sir john

I first noticed it in Feb 2010. I maked the expansion tank with a line and date. If i top it up, it drops to this level and no further. I thought no more of it. It was finding the droplets of coolant hanging from teh sump that got me thinking. I think ill keep an eye on it and do nothing until something goes wrong.

That sounds like it Colin. The fluid level has always droped by about an 1" in the expansion tank then no more. If i top it up, it drops again. Always seemed a bit strange to me. I thought that maybe it was firing out what i didnt want, but now i have found a potential leak im thinking of using an additive. What do you think?

Under the LS to drain the engine oil today and I noticed a few droplets of greenish water hanging from the front of the engine sump. It tasted sweet so assume coolant leak. The car has been standing in the workshop for a couple of weeks but reversed out and back into the workshop (to get it onto ramps) just prior to finding these droplets. Nothing else was wet. Just these few droplets. Is the water pump in the middle of the engine right at the bottom?

Here is a quick “how to” for replacing the rear upper wishbone that carries the upper ball joints, without having to removing the drive/half shafts. I’m not an author or a trained mechanic so, don’t shoot me down if this isn’t text book and doesn’t read well. It’s also 2 weeks since I did the job so it’s also from memory. Usual rider; you are responsible for ensuring your own safety and your own workmanship. This is just what I did and is meant to be a guide only, its not advice. (If you think you are going to squash yourself under your car, drop me a PM beforehand and I’ll sort you out with some life insurance; I’m an Independent Financial Adviser. It’s what I do). Here we go then. The upper rear ball joints had too much play in them for about 12 months now so needed replacing. My car is a 93 LS so everything will have been good and rusty so here what I did. August 2011; cleaned (wire brush) all the nuts and bolt that I thought I would have to remove and treated them to a good bath of WD40. This included everything around the rear suspension. Between then and now (June 2012) I have repeated this about 6 times and it’s paid off because there were no dramas in getting anything apart. Parts from Lexus Coventry were £253 delivered (i live in Cumbria); I haggled a 15% discount and Coventry gave me excellent service and even photocopied a few pages from the workshop manual for me. The removal procedure is as follows; Remove the seats and rear parcel shelf. This will give you access to the top of the rear shockers (more on this later). Jack up both sides of the rear of the car and support on axle stands. I always lower the car onto these and then wind the jack back up so it is “just” taking some of the weight (I like the belt and braces approach) and i have 2 jacks. Remove the road wheels and slide them under the car just below the rear foot well (more safety). Remove the rear callipers from the hub and wire up out of the way. I removed the pads as well, because I replaced the rear discs and pads while I was doing this job. Using spring compressors, compress the rear suspension spring down to about 8” so that you can remove the shocker and spring as one assembly. You cannot change the wish bone without removing the shocker and spring assembly. And you wont get the shocker and spring out without compressing the spring. Undo the nut at the bottom of the shock absorber but do not remove the bolt yet. Now that the rear suspension spring is compressed you can undo the top nut from inside the car. This is why you removed the rear seats and parcel shelf. Under the parcel shelf at the bottom corner of the rear screen, on each side there is an inverted steel cup held down with 3 nuts. Remove this and put to one side. Under this cup is a 14mm nut that you need to remove. This is what holds the top of the shocker in place. You are now ready to remove the bolt that holds the bottom of the shock. I used a ¼” socket extension bar to push it out. You should now be able to push the shocker upwards so that you can remove it from the car. It’s a bit tricky and you might have to compress the spring a little more to get it out. Warning; be careful because if the compressor clamps come of the spring while you are doing this it will take your fingers off; really. Put this shocker and spring unit to one side. I took the pressure of the spring so as not to stress it for too long. Undo the 2x 10mm nuts that hold a U shaped clamp to the wishbone and tie out of the way. You are now ready to remove the rear upper wishbone and ball joint. You will need a 12 point and a 6 point 19mm socket, a straight 19mm open and ring spanner and a double cranked 19mm ring spanner. If you haven’t got a double cranked 19mm ring spanner you will not be able to get the wishbone off. Having the shocker removed will give you just enough access to get your (probably newly acquired) double cranked 19mm ring spanner onto the nut that holds the ball joint. You will be on your back under the car and it will be very tight but your months of cleaning and oiling with WD40 will have paid off. Mine had been on for 19 years but I got them off with just the ring spanner without drama. Here is the big tip; access to this nut is really restricted. As the nut winds down the thread of the ball joint, there comes a point when you cannot drop the ring spanner off the nut to move the spanner round another 1/8 turn without tightening the nut back up. So you have to wind the nut back up until you can slide the ring spanner out. Carry on with the open end 19mm and the nut falls off into your hand. Well actually, it will probably fall onto the floor and roll off onto the dust and dirt but you shouldnt be reusing it anyway. Next, using a trolley jack, take the weight of the rear hug. Remove the 2 nuts and bolts that hold the other 2, inner ends of the wishbone and slide out the bolts, taking care to make sure that the wishbone and hub don’t fall outwards towards you and pull at the drive/half shafts. (Months of cleaning and WD40 pays off again because I had no problem getting these out. All that should be holding the old wishbone in place now is the ball joint. I have forked ball joint splitter but for me these are a last resort because they damage whatever you hammer them into. Take a decent hammer and give the old wishbone a few clean horizontal knocks at the side of the ball joint and it will just drop out (don’t hit the hub. You don’t have to). And that’s it. The old wishbone is removed without removing the drive/half shafts. Fitting the new wishbone is simply the reverse procedure. Here are a couple of tips that might save you the time that I lost. Tip 1; if the new ball joint turns while you are trying to tighten a NEW nut onto it, you can use a G clamp to hold the new wishbone and hub together. It holds the ball joint just tight enough to get the nut on. Tip 2; the new wishbones from Lexus don’t come with the ball joint nut. You have to order them separately; £1.06 each. DO NOT REUSE A BALL JOINT NUT. Tip 3; And this drove me mad until I spotted what was wrong (and to think that 2 years ago I replaced both rear springs and should have known this). The thread on the top of the shocker has 2 flats on it where it passes through the underside of the rear parcel shelf. 1 at each side. It won’t go through the hole in the rear parcel shelf unless you line these up properly. Jiggle it about until you get the top thread through the hole and get someone inside the rear of the car to get a couple of turn on the top nut when it comes through. I managed this on my own but I’m a hero (No really!; I wear my undies on the outside of my pants and fly through the air at night looking for villans and righting wrongs). You can now push the bottom of the shocker into place and slide the bottom bolt into it. Then remove the spring compressors. Footnote; I was dreading this job but it wasn’t that bad. Mainly because I have spent nearly 10 months spraying WD40 at it. It took me a couple of days but that included cleaning all the dried dirt off the underside of the rear end and wax oiling everything that I could get to (I got 12kg of dry dirt, just off the back end). The 2 days also included changing the discs and pads and cleaning the inside of the car. I have taken the time to type this up because I would have liked to have had something similar before starting the job myself. I hope that someone finds it useful. And if you need an IFA drop me a PM and I'll have a chat with you.

My fabricator chappie cut out a leaking flexi section and welder a new flexi section (new from exhaustpartsuk) without removing the exhaust from my Rover 75. £40. I was well impress. As soon as the ground in front of the garage dries out enough for me to get the LS out of the garage he will be cutting and shutting the flanges on that for £80.

They are great cars Malc,I havnt used mine as a regular drive to 2 years. Wife uses it as a 3,000 miles a year run about but i used to average about 26mpg. If i can get 22ish on gas ill be happy and ill drive it every day.

Hi, You must have some faith in the car as you say your going to refinish the alloys next month. Mike I do have faith in it. In nearly 4 years it let me down once when the battery went flat because the alternator was duff.There is nothing I cannot fix. Im quite confident that I could drive it back to Japan without any problems. Im just hoping that they will write off the Rover.

Thanks for your respnses guys. Can I be cheaky and ask what the cost of conversion was? Would be interesting to know what mpg yours does on LPG.

I should have gassed it when i bought it nearly 4 years ago but it was my first Lexus and i thought (wrongly) what if I spend £900 gassiing a 15 year old car and the engine drops out teh month after. I havent been able to use it as i first car for 2 years because of teh cost of running it so have been driving a Rover 75 CDT Tourer (nice car but not a LS but averaging 44mpg). I rammed the Rover into a Focus last night (not on purpose) and it might be written off. So heres my dilema; If the Rover is writen off do I; 1. buy another cheap to run deisel and carry on using the LS as a second car. or 2. spend £900 gassing a 19 year old LS400 with 185000 on the clock and use it as a first car (20k miles a year). Good points; recent alternator. PAS pump leak fixed. new rear screen last year. Regulaly serviced. Recent Dunlop Winter tyres. Aftermarket F Upper wishbones (could be a disadvantage) New rear discs, pads and rear Upper Wishbones (just fitted) Bad points; Exhaust flanges need welding (£80) Small amount of rust bubbles abover windscreen about 3" long. Same on front wing abou 1" long. Cassette player doent work. Cruddy alloys (will refinish these anyway next month) I plan to keep the LS indefinately.

I have had the same problem for the 3 1/2 years i have owned my 93 LS. You can use all sorts of gum to do a temporary fix (pastic metal works best) but its only temporary. I have found a fabricator who is going to weld my cats to the Y pipe as a final fix for about £80. It should last for another 5-10 years which will suit me. Any good fabricator should be able to do this. My guy is a builder of trailers and fitter of tow bars so a good welder and he has a 4 post lift.

The other member that Benfur went to look at the car for was me. My mate was thinking of traveling from lancaster to Kent and would not have had a clue what he was looking at so a massive thank you Benfur from me and Paul. A great help.

What a fantastic tutorial. I would never have found that little adjuster wheel. I was peering through the hole looking for a screw head to turn. Thanks again mate. The new OS upper suspension arm is on and and that side of the undercarraige has been cleaned and wax oiled. NS tomorrow and she's ready for another 19 years and 180+k miles. Tip for anyone doing the upper suspension arms; Clean and WD40 all the nuts and bolts for about 8 months like i did and it will all come apart without drama. You can get the ball joint nut off without removing the driveshaft and a hub if you have a good quality double cranked 19mm ring spanner.

changing the rear discs, pads and upper wishbones and ball joints. But i cannot get the old discs off because thay are binding on the parking brake shoes. I know there is an adjuster screw accessed through a hole in the disc when a rubber bung is removed but i cannot locate the screw. Is it at 12 o'clock or 9 o'clock or.......... Really need to crack on with this so any help would be appreciated.

Ill be doing this at the weekend when I get the car in the workshop to change the rear discs, pads and rear upper wishbones. I like working on the Lexus and looking after it but am not looking forward to changing the wishbones. Got to be done though because they arrived from Lexus Coventry yesterday; £265 ouch! Plus another £87 for discs and pads, plus another £80+ for service bits and anti rust stuff for the rear undercarraige.

Cheers and thanks for that benfur. PM sent and a message sent to my mate.

A mate of mine, and fellow Lexus owner, has seen an LS on ebay. Its in Welling Kent and he is in the north west (morecambe). He obviously doesnt want to travel all the way down there and fnd that, although the car looks good in the pictures, that its actually a bit rough. If you are in the Welling area, is there any chance someone could go and give it a look over? tel 07800 552261 Cheers.

A mate of mine, and fellow Lexus owner, has seen an LS on ebay. Its in Welling Kent and he is in the north west (morecambe). He obviously doesnt want to travel all the way down there and fnd that, although the car looks good in the pictures, that its actually a bit rough. If you are in the Welling area, is there any chance someone could go and give it a look over? tel 07800 552261 Cheers.

The finest car in the world and someone does this to it! http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/toyota-celsior-lexus-ls400-highly-modified-custom-show-car-work-equip-low-miles-/180903571931?pt=Automobiles_UK&hash=item2a1eb171db

HiDid this earlier this year the main difficulty is the 17 mm bolts holding the caliper bracket you will need a breaker bar if these have not been off in the lifetime of the car.I would replace the emergency brake shoes as they tend to go thin on setting off with the brake on. I would look carefully at the tutorial for fitting them , if it not done as per workshop manual sequence it is impossible to refit them. The cables also stretch over time and I had to adjust the single cable in the mid section coupling as it had become an advisory on the Mot.for too much down travel on the pedal,this was even after fitting new shoes, even after 22 years of being under the car unprotected it was a touch of wd and a turn of the locking nut to adjust, testimony to the quality build of these cars. Thanks for that Ambermarine. Did you just change the discs or the upper wishbones and ball joints as well?

thanks for that Steve. Its so long since i had to do something to the LS that i had forgotten about the tutorials. Ordering the new discs and pads (£87 off ebay) tomorrow and the new upper wishbones and balljoints from lexus carlisle (c£240 the pair) Will be traeting a bit of surface rust at the rear of the floor pad while its up in the air; she went in to have the back end repaired 3 years ago after a rear shunt and i dont think they did a very good job of repainting the underside.

cheers guys. I was sure there must be drain holes. I must not have been looking hard enough.

Doesnt happen every time it rains. And been happening for a long time on and off. It dripps from the headlining above the drivers side and drips onto the steering wheel and gear stick. The chrome trim on the top OS corner of the screen is loose but i dont know whether its getting in through there or the sun roof. It always seems to happen more after ive had the roof open. Where are the drain holes for the roof?

The disc at the rear are shot so im ordering new discs and pads on monday. How difficult is it to remove the old discs? I seem to remeber reading that its just a couple of screws to remove from under a couple of rubber plugs. Im replacing both lower rear wishbones as well so any tips on that would be good too.

3 years ago someone hit the back of my LS. When i dropped it off at the repair shop they handed me a new IS220d. I thought "here we go, i wont want to hand this back" 16 year old LS v brand new IS220d?? As it turned out I couldnt wait to get my old LS back. The IS was too noisy, thirsty and i kept stalling it. The only good point was the air con seats; i liked those.

can i ask what MPG you are getting on gas and what you were getting on petrol?