flbob Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 New owner of a 97 LS400 with a couple of questions. I'm looking for a repair manual - may purchase factory manual and electrical diagrams but don't really want to pay that much. Saw DVD's on e-bay at autorepairinfo (or something like that) for $19.95. They sell DVD for 1998 but not 1997. Anybody know if the DVD's are any good? Would the 1998 one be good enough for most stuff on the 1997? Second question - I'm fairly ignorant about Lexus but saw one advertised as near perfect -and it was - as far as I could tell - looked like it just came off the showroom floor - Paid $6900 - Mileage was a bit high at 137,000. While registering the clerk noticed that the old title listed mileage as "unknown". It had incomplete service records but enough that I am reasonably sure the OD is accurate. Question - is the OD able to be reset? Glad to find this forum -y'all seem like a good bunch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulo57509 Posted January 25, 2008 Share Posted January 25, 2008 I bought one of those soft copy manuals, but I can't recall where I got it from. After I downloaded it from a file sharing service, I went and separated it into sections and found that there was over 1000 pages missing. You read that right.....one thousand missing pages. The guy that put the file on the sharing service was cool and refunded my money. If you don't want to spend the money for the hard copy books, go to www.techinfo.toyota.com and subscribe for 30 days ($50) and spend some time downloading the manual. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VMF Posted January 26, 2008 Share Posted January 26, 2008 pretty much useless, bought one, could not extract any useful info, had to buy factory repair manual. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Young Posted February 3, 2008 Share Posted February 3, 2008 Dedicate a couple of long nights or a Saturday on the site mentioned above, I got by on the 24 hour deal for only $10. I have a fairly high speed link and downloaded everything for the LS 430 in about 6 total hours. The Wiring Diagram alone is 538 pages, with diagnostics in Part 1 (of 5) in Section 5 of the repair manual at 731 pages. There are something like 40 other sections, but I skipped a few - like the air suspension - that didn't apply to my car. Unfortunately the info comes in hundreds of little files, make sure you buy a full version of Acrobat (or know someone that has it) and spend the time to piece the Sections together for a much more useful document. I find the electronic form much more useful than paper, since I can always print what ever I need and then write all over it. With Acrobat, I can even scan anything I scribbled and post it right into the Lexus manual whenever I want to keep something. Much better than the foot of paper on my shelf that is the manual for my 2001 GMC Sierra. I also love the fact that I can put everything on a USB drive and simply stick it in the glovebox. Then all I have to do is find some form of computer (if I don't have one of the laptops along) and I have literally everything on the car. By the way - try the same trick for the owners and nav manuals, although those are available on the Lexus owners site for free. I also combined those Sections with Acrobat and made a searchable document, simple type in a key word and get a list of all the pages where it appears. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcfish Posted February 3, 2008 Share Posted February 3, 2008 Dedicate a couple of long nights or a Saturday on the site mentioned above, I got by on the 24 hour deal for only $10. I have a fairly high speed link and downloaded everything for the LS 430 in about 6 total hours. The Wiring Diagram alone is 538 pages, with diagnostics in Part 1 (of 5) in Section 5 of the repair manual at 731 pages. There are something like 40 other sections, but I skipped a few - like the air suspension - that didn't apply to my car. Unfortunately the info comes in hundreds of little files, make sure you buy a full version of Acrobat (or know someone that has it) and spend the time to piece the Sections together for a much more useful document. I find the electronic form much more useful than paper, since I can always print what ever I need and then write all over it. With Acrobat, I can even scan anything I scribbled and post it right into the Lexus manual whenever I want to keep something. Much better than the foot of paper on my shelf that is the manual for my 2001 GMC Sierra.I also love the fact that I can put everything on a USB drive and simply stick it in the glovebox. Then all I have to do is find some form of computer (if I don't have one of the laptops along) and I have literally everything on the car. By the way - try the same trick for the owners and nav manuals, although those are available on the Lexus owners site for free. I also combined those Sections with Acrobat and made a searchable document, simple type in a key word and get a list of all the pages where it appears. Robert, That is the way to go, And well worth the time spent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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