ciao_chao

Thanks guys.

Hi guys, I’m not sure if this is appropriate, so please tell me if this isn’t. I’m moving house soon, and I can’t justify bringing my Mercedes with me. I’m looking to sell her, it’s a 1991 300SE W126, around 180k miles and in good mechanical state, but with all Benzes of this era, a fair bit of surface corrosion. If people are interested I’ll post more details here.

First of all if you are not a smoker, please do not start, it can be a slippery slope. I was quite a avid pipe and cigar smoker for some time, went to cigarettes and now backing off by vaping. If you ever see a blue LS that looks like it’s on fire, don’t worry that would be just me vaping. Now if you are determined to try, I would highly recommend that if you ever are in London to visit James J. Fox on St James’ Street. The whole team will help guide you through your first cigar experience according to your individual needs. They even have a indoor sampling lounge there, so you have somewhere nice to enjoy your cigar. If you’re not in London, and don’t intend to visit. Then let please feel free to message me if you’re still interested, and I am happy to share what knowledge I do have.

I’ve just resolved a similar issue myself. My code reader did pick up on the heated O2 sensors, it was very confusing because it turned out to be a faulty coil pack. I agree with Steve, without official diagnostics it feels like reading tea leaves at times. It would be interesting if you would clear the faults when it does comes up and then continue to drive to see if it comes back again when at operating temperature. Does your fault reader also have a live data stream? That sometimes will provide some more information towards diagnosis.

So I’m actually in Bucks, work in London. I could do Essex easily too, and I would expect you’ll find more appropriate venues there and Kent. I think it would be hard to find a London venue that wouldn’t want/need/appreciate advanced notice, even for a small scale event. Maybe something like Waltham or Epping forest, but people might think we were up to something else…

London would work for me, Kent would be a bit far. I’ve hosted one a many number of years ago with the Citroën C6 club, but we were a small group, I don’t think there were more than 1000 cars ever imported total! Effectively we just held a casual meet-up at a nice local pub on a quiet evening with a large car park, that’s usually easy enough to put together. While that kind of event is dead easy to pull together, I feel like it would be bad form if a large group just rocked up without notice, I would say we never really had more than 10 C6s on any given event. A small event like this would be a nice way to dip a toe back into the car meet world after covid.

@steve2006 thanks. Asked and answered.

Hey, thanks Steve, those diagrams are a helpful and along with Toyodiy searches I think I can better describe things. I’ve found a picture of the joint as described, hopefully I can more accurately describe where the leak is coming from. In the picture the red circle is where the leak is, and from what I can tell from the diagram, there is no gasket for the join. It seems similar to the thermostat housing, the gasket there fits around the thermostat, rather than to seal the join. So please tell me if I’m wrong to conclude that there is no gasket there! The blue circles are where the gaskets, 16355A (pn. 16341-50020) reside, which is the coolant bypass. Final thing, if somebody has access to Fig 16-01 which refers to the water pump assembly, that would be really handy for more answers.

Thanks for all your help here so far. Unfortunately I seem to be having some problems. The water bypass gasket (16341-50020) is meant to go somewhere else. The join right below the engine air intake appears to be sealed without gasket, can somebody confirm this? In regards to the misfire, I have noticed it’s a cold misfire only, and the temperature gauge seems to read fine, however I understand that this car has two different sensors, one sending to the dashboard and another communicating with the ecu, is this information also correct?

Thank you steve! Amazing for the quick info. Just wondering, I found the O ring fine. I noticed that the thermostat seal pointed to a LS400 phase2 non VVTi 1UZ. Some digging, now I know what the component was called, I found part number 16341-50020 as the equivalent for the 3UZ LS430, I wonder if this correct. Sorry for the formatting, weird copy paste thing.

Hi guys, hoping to tap into your knowledge here! So I recently developed a minor misfire and did an obd scan, with O2 sensor heater faults, P0135, P0155, P0161. Research here suggested that it could also be the engine temperature sensor behind thermostat. So time to go digging. I’ve noticed a minor loss in coolant of late, but just thought it was down to poor bleeding after a water pump change. However this seems to not be the case. There’s a bit of pooling of coolant behind the thermostat. It looks like a gasket, but what I would like to know is if anybody knows what part this is? Some clues will be helpful to narrow down things when on the phone for parts.

Hey, unfortunately the project is on hold, I have had a lot going on suddenly, on top of that need to figure out a cold misfire issue which has started happening first. Sorry to disappoint you.

Ugh....to be honest I often feel that the environment is a convenient smokescreen (pardon the pun) for the government. Now....20 zones, that's a bit different. Frustrating when the A1 Holloway Road is almost all 20 and lined with endless speed cameras, but down suburban residential streets, kinda makes sense.

If you're going to try with Lancaster, remember to mention any club memberships you have, often get discounts through that. They were expensive this year for my LS430, ended up through one of the comparison sites actually for decent premium/excess/extras package.

Just a quick one here, bear in mind the type of road you'll be on. Motorway cruises, aren't a hybrid's best friend, so the Civic might be a good shout. On the other hand, if most of the miles are going to be in traffic, totally different story. Maybe its worth asking if dealer will offer a warranty or see if thats an option from a third party?

Well that confirmed my hypothesis, though its probably just going to make the premiums go up for new customers, rather than down for renewals. It's quite the palaver to answer all the questions, and be on hold for so long just to go through that process. The cynic in me says that it's deliberately complicated to dissuade people from shopping around, so maybe if nothing else, that would become more straightforward?

Hi guys, I’m reaching out because I’m in a bit of a dilemma. After some research, I’ve seen people install the Grom VL2 to their LS430s, mostly across the pond in the states. It’s a nice solution that adds CarPlay/Android Auto while using the original interface. I even have narrowed it down to the exact part number LEX3LVL2. Good news is GromAudio have a UK website, bad news is they only offer the previously mentioned version in the US. Instead Grom UK have a product listed as LEX3VL2 which is compatible with similar years of GS, RX, and even the 01-03 Prius, yet the compatibility chart lists the 00 (01MY)-03 LS430 non compatible, while 04-06 use the newer LEX4VL2 (same with Prius and RX, but not the GS). So onto my question, is the touchscreen just a common part across various cars? Do the stereos have a similar setup in terms of connectors? Or am I stuck because of the flagship nature of the LS? I’m going to contact Grom as well and see if they are able to help, and update as I go along with this project. Here’s the link to the compatibility chart

It’s interesting that a lot of competitive market sectors do try and offer some level of loyalty incentive. I wonder if insurance having a captive audience (we legally must be insured) allows the industry to take a different approach?

@Herbie That is a very good point. What is worth mentioning is to those who want to try the comparison method, please look at your renewal paperwork as that typically has a very detailed breakdown of information to then supply to the comparison system. Furthermore I was asked to confirm the details on the underwriters own website and that’s when you really have to double or triple check it’s all been entered accurately (which is wasn’t in my case) and amend it manually to get an updated quote.

So I just did my renewal too and posted my experences here. I was surprised how much Adrian Flux quoted me! More than double my AXA premium, and £500 more than my renewal through Lancaster (underwritten by Aviva). For modern classics though, I've had good experience with my multiple 80s/90s Mercedes with Lancaster even though I was using those cars as a daily, but FYI, sometimes they'll throw up some lesser known underwiters.

IIRC E5 is going to continue to be sold with Super Unleaded standard, so sure it's a little more spendy, but cheaper than fuel line repairs, and might be a good alternative to replacing the whole car!

So lots of people may be cynical of price comparison sites, but this time its worked out, I went with AXA in the end, so a reputable insurer. For an hour and half of work, I've saved just under £300 on cover versus my current broker's best rate. I'm astounded just how much difference there was, my current broker couldn't match my price (and neither could Adrian Flux...sorry). I expect that a lot of insurers are banking on the convenience of auto-renewal, but honestly this difference is totally worth the effort of searching around, I was probably on the comparison sites for around an hour in total, so it begs the question, how much is your time worth? Since loyalty seems to mean nothing these days, why not make the most of what technology has to offer? Hopefully this is helpful.

I believe hardwire kits should come with a black box to reduce voltage, I haven't got round to hardwiring my Viofo dashcam yet but comes with a 12/24V in, 5V out adapter thingy.

Finally checked back with the manual, and something I noticed, is there are differences to the expansion tank with Type A and Type B cars, maybe that’s something to do with this? I’m really curious what the differences are, because it’s really thin on information. I know the second generation UCF20 Celsior came in A,B, and C specs if this is something similar?

Hey mate, did you have any luck with your various LSs?