blackpoolmike

Hi Harry I bought a 56 plate ls460 SE L with 35K on it a year ago. I paid £19k at a lexus dealer and it came with a lexus 12 month warranty. I haven't claimed on the warranty as nothing has gone wrong. I used to have a 430 which had 90K on it when I bought it. It cost me about £700 a year in repairs over the 5 years I had it. Various sensors at £250 a throw, part of the exhaust, new radiator were the main things, but not surprising given the age and mileage. I'm hoping the 460 will cost less because of the lower mileage. I think the 460 is better looking than the 430 and has a lot more features. However, I get the impression, it is not quite as well made as the 430.Mine has a problem with wind noise which is not uncommon and for which there is a well documented diy fix. There is also a rattle that i believe is the front speaker housings catching on the windscreen. I've seen a fix for this as well, but not tried it. Lexus Bolton seemed to be aware of this problem from other cars. Early models were recalled for valvespring replacement and I have a feeling that the electric steering was prone to failure on early cars, but these problems are likely to have been sorted under warranty. I'm currently wrestling with whether or not to extend the warranty (£995) so I appreciate your dilemma over purchase. If you buy I'd go for the SE L for all the extra gadgets, theres not another car that comes close. Mike

Hi I just caught up with this thread. I had an ls430 that developed the oil cooler leak. I was very lucky in that I'd checked my coolant one day and it was fine and a couple of days later happened to lift the bonnet and found the coolant looked like oil. I had no idea what the problem was until lexus said I needed a new radiator. I was lucky, the gearbox was fine. The really worrying thing is that this appears to be a rapid failure that you'll have no awareness of until something breaks or you happen to check your coolant. I guess few of us do weekly checks under the bonnet and even these may not be enough to avoid a shot gearbox. If my experience is typical this fault probably didn't exist when the subject of this thread changed hands. Mike

Hi Re LPG conversion for LS 460/600. I had a LS 430 converted to LPG and was very happy with it. When I got a 460 I asked my installer and he said they can't be converted because the petrol injectors in the cylinder head would melt. They rely on fuel passing through them to keep them cool, so would overheat when car is running on LPG. I don't know if this is true, but there is some logic to the argument. With my LS430, Lexus workshops were not very happy about working on the car. Spark plug change would have been difficult because some of the LPG pipework restricted access to some plugs. Other jobs on engine would also require some bits of LPG system to be removed to gain access and Lexus would not touch the LPG system. Hope this helps Mike

Hi All. I've just come back to a Lexus having tried a Mazda for a couple of years. I've got a 5 year old LS460 and was very interested in the essential care servicing option. Prices looked good and made it sensible to stick with Lexus for servicing. However, on phoning various dealers and the Lexus call centre, I was very disappointed to learn that the service book would not be stamped! But my Lexus warranty wouldn't be invalidated - weird. Before going in to all this I assumed that essential care servicing would be according to the book, but devoid of the frills such as the free courtesy car and the free pick up and delivery of my car from home (around 30 miles from Lexus centre). I also assumed I'd have to leave the car for a full day rather than have a while you wait service. These features are a great convenience that must cost the dealership quite a bit to provide and cutting them out should have enabled them to offer reduced price servicing for older cars. As far as I'm concerned Lexus have missed as trick and shot themselves in the foot - the essential care system will not be successful in retaining customers with older cars. As it stands, you can get a better service from an independent and get the service book stamped. It's not as if most services need specific Lexus tools or skills. Only downside is not having a relationship with a Lexus dealer when you get a problem that needs a Lexus garage to fix! Mike

Not had a Lexus before, but got a good chance to test out the renowned service as my LS430 needed 100k service plus an engine management problem needed sorting. Lexus Bolton is nearest to me (Blackpool), but Stockport seems to get all the good reviews. I got prices from both for the service and there wasn't much difference. Bolton said they would collect my car from Blackpool and drop of a courtesy car, which they did. It was a high spec Toyota Avensis - they apologised for not having a Lexus - but I was happy anyway. Later in the day they phoned to say what they had found re engine management problem. We agreed on the cost to fix and they went ahead. As the fix was to take a few days, they offered to swap the Avensis for a Lexus. When I got the car back there were a couple of things I wasn't happy about and that night I emailed the after sales manager. I was amazed to get a phone call at 8:15 the following morning to apologise and start the ball rolling to sort out the problems. They collected the car again and left me a new top spec RX300 with plenty of fuel in it. They sorted my car and to compensate me for not getting it spot on the first time, they replaced a faulty rain sensor, fixed some switches that didn't illuminate, valeted the car inside and out and delivered the car back with a full tank of petrol. So, although the initial problem was a disappointment, I'm very impressed at the efforts they went to sort things out and the freebies I got. As a result, I'll certainly use Bolton again.

Hi Smiffie I know you from TIF. I've got an LS430 now and bought the W/S manuals for an 05 model from USA. It mentions a tyre monitoring system and describes the following process to initialise the tyrepressure monitoring system - it may be the same for the SC430. "Set tyre pressure to correct pressure. with vehicle stopped, turn on ignition switch to ON. press and hold the tyre pressure warning reset switch until the 'pressure initial' indicator comes on. (On the LS the switch looks to be under the dash) If the 'pressure initial' does not come on perform the initialisation again (with the ignition switch off). Drive the vehicle at 19 MPH or more to complete the initialisation of the skid control system. Check that the indicator is not displayed after driving vehicle for 60 minutes. If the pressure initial indicator comes on again while the car is being driven, the initialisation may have failed. If so repeat the whole process again. After initialisation is completed, the skid control ECU monitors the tyre pressure using the wheel speed sensors. Mike