GoldfingerLS

Hi All, An update on my starting problems. Starter deteriorated to a point where if the car was cold it would take 30 attempts to start. I checked the relay by trying another one and no luck. All fingers were now definitely pointing to a faulty starter. Got it replaced from Lexus dealer at a cost of £900. The breakdown is: Labour by Lexus - £600 Re-build Toyota Denso starter - £200 Gaskets you need to replace while opening up the inlet manifold and water pipes etc - £100 It maybe false economy to cheap out on a starter because you will be paying a lot of labour to have it replaced. Even if you are doing the job yourself you will be spending a lot of your time taking it apart and putting it together again and on top of that removing bunch of gaskets which cannot be re-used. If I had gone for a brand new starter the bill would have been £1100 (i.e £400 for a new starter). But the rebuild Toyota Denso starters are supposed to be rebuilt to a very high standard. I’ve now done some stone cold starts in the mornings and it is now starting up fine. One thing I do notice is that the engine cranking is noticeably much quicker than before. Before I had the starting troubles I was a little puzzled that even after changing the battery why the cranking time was a bit longer than what it should be. Now it fire up fantastic again. I’m pleased the car is starting normal again, but what I am disappointed with is that a premium Japanese brand like Lexus fails on such a simple aspect and it cost so much to get it fixed, especially given the car is not so old or high on mileage. I’ve had Hondas with 145,000 on the clock which I have used on heavy start-stop intensive runs and never had starting troubles. Thanks for the tips and pointers on this one guys. I am putting it down to the fact that this was just a bad starter in a big batch and it is not representative of Lexus build quality. – so no need to ditch the LS for a 2CV just yet Chris S :)

Hi Bazza - When you say be wary of importing from USA, do you mean that pressurised struts shouldnt be put in cargo in a pressurised aircraft cabin ?? I'm confused. Mine also tend to give way when it gets cold. At the moment I use a wooden stick to support the bonnet when I check the oil etc....its so embaressing, sometimes people that are walking by first look at the car and then the wooden stick. I was also going to order some from the states especially with the fx rate hitting 1.96 :) Thanks

Also forgot to ask if the car starts in N and P but refuses to start in the other positions ? and if the selector indicator on your instrument cluster correctly shows the position you have selected on the gear stick ? Reason why i ask is because there is a proceedure to adjust the shift lever position and the park/neutral position switch. .....but in the meantime will also keep my eyes peeled for a replacement box.

Matt, This might be a silly question, but is the forward cluch not a serviceable part ? i.e. can you get away with droping the box and re-building ? The repair manual gives 5 pages with diagrams on how to service and rebuild the forward clutch. Might not be worthwhile taking the chance if your going to be paying labour to get it done but if your up to the challenge it might be cheaper than a replacement box. Shame the auto box has gone, never heard of this on an LS. Have you been using Toyota type IV fluid in the box ? Also, I thought the Mark 3 had a 4 speed auto box (i.e. the A340/A341E) transmission, the 5 speed was introduced with the Mark 4 LS (i.e. A650E) ?

Steve - No probs man. Yup, GTX Magnatec is good stuff, especially on cold start-ups now that the winter is setting in. Ian - out of interest, do you remeber the make of your filter ? Thanks.

Ah well I must disagree here, I'm sure you can do the maths. Filled up to the brim, drove just over 200 miles to Sheffield, filled up again and had used £25 of fuel. Now I tend to use Sainsbury's Super unleaded which cost me 85.9 pl but in Sheffield the same was 89.9 so a good 20p extra per gallon. So at approximately £4 to a gallon that would equate to 6 gallons. And that was definately not my imagination or incorrect calculations. Oh and it's a 1990 LS400. :) I would agree with Mr DC_LS400 here. And for owners of the Mk4 LS400, there is not even arithmetic involved since the Mk4 has a trip computer !! (Not sure if the Mk1, Mk2 and Mk3 have trip computer ?) All you have to do is re-set the 'Average' reading at the beginning of your journey and by the end you can see your average - as simple as that. I can see that 36 mpg at 60 / 65 mph is plausible in my view from an LS400, at least the Mk4 anyway. All LS400s were built equal, but not all have been maintained equal during their life. I can think of 5 basic service items right now off the top of my head that, if not serviced properly, WILL adversely affect fuel consumption.

Hi Steve, As for oil filter, I'm not sure of the supplier. I usually buy an ADL Blue Print filter for my LS for £7.54 from my local autospare shop. However if you find the details of the supplier, I would be interested in buying a genuine Toyota filter for my next oil change which is now due. The reason being because I remeber reading somewhere (don't hold me to this) that genuine Toyota filter for the LS has a oneway valve which stops the oil from draining from the filter when you turn the engine off, so oil reaches all part sof the engine must faster on start up, which is very useful on cold start-ups. As for oil, you can even run the the 1UZ-FE engine of the LS on 10W-40 oil if you wanted. If you wanted to go for a bit more of an expensive oil, you can go for 5W-30. I personally use Mobile1 0W-40 or Castrol RS 0W-40 fully synthetic in my LS. The reason being that in the UK the temperature is faily cold and you want the oil to be as thin as possible on startup, hence the 0W. When the engine gets hot, the 40 weight will give you protection against the higher engine temperatures that one would experience in the summer months. You can run 10W-40 or 5W-30, but if you want the best fuel consumption (since a heavy oil will drag the engine and eat up horsepower), ultimate protection, performance with a quiet sound, I would stick with 0W-40 oil. Mobile1 0W-40 is pretty expensive if you buy it from Halfords etc. I usually buy it from Costco where I can buy a 4 litre can for £23.44 inc Vat which is a very good price I think. (But remeber the 1UZ-FE takes around 5.3 litres if i'm not mistaken). In the long run buying a quality oil pays dividends. I've found that Mobile 0W-40 runs fantasic on my car. I am thinking of perhaps using a 0W-30 fully synthtic formulation (such as one from Castrol) in the winter months which will have slightly more bias towards the thinner side and sticking with the 0W-40 in summer....I am still undecided.......

I managed 31-33mpg with cruise control set at 73mph and the odd bursts of speed for overtaking etc. So 36mpg@60 sounds possible. On the subject of fuel consumption, are the figures from lexus correct? I have a series 3 and Lexus says it does 21mpg around town, which I think mine is not too far off. The series 4 and LS430 manage 16mpg around town, which is a big drop. I was considering upgrading, may just buy a cleaner series 3 instead! Figures from Lex are probably correct. After around 1995/96 (from what I can remember off the top of my head) manufacturers, in line with new EU rules, had to change the way they quoted fuel consupmtion figures. I can remember reading the back pages of What car back in 1995 (the pages with the red header where they have the specs for every car make/model). Every car would have 2 numbers. The 21mpg was probably the lower number but the lower number was always over optimistic. After 1995/96 all cars were quotes with 3 mpg numbers: urban driving, Extra Urban and a combined figure. On my MK4 i can get: 16 mpg around town in London traffic. If traffic is heavy (as is usually the case in London) and with the air con running, I can often get as low as 14.5 mpg, just depends on the traffic 18 to 23 mpg when i drive a mix of town driving and A406 (50 mph driving) and/or driving through clear road at night (i.e. with very little start stop) 30 to 34 mpg on the motorway. I can get 34mpg with the cruise control set to 70 mph. As soon as you decide to open up the taps on that V8 on the motorway, you can say goodbye to 30mpg and better.

Hi Simon, That doesn't really come as a surprise to me, £220+Vat sounds about right to me from a dealer. I'd imagine that this is for the complete unit which consists of the antenna mast, cable, motor and any circuitry contained within it. What is so special about the LS400 antenna is that when Lexus designed the original LS400 (starting from the 1989 Mk1 model) the aerial was designed to automatically adjust its height for the clearest reception. Sometimes when I switch between stations I can hear it faintly adjusting itself. 1. If you can do with out replacing the plastic which covers the motor (and hence buying the whole unit), can you get away with just replacing the mast and cable ? 2. If the mast is not broken it may be possible to get away with opening up the unit and replacing just the broken cable and re-oiling all the bits while you’ve got it apart. 3. Your other option can be to source one from a scrap dealer that’s breaking an LS400. 4. If you buy a replacement from halfords / motor spares shop, I’m not sure if it will still work and if it does work, you may lose the self adjusting feature.

Hi Guys, Thanks for the tips. So far I did a few easy checks this weekend: 1. Chris Skelton made a good point which hadn’t crossed my mind. So checked the new battery by turning on the lights for a couple of mins (to remove any surface charge) and then using a volt meter on the battery. The voltage reads 12.67 volts which is correct for a properly functioning battery. I think 12.4v and anything below that means its not charged properly or dying out. Although I’ve not done a heavy load test on the battery it seems new battery is unlikely to be the problem because it hasn’t given any starting problems whatsoever in the last 25 to 30 starts. 2. As lutonmatt mentioned, I checked a quick check of the alternator by starting the engine and putting the volt meter across the battery terminals. The voltage is stable at 14.32 volts (at 8 degrees Celsius) which seems in range. 3. Took out the starter relay and checked for continuity between terminals 1 and 2 and no continuity betweens terminals 2 and 5 and it was ok. From reading around on the US part of this forum, it seems that quite a few people have had starter motor problems on the 1998 + LS400. The problem seems to be worn copper contacts. For example this is a good link which shows the common problem part – i.e. the worn copper contact http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index...0motor&st=0 But from past experience, all the symptoms point to the starter, especially if it continues to get worse whereby I hear a click when starting the engine and upon subsequent attempt it fires up without problems. In case it comes to replacing the starter I found out about replacement. A Lexus rebuilt starter from Toyota is £204 (inc VAT) plus is £30 surcharge which I can get back if I give them my old starter. The rebuilt starter comes with a 3 year guarantee. A brand new Lexus starter is £405 (inc VAT). Lexus want £488 labour to replace it since it involves removing the intake manifold. Will try to look into this more. But approaching £500 for labour, I’m not giving up that easily :)

MK4 LS400 having trouble starting Hi all, On about 2 or 3 occasions over the last 3 weeks my Mk4 LS400 has been cranking over slow on the 1st attempt and did not start on the 1st attempt when starting it cold. On the 1st try the engine sounded like it wanted to turn over but would just cut out blank half way through, but on the 2nd try it would start fine. I suspected it was the battery and replaced the battery with a brand new 70Ah Bosch AsiaSilver battery. After replacing the battery all was fine for 1 week until this evening when I tried to start it from cold again. On the 1st 4 attempts the engine did not even try to crank over and all I could hear was a slight “click” sound coming from the engine. On the 5th attempt it started fine like nothing was wrong. The car only has 62,000 on the clock. Replacing the battery was still a good idea because the old battery was the original Panasonic one and it was due to die out anytime soon anyway and also it has eliminated the possibility of a bad battery. Any ideas what could be wrong ? Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Many thanks.

Hi Owen, If the shudder is only happening when you apply the brakes it could indicate warped discs. However from reading around this forum, a common problem on the LS400 after 100K is the upper suspension arms and /or possibly the lower ball joints. A gentleman on this forum recently posted that his MOT failed due to this reason. It might be worth having this checked out.

Hi Frank, I noticed that you said that you car is a W reg MK4 LS400. How come they need replacing so soon ? Out of interest, how much mileage has your car covered ? Is it mostly town or motorway driving your car has done ? Only reason I ask is because I have a T reg 199 MK4 LS400 with 61,000 on the clock. Is this something I will need to get replaced on my car anytime soon ? If so I better start doing my homework on how to replace these. Many thanks.

Hi Jimmie, Which year/model it your car ? On my Mark4 LS400 the correct way to re-connect the battery once you have taken it off is to put the key in the ignition (a key which is progammed to start the car) and turn it to the 'ON' position and then connect the battery. If I dont put the key in and turn it to the ON position, the alarm will start going off as soon as I connect the battery because it thinks I am trying to steal the car. Might be worth a go.

Car: LS400 Mk4, Year: 1999 (T-Reg) I changed the coolant on my LS400 today. I’ve changed coolant many times before but it’s the first time I’ve done it on a LS and it took me quite a bit of time to locate the drain plugs. I checked many different parts of the LS400 service/repair manual and I found it wasn’t very clear where the drain plugs were located so I was looking in the wrong places for too long ! In the end I ended up finding them myself. One thing I liked about this car as far as coolant goes, compared to other cars where I’ve changed coolant, Lexus have placed special drain plugs with small nipples / tubes on the engine so that all of the coolant can be drained. Other cars do have engine bolts for draining coolant, but if the car is more than 4 or 5 years old and you try to open one of these bolts you might end up breaking the bolt since it has seized up, or you get problems trying to seal it back on to the engine block again. What this mean is that you have to make do with draining just the coolant in the radiator. Anyway if there are other MK4 LS400 owners wanting to change their coolant fluid they might find the below information useful (and possibly save themselves from beating around the bush like I did). To avoid confusion when referring to position of components (e.g. driver side or passenger side), the below is for a normal UK right hand drive car. 1.) Open the radiator cap on the reserve tank under the bonnet located towards the driver side. This is obvious to spot. 2.) Remove the engine cover and remove the 10mm bolt on top of the throttle body. This is what it looks like (photo below). You will need a 10mm hex key to open this. Be careful not to drop the gasket into the engine bay when you take the nut off. It is best to open the radiator cap and bolt before you start to drain the system so all the fluid can drain with gravity. FillerBolt 3.) There are now 3 drain plugs you have to open in order to drain all 10 or 11 litres of the fluid. One of these drain plugs is the radiator drain plug actually mounted on the radiator and the other two are mounted on the engine. The drain plug on the radiator is on the driver side end of the radiator. It can be opened from the under the bonnet. When the radiator drain plug is opened, the photo below (take from under the car facing the front) shows the pipe from where the coolant will drain when the plug is opened. Place a container under this pipe. The plug is a normal plastic one and should open without too much force. RadPlug 4.) DRAIN PLUG ON DRIVER SIDE: Next you will need to open the drain plugs on the engine. I was able to access these by getting under the car. One of the engine drain plugs is on the driver side of the engine. To locate it, it might be easier to follow the long black ribbed rubber boot which comes from the driver side wheel hub, and the drain plug can be seen just above it. This is shown on the photo below. In order open this bolt I needed a 10mm socket and a 11 or 12 inch socket extension. Yes that’s right 12 inches. Be warned: the nut is quite far deep inside the cavity than appears on the photo or even when you actually look at if from under the car. (At this point I got stuck because I only had a 3 inch extension for my breaker bar, so I had to phone a friend to buy me another 8 inch extension from Halfords and bring it round.) I combined the 3 inch with the 8 inch extension along with the actual 10mm socket and it just reached and no more. Even with a flexible joint breaker bar which I had there is not much room for manoeuvre. DriverSidePlug Anyway, you might want to attach a piece of hose pipe to the outlet going into a container. I did not remove the 10mm bolt, only enough (a few turns) to let the fluid out of the outlet. 5.) DRAIN PLUG ON PASSENGER SIDE: Now open the drain plug on the passenger side of the engine. It is located in between the cross-member support and the long black ribbed rubber boot which comes from the passenger side wheel hub. This is shown on the photo below. In order open this bolt I needed a 14mm socket, and again, the long socket extension. The access to this bolt has slightly better room for manoeuvre than the driver side. Again, you might want to attach a piece of hose pipe to the outlet going into a container. I did not remove the 14mm bolt, only enough (a few turns) to let the fluid out of the outlet. PassengerSidePlug The fluid took quite a few minutes to drain and towards the ended it trickled out for 5 minutes or so. 6.) You will need enough contains at the three drain points to take 10 or 11 litres of fluid in total. Once the fluid has drained, tighten all the three drain plugs. The radiator drain plug can be hand tightened. The ones on the engine should be torqued to 12.7 Nm. (I just tightened it with the socket and then gave it a slight nip since my half inch drive torque wrench does not go as low as 12.7Nm.). 7.) Make sure you have 11 litres of pre-mixed red Toyota Long Life Coolant. I purchased 11 litres from Toyota. I purchased two 5 litre cans, (part # 08889-80002 for £17.94 each inc. VAT) and a 1 litre bottle (part # 08889-80002 for 4.34 inc. VAT). Start filling in coolant slowly thorough the filler bolt opening on the throttle body until it becomes full. I filled it up slowly so as not to get any air locks. Towards the end you will also see coolant filling up in the radiator tank. Once full, put the 10mm hex bolt back on and tighten to 45Nm torque. 8.) Top up the remainder of the radiator reserve tank through the radiator cap opening until it reaches the full mark and install the radiator cap. 9.) Start the engine and turn the heater temperature (both driver and passenger temperature) to ‘MAX HOT’. By doing this, it will open the heater water valve under the bonnet. Rev the engine at about 2,000 to 2,500 rpm until the engine is warm. Once the coolant starts to circulate and the engine is warm, the coolant level in the radiator tank will drop. Wait for the engine to cool down again and re-fill the tank to the full mark. 10.) Over the next couple of days of driving you might need to top up the radiator tank if the level drops below full. Always remember to check the coolant level when the car is cold for an accurate reading.

Hi TrevCooke, Chris, I have a MK IV LS400 and here is my two bobs worth on the brake pads / discs issue. Looking back on my past experience in trying different manufacturer pads (mostly with Honda Accords we’ve owned before buying the LS400), my opinion is that OEM pads are generally not worth it if the objective is to save money. It is for this reason when I came round to replacing the pads on the LS400 earlier this year, I chose genuine Lexus/Toyota pads. Allow me to explain why I have come to this conclusion. In the past I have tried different brands of aftermarket pads on Honda Accords. Firstly in terms of pad wear rate, many of the aftermarket brands tend to wear very quickly. For example, I have used Lucas pads on the front which have lasted only 10,000 miles of driving and ADL pads which have lasted as much as 17,000 to 20,000 miles. (The mileage numbers here are based on approx 70% motorway driving and 30% town driving). Often in the past for me it has just meant that when I had purchased pads that only lasted for around 10K miles, although they had been £25 cheaper to buy than say genuine pads, I had just ended up paying the mechanic 2 visits (and hence two fees) over the 20K mile period instead of one, had I bought pads that lasted longer. So in real terms this did not really work out cheaper. And what if using aftermarket pads did somehow work out cheaper, then what? Well, then there is the problem that cheap pads are (not surprisingly) made of cheap or coarse material. Often I have found that after washing the car, the faster wearing pads started to make the wheels black with heavy brake dust after only a day or two of driving. Another problem is that aftermarket pads may be made of a material with a heat/friction index which is not suited to the discs installed on your car. The result is that over time the brake pads may end up producing more heat than the discs can dissipate and cause them to warp leaving you to foot a bill for purchasing new discs and paying a mechanic labour to fit them. I noticed this problem because when applying the brake at motorway speeds, the steering wheel had significant shudder in it. (The problem disappeared after replacing the discs.) If the problem of excess heat build up is addressed too late, you may even end up ceasing one or more of the pistons in your calliper. When I came round to replacing the pads on the LS400, I purchased a genuine set of pads from Toyota for £66.83 inc VAT. If I did not purchase genuine pads, I would most probably have gone for ADL Blue Print pads. Although I have not tried ADL pads on the LS400, it is because in my past experience the next best thing for Japanese cars if not genuine pads is ADL as they last very long and don’t produce huge quantities of brake dust every week, and have worked well on the Honda Accords for me without prematurely wearing out / warping the genuine discs. I also got a price from Lexus for discs for the MK4 LS400, which if I can remember correctly was around £88 each inc VAT. When the time comes to replace the discs, I will most probably go for genuine Toyota discs. Over the long run, especially if I plan to keep the car long, I don’t think I will save much by going for aftermarket parts. You have to remember that the LS400 is a very heavy car, with 4 pistons in each calliper at the front, so the brake gets punished. I wouldn’t be surprised if many aftermarket pads don’t perform well and/or compromise your brake discs. As for the sensor, Lexus charge around £50 just for the sensor. As Steve2006 mentioned, you can re-use the old one if it has not grinded away too much against the disc by replacing the wire loop through it with solid core wire. You’ve just got to carefully pry out the old wire. Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

Hi Sam, I just noticed your post. The symptoms and the amount of vibration you describe (i.e. even the passenger notices it) is probably too much to attribute to just tyre/wheel run-out (i.e. aligning the 'dot' on the tyre and rim). This is one possible cause, but it seems you have pretty much eliminated the tyre/wheel possibility. Does the vibration happen when you are braking ? or does it happen even if you don't have your foot on the brake pedal ? does it get worse if you brake ?

Hi all, I'm new to this forum (bought an LS400 late last year). I have a Mk4 1999 LS400 and I also changed my transmission fluid this nice and sunny weekend. I did a full flush after reading the lexls tutorial. Cleverdick is right that the lexls tutorial seems slightly confusing when it refers to the hose union on the rad cooler as an inlet (one end on the rad is an inlet and the other one is an outlet). I didn't drop the pan because my car has only covered 52,000 miles so maybe a job for a later service. But the tutorial was very helpful and i replaced the fluid with 9 litres of Toyota T IV fluid. Cleverdick - I also paid about £80 for my fluid, but ive heard that if you buy it from a Toyota dealer is it supposed to be a bit cheaper so maybe ill go to a toyota dealer next time and ask for Toyota type IV fluid. Just one question - I put in exactly the same amount which i took out (I took out 1.5 litres and replaced 1.5 litres at a time) so the level should not have changed very much, but how do i properly check the level ? The dipstick has got a cold and a hot mark. Am i supposed to check it with the engine idling ? I just checked my trans fluid (on my level driveway) with the car stone cold since it hadnt been driven all day and it is slightly higher than the top of the Hot mark on the dipstick - is this how it is supposed to be ? I did a test drive yesterday and all seemed fine. Any idea. Many thanks, Goldfinger