Where To Start?

[calvin305]

Hello all, just wanted to introduce myself and i wanted to ask some questions.

my wife has a 2002 rx300 which now has almost 100k miles. she has had it for 2 years now and since we are now married i take care of the cars :D well she really hasnt taken care of it and i know i have alot of work. heres the history. she bought it in 2006 may with 47k miles. in 2 years she has put about 50k miles(she goes to work for her fathers business on the weekends which is over 100miles each way while she goes to school full time during the week). anyway 3 months after she just got the car the engine had internal failure and lexus put a new short block in. so on the new engine it has about 50k on it and i dont really know how many oil changes she has done but im guessing 3..in 01jan08 the transmission went and we had a rebuilt tranny put in ... anyway i just did the oil change 2500 miles ago and am going back in a short while when it hits 3500. when i got the car it was a mess. shakes,steers to one side, carpet and leather have not been taken care of. so first thing was first i put new brake pads, rotors on all 4 wheels did an allignment. its better but also i just purch a new iac valve which will be going in tomorrow morning. my question is because the engine is new and tranny is rebuilt what should i be looking for on these cars to go first? i was going to do spark plugs, coil, ignition wires and than do the belt and hoses to start. am i missing anything? being that the engine itself has 50k miles and tranny maybe 15k..

thanks

Calvin

[code58]

Hello all, just wanted to introduce myself and i wanted to ask some questions.

my wife has a 2002 rx300 which now has almost 100k miles. she has had it for 2 years now and since we are now married i take care of the cars :D well she really hasnt taken care of it and i know i have alot of work. heres the history. she bought it in 2006 may with 47k miles. in 2 years she has put about 50k miles(she goes to work for her fathers business on the weekends which is over 100miles each way while she goes to school full time during the week). anyway 3 months after she just got the car the engine had internal failure and lexus put a new short block in. so on the new engine it has about 50k on it and i dont really know how many oil changes she has done but im guessing 3..in 01jan08 the transmission went and we had a rebuilt tranny put in ... anyway i just did the oil change 2500 miles ago and am going back in a short while when it hits 3500. when i got the car it was a mess. shakes,steers to one side, carpet and leather have not been taken care of. so first thing was first i put new brake pads, rotors on all 4 wheels did an allignment. its better but also i just purch a new iac valve which will be going in tomorrow morning. my question is because the engine is new and tranny is rebuilt what should i be looking for on these cars to go first? i was going to do spark plugs, coil, ignition wires and than do the belt and hoses to start. am i missing anything? being that the engine itself has 50k miles and tranny maybe 15k..

thanks

Calvin

Calvin- Your money- do whatever you want with it but Toyota uses some incredibly fine parts on their cars. To start with, you have no ign. wires, you have no coil- what it has is COP's (coil on plug). You have a coil on plug for each spark plug. They're pretty expensive and I wouldn't change them until you have a TC (trouble code) stating you have a bad one. If you want to do yourself a favor, put diaelectric grease on the inside of the COP's- it keeps it from arcing and taking out a COP. I also would check the paperwork to see if they installed new plugs when the short block was installed. If they have ever been changed and they used original Denso's or NGK Iridium's, they are good for a minimum of 100k mi., and probably a lot more. These do NOT wear out like regular plugs. The belts and hoses also do not wear out like you're used to on most cars. I do the work on my DIL's 99RX and just replaced the belts for the 1st. time at 123k and they still were in awfully good shape. The hoses are original and are in excellent shape. As I said, they put some outstanding parts on these things and I would

check condition before I replaced anything. I replaced the plugs for the 1st time at 97k and they were original gap and showed virtually no sign of wear. I would use ORIGINAL TOYOTA PARTS for whatever you do replace. They are better than probably anything else you will find.

Also, if you want this engine to last any longer than the last one you need to do a lot more than 3 oil changes in 50k mi.!