Feckless Mancunian

Well, it's booked in on Friday so I'll soon know exactly what it needs. It's a total pig to drive in that condition. Lucky it's only four or five miles. Cheers Dave

I'm limping it over to the garage next week, he's always looked after mine for the last few years although he's usually busy. I'll see what he says. If it is that strut (most likely I guess) I'll let you know and go from there. Cheers Les Dave

Now I'm learning... So you have two front air struts for an RX? Interesting... good to know. I have to rush off for the evening but can continue this tomorrow. Cheers Les Dave

Sorry, yeah, I have the LS430 which seems all ok, it's the RX300 that looks wonky with the sagging strut. I've been reading about the 'bag'. Are they separate from the strut? Is it the bag that has failed but the strut is fine...?

I knew it was coming as I could hear the compressor running every few minutes and it was starting to sag after a few hours. This afternoon I was in a MacD drive thru and as the waitress was serving me, the strut failed. Very loudly, like a tyre had burst. It instantly dropped a few centimetres. And frightened everyone in the restaurant. So... Is it most likely the shock absorber? Could it be anything else, like somewhere along the air line from compressor to suspension? Is there a part of the shocker that can be replaced or does it have to be the entire unit? And what will the unit cost? What about changing both fronts to conventional shockers? Simple changeover or a software nightmare? It's a 2004 RX300. Advice will be most welcome. So will good news. Cheers, Dave.

Well the replacement autobox is not ok, it is slipping in first and second. I'm clearly being ripped off, it's not easy having a Lexus box problem in a foreign land. Any engineers out there? It seems there are Gear Box Fibre Clutch Kits retailing for about $160. http://uk.alibaba.com/product/136639634-A650E-Gear-Box-Fiber-Clutch-Kit.html If that's the solution, I'm going to order the kit and have it fitted. Will there be anything else I'll need? There's a local company who recondition torque converters so I might just get that done. It's about £100. Anything else you'd replace while the box is down? Solenoids? Sensors of any kind? I'm not an engineer, and I'm sick of trying to learn about them on the interweb. Thanks for any helpful solutions Cheers Dave

Hi Steve I've now bought 10 litres of ATF from Toyota specifically for the LS so thanks for the tip Steve. I've booked it in at a different autobox specialist for fresh ATF and an oil change on Monday. I insist that I watch what they do. The last specialist wouldn't let me near the garage area and I don't trust them. I also want the linkage slightly adjusted. The shifter is just a few mm too far forward and just seeing it ruins the pleasure. The specialist said it shouldn't be a problem. Cannot source a single manifold gasket in Poland. The LS is rarer than rocking horse droppings over here. Are they readily available from Lexus UK? Cheers Dave

You are a hero CM, cheers. Last week a mechanic had plugged his laptop in the footwell and must have pressed it. The long story is - I had a gearbox that was slowly starting to disintegrate so I had washed the car and taken the car to an autobox specialist. He was checking for code faults and it was all clear so it was a mechanical problem. I knew that, it was revving between gears and slamming into neutral. They opened the gearbox and found fragments from the torque converter had found their way into the gearbox, one of the clutches was wrecked. I sourced a second-hand box with a warranty and they fitted it yesterday. Although the box was fine, I thought the keyless entry had failed but fortunately it isn't. I'm now sourcing manifold gaskets as they pulled the exhausts apart to drop the gearbox down. When they put it together, they couldn't be bothered using fresh gaskets, so it sounds like a motorbike. I'm in Warsaw at the moment so the word 'service' hasn't reached that far yet. I'll let you know. Cheers Dave

Hi CM The blipper works fine from quite a distance so it's not a battery issue. I ran it through a carwash earlier that day and wondered it could be related. I might ask the local mechanic to plug it in and see if there any code faults...

It started a week ago and it drives me crazy. I can't unlock the doors by tapping the handles, I have to put the key in the ignition. What happened? The car isn't seeing the key. I can't live like that. Any ideas? Fuse? Cheers!

I have a 430 that has recently developed a "slow gearchange" between 3rd and 4th. The revs rise by about 1000 before it finally engages 4th. Not enough to worry me immensely but irritating none the less. Sounds like a sloppy gear-change in a manual car. It doesn't always do it. Some days it's absolutely fine, then it will happen for a couple of days. I've had an ATF change but it hasn't helped. Any thoughts? I had an LPG conversion in December but have only become aware of this glitch in the last month or so...

He's having a couple of laffs. He's also selling a 2001 LS430 for £18k. More than three times what I paid for my 2003 last summer.

Hi Mike My engine light is on permanently since I had a gas installation a few months ago. I took it to a couple of garages who plugged it in, couldn't find any problems, reset it and within a day it was back on. I stopped worrying about it. Mine switches over after 4 minutes first thing in the morning, slightly quicker if I leave it in the heated garage. I had the same worry as you, I work from home so only do a short school run and I worried it wouldn't switch over in time for me to benefit but by the time I've got the kids in the car and locked the house it's running on gas. For the rest of the day it switches to gas within a minute. The petrol gauge drops as if it were running on petrol all the time, then suddenly, after a few days it seems to recalculate and realise it hasn't used any petrol and the gauge pops back up to full. I use a quarter of a tank of petrol every month so should be filling up about 3 times a year. My neighbour who has a piddly little 1.4 litre Golf on LPG, fills up twice a year so I reckon I'm on target there. It's not the most economical engine for the short runs I do but that doesn't matter because I'm only spending £40 a month on gas - compared to the £80 I was spending on my last car, a 3 litre V6 petrol. And I paid considerably less for the LS430 than I would have paid for a brand new Panda. So it's just win win win. Good luck.

If everyone drove an LS there wouldn't be any road rage. In any car I've always found Cruise Control to be a great calmer. In an LS it's like Diazepam.

I can believe it, I managed 36.7 in my LS430 between Hook of Holland and the border of Poland. Cruising at about 55 and with the aircon off, minding my own business, ipod on and letting everything blast past me. I still had almost a quarter of a tank left when I crossed the Polish border, I was going to see how close to Warsaw I could get on one tank but hit 80 miles of single lane roads and had to blast past loads of trucks. That demolished my average and I got bored and wellied it the rest of the way.

Hi Mark. Well I've got my engine cover back, they simply forgot to clip it on and I'm much happier. So please disregard my earlier post... It's a full flashlube system and done by a good installer, I went to a lot of effort to find someone reputable and then I borrowed a car for a couple of days that they had converted. I agree with you that it runs smoother on gas than it does on petrol, I must admit it's the first thing I noticed when I originally collected it. I was hoping for better economy than I'm getting but I think part of the problem is that when you know you're only paying half the price of petrol, you tend to have a heavier right foot. Best wishes, Dave.

On the subject of butchering and something I'd definitely recommend to the OP and anyone considering LPG. What the guys who did mine got absolutely spot on was putting the gas connector inside the petrol filler door. I was worried about drilling holes in the bodywork or untidy gadgets stuck in the rear bumper. I've got none of that. It's a small brass connection behind the filler door where nobody can see it and it comes with an adaptor that has to be screwed in before gassing up. Discreet, neat and tidy. Perfect.

It never even occurred to me to check and I didn't notice until I was putting screen wash in it. I'm well miffed because they didn't even stick it in the boot, they probably just binned it and I would have mounted it on my garage wall. Grrrrr!

The fuel economy on mine has suffered on LPG as much as 15-20% And it still uses petrol don't forget. I've used about a fifth of a tank in the last month just starting the thing up so will probably be filling it every four or five months. I tend to do lots of short journeys though, (school runs and off-licences) so I may not be a good example... I might as well add my other thoughts. It doesn't feel like the same car, there are lots of tiny little minor differences. You know the things that only you know about your car? - how many fractions of a second it takes to fire up on a hot or cold start, the noise level in the cabin, the sound it makes when you kick down for a rapid over-take, the sound it makes at tickover - they're all slightly different now. I wouldn't expect anyone sitting with me to notice them, but I know it's all different. I wonder if they removed some sound-proofing in the conversion... Plus you lose your beautiful Lexus engine cover. I haven't noticed any loss in power though. Would I convert the next car? Not sure yet, ask me in a year.

Well, they collected it yesterday morning and brought it back yesterday evening all fixed. Something wasn't tightened properly in the LPG system, simple as that, and it was either letting air in or letting air out. I did expect one or two niggles so I hope they're all done and dusted now. Other than that, I'm really pleased with the conversion, I'm actually looking forward to the long drive to my mother-in-law's this weekend. Thanks for your help Steve.

To add to the above, the VSC light is now on and a Check VSC warning is flashing.

Hi Steve I really hope it's not related to the LPG because I got it done 50 miles away! I'm happy to drive it a mile to a Toyota dealer and just hope it's a simple coil problem, but I think you could be right... too much of a coincidence isn't it?

The lambda light is flashing on my LS430 and the warning triangle is lit. I'm guessing it's a coil problem because it's running very slightly rough which is exactly what happened on my last V6 when a coil went. Any thoughts? How much are coils for Lexus? Is it something my local Toyota dealer can sort, I don't want to drive it a great distance... I had an LPG conversion last week and it until today it was running beautifully, could this be related? Many thanks.

That's a great price you've paid Mike. I've just spent £311 for a set of winter tyres for my LS430 - Nexen, whoever they are. It started snowing heavily an hour or so before I was due to leave for the tyre place and the old tyres were next to useless, couldn't get it going, couldn't get it to stop, couldn't turn corners. The transformation on winters is fantastic, you can drive with confidence knowing that you have a huge amount of grip beneath you. I'll be driving it to Switzerland early next year so it will be interesting to see if it copes as well as my old Peugeot 406 V6 which was absolutely unstoppable on winter tyres around the ski resorts.

I'm under no delusions that my LS430 is Bug Ugly, I think of it as a hooker - I want it to pamper me and pander to my every whim but I don't want to pay too much for it. If I wanted to fall in love with a wallet-draining beauty, I would have gone for a Daimler Super V8. Despite its ungainly appearance, I have to say that every morning when I open the garage door I'm always slightly taken aback by its majesty, it absolutely fills the garage, it's huge and menacing and I love that first few seconds when I think "wow, is this beast really mine?" Regarding the C6 that some guys have mentioned. I think it's a seriously, seriously cool car. Pity the French don't do V8s because it's crying out for one.