Mybikesacx500

Tricky, perhaps get a full inspection on the new one- does it need a cam belt change, new caps, rotors, any suspension work, brakes, tyres?

Yes, I may regret the cheap pads, the ones in there now are pretty dusty

Hi guys, I leave the servicing to my local guy, who looks after my lexus and another car of mine. £30 an hour and parts at his cost price . no added VAT ( his t/o is low ). He uses good motor factor stuff for both cars and pads are not the cheapest but damn good and when it needs new discs I'm sure they won't be too expensive either. Oct 2009 Front pads £45.30 a pair and Rear pads £26.13 a pair + 2 hrs labour £60. Wouldn't the caliper just need easing off a little ? I will free up the caliper when I change the disk. I will probably need a rebuild kit for one of the rear calipers, the piston is a bit tight, apparently. The dealer would probably just fit a new caliper

If I spent my time hammering up and down the autobahn, I would want brand name parts, but sometimes you are just paying for the fancy box. Perhaps the parts I'm getting would cause brake fade on the second 100mph to 0 stop, but I don't drive that way. It's going to be an improvement on the way it is now, that's for sure

My brake pedal is too soft, and I have bled the brakes twice, so off I went to the local Toyota dealer (Arnold Clark, Kirkintiloch Rd, Glasgow) They test drove the car, and phoned the Lexus Dealer, to confirm that a special tool is required to open up the ABS for bleeding, so I should best take it to them. No charge. Off to the Lexus Dealer at Charing Cross, left the car. Phone call tells me I need disks, pads all round and have a stuck caliper slider, as the cost of replacing all that would be £1500 to £2000. They were not to surprised when I said I would leave it for now. Despite me arriving in jeans and T shirt, with a 17 year old car that I wasn't getting fixed by them, they washed it, blacked the tyres, and gave it a hoover out! No charge!! I have just bought the cheapest Disks and Pads for the front I could find on Ebay- £45 for a pair of disks and £20 for pads !! I'll put a posting in the brakes section when I have fitted them....

Not that easy, the throttle body has to be pulled back off the top studs with some force against the rear water pipe and the breather pipe from the cam cover, then it can be tilted back so these pipes can be removed. It's worth it though, my tickover is 1200 cold, droping to 600 hot, just as it should. It's down to the 3 pipes which allow air in past the throttle, which were blocked- all that design technology and bunged up with carbon. There is a pdf Throttle_pdf Engine silent now, well worth it, now, if someone could tell me why I have too much brake pedal travel, I'll be a happy chap

I finally got round to cleaning the Throttle Body, my tickover was not as smooth as it should be and the stalling on roundabouts was becoming tiresome. The difference is amazing, inaudible tickover, much better pickup. I also discovered the cable linking the throttle to the transmission was well out of adjustment, so if you have a bit of a clunk selecting D from N, and can tell when the trans shifts, its a quick cable adjustment, move the outer cable in until there is practically no slack on the inner cable, hard to tell as there is very little tension on it. Car now runs and shifts beautifully, a well spent sunny day with the spanners!

Lots of people reading your post, but no replies, So I'll have a go. Pretty rugged diodes in a rectifier, to burn them out by pulling to many amps would fry something else, I would have thought, or the fuse. I suspect you have been unlucky, if it was me, I would replace again, and monitor the current and voltage for anything weird. (Lovely place, NZ, I hope to move there shortly, I have OZ citizenship, so I'm allowed in)

I'm with you on thinking the MkIII dash is nicer (I have a MkII) The headlight changing might prove expensive....

Certainly brings home the meaning of the phrase a spannner in the works... sorry If one of the magnets on a telescopic stick things doesn't do it, try the magnet on a string

You can get much cheaper kits from Ebay. There are also quite a few ways to use HID, depending on the lamp setup you have. I have a dipped/ full beam headlamps and separate full beam headlamps on my '92 LS400 I replaced the dipped/ full beam bulb with a dipped only HID. Most of my driving is within street lighting and I hardly ever use main beam anyway, so "normal" high beam is fine for me The other main thing is Lexus use a different way to power the bulbs- normally the common terminal on a bulb is grounded, and 12 v positive is applied to the main or dipped terminal to power the appropriate filament. Lexus make all 3 terminals 12v positive, and ground the main or dipped terminal to power the appropriate filament. In practice with a single beam settup, this means reversing the 2 wires going to the HID ballast i) Yes, the beam pattern from an hid bulb is fine with reflector headlights, ii) Seems a bit pricey too me

i loved it before this stupid problem lol, On the rotor arm there is a lug that i goes into so it looks like it can only go in 1 way correct me if im wrong coz i would love to sort this stupid problem out.Is there a way i can test the ignition coil ? You can check the coil resistance with a meter, I can't remember or find the correct readings, but I had a faulty one and it showed on the resistance test.

"Borrow a paper clip and pull the codes 1st"? I like the other suggestion though. Problem is I will have a rhodesian ridgeback, 4 young geese and the wife in the car with me. The AA man might like having my wife in the cab with him. Sorry, I mean the geese. Code reading on a 1993 LS400 something you can do fairly easily "with a paper clip" to short the pins, once you have them look on the list provided on the link and this should help diagnose the problem. http://www.lexls.com...odereading.html There is a second diagnostics port on top of the engine, battery side. I find it much easier to get to than the one below the steering wheel

Kinda sounds like the alternator, if the engine was running but your voltage was low, but check its not a bad connection / earth before getting a replacement alternator. Sounds like you need a good auto electrician

Perhaps that dropped MAF sensor is bad, there's a chap on here could sell you second hand parts, maybe temp. sensor too??

A stainless steel exhaust fabricator should be able to make it up

Sorry, think I got my posts mixed up...

This happened after you replaced plugs/ leads/ dizzy arms/ caps? It was running ok before? You put all the old bits back and still had the problem? If the above is correct, it's a very big coincidence the crank sensor has failed, unless it got disturbed/ bumped. I had a badly earthed crank sensor once on a Scorpio, engine stuttered for a few days , then died. AA man sorted it, fault was in the AA database, reseated sensor, all sorted Clutching at straws here, how about a bad engine earth, causes all sorts of mayhem. Test with jump lead from batt neg to engine. Get a second head under the bonnet, looking for anything disturbed good luck

Thanks guys, I might give my local Toyota dealer a ring, the guys in there were Lexus apprentices , and were delighted to see my last time I went in with the car

Hi, My brake pedal has a bit more travel than I am comfortable with, but I have flushed new fluid though, and bled them twice, still the same. The third application in succession gives a good firm pedal. Am I just useless at bleeding brakes, or might I have a bad master cylinder?

I have a 1994 LS400 wiring diagram pdf and the #1 camshaft position sensor wires are red and green , #2 are blue and yellow

It's a 96, but has OBD1. It does (or did) fire when cold, and it might even run for a mile or two. Crank Position sensor was my initial thought. Got in the car last Tuesday, and the tacho needle was shooting about all over the place when cranking. Prior to that (from the Friday before), the engine would fire and run fine, apart from a periodic short hesitation, where the revs would drop, as though the engine was starved of fuel for a split second. It would only do this on LPG, not on petrol. Basically; it got progressively worse last week; to a point where it was seriously mis-firing on petrol by the Thursday. Bizarrely; the mis-firing was more pronounced when reversing. Whatever the problem is; it's something that has deteriorated, rather than just failed. That was my conclusion; not a show-stopper. Agreed. I paid the $15, and downloaded the engine section from the 94 Repair manual (plus a load of other PDFs). Manual suggests that the ECM isn't receiving an ignition acknowledgement (IGF) from either Ignitor, and that the problem lies with the ECM, Ignitors, or the wiring inbetween. Can't believe that BOTH ignitors would act up. So I'm thinking Crank sensor, or less likely (hopefully) the ECM. Have the upper/lower resistance limits for the crank sensor, so will measure that tonight, and report back. Thanks for the reply Justin

also check the 2 wires that run past the plastic cam covers about midway down the front of the engine i think its the knock or the cam sensor because if its mis routed it gets cut by the fan belt and has similar symptomes to what you describe. I know i did it lol Cam sensor I think, mine was almost cut through as well, only a few strands left when I noticed it- if yours was like that, disturbing it could easily have finished it off. I did the same thing with my Fiat Panda, replaced the oxygen sensor, wouldn't start , completely dead. Looking around where I had beeen working, found the crank sensor wire disconnected

I can sympathise, my new (to me) beautiful Lexus died on me just after I got it, but I did eventually sort it,( faulty coil) I don't know what a bad MAF does to the engine, I would have expected it to run, but the fact that unpluging it doesn't change the symptoms could also mean it is faulty. Someone who has run there car with the MAF disconnected could comment. Timing out would fit the symptoms too....

Its on the r/h side, below the bonnet/ boot release switches. I found it a tad inaccessable, and much prefer using the engine bay connector. I would have thought a 96 would have been OBD2, perhaps someone who knows what they are tallking about could comment?