We have 120,000 on our one owner 2000 Avalon XL. Its quiet and smooth ride always amazed us from the day we drove it home. However, it has become signifcantly harsher and louder over the past year or so. I am confident it is not the tires. We took it in for its 120,000 service and asked the dealer mechanic to look at the suspension. Other than a couple of worn bushings, he found nothing wrong with the suspension. He said he felt the suspension had a little more "play" in it that it would have when newer, but otherwise he did not see any leaks and said it "looked good." He said we could try replacing the struts for abut $1,200 if we wanted to do so. It would be worth the $1,200 to us but we want to be relatively confident that is the problem. Any thoughts?
Radsra

If it sounds like you're driving on snow tires, or if you never drove on snow tires, like a cross country or all terrain tires, it may be a rear bearing. We have a 2000 Avalon XLS with 105K on it. We absolutely love the car. Some time ago maybe a year we started to notice a noise that reminded me of driving back north on snow tires or a rough road. It wasn't that noticeable at first and someimes when things develope slowly there's a tendence to unconsiously ignore them. At our last service they said we need the right wheel bearing replaced. That fixed it. The noise went away. But be ready. In the Avalon it's not a simple bearing replacement. With the new sealed bearings they have to replace the whole assembly which I beleive includes part of the rear axle. This runs $500.00 - $600.00 at a Toyota dealer. Buy the way, check the Toyota recall web. They had a recall on 2000 Avalons for a rear axle problem in some Avalons manufachured aroung March 2000. I don't remember the details. We bought ours in Jan 2000. Hope find the problem.

Just curious, how did you make out?