Ls400 Air Con Mot And Ball Joints

[Haylands]

Hi all

Not been on for a while.... I try to forget about my lovely old 430 but my brother has just been staying for a week and as some of you will remember he has a rather nice 1992 LS400

Anyway it needed an MOT so we got that done and yet again for another year it passed without even any advisories...

We took a can of Dinotrol anti rusty waxy stuff with us to keep any underbody corrosion in check whilst it was up on the ramp.... well the only bits we could find were the two rear towing eyes were going a bit around the edges and a previous owner had jacked it up under the front chassis leg and damaged the under seal through to the paint... still wasn't rusty but I gave it a spray just for the hell of it....

The other issue he had was that his aircon worked fine from cold but then after a short while you would get vapour coming out of the air vents... looked like an airplane vapour trail... then a while later the aircon stops working and warm air comes out...

There is a place near me that regasses and services aircon, it's an old boy who has been at it for years... we took it to him and told him the symptoms and it had him baffled... he thought it was low on gas and would then be over pressurizing and cutting out as it got too hot... he put the gauges on and the pressure was just as it should be around 100psi... although pressure is no indication of how much gas is left in the system it does rise as the level of the gas decreases and can get to 300psi... he scratched his head... It was filled with the old R12 coolant and this is getting very expensive now and it is cheaper to change the oil, gas and filling points for the later R134a so we thought it was worth a try..... He put his machine into vacuum mode to suck out all the old gas and low and behold next to none came out....

It sat for ages under vacuum to dry out the system and check for leaks and he then refilled it with 1.1kg of gas.... cost all in £85...

It is now a fair bit colder than it was and we were freezing by the time we got home.... well if you’ve got it you have to use it!!!! There were no clouds out the vents and it stayed cold the whole way so it seems the problem is fixed...

The guy reckoned that because the LS is so well built it let the aircon system work with such a small amount of gas, other "normal" cars would have given up a long time before....

That just left the last issue... the replacement top front wishbones that we fitted about 2 years ago were still fine with no noise etc (they were from that company in the USA that recons them) but the top ball joint rubber gaiter had perished to such an extent that it was in three pieces... you can easily check yours with the wheels on, just look above the wheel in the wheel arch and you can see the gaiter...

Anyway we took it apart to check the joint itself and it was fine, even the perished bits of rubber had done a pretty good job of keeping the crap out... we cleaned it up and regreased it.. My brother had bought some replacement boots, the biggest he could find, but they were way too small, he also brought with him a pair of new Fiat Panda front lower ball joints that he had bought when he had his last car.... can you believe he went from a Fiat Panda to a LS!?!?!?, anyway he never needed to fit them so they sat in his garage.... you can see what’s coming here can't you.... yes they were exactly the same size, so we swapped them over and they now adorn a Lexus... so parts interchangeability with other makes takes an all time low....

Anyway his Panda was in a similar condition to his LS... these were taken 3 years ago when he swapped cars so the Panda is 14years old....

So my brother left last night to purr the 230miles back to his house a happy man......

Meanwhile, back at the ranch I have bought myself a new toy.... had it a few months now... done a fair bit to it... I just can't stop playing...

It looked like this when I bought it... 20 years old, everything works including the aircon... all for £500... Nearly as good a bargain as a LS...

It’s had

New 16" wheels with off road tyres

3" suspension lift

2" body lift

Winch

Snorkel

Electric fan

Bluetooth hands free

Roof crate

Homemade white dial kit!!!!

etc etc...

It now looks like this...

but usually looks like this

Home made white dials and heater panel ... I'm quite proud of them...

Before

After

Anyway I'll stop going off topic and car make and leave you lot to it, I just thought the aircon story needed sharing in case anyone else gets the same symptoms...

Pete

[JellyBean]

From a Panda to an LS ? Must be some sort of record.

The cars look great, but someone must have an awful lot of free time.

[Ruud]

From a Panda to an LS ? Must be some sort of record.

The cars look great, but someone must have an awful lot of free time.

I take it the Ls is wet sanded and then polished the ***** out of it..:)

[Haylands]

From a Panda to an LS ? Must be some sort of record.

The cars look great, but someone must have an awful lot of free time.

I take it the Ls is wet sanded and then polished the ***** out of it..:)

Yeah... 2500grit then machine polished then hand polished, but believe it or not the photos are the before ones... it had just been clay bared and Meguiar'ed in these pics... they always look better in photos... now it looks about the same in the flesh....

Pete

[TigerFish]

Very nice LS. Looks great with the clear indicators etc.

Is your project purely an off roader, or a daily driver too?

[Haylands]

Very nice LS. Looks great with the clear indicators etc.

Is your project purely an off roader, or a daily driver too?

Hi

My daily driver is a Toyota Verso but to be honest I'd rather drive the Pajero...... well no I'd rather drive my old LS430 but it was too low and really hurt my already knackered back....!!!!

Pete

[steve2006]

Hi Pete,

Very good informative article.

The 1st car I bought my now ex wife was a Fiat Panda I always remember the drivers door falling off one day when she opened it. We used to call it the Poorly Panda!

Was up your way a couple of weeks ago bought some wheels in Hull then decided ( after a lot of rib pulling on this forum ) to sell them again on eBay and the buyer was ..... in Hull! but met him at Ferrybridge services.

Diversifying again ( but coming back to the LS) some of you may remember the "bargain" Lexus LS400 roofrack I bought some time ago on eBay for the huge sum of £1.20 I decided I really had no use for it and relisted it on eBay needless to say it sold for £61.00 and is now sitting on the roof of an LS somewhere in Sweden!!!!!!

Fortunately it was all bolt together so I took some pictures emailed them to the guy and then "Flatpacked" it for UPS.

The thing is £61.00 is around 65.00 Euros which roughly tranlates to 22 large BEERS for my upcoming holiday in Rhodes YUM YUM!