New Lexus Ls400 Owner

[billymild]

I recently went through a garage fire loosing my 944 Turbo, Miata, and RZ350. I needed to buy a car to use in the meantime until I have another garage built and a "fun" car back. I wanted something that was comfy, had decent power, and rode nice. I looked at LS400's, GS400's, and a few other cars. I settled on the this LS400. Most people are shocked by the change of type of car. Going from a sportscar to a luxury cruiser. I have a lot questions that I will be asking over the next few weeks. So far I am loving the LS.

Here is a pic of my old cars/bike.

Anyways here are some LS pics.

1998 LS400 130,000 miles on it.

Overall its in great shape. I had a PPI done by a friend at the Lexus Dealer. His list of stuff to watch out for and what needs to be done:

Valve Cover Gaskets

Spark Plugs

Timing belt and water pump

Ball Joints(good for about another year)

Strut rods(looked okay, but may need to be replaced in my ownership)

Fluids(Transmissions, coolant, etc)

So overall a great car. I looked at about 5 other LS's but none of them had this low of miles and were in this good of shape. This one didn't come with any maintenance records, but I will get it all up to date and drive it for a while.

How can I tell what options this car has? Is there a VIN decoder that will tell me? I don't think it has heated seats or the Nakamichi stereo.

[steve2006]

Hello and welcome to the LOC.

Sorry to hear and see the results of your garage fire I hope the insurance takes care of everything.

It looks like you have the DHP model going by the wood steering wheel so you should have the stiffer sports suspension and 17" wheels.

Heated front seats should be standard fitment, the buttons are normally above the front ash tray.

Looks like you've got the servicing sorted especially the timing belt.

[1990LS400]

Bummer. Where in Missouri was this inferno? You should be able to figure out what equipment your car has with these specs for the 1998 LS400: http://www.lexus.com/contact/pdf/1998/1998LSspecs.pdf

It looks like you have a fairly basic 98 LS400 and that a prior owner made some modifications. Your LS has a wood wheel but a leather gearshift knob - both a wood wheel and gear shift knob were in the same option package so something's going on with that.

It's got the standard Pioneer radio so that automatically excludes some other options. A lot of 1998 LS400's did not had the optional HID headlights. If you have HID, the headlight lens will have D2R on them; Halogen have something like HB2 inscribed on the lenses.

The headlight lenses look quite foggy - they can be restored to absolutely clear and like new using one of a number of headlight lens restoration products.

I see your car has or had a dealer installed Lexus phone system. If it is all still installed and your radio works OK then don't worry. A failing phone ECU in the trunk can cause the radio to go into permanent telephone mute mode. Unplugging the two large phone connectors from the ECU under the false floor on the right side of the trunk and plugging the connectors together usually fixes that problem.

Otherwise, have fun with it. These are very reliable cars although things can go wrong and are sometimes fairly expensive to fix. I owned my first LS400 (a 1990) from new to 183,000 miles and my current 2000 LS400 from 38,000 miles to its current 170,000 miles and both were relative trouble free and far less expensive to maintain than any Mercedes I've owned.

[1990LS400]

Hello and welcome to the LOC.

Sorry to hear and see the results of your garage fire I hope the insurance takes care of everything.

It looks like you have the DHP model going by the wood steering wheel so you should have the stiffer sports suspension and 17" wheels.

Heated front seats should be standard fitment, the buttons are normally above the front ash tray.

Looks like you've got the servicing sorted especially the timing belt.

Steve, the DHP (Dynamic Handling Pack) was an option in the U.K. and nowhere else. Heated seats were standard in the U.K. but optional on the LS400 in the U.S. in all model years.

[steve2006]

Hello and welcome to the LOC.

Sorry to hear and see the results of your garage fire I hope the insurance takes care of everything.

It looks like you have the DHP model going by the wood steering wheel so you should have the stiffer sports suspension and 17" wheels.

Heated front seats should be standard fitment, the buttons are normally above the front ash tray.

Looks like you've got the servicing sorted especially the timing belt.

Steve, the DHP (Dynamic Handling Pack) was an option in the U.K. and nowhere else. Heated seats were standard in the U.K. but optional on the LS400 in the U.S. in all model years.

Ar sorry I didn't know that, just (wrongly) assumed it was a world wide option, maybe I should start exporting the DHP package over as a retrofit. Strangely enough my JDM B spec import has leather but no seat heaters at all and my other CF package has rear seat heaters but none in the front.