Hi everyone,
I hope you are all well, I am in need of some help with my IS200 if possible?

I am in desperate need of some advice, I have a Lexus IS200 and it has been so good to me however recently the steering has felt a bit 'flakey' this had turned into a rapid deterioration and the car is all over the road (literally).
So I got under the car and had a look, basically the front two shocks are completely shagged (See pics, they say a thousand words.) The backs seems fine.
The car has only done 82k however I am not surprised the shocks have given out as the car has 50mm lowering springs on.

Okay, so the ideal situation is get coilovers and all is well, but I cannot afford them at the moment so will have to be replacement OEM for now. I appreciate that putting 50mm lowering springs onto the new shocks will ultimately lead them to the same fate but at the moment I don't have a choice.

My questions

[list]
[*]Replacement ones I am looking at say KYB Gas however the current ones are clearly oil, will this be a problem?
[*]Will I need to replace the rears as well, even though they are not showing signs of leaking.
[*]How much should a garage charge to do this? One wanted an hour and a half PER SIDE?! at £80 per hour.
[/list]

Also to add insult to injury my passenger side lower ball joint seems to be on it's way out as there is an oily substance around it, again I know these will need to be replaced it pairs. Cost wise does it make sence to get this done at the same time?

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[URL=http://img233.imageshack.us/i/dscf0426t.jpg/][IMG]http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/97/dscf0426t.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Thanking you all kindly!!

mate have a search on the forum and theres walkthroughs to change these bits yourself, only need things like a socket set, jack, etc.

will save you a fortune.

Hi mate, thanks for your reply. I was going to have a crack at it myself but I have been told I will need a spring compressor plus a ball joint breaker? Plus I will need the alignment re-doing so I might see if Tony @ WIM will do it for me as they set the alignment up for me when I originally got the car.

Alignment maybe but not urgent.

yes spring compressors but there only cheap from halfords etc.

and you can just use a big hammer instead of joint breaker.

Okay mate, well I've emailed Tony to see what kind of price I am looking at- If it's expensive I will give it a crack myself.
The shocks I am looking at are 'Excel-G/Shock Absorber' from buypartsby.co.uk

Do you reckon the rears will be okay? There's no sign of them leaking, also should I replace both bottom ball joints, are they easy enough?

Thanks so much for your help.

AMD at Lakeside, Essex installed my coilovers (front and rear) and aligned the wheels for £200+VAT about 2 weeks ago.

Before that, I rang around a few places and one quoted me £80 + VAT per corner!! That's £384!!!!

I told them to jog on!!!!!