Paul Ed

I have a 2004 LS430 on 170k miles. Both rear airstruts are presumably leaking as the back end drops down very low after the car has been left for a few hours. When the engine is started it recovers after a few minutes and drives fine, however the compressor is a lot louder than it used to be and I'm assuming this is because it is working harder/more than it was designed to do and may be wearing out. I have decided to take the car off the road for a while and do some general repairs/maintenance and am unsure at the moment whether to replace the airstruts and compressor or to replace with new coilovers such as BC. Any advice would be greatly appreciated especially from anyone who has already carried out this mod and whether there are any pitfalls I should know about. Thanks, Paul

I have seen many posts on different forums stating that caliper bolts must not be re-used as they are 'stretch bolts'. Firstly, these bolts appear to be working in shear and not in tension so why use stretch bolts? Secondly, where do you get new caliper bolts from? I've searched extensively online over the last 7 years and the only ones I've seen have been in the States. The first time I changed the discs I did indeed orders new bolts from over the pond at considerable expense. Since then I've just reused these bolts each time I've removed the calipers (about 5 times now) with no ill effect. OEM from Lexus are probably more expensive than the US got ones. I would be interested what others think. Thanks.