a little more space to work with. I can kind of hold it with this 19 millimeter wrench.

Going to remove this nut. Repeat this for the lower one. It may be easier to go from underneath. Now I've broken it free. I'm going to switch to an extension and a smaller ratchet so I can move it more freely. Still need to kind of hold the bolt with the box wrench. Got pretty loose. I'm just going to remove it with my hand. Just a small hammer to tap it out. Get this top one started. Need too you should be able to pick up on this a little bit. Push in the knuckle, wiggle it around, and pull the bolts out. Leave this upper strut bolt in place.

Now I'm going to go up inside the car and remove the bolts that are holding on the studs. Once this is loose up top, I can remove this lower bolt, and the whole strut assembly should slide out from the wheel well. Back inside the car, there are three nuts on top of these studs that need to be removed so we can lower the strut out of the body. One's over here, there's one here, and then one in the back. It's hard to see. It's behind this one. These are 12 millimeter. I'm going to use the deep socket, loosen them up. The strut might actually start to lower as you loosen this nut off. It actually just slid loose and came down. All right, the strut is loose from the top of the car in the body. I left this bolt in here so the strut wouldn't fall out when I ended the bolts. I'm going to pick up on the strut, ready this out, to get the strut loose. There, the bolt finally came out. The strut is off of the knuckle. Pick it up. Pull it right out of it wheel well.

Here's our original strut assembly. Here's our brand new one from 1aauto.com. It's a complete assembly. No need to decompress the spring.

Install a new spring, or a mount or a bump stop or boot. It's already assembled and ready to go. This matches up to our original one perfectly. It’s got the same type of mount for the strut, the same mounts for the brake line and the ABS line, same mount for the sway bar link, and the same three studs on the top. There's a warning label here. Don't remove this center nut because you'll undo the tension on the spring. You don't need to touch that. You can just take off these nuts to install it, and this should get you back on the road and riding nice.

Install the strut into the wheel opening, and push up on the knuckle. Put the top bolt in. I'm going to actually take this and just tap it in a bit. Capture our nut so it doesn't come out. Now remove the punch. Capture the lower bolt. I need to use the punch to line it up. Just put it in like about halfway and wiggle the strut around. Just got to take the punch again, put it ahead of the bolt and tap it in, and capture that nut. Now it's time to go back up inside the car, push this strut into place and capture the nuts up top.

I'm going to reuse the original nuts because they're in good shape, but we need to get the studs on the strut up through the holes that are in the body here. I have to reach out underneath to get them up through the holes. I'm going to my capture at least one of them. Now I can snug these up evenly to pull them up into the body. Once they get snug, I'll stop. I'll come back and torque them afterwards. I torque these top bolts to 29 foot-pounds. I torque the top and bottom strut mounting bolts to 133 foot-pounds. Just taking up some of the slack by threading this down before I torque it. Same thing in the bottom. With the slack taken up I can counter hold the bolt. Use your torque wrench, torque this to 133 foot-pounds. Repeat the same for the other bolt.

If you bend this shield, just bend it back. Install the ABS sensor bracket. It's a really small little bolt so I'm just going to thread it in. When it gets tight I will stop. Reinstall the brake hose. Goes in place here. Get it started. Until I get tight I'm just going to stop. Reinstall the original sway bar link or a brand new one. Now torque these to 29 foot-pounds. Make sure it doesn't get caught on this trim here, this piece on this trim. I was holding it up. Slide it underneath it. It should line up nice with the bolt hole underneath.

To install the side bolster and put this tab up into the body. Pull the seatbelts out of the way, then slide this up. Kind of see from behind where the tab needs to go. Make sure it doesn't get caught on this trim here, this piece on this trim that was holding it up. Slide it underneath it. It should line up nice with the bolt hole underneath.

Install the side bolster. This part slides down into the back over here of the sheet metal. This bolts into the bottom part here. Watch out you don't grab the seatbelts and kind of just see behind it on this side. Push in. Line up down the bottom.

Now we can lift up these seats to install the lower seat. You want to make sure you don't lose your seatbelt buckles. You can buckle them into the upper seat belts. These are going to go up underneath the back seat. I'm just going to slide it in like this. I'm going to push it forward and push it down into the locks. Repeat that for the other side. Unbuckle your seat belts. Move them lower where they belong. Your seat is reinstalled.

Thanks for watching. Visit us at 1AAuto.com for quality auto parts, fast and free shipping, and the best customer service in the industry.

Hi. I'm Mike from 1AAuto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years!

Use a large pry bar or a flat bladed screw driver to remove the wheel cover. Just kind of slide it between the wheel and the plastic and pop it off. These lug nuts are a 21 millimeter socket. I'm going to use that and a breaker bar to loosen them while the vehicle's on the ground. Raise this part of the vehicle. We're using a two post lift, but you can use a jack and jack stands. The lug nuts are loose. I’m going to take my socket and finish removing them. I’m just going to hold onto the wheel and take the last lug nut off. It's going to be loose. You don't want to drop it. You can drop the lug nut. That's okay. You just don't want the wheel to fall.

I’m going to disconnect the sway bar link from the strut. Going to spray some rust penetrant on this upper sway bar mount. Use a wire brush to clean off some of the rusty bits. These can be difficult to take off, they get rusty and then the ball joint spins. It does have a hex spot here to put in a six millimeter hex drive. A lot of times that strips almost instantly as soon as you try to break it free ad you end up having to put vice grips behind to grab onto the ball joint, because there's no point here for a wrench. We’re going to do our best to get this one off without having to cut it off.

So this is 17 millimeter nut. Try to break it free first. See, it's turning, it's turning the whole ball joint with it. It's really tight. I’m trying to clean out any rust and dirt that's in this hex drive so I can get the hex drive to sit as far possible inside here, so it doesn't strip. Use some brake parts cleaner, I've sprayed some oil in there and I've been working the hex drive in to try to clean it out. I can see it's going in a little deeper, trying to get this sit as best I can. That's as far as it will go. Spray some more rust penetrant on there. I'm going to try to counter hold this hex drive while I free it with the 17 millimeter boxed wrench. We'll see how this goes. Sometimes you have to brace that against like the strut ad these just have so much – see, it's moving. That's good. It's really tight, though, so I'm just going to put that there. I'm going to spray some more rust penetrant.

These are typically self-locking nuts, so they're a little bit, they're not perfectly round. They're kind of oblong and that can make removing them difficult and also the rust gets gummed up in the threads. So I'm trying to spin this on and off to try to work the rust penetrant into the threads. So as I kind of expected, working these back and forth this hex drive they basically always strip. It's nearly impossible to remove them without these stripping, no matter what you do. So the next step I'm going to get some vice grips and try to hold the ball joint back here and use a 17 millimeter socket and ratchet and continue to remove this nut.

I’m going to try to slide these locking pliers behind the ball joint on the sway bar link. I’ve got a 17 millimeter deep socket on this longer ratchet, going to try to remove these. It feels like it's turning. One thing to mention if you're going to have to remove sway bar links for any reason or think you're going to have to remove them for any reason, you should have new ones on hand. They're almost a one-time use part.

If you're as lucky as us, you'll have to resort to power tools or a hacksaw to cut these sway bar links free. I'll do my best to avoid the strut, I don't want to damage that. I just want to kind of cut on the – going to try to find the narrowest part of the ball joint and the sway bar link. I think I'm on there.

I've actually gone in here. Because these sway bar links get seized on here so easily, I went in and cut the boot away, the rubber boot. So that I can get locking pliers in here to get a better grip on it and it's kind of working by holding it. I'm able to turn the nut out. Worst case if I get loose enough and it just keeps spinning, then I will take a saw and cut it right here. But I'm going to keep trying it right now with the locking pliers. Got it.

Here are our old sway bar links from our vehicle. You can see where I had to cut them. I was able to finally get this one out, but still, these have been destroyed by trying to remove them and you can see they're kind of rounded here. There's no real way to counter hold them to remove the bolts. They are supposed to have a hex drive in here. That strips out pretty quickly when you're trying to remove them.

Here's a brand new sway bar link this is from 1AAuto.com. These actually have a six-point on them so you can put a wrench on here and tighten them down and it's not going to spin on you and when you want to remove them to do other services, you can put your wrench over here and spin this off without destroying the ball joint and the sway bar link. So this should fit great and work great in your vehicle.

Put these up. Get this one up top. You can bend these around. Slide it through. These nuts are locking nuts, so the hole is not perfectly round. It's kind of oblong. So when this starts to tighten it will lock and it won't want to back off.

These nuts are 18 millimeter get this one set up here. The counter hold on the back is 18 millimeters. I'm going to use a deep socket 18 millimeter in the front. Get these snugged down and I'll come back and torque them. Torque for these sway bar links is 55 foot-pounds, and repeat it on the other nut.

Reinstall our wheel. It’s important to note these lug nuts have a taper. Taper meets the wheel and matches the inside of the wheel. Don't install them on the flat side like this; that is incorrect. Install them with the taper to the wheel. It helps locate the wheel on the lug nut stud. I'm just using the socket and ratchet to bring these down snug before I put the car on the ground. Torque the lug nuts to 76 foot-pounds, going in a cross pattern. Reinstall the hub cap. You’ve got to line up the opening for the valve stem with the valve stem on the wheel. Just push it in place.

Thanks for watching. Visit us at 1AAuto.com for quality auto parts, fast and free shipping, and the best customer service in the industry.