Rx300 Lights

[MingF]

I recently noticed that when I turn on my headlights at night, I can tell the lights are somewhat flickering. When I press down on the break petal, the headlights flicker or dim a bit. Every time I press down on my break petal it does this. Also when I put the car in park.. and open the driver door, the light that is at the bottom of the door is also doing the samething. Sometimes its really noticable. What is the cause of this? My battery is working fine.

[jgr7]

These kind of electrical ghost are hard to track down, so some basic trouble shooting is in order. You say your battery is good, did you have it tested? did you check the terminal connections? Clean the posts? check alternator output? Now the fun stuff, check all your lights and make sure they are working. This is where it gets hard, you need to remove and clean every ground connection that you can find on the car. Remove them and clean them and the mateing surface they attach to if it has paint on it scrape the paint off under the connection put some no oxide corrosion inhibitor on it and reattach it with a good tight connection. I'm not a fan of painting over ground connections after this work is done, I like to be able to keep an eye on them for signs of corrosion. Good Luck, and I'm sure you will get some more advise on things to do so keep looking here.

Jeff

[mikey00]

This could be a number of things as mentioned above, but I would put my money on the battery. You didn't say what year your rx is or if it has the original battery. One thing I did notice about the rx , is when the battery starts to go you get a lot of little telltale signs like the digital clock requiring resets, lights dimming, etc., long before the car will give you starting problems. Do you have another car that you can pull the battery out of and test it in the rx. It doesn't have to be a good fit. Just connect the cables and run it in the driveway without even closing the hood to see if the problems are still there. Or if your battery is getting near 5 years old just change it.

[RX in NC]

mikey00 is correct - if your battery is original, it should be the first component you check out. Failing batteries can cause some very strange behavior throughout your electrical system before they finally die.

[LexKid630]

if you are sure the battary is fine, it's probably something with the wiring. There is probably a loose wire somewhere that's creating a short preventing full electricity from getting to the light sources. i highly doubt it's anything but the battary. These are signs that the battary is going. Also the altinator might not be working correctly which would make the battary lose energy faster.

[MingF]

Sorry..my RX is a 99 model with the original battery in it. I'll take a look at the battery again and hook another battery to it...and see if it does the samething still. But the dealer said it's perfectly fine. They don't know what the problem is.. and said everything seems to work normally. One of the Lexus mechanics told me he noticed that the 99 model RXs have more electrical problems compared to the later models...Thanks for your suggestions and help tho.