donkmeister

Has anyone added any circuits to the blank slots/ways in any of the LS460 fuseboxes? 

I have done this on other cars in the past to avoid using fuse-taps, but for the LS460 the fused power goes out through multiway connectors and I've not been able to find info on which slots are connected to which pins (nor what pins I'd need to buy to populate the blank parts of the connectors). I'd rather avoid having to buy a set of used fuseboxes on eBay to test!

Specifically I'm interested in the boot fusebox and either of the passenger compartment ones. It's not to add anything particularly exciting (towbar wiring and a dashcam) but it saves having to piggyback off something else or having to leave the fusebox cover off for a fuse-tap. 

Brilliant video demo, thanks! 

On 1/20/2023 at 7:18 AM, Brian R said:

Take it somewhere else, yours doesn't sound like a dealer I would wish to trust!

It seems to be a common recommendation - I went to MK Lexus to quote on a new rad and asked for them to do an ATF change (I didn't realise that you only lose a tiny amount of fluid when doing the rad, I had visions of a litre in the tranny cooler and then loads gushing out of the pipes)... They said they wouldn't do it due to tales of transmissions breaking after a fluid change.

I think it stems from people having a transmission problem, trying a fluid change "just in case it fixes it" then amazingly, the new fluid doesn't repair the worn bands or blocked valves. So it gets remembered as "new ATF broke my gearbox" rather than the more accurate "new ATF didn't fix my broken gearbox".

For long road trips I have a BT module hooked up to the aux input; it's too annoying to fiddle about with the remote and folding the screen back up for most journeys, so it rarely gets used.

I had been contemplating the GROM, but for £500 would want something that works perfectly... Which doesn't seem to be the case.

So, I found a company called VAIS in the US have a BT module that is a fair bit cheaper ($280USD plus shipping , taxes etc) and emulates a second CD changer (I.e audio only; no screen mirroring or android apps). Seems ideal. Has anyone here had any experience of them? Anything to report?

I saw that LPD are down to their last few official branded power banks, there are some odd bits of Lexus branded merchandise about 🤣

But as he said... Never buy stuff from an unsolicited random, it's always too good to be true. I knew some guys get taken in by the speaker box scam 20+ years ago.

The first picture shows the old radiator I removed. This pink crust, both top and bottom, wasn't apparent before I removed it from the car, so I'd suggest any old LS460 owners who suspect they are still on the original rad should have a good look around with a nice bright torch and a mirror, phone camera, boroscope, just something to peer underneath the fan shroud as I couldn't see it beforehand from just nosing around.

The second picture is just the "bottom crust". Apologies for the brown grass, it was July. 

The third picture shows the incompatibility of the pattern part rad with the fan pack. I'm afraid I was rather annoyed at this point and this is the only picture I took, but you can see that the bottom clips are engaged (top of the pic) and the top hose (bottom of the pic) is fouling the shroud. It appears the rad itself is too short, top-to-bottom. My advice is to pay the Lexus premium and get the OEM part (16400-38192) - approx £300. The pattern part claimed to cover that part number but clearly doesn't.

Also, for the transmission cooler I'd recommend changing the following parts. 

32941-50040 (oil cooler hose) qty 1
32942-50040 (another oil cooler hose) qty 1
90466-16004 (clips for those hoses) qty 4

Finally, whilst you COULD do the waterpump with the rad in situ, for a novice such as myself I was thankful for the extra space once the rad was removed. So I'd recommend doing that too as I did find a small amount of leakage that was cleaned up with a scotchbrite before I fitted the new pump, gasket and belt. 

I'll dig out a photo of the old rad later on; it was definitely getting rather crusty!

Just realised I never updated this. 

I ordered one from Rock Auto and found that (despite the manufacturer themselves saying it was a replacement part for the correct part number) it didn't fit... The top pipe fouled the fan pack.

So, I ordered the part from LPD, perfect fit. I replaced the water pump, trans pipes and clips, and the large rad hoses whilst I was at it. Only one corroded fastener, holding the rad and condenser together at the bottom. The little thoughtfully placed hole in the undertray meant draining down was nice and easy. Hardest part was figuring out how to remove the radar.

Obvs the little overflow nipple snapped on the old one, because that's what they do 🤣

Also, Lexus kindly put the fill/ bleeding instructions right there on the header tank so I just followed those and it was perfect.

1 hour ago, Spock66 said:

I suspect as the brake pads wear more of the piston is exposed to the elements and corrodes, gets covered in brake dust, muck etc. New pads fitted and piston is pushed back in to accommodate the thicker pads and hey presto is now stuck.

That makes sense, thinking about it. The boot SHOULD stop it, but in reality it's only going to stop 99% of rubbish getting in rather than 100%.

2 hours ago, Malc1 said:

 methinks servicing the calipers is NEVER on the formal  " to do "  sheet ..... one has to ask for them to be serviced specifically .....  it's poor for the servicing people not to service them regularly but there we are .....  it's built in obsolesence 

Touch wood, ........ my calipers are originals from 242k miles and 27 years of proper servicing 

There's no mention of new calipers on any of the service records I have .........  from new 

Malc

 

I hope you realise you've just jinxed yourself... Buy a full caliper rebuild kit now, to break the curse! 😁

I've had a few seized calipers in my time, but only ever discovered them the first time I replace the brake pads after taking ownership of a car. So I don't know if it's something that comes on gradually and can be anticipated ("that piston was a little stickier than the rest... I really must rebuild the calipers on that axle in the next year or two") or if it's something that you cannot spot until it's happened. I do know that just because a mechanic says "you really need to do this work" doesn't mean a customer agrees to that work though, so I'll withhold from blaming them.

If it wasn't the family transport I'd be happy to buy in a rebuild kit and do it "soon" however currently we're having to use the Citroen Picasso for family duties... a perfectly acceptable car but ours smells of wet dog (mostly because we use it when we need to transport a wet dog). 

Also I have learned it's not possible to get a proper look at the pads and discs in the dark through the wheel. 🤣

Update on this...

Turns out the calipers had seized and the outboard pads had barely worn. On the nearside the seize is slight, so inboard pad still had plenty of meat on the offside but on the nearside it was barely legal. Discs were clearly replaced at the same time as the pads, judging by the outboard sides. So, I think what happened was the brakes WERE serviced 7,000 miles ago, but the calipers should have been overhauled/replaced at the same time. Entirely possible the previous owner was told this too. 

As I need it back on the road I've ordered a pair of new calipers plus the fittings. I may rebuild the old ones for a side project at some point!

A word of advice to all self-spannering LS460 owners out there; change the caliper mounting screws whenever you refit the calipers. On mine, they had corroded into the calipers. One of them was so badly galled that it required an impact wrench to remove and the caliper will need an insert or weld-fill/drill/tap if it is to be used again. According to some of the US forums, you are supposed to change these bolts every time you refit the calipers, from what I've seen I'm going to say I support that recommendation so factor these in to any disc replacements you do. The part number is 91552-L1245, you need two per caliper (same part front and back) and they're only about £3.50 each (through Lexus). It's a 60mm M12, 1.25mm pitch flange head high-tensile screw, those just don't seem to be available off the shelf!

And a tip: if you need to get an impact in to undo the top caliper mounting screw, remove the plastic aero "spat" that sits underneath the suspension. There are 3 10mm nuts holding it on. Remove that and you can slide the impact up from underneath and attack it square-on. 

Also I have the answer to my original question: there is a brake-pad wear sensor on the offside, but not on the nearside. This sits on the inboard pad and appears to be a broken wire sensor, triggered when you're down to 3-4mm of material left on the pad. 

Seems likely - I've had similarly big powerful cars and had similar 30-40k miles from rear pads. In fact, I'm pretty sure my old Mercedes did 50k miles on a set of rears before I changed them due to age. 

I don't think the garage was trying it on but I'll order the parts ready to go... In the dark all I was able to ascertain is that the discs definitely have a notable amount of lippage so on that basis it seems likely they need doing. If I can't get new drift pins I'll clean the old ones up and lubricate the sliders with red grease while I'm in there... Hopefully (?!) the previous owner just got ripped off 7,000 miles ago, but I can't fathom a main dealer doing that, it's on Lexus Link rather than a paper invoice that anyone could have knocked up. 

Also, how long do you find discs and pads last on these? I've just checked the service record on Lexus link and had new pads and discs all round 7,000 miles ago. Mixed city and motorway.

Just failed an MOT for the rear brake pads being under 1.5mm remaining 😲 

Putting aside that ideally I'd have taken the wheels off to check before taking it in, I'm surprised they have got that low. Do LS460s have brake pad wear sensors? Is there a trait for uneven pad wear that means the pad on one side of a rear disc wears down more quickly?

I could have done with something like that a little while back; the boot on the SE-L is surprisingly small and a long weekend away with pram, travel cot and so on meant packing clothes in squashable luggage to fit in the crevices. Wish they'd done an estate LS460 but that never seems to be the case with this size class of car (outside of the US, at least).

Looking good! How do you feel about the brackets wrapping around the door openings? Likelihood of paint chipping or do they have something to prevent that?

Does anyone know if there is a way to enable speed limiting on the LS460? Not the 155mph "don't blow the tyres" speed limiter, but rather the "don't get a ticket in a 20mph zone" type of limiter.

From scouring the user manual and playing with the CC stalk I've not found anything that would suggest the car has it. Am I just being dense? Is there a firmware update/coding option/CANBUS dongle that enables such a mode?

FWIW I have no issue with modulating my right foot, it can be a handy option to have when driving in places with a high driver workload and a stupidly low speed limit though (yes London, I'm talking about you - even my mum managed to get a ticket at 25mph...)

2 hours ago, Malc said:

hadn't quite realised what an elite bunch those owners are 

Malc

Ha, never been part of an elite before 🤣 

Did get chauffered in it by Mrs D yesterday for an hour down the motorway (me in the back with Mini D) and I felt like Lord Muck. Lovely place to be... Cold drinks in the fridge, seat right back and blinds up to shade myself from the sun, very nice! 

On 7/5/2022 at 5:53 PM, lex - eleven said:

Didn't even know there was such a thing? Isn't that like putting a towbar on a Rolls Royce?

I actually have a Curt towbar waiting to go onto my LS460... Tried the usual suspects and no-one in the UK was doing towing kits (even Watling in St Alban's) despite the LS460 being a fantastic tow car candidate.

On Friday I was at the back of the queue for some right-turn traffic lights on a busy dual carriageway. Without warning, the headrest tilted forward to touch the back of my head. My immediate thought was "15 year old car full of tech... must be an electrical gremlin". Glanced at the rearview mirror to see someone barrelling down the filter lane toward my back bumper to overtake traffic, then cutting back in at the last second. 😮 Then, as soon as he'd passed me the headrest went back to the normal position and I remembered reading something about a rear-facing radar in the manual, and the car prepping itself for a rear-end shunt. 

Good to know that even 15 years after manufacture with presumably it's still working as the engineers intended! What was surprising was how far in advance the car decided to prep for a shunt; it felt like a good half second or more. 

On the exhaust "vent" question - I totally understand, I'm a V8 guy, and agree that it would be nice to have the option of sound or not.

When I looked into cut-out valves (this is what they are called), there are two drawbacks that long-term users report on...

1) They rattle. The valve itself is a butterfly, and due to the environment it's working in there isn't a nice rubber seal. It's metal on metal. So, some people who fit them end up just having the butterfly valve removed and the branch blanked off. 

2) The motors can fail. Not a certainty, but it's annoying when it happens.

On the rattling issue, before butterfly valves became all the rage people just had a blanking plate over the branch, with the idea being you removed it at whichever location you were racing at. Bit of a pain as it would be under the middle of the car, but if you wanted to just switch things up from time to time (have it louder for day-to-day but quieten it down again for a planned long road trip) you could do that. 

So, a better bet might be to remove the rear silencers and accept that overall the car will be louder. By keeping the resonators you should avoid an irritating drone. Cannot stress that latter part enough - motorway trips would become a real pain without them.

I appreciate that taking a quiet limo like an LS and making it noisier seems silly to some. But at least it's a nice cross-plane V8 rather than a farting wheezing four-banger. 🤢

I stumbled across the Lexus online EPC tonight... I'm pretty sure it wasn't publicly accessible before. 

https://lexus-europe.epc-data.com/

I'm sure some of you already use it, but for those who don't it's a handy tool when trying to work out exactly which parts you need; it shows the different variations, for instance headliners with and without sunroof, or boot trim with and without rear seat a/c unit. 

It's handiest if you already have your "Frame number". This is not the VIN but rather a chassis code, for instance my LS460 is USF40R-AEZGHW.

Perfect, thanks Steve. 

Second car I've bought where the Battery wasn't held down - think I'll check that in future as it's becoming a habit!

19 hours ago, steve2006 said:

You’re missing the complete battery fixing clamp by the looks of it, the cover fixings push into the holes in the arms circled in red.

Comes in about 5 different parts from Lexus, let me know if you need part numbers.

 

Thank you! That could well mean my Battery is only held in by its own weight - not ideal!

If you do have the part numbers that would be excellent - or to save you the job is there an electronic parts catalogue somewhere?