My '00 camry 2.2L with 100,000km was making suspension noises. I thought it was the sway bar bushings acting up again, but regreasing them didnt help. I also greased the shocks piston rods, it seemed to work at first but the noises came back soon after. I did a bounce test and the shocks still seem to work great, but I decided to change them anyway. Before I went out to buy the parts, I decided to dismantle the shocks first to see what parts I needed to buy, so I took apart the right rear and right front first.
To access the rear shock, you need to remove the rear bench seat and then the side back seat to expose the 3 nuts holding the rear shock. You can wiggle a 12mm wrench into the tight space to remove the nuts, so removing the speaker tray is not necessary. I also managed to wiggle a 19mm socket wrench to loosen the center bolt a little bit too.
Here's a pic of the rear right shock removed. Tip here is to loosen the nut side of the bolt holding the shock to the hub (you need long breaker bar bcos it's torqued to ~150ft-lbs). Loosening the bolt side is nearly impossible. And accessing the nut is impossible if you dont remove the rear caliper out of the way first (something which the service manual did not mention).
Here are pics of the front right shock dismantled:
After examining all the worn out parts:
I decided to replace all 4 shocks, lower insulator rubber, bump stops, rubber boots, stabilizer links and sway bar bushings. Total cost S$1,094 !!!
Here's a pic of my car up on jack stands:
Here's a pic of a rear and front bump stop. Very fragile looking pieces of hard foam I might say. Maybe only good for 3 or 4 bottoming out, before they get damaged and begin disintergrating. (Note to self: Go slow over those speed humps in future!)
And here's a pic of my professional workbench, which is an old vice wedged between a drain gutter! Lucky that spring compressor tool only cost me S$65.
Here's a pic of reassembling a new shock:
And finally a pic of a newly reinstalled shock assembly with new rubber boot, new bump stop, new lower insulator rubber, new stabilizer link and new sway bar bushing. The feeling is so good! Heaven!
And of course the test drive was excellent, it was like driving a new car all over again. The suspension felt alot firmer. The old shocks although still usable but the you can tell they are worn bcos when you push the shock piston rod down by hand, it was slow to respring back up. The new shock was smoother and respring rate was much faster. Another thing I noticed is that the right rear shock was the most worn, followed by the right front shock. Probably bcos mine is RHD camry. Also interesting to note is that the original toyota shock I bought had the marking KYB on it. So Im guessing if you want to save some money, buy the shock direct from KYB instead, hopefully the stabilizer link mount, ABS sensor mount and brake line mount are the same.
My shock absorber job (pics intensive)
Linear Mode
