david_hornet27

Great info Mike! I too would be interested to know if quality is good as mine were an advisory on last MOT.

I used to love this club, however comments like the one above mean I will not be renewing my gold membership. ParrotofDoom is a new member who is obviously enthusiastic about his new LS400 so does it really do any harm to follow his original question with another?? If it does then maybe you could explain why with a little more tact rather than holding up a silly symbol and being so pedantic... There seem to be a huge amount of patronising comments recently and a distinct brand of elitism amongst a 'chosen' few that comes across as anyone who is not part of this 'chosen' group is unworthy. If you don't like the follow on question Steve then why not move it? Oh I forgot you're not a moderator are you... ParrotOfDoom, enjoy your new purchase and I am sure you will find the information on here very helpful. I promise the majority on here are friendly and realise that there are more important things in life to worry about than somebody asking 2 different questions in one thread.

The MOT was £54.85 to be exact, just grabbed the invoice out of the car to have a look for you. My advice, for what it's worth, would be to stick to your local garage if you have used them before and are comfortable with them... The total bill for parts (bearing, circlip, grease etc), labour and MOT was £350.17 Not a bad price for 18 months of motoring already, and hopefully some trouble/expense free months ahead! Spent far more on my scorpio, which was newer by a few months, over the same period and then consigned it to the big banger race in the sky.

Thanks Ruud... Yes I got it free last year with just an MOT although they did charge me 26p for replacing a sidelight! The advice posted above is good about presenting your car clean and usually I would. However as I am comfortable with the guys at Lexus Reading I thought this year I would take advantage of the valet by leaving it dirty. I am after all paying a premium to have the car done by them so its not really free is it? (£50+) I would also usually follow the advice about removing the hub and having the bearing removed and replaced by a local garage, indeed I have done this before with my old Scorpio but this time thought the old girl deserved being treated with some TLC by a 'real' mechanic. Plus I have a lot on with work so couldn't face the hassle of doing any of it myself and arranging lifts to somewhere with a press. I am all for minimising cost where possible, and have in the past posted asking about reputable non Lexus garages, however after trying the first one suggested and not even getting a call back even after chasing I decided to go back to Lexus. I would not trust my car to any garage that had not been recommended by someone I trust so this felt like the right thing to do. Usually I would do my own work and the guys on here are invaluable in this respect, especially Steve2006. But sometimes I just don't have time to work on the car myself so thought I would share my experience and cost of a Lexus main dealer for anyone else in a similar situation. Must admit I felt I shouldn't have bothered after the first couple of replies because it felt like I was being criticised for it...

Just to update... Took the Lexus in today for wheel bearing and MOT and for the second year in a row it passed with one advisory which was lower ball joint. Really have done no maintenance in the 18 months I have had it apart from a Lexus service for my service book, changed oil in transmission (complete change myself) and an oil change a couple of months back. For a 13 year old car that is incredible and shows what a great piece of engineering it is. This time I am not joking just incase anybody is wondering. Certainly made no difference that she was a little dirty and hadn't been hoovered for a while... And yes she came back looking good as new after her free valet.

:shutit: :o :duh:

The comment about the car being as dirty as possible was meant to be tongue in cheek... Obviously my sense of humour is not shared by all!!

Sorry if this has been asked before... My Mk4 heated seat seems to turn on automatically when the outside temp is 0 or lower. Has anyone else noticed this? The light doesn't show that it is on... Is this normal? On another subject, I have just booked it in for offside front wheel bearing with Lexus Reading and it is going to cost a cool £295. Ouch. Usually do my own work but could not face it this time after many problems with bearings on other cars ranging from Renault Clio's to Ford Scorpios. Never had one that was easy so decided to bite the bullet this time and shell out to save myself from the misery of messing around with vices, pullers, hammers and bits of scaffold pipe! I have made sure the car is as dirty as possible so at least I get value for money from the free valet!

Mine also has this problem and has for the 18 months I have owned it. It is common and I have in the past found a thread relating to it. I do not think there is a cure apart from adapting to it, I changed the transmission fluid and it made no difference... You will get used to it, but it is strange that a car that is so well engineered and perfect in almost every other way suffers from this.

I bought and refurbished some DHP wheels for my LS and researched a bit to find if any other tyres would do the job as the Pirellis were expensive and from what I had heard wore out pretty quickly. I have fitted Michelin Primacy 225/55 17 to them and I am really pleased with them. I was a little worried the very slight difference in circumference may upset the sat nav, but it has not been an issue, and compared to the Pirellis that I had before they are brilliant. It feels like a different, better car, much MUCH better in the wet. My advice is stick some Michelin 225/55 17's on there and you will not regret it. Just make sure they are 'w' rated. With a new set you should be able to get 16000 plus miles out of them. Hope this helps... PS. The 235 and 245's will put your speedo and sat nav out by more than I would accept personally...

I have a set of 5 recently refurbished standard Lexus LS400 16" wheels with pirelli tyres that have 5mm tread all round if you are interested. They came off my 98 LS400. PM me if you would like to make an offer... Cheers, Dave.

Hope you are having fun looking for your Lexus! I was in a similar position to you a year ago where I knew I wanted an LS400 but was not sure whether I had enough money to buy a Mk3 or Mk4. I knew I had a bonus coming at work of between £2500 - £3500 so had 6 months or so to trawl ebay and autotrader looking at what I could afford until the bonus materialised. It soon became obvious that if I knew what I was looking for I would be able to get a decent Mk4 with service history and recent cambelt change for about £3000 if I looked hard enough. When I finally got the money I picked out 3 cars to go and look at after I had done plenty of research on here. I chose to look first at a car with only 50000 miles that had a full service history and was up for £3500 which was right at the top of my price range. As I hoped and expected it was an absolutely mint example which I could use as my bench mark. I test drove it on motorway and around town and then had a good long look round so I knew going forward what a perfect LS should look, sound and drive like. I then went directly to see a car that had been knocking around on autotrader and ebay for a couple of months that had gone from £3500 down to £2600. As it hadn't sold I expected to be looking at a clapped out example, but was pleasantly surprised to find it was as good as the previous one except it had a smashed wing mirror. It had a sticker confirming the cambelt had been done within the last 20k miles and a full service history at Lexus Birmingham who I called to confirm what work had been done. The seller had also just had the wheels refurbished and put 4 new Pirelli tyres on. After a test drive it was obvious that it was a good car. So I offered the seller £2500 which he accepted and the rest is history. Didn't even bother looking at the 3rd car priced at £3k. I have ended up with a car that I love, that has given me no problems in the 9 months I have owned it and went through its MOT with not even a single advisory!! The only money I have spent is on oil and filter, and I treated it to a service at Lexus Reading. Also for peace of mind I changed the transmission oil which was a relatively easy job but well worth it. I will be servicing myself from now on as I plan on keeping the car as long as possible so the stamps are not important to me. Other money spent has been cosmetic, new set of refurbished DHP alloys (i think they look better than the 'standard' wheels'), michelin primacy tyres, and the wing mirror (which cost me a fortune). My advice is that you will certainly get a mint Mk4 for around £2.5K if you do your homework. Happy hunting!

What a negative post!! I have had little problems getting parts for my Mk4, and worst case scenario is that you have to buy from Lexus if all else fails which means you have the peace of mind that you are buying quality parts that will last. Exhaust is stainless steel which means it should last forever, you may at some point need to weld the flanges at the join from the cats to the rest of the system. Not a hard job to do and reasonably inexpensive. All BIG cars suffer from suspension noises after a while, unfortunately that is the laws of physics, big heavy objects create stress on moving parts. It is certainly no indication that a car has been neglected!! If you are prepared to get your hands dirty it really isn't rocket science to sort yourself relatively cheaply and suspension parts are widely available as stated above. You say the cambelt has been changed which in my opinion would indicate the previous owner certainly spent money when neccessary and had longevity in mind. As for fuel consumption. mine averages 25mpg around town and 35mpg on the motorway at 80+ miles an hour. And I guess you wouldn't have bought a 4 litre car if you were too worried about fuel consumption. Fortunately most of the members on here are ready to help if you have any problems rather than being as pessimistic as 'celssior' (spelt wrongly)! I guess 'celssior' has never owned an LS judging by his very inaccurate claims. Enjoy your new purchase and welcome to LOC.

After looking for 6 months for an offside wing mirror for my Mk4 I gave up and went to Lexus. The problem I found was getting one with the right tint (green in my cars case, different colour cars have different tints as far as I know) and heated. I did find a non tint, non heated one on ebay for £35 and I guess if I bought the nearside one aswell then at least the mirrors would match, but obviously wouldn't be heated. Benfur from this site had one for £60 but was it the wrong tint. There are complete mirror units available on ebay as sellers rarely want to sell the mirror on its own and they are around £50. Lexus charged me £240!!!! but did fit it for free and valet the car. Good luck... PS the ones you have looked at on ebay are to stick over the existing broken mirror, I had one, not heated and they look crap. Really let my car down hence finally shelling out at Lexus.

Looks really nice :) Are the centre caps missing? Well spotted!! I have had to have custom caps made as the originals were not good but I wanted the lexus logo on them. Luckily I know a chap that can make some up for me as Lexus have stopped doing them and I cannot find elsewhere. They will be with me tomorrow.