steveskeggy

Yes we were fine thanks. It was a dumper loading up where the council are re-surfacing the pavements at the end of our road. He was been loaded on one side, on the other side was a small van. There was a big enough gap for me to get through, until he moved forward without looking to see if there was anything there. It was a ringways truck, and the driver admitted fault, so there should be no problems. Both vehicles travelling at less than walking pace, but those Mercedes trucks have a lot of mass. Took out the door, the back wing and the wheel and tyre. Good thing is that the back wing had a small crease in it from a wheelie bin in high winds, so not all bad news!!

Look what some ##%&*rd lorry driver did to my pride and joy Door still opens, Good solid cars these. Should be back to like new next week :D

Used quicksteel on the backbox on my old 800 turbo, worked a treat, I think it would have outlasted the rest of the exhaust, much better than gun gum. wont break the bank just to try it will it?

I once had a rear window replaced on a Rover 800 fastback that I had stuck a third brake light on with superglue, it shattered all by itself during the night. The installer said that the majority of their work came from people who had used superglue to stick their rear view mirrors back on. Some sort of reaction I think. So tip of the day: Dont use superglue on car windows!!

On my Mk4, there was a long metal strip under the bumper, its held on with those silly fixers that Lexus use. These go through brackets in the bodywork and fasten to another strip of metal inside. I took these out, took both the strips out then the bumper was bendy enough to let me work behind it. I strapped the brain to the old phone/central locking boxes in the right hand side well and just ran the sensor leads to it through the light cluster. if you dont want to go through the cluster then take the spare wheel out and all the carpets and fillers etc, then you can drill a hole in the bodywork behind the bumper from inside the boot.

The radius arms connect to the chassis at the front and to the suspension at the back. If you draw an imaginary line from the top of the suspension in the center to the bottom of the suspension in the center, you would find that it would be offset slightly, this is called the castor angle, which is what the radius arms control. The castor angle has a few functions, but the main one is to keep the wheels naturally pointing straight ahead. So if you turned the steering wheel without a castor angle the wheel would stay in the position you turned it to, or worse if the angle was in the wrong way the steering would wind itself on, very bad. If you want to save a bit (LOT) of money look on Ebay see if you can get a few off there, dont rule out Ebay USA either, I got a pair of bonnet struts for my 98 LS for 34 quid including shipping.

There`s a near side heated mirror on E-Bay: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/lexus-ls400-ns-heate...1QQcmdZViewItem Its only at a tenner with no bids and a day to go if it will fit yours.. The car looks stunning. Well done for that. I think the wheelcover if great and the Sat nav is a superb installation. Could you email me the address in the US where you bought the cover? I've had an exhaust leak on the joints after the Catalytic Converter on both pipes which I am going to fix today. One of the after Cat lamda O2 sensors is also damaged and I will replace that next week (£97!!!!!). Another woe is that my door mirrors need new glass and I was quoted £199 each (fitting extra) from the lexus dealer but I think I can get some from the US at £40 each including shipping. Hopefully after this I can settle down to a last couple of repairs before I concentrate on tuning, bodywork and interior. Looking at your car I have some catching up to do. happy motoring, Rab

If your parking sensors are in the same place as mine, ie on the outer corners of the bumper, you probably wont need to take the bumper off to get to them. Even if they are anywhere else, you most likely wont need to take the bumper off either. if they are on the corners, then just remove the nearest rear light cluster by popping out the two round trim pieces next to the lights and taking out the screws under them. The clusters should then come off with a bit of twisting and pulling, also if you look in the boot under the carpet trim behind the lights there are two square push in holders that you may have to compress the lugs on, if they dont pop out. After the lights are out, you should be able to stick your hand into the bumper and get to the sensor, on mine the wires run through the cluster wiring grommet, so you would need to take the lights out anyway. If they are away from the corners, and you cant reach them using the above method, then look under the car at the front edge of the bumper, there should be a long black plastic trim, with five retaining clips in it. On some cars these may be screws, but on mine they were the two piece clips which you remove by pulling out the core that looks like a screw head. The rest of the retainer is part of the plastic trim. When you remove all five cores, pull or prise out the plastic trim. This may cause a metal part the same length as the plastic trim to fall off, if not then pull it off, it will only fall off anyway. Now you can pull on the bottom of the plastic part of the bumper (not TOO hard!), and you may just be able to do the job this way. When you come to put it all back together again, the metal part goes behind the bumper, sandwiching the bumper with the plastic trim. There are also three metal lugs on the bodywork that the retainers have to go through, be careful of these as they bend easily when you are trying to push the retainers through. The light clusters should come out leaving the two square retainers in place with two pegs that locate in them on the cluster, if the square retainers came out then just make sure that they both go back in again properly with the lugs spreading either side, if they come loose after you have taken the clusters out then try not to drop them down into the bumper cavity, especially if its getting dark, and you have nearly finished the job, and the batteries in your torch are nearly flat. If you have got the same corner sensors as me, however, I would recommend that you dont bother, as these things are useless at best. The best thing to do in this case is to fit an after market set of sensors, I have just finished fitting a set on mine consisting of two sensors at the front and four at the rear. The ones at the rear were a doddle to fit. The ones at the front however, made me shout rude words. A lot. However they have been well worth it, my feeling is that it is a lot less stressful, and a lot cheaper, to fit these things than to have to replace or repair the bumpers on your car. you may want to visit here: http://www.lexls.com/tutorials/body/trailerhitch.html For a few more pointers.

If its ok with the Mods, you could leave it as PDF, upload it to Rapidshare and post the link..

I think the trim must have come from the optional extras list (must be a short list). The phone was a Motorola scn2763a, if I google it then it only returns two hits from club lexus in Russia, which when translated turn out to be somebody in Russia with the same problem. The suggestion is to clean the contacts, which isnt any good because there is also a reader in the boot which returns the same message on the phone. The card reader is sln 3285 b, which returns no hits to do with 3285. Guess this one could be unsolvable, put it down to old hardware being incompatable with new.

Cant be bothered with it anymore, have started installing the nokia kit. Have put the cradle in place of the original handset and the brain in the cubbyhole underneath to keep the dash as original as possible. just got tofigure out the wiring now... PS. want to know why they say that Skegness is so bracing? Because they couldnt fit "wet, windy and bloody freezing" on the posters!

Hello all. Bought home my first LS400 last Friday, if you want to see it, the trade pics are at http://www.911virgin.com/ls400.htm, or at least till they take them off! Its got a built in Lexus car phone, which I cant seem to get working, it asks for a card to be inserted, it hold a credit sized sim card which I presume to be a normal small sim card in the credit card sized frame that it comes in. if I put this in the card reader under the handset then it says check card, so I suppose either its the wrong card altogether, the wrong network or the readers had it. The user manual says that there is a separate reader in the boot, but i have looked at the phone stuff in the boot and I cant see where a card would go, Any suggestions? If the phone system is a gonner then I would take it out and replace it with my trusty old Nokia car kit, which I could fit nicely in the place that the old phone was. In this case, then the phone controls on the steering wheel would be redundant, so, what I would prefer to do would be to get hold of a set of radio controls. The question is, Would you think that the wiring would be in place to just drop the radio controls straight in? as the phone controls look a bit of an after thought, which may have been shoved on in place of radio controls when the phone was put in. Thanks