California Bay Area Mechanic

[Buddahbelly]

I just bought a 97 LX450... very happy with it so far, but I can see that I will need to stay on top of the maintenance. Does anybody know of any good mechanics in the SF east bay area? The vehicle drives great, but I'd like to fix my shaky idle issue, and replace the rotors and pads with something more capable (cross drilled etc...) - any reccommendations??

thanks!

[dougjohn]

Most of my freinds in the bay area seem to hit the dealerships. Don't know why. I have a trip planned with a number of them fairly soon, so I'll ask them where they go for servicing, if not the dealer.

I'm in the Sacramento, CA area -- so not too far from you. I've been lucking because I bought my '97 LX 450 as a certirfied used car -- it came with an extended warranty (up to 100k miles), so I've had all major work done by the dealership.

Recently, I had some friends help me with a full brake job -- rotors, pads, bearing repack -- the works. It's a very messy job and it took a few hours to complete, but it was better than spending the 1200 the dealership wanted.

I have a mechanic that I trust locally, but I doubt that you'd want to drive 1.5 hours to get work done. B)

One thing about cross-drilled rotors... If you plan on taking your LX 450 off road, they're not recommended. It seems that the holes tend to get filled with mud. The slotted rotors or OEM are a better bet. Next time around, I'll try the slotted ones.

Doug

[Buddahbelly]

I know the dealership will do good work, but I will pay for it... Not planning to do much off roading, but I did take it through the Tahoe storms this weekend with no issues! :D

One thing I noticed - My car seemed to give off more exhaust then other similar vehicles (expiditions etc...) - I'm wondering if I'm going to have a smog issue. The carfax indicated clean smogs all along - and I haven't seen any posts about smog issues.

One thing i'd like to do soon is replace or add a nice chrome muffler pipe... not for performance.... it's the one thing that looks cheap or 'older' to me - know of any?

[dougjohn]

If you just bought your LX, then it would've had to have been smogged. I just bought a second one (for the wife to haul the kids) -- I had to pay for the smog certificate. Also, my first LX 450 had to get a smog test a couple months ago and it passed with flying colors -- everything tested well below the max.

No ideas as to the chrome pipe. I haven't really looked into it -- on mine, it was just get scraped up, covered with mud or more likely crunched. My tail pipe currently looks like a duck's bill -- it's smashed flat!

If you want performance from your exhaust, you'd probably want to find a cat back system (from the catalytic converters to the tail pipe) -- the tail pipe itself won't do much.