ambermarine

That sounds like a front upper wishbone ball joint,it is unlikely to be the A/C compressor as that is front left from the driving position and would not rattle intermintently unless it was falling off its mounting bolts.To check the ball joint, jack the car off the ground on that wheel and using a tyre lever or bar lift and push inwards at the outside bottom edge of the tyre.If there is any movement you should be able to feel it by placing your fingers around the ball joint.

Fairly certain this is the car that was featured a couple of years ago when a local garage refurbered it from the bottom up including a full respray .The price for the job was that the car had to sit in the showroom as an example of excellence for an agreed period of time. It as to be the best example of the Mark1 on that history alone.

I have mentioned this before but whilst changing of bulbs as been mentioned my last Mark 1 which was 22 years old this year never had a bulb renewed my local workshop could not believe it .I pointed out to them that it is not the quality of the bulbs it is the quality of the electrical system and its integrity.I have a classic mini variant as my knocking about motor and the electrics like all those classic cars are playing up every five minutes,I know times have moved on but there are still examples of modern cars that have awful electrical problems.

You are getting into dangerous territory with that solution, your insurance could be invalidated.

If the key fobs are not operating the imobiliser the system may have failed at the imobiliser end . This would require a new imobiliser and new key coding ,which if I remember when this happened to me on my Mark 1 involves new keys being cut. This will not be cheap so make sure that it is not something else that is causing this problem before ordering the imobiliser replacement.

Hi SteveIf it is the water pump it will be a wallet charger :megaangry:

Unless someone as been there before there is no such thing as a loose wire on a Lexus LS400. The motor is probably sticking through age and little use .Access to it requires removing the doorcard and the insulation behind ,It is a job you could do but download a manual onto your computer from the web thy cost about £10 .With the help of the diagramatic detail of the door construction you will be able to locate the screws and fastenings that release the card without doing any damage. The motor is located immediatly behind the door catch and operates the lock and lock switch through a lever system. If it is the motor you can get one off ebay for a lot less than £200.

Sounds like the water pump ,check out the threads on the LS400 forum and there are lots of experiences that will give you cause for immediate attention, my own especially.

My LS400 mark 1 was £180 a year with churchill fncb incl protection max 5000 miles per annum £400 excess and wife on ins who does'nt drive anymore but apparantly makes it cheaper .Renewal to the mark 4 in NOV, car value differences are not massive so I expect similar.

HiJust got a 98 ls and decided to get the touch up paint just in case, the place I bought mine was on the net from a co on ebay £8.50 delivered.The advantage of this product is there is no need to apply laquer as it is mixed in with the colour . Mine as got a light mettalic green as the main colour and that is marked up on the chassis plate but what I could'nt find on the plate is the lower darker shade of mettalic green which is known to Lexus as the cladding colour.I was involved with Lexus at the time over another matter and they also struggled to find out what the code was even off the vin of the car.I eventually found a site in the USA that as the combination colours for the Lexus cars and they came up with the correct code.All cladding paint codes start with UCA according to the info on site.

Great postHats off to you, daunting task just got the mark 4 but with only 20k on her not likely to be doing this, mark 1 did 190k and never needed it .I believe it as a lot to do with usage rather than mileage my old Mark 1 did 85% of her miles on the motorway.

Does the headlamp washers work

Hi KiethI had the same experience when I drove my 98 from England to Scotland. The car was fine at motorway speeds but on tickover it was as rough as a Bears A~~~ ,turned out the battery was completly dubbed.The electrical system for the engine will take its primary power from the battery and if there is insufficient amperege in the battery it will not service the engine requirements efficiently, when the Battery is failing basically the alternator is running the car which is not a good thing This is the time of year that batteries fail most when they are asked to perform and are at the end of their life,they literally have a heart attack. So everyone should check the state of their battery before it lets you down.There is a tool at some quality workshops that will give a reliable reading of the battery state .Tell tale signs are interior light brightens and dims on increased engine revs . A simple test can be carried out at home just run the battery right down ,take it off the car and connect it too an old headlight from the scrapyard, then charge it up on a normal battery charger if it takes the charge well and charges up at a good rate then stays charged up it is in good shape ,if it loses the charge or takes a long time charging it is on its way out.

Thanks for that. 18K miles! Wow, that was a good find. Do you have pictures of your car anywhere? HiThis is your day to celebrate !

Hi Keith If the code as been set for your car and you disconnect the battery it will disable the satnav and audio functions until it is reset. There is a thread on our own club site that gives instructions on that. Put in the search box;LS400 1998 with Satnav-unlocking code started by lexuslexus Aug 02 2008. Under no circumstances try to change a battery with the engine running if you get the sequence of poles wrong you will cause unimaginable damage to the electrical system.

HiLovely car look after it and it will look after you,They are not the original wheels I have the exact same model mint and original 18k on the clock when I bought it last month ,The original are 16inch and as been mentioned corode badly even mine had been refurbed but by Lexus and properly. It seems according to the best info you can get from inside Lexus ,that all the Lexus Wheels are manufactured on a deliberate cost saving for temperate climates because the majority of Lexus cars are sold in temperate climates Less than 12% are sold were they put salt on the road which is the wheel's worst enemy. There are sites on ebay USA that sell replacements for the gear knob.

hi KiethJust back from the pub vented my frustrations on all and sundry and created another regiment of anti-DVLA with the amount of earache, know what I mean? of course you do. I appreciate your input but to be perfectly honest I at this moment don,t give a S### . I like all of us in this club are superior to these plebs that run these so called public service organisations that spend our money persecuting us out of envy. Good luck to them in there sad non productive jobs waiting for the next government cut that throws them on the scrapheap of life. I have been honest and hardworking all of my life and have a fine lifestyle that I see as a reward for that.The reason for the initial post was to warn everyone that we have a pernicous layer of Mandarins that are out to fleece the unwary under the Governments cloak of authority.

Malc you need to read the text ,the visit to the DVLA local office was made right at the beginning of this scenario and we acted on their advice,after that it was all dealt with through the post because we were waiting for them to do their job.

Yes SteveI made the unfortunate error of not being an out and out S##t as doing what I did I thought I was helping the guy who had not been able to use the car for the three weeks because the DVLA would,nt let him TAX it although they were well aware that he legitimatly owned it ,it was insured as when he bought it from me it was still taxed. If I had sent in the V5C without his signature as the new keeper that would have caused another delay for God knows how long and he still would not have use of the car. The process of transferring a Personalised plate from one vehicle to another is riddled with anomolies which the DVLA have tried to address with the simple precedence that you cannot sell the vehicle whilst the registration transfer is taking place, well the problems there are many fold because of the various departments of the DVLA that get involved and obviously don't speak to each other. And you also have the unholy experience of some government jobsworth being in charge of the timetable of your private business of buying or selling your car. The DVLA must be the most publicly reviled Government organisation as I hav'nt spoken to anyone yet about my issue who has'nt had an issue of some type with them.

There is no recourse to a senior officer in this procedure the Sorn enforcement office is based in Newcastle and the forms have been written and designed to stop any protest apart from official directorates slanted in their favour, you cannot call and protest on the phone.If you do write to them they just quote chapter and verse and behave like the KGB. The threats of county court judgements ,debtors lists, your car clamped or crushed headline their first communication designed to frighten the s~~~ out of law abiding citizens but laughed at by the criminal sector that this department was set up to address. Yet again the Government mandarins have managed to create another department that alienates the general law abiding public.

Hi MikeJust to clarify a couple of things. The original notice is accompanied with a space on the back that you are expected to send back with your reasons for not agreeing with the charge,this was sent back with what as been stated above .There is also a telephone number with a rider stating not to call if you are disputing this charge the form they send also as a rider saying don't bother sending it back unless you have received official notice from them that you have sold the vehicle.All options erased before you get off the blocks.I did send the notice back and yesterday got a reply from the chief enforcer saying that I am a bad boy and just pay the penalty. The reasons stated were ;The onus is on me to send the V5C back and not a third party now assuming that this V5C as got lost in the post it is my honesty that as got me in trouble ,according to the buyer he has still not received his new V5C 5 weeks on he obviously received the V5C from me as he used the new keepers section to tax the car As I spend the first three months of the year overseas I did'nt want this dragging on and into court proceedings that I may not have been here to address. I do not normally roll over this easily but you win some and lose some and in life generally I consider myself a winner so I'll just mark this one up as a home goal.

There is sadly only one way out of this and it involves an awful lot of work from you. First write to them and list in a logical order the list of events including dates and times with as much detail as you can remember. Send it to them by recorded delivery and wait. Remember one very important thing if they go to court its down to them to prove your guilty and not you proving yourself innocent. Should you get a reply from them unless they are asking for more evidence that you have forgotten to tell them in the first instance just send them your first letter again by recorded delivery, that's very important with any dealings these days with the DVLA, if I send them anything these days its always recorded delivery. You know you have a fight on your hands but don't get uptight only write to them when you are in a calm mood and don't let it wind you up, keep it to the facts and remember you are not writing a letter to your favorite aunt so keep it tight to the point and concise. One other thing to remember is that you are now dealing with a private company and they are interested in making profits and not wasting time, efforts and monies on cases that wont produce a profit for them. They will probably not even read your first letter it will go straight into the bin. They will send you letters threatening all sorts on headed noted paper that looks very official don't fall for it, they have no more power to wield than you or I do. To get monies from you they have to take you to court and a judge will decide on the balance of evidence presented as to whether you are guilty or not. Only a judge can issue Bailiff warrants and that cant be done until you have been to the court and then only if you have not complied with the judges direction and judgement. This is a County Court which is a Civil Court and not a criminal court Believe you me if what you tell me is exactly what happened after a while they will get fed up with it and you wont hear anymore, not even an apology. Good luck and keep us informed how you get on. Mike MikeYour opening line says it all I just can't be mithered, I have negotiated a reduction to £40 for prompt payment and taken it as a lesson learnt .I only brought it to the club members attention to warn anybody else who is planning to do this exercise of the pitfalls.

Hi Fellow Lexuns Word of warning on the SORN enforcement policing. As some of you will know from my recent posts I have aqquired a replacement 98 ls400 for the 90 LS400 I had owned for sixteen years. In July I owned both cars and wanted to transfer the private plate from the 90 too the 98.I visited my local DVLA office in Glasgow and following their instructions did the transfer before selling the 90 to protect my registration plate apparantly if you don't do this the buyer can keep the plate as it officially belongs to the car.Whilst the process was taking place the 90 sold on EBay and the buyer took possesion of it before the tax expired in JULY. As the V5C had gone to the transfer office in Manchester The buyer could not present a green new keeper section from the V5C so in August when he tried to Tax the car his local office DVLA refused to tax it on the grounds it was still registered to me but they knew the plate transfer was in progress as he was told that by them ,they said he could tax the vehicle as soon as the new V5C was issued to me with a new registration number. With it so far? I received my transferred plate two weeks later for my new car but there was no problem here as the car was taxed till November when I bought it. A week later I received the new V5C for the 90 and it was the original first reg number .I signed the V5C and immediatly sent it to the buyer so he could at least tax the car he had not been allowed to use for three weeks. Last Friday I received a £80 fixed penalty and £18 back duty for not Sorning the 90 Lexus ,the notice carried the new registration number and not the private plate number so we are now getting into crystal ball territory.How can I Sorn a vehicle with a registration I don't know and I can't sorn a vehicle that is taxed,niether can I Sorn a vehicle that I don't own and don't even have knowledge of its whereabouts I protested vehemently but too no avail. According to them they only have an application for tax from the new owner and have not received the V5C making me the culprit for not sending in the V5C . which is not what the original offence was, I have been assured by the new owner that he did send off the V5C and I have no reason to doubt his word. The crazy part of all this is that when I asked about the back duty they said they were letting me off that sum as they know I was'nt in possesion of the car .The person I had to pay offered to send a dispute pack but I believe whatever is said in my defence this matter is cut and dried as far as they are concerned and just another way of fleecing us and driving the innocent to dispise Government departments. The whole issue as left a nasty taste in my mouth as I endeavoured to do things by the book and did my upmost to get the buyer on the road as fast as possible,despite the cumbersome way the DVLA work.

Well that gives me confidence, especially when you see the way some idiots drive in this country Now surely you'll compose a Lexus blues number in memory of this one!!! Phil Thats why I drive a Lexus LS400.

Hi NickThe solenoids are all accessible from the bottom side of the box and can all be replaced without taking the box out, with regards to the valve body this is in fact at the end of the solenoid and may be sticking it can be accessed by removing the sump of the box in situ. The resistance of the solenoid will still show correct if the solenoid is sticking removing /replacing it and cleaning the valve body may solve the problem.