300 Drive Service?

[jnosm]

2001 RX300 75,000 miles. My wife drives the car. I'm getting confused between my dealer and Lexus as to the interval for replacing AWD differential fluid and lubricating the drive shaft. Dealer says I'm in extreme conditions (suburban Chicago) so every 15.000 mi. Lexus says 120,000. Huh? $240 charges.

[RX in NC]

jnosm,

Good question and a very debated subject here on this forum.

Search this RX300 forum using "transmission problems" as your subject and you'll uncover some very unsettling information on this topic. I found this website in September 2003 specifically because my wife and I grew tired of the unacceptable transmission performance she began experiencing on an intermittent basis, particularly as the weather cooled that autumn. She literally became afraid to drive her vehicle. I battled my local Lexus dealership using quite a bit of the information I found here and by mid-November 2003, my wife had a new transmission installed under warranty by our local dealership. It took me about a month to beat their service management into submission, but I never let up and I made sure they knew that I wasn't going to walk away from this problem. For problems like this, it helps immensely to have a "no-quit" mentality. I was born with one.

The consensus is that the RX300 all-wheel-drive models are sensitive to transmission failures, much more so than the two-wheel drive models. A number of us have suffered failures, usually under warranty, and have had to replace our transmissions with Lexus picking up the tab (my wife's RX transmission failed at about 48,000 miles - her replacement transmission is now sitting at about 85,000 miles on the odometer). Be aware that if this cost has to come out of YOUR pocket, you're looking at a $5,000 to $6,000 job depending upon your negotiation skills.

Lexus has done a lousy job handling (some would say hiding) this issue when the owners manual indeed says that your factory-filled transmission fluid is good for the life of your vehicle as long as you drive under "normal operating conditions" which means no towing, minimum dirt road driving, minimum stop-and-go trips under five miles, etc.

I did a ton of research and decided to do a transmission drain-and-fill myself every 30,000 miles on the replacement transmission for as long as we own this vehicle, regardless of how clean the fluid looks and smells. I also check the fluid EVERY WEEK at the same time I check the oil level and tire pressure. Changing your transmission fluid in this vehicle is extremely simple to do, and some of the forum threads that you'll pull up while researching this topic will tell you exactly how to do it.

Some folks on this forum will tell you, like your Lexus dealership did, that unless you change your fluid every 15,000 miles you're asking for eventual failure. Either way, you must change that fluid at least every 30,000 miles to be safe. And always ensure that NOTHING except Toyota Type T-IV transmission fluid ever goes into your pan's filler tube.

Check out the threads dedicated to this subject and make the right decision for you and your wife. Keep in mind that statistics seem to show that if your vehicle is two-wheel-drive, your chances for transmission failure are somewhat less.

Best of luck and let us know what you decide to do.