EPS area? Electric Power Steering?

Are you talking about the intermediate steering shaft? Some cars and trucks you can remove the intermediate steering shaft and lubricate with grease and will help, not sure if that is possible on the Avalon.

Before going down any rabbit hole and trying to diagnose over the internet, you need to inspect the front end compenents and make sure all is good. tierod ends, ball joints, lower control arms (LCA) and LCA bushings, wheel bearings.

 

Yes. It is coming from the Power Steering somewhere. Front end was checked out and everything there looks good.

 

Well intermediate shafts aren’t the funnest repairs to make. Kind of tight in there and tough to get at on most cars. I’d price the part out to see if it’s worth doing.

There are some things to worry about, one of which is having the steering wheel move when the shaft is disconnecting and breaking the clock spring...then you’ll be in a lot of trouble. The other is getting the old one out and not being able to put the new one in.

 

I was crawling around it the other day, it is not too bad to get to it in this car but I'm also concerned about something gets moved. I want to take this car to the dealer for the OEM remote start installation, maybe I'll ask these guys to check it out while at it. Let's see what they say.

 

Last week made it to the Toyota dealer and mechanic confirmed some wear in the intermediate steering shaft. Price of the matter is $860, which also includes wheel alignment check (Dealer says it needs to be done after intermediate shaft replacement). Shaft itself is about $250 from Toyota. My Toyota dealer also stated that even though it started to make noise it is not worn enough to be replaced at this time and I can drive it for probably another year or so. I'll probably replace it at my next oil change anyway, hate this rattle.