I need to figure out what's causing the noise. As I drive over rough roads it makes a clunking noise. I suspect either a bushing (maybe on a sway bar) or a strut. Any ideas?
Had the sway bar bushing cause the clunk, as well as the short rods that connect the sway bar ends to the wheel suspension.
I took a look and found a swaybar bushing that was crumbling. So I ordered bushings and swaybar links. Any idea what the procedure and torque specs are? I think I can get them all replaced, but I don't know the torque specs and can't find any repair manual for an Avalon Hybird. I did find a Haynes repair manual for a non-hybrid Toyota Camry that supposedly has info for the non-hybrid Avalon. Should I get that?
A subscription to whatever Toyota calls their service app will have the info. Plenty here have used it. Having replaced both the end links and bushings on an HHR, the actual procedure should be easy to divine. Get the wheel off, and all the parts should be in view. Any difficulty would come from if things need to come off for access.
I finally got around to a TIS Subscription. The first step says: "Remove the engine and transaxle [INFO]". Now I just need to write it down or I'll lose the instructions as I only got two days subscribed.
The sway bushing making noise failed the HHR on inspection. They wanted what seemed excessive amount to do it. I think they were planning on removing the sway bar to replace the bushing. That involved dropping a sub frame. Maybe that is what you are looking at. I did it without all that effort as the bar didn't have to come out to replace the bushing. Just loosened bracket holding the bracket and bar down, slide the bushing off, slide the new one on, and replace the bracket. One side at a time.
Thank you! That's exactly what I did. There isn't even enough room down there to get the bolts on one side of the brackets completely out. But I did loosen them and slide the bushings out. In the end the bushings seemed fine. But the swaybar links definitely were needing replaced. Now there's no noise since I replaced those too. Thanks again!
Well, I think I just got banned from TIS or something. I thought I could print to PDF all the pages on the Avalon and then maybe start on the Prius. But after only about 5 documents it won't let me see anything nor log back in. I can't even get the main page to show up. Oh well, at least I have the page that says I should remove the engine in order to change the swaybar bushings.
I got it going again. It kept saying something about a server error, but now it's working fine. Man! There are a lot of documents. I'm probably going to have to download what I can and then get another 2 day (or month) subscription to TIS at a later date. Hopefully I can find the one on how to fix my radio. And hopefully it doesn't say "Step 1, remove the engine assembly and transaxle."
