Bought at auction need help!

stvneason · February 15, 2016

Hello all. I need quite a bit of help as I know little to nothing about Lexus, but I do have some knowledge about cars in general. I bought a 1991 Lexus at an auction for $1300.00. It's a very good looking, clean car. There's nothing wrong with it that I would call "MAJOR". When I received to "keys" to the car I immediately knew that this key was not normal. All this key is is just the, I assume, laser cut part that goes in the ignotion. There is no top to it at all. It looks to be broken off (picture below). From what I have read about these keys is this "missing" top piece has a chip that is programmed somehow to the vehicle, and without it the key is useless. The kicker is, it works perfectly! It goes in the ignition just perfect and starts the car with no trouble. I assume that this car has some type of keyless entry or remote start because there is an on/off switch inside the car that says "key remote". Is there any place I could go to have a "correct" key made? About how much would this cost me? Another problem is the instrument panel. When it does light up, the backlight works as well as the (blue) lights that are on the guage needles. But it does not light up all the time. It will come on and off at random while driving like it has some type of short in it. The RPM guage and the speedometer doesn't work. The speedometer will move, but is by far accurate. It will slowly rise to show 20 mph when I gun it and am traveling around 70 or 75 mph. The RPM guage doesn't work at all. The fuel guage does work, because when I bought the car it showed just under 1/2 a tank and when I filled the car up it read full. How "accurate" it is is left to be found out. The temperature guage does work because I can watch it rise when the car has been running for some time but again I'm not sure if this is an accurate reading. An odd thing is the digital trip miles that is displayed in the lower right corner. It resets itself to 0 at random times, mainly when I shut the car off and start it. Is there any way that I could fix this or do I need to start looking for another instrument cluster? Also, the entire middle panel where the A/C, stereo, and cassette player is located doesn't seem to work at all. The only thing that does work is the a/c and heater. The buttons light up and air does blow out of the vents, but the display where someone can set the temperature doesn't work at all. The radio nor the cassette player work, and neither does the clock. I would assume that there may be a fuse blown somewhere, however the fuse box I located that is under the hood next to the battery doesn't have anything labeled as such. Is there another fuse box in the car somewhere? If it's not a fuse, how would I or what would I need to do to fix it? Or do I need to find an entire panel? And one last thing, on the papers that I received so I can get a new title it does not specify what model this is. I know there are several different models such as ls, se, etc. How can I find out what model this is? Is there a website I could go to that I could type in the VIN and it would give me everything there is to know about this vehicle? I know there is a lot here to read but as I have stated earlier while I do know a good bit about general car repair and information I know very little about Lexus, and from what I hear these cars are very "finicky" and can be a pain in the !Removed!. Any and all help from anyone is very much appreciated. I thank you for your time.

Exhaustgases · February 15, 2016

On a 1990 to a 1992 and maybe up to 1994 you do not have a chip programmed to the car. The master key that has a chip is a radio transmitter that is used to lock and unlock the doors only and it is programmed to the receiver in the trunk. And the key works fine without it. Any lock smith can make a key, if you want the one with the radio you go to the dealer, 2 or 3 hundred I think.

The cluster problem can be normal on these cars. Do a search for Tanin auto electric, they fix them and don't break the bank doing it and can fix the climate lcd as well, for the work involved they do it for cheap. The hard part is removing the stuff to send to them.

The tag on the B pillar when you open the driver door on the lower right inside (with you standing outside with door open and looking there) will tell you the model ucf10 and the vin, also the vin is on a small sticky tag on all the doors on the car.

If you have an owners manual it should say where stuff like fuse box is. The other one is up under the dash sorta, and on the driver side near the kick panel, just stick your head down there like your gona push the brake pedal with it and look up and towards the driver door. It has a black plastic cover on it.

What color is the car, and what options does it have.

Power seats are not an option its normal stuff. Options are Trac, heated seats, driver memory, power extend steering wheel, power tilt steering is not an option every car has it, power head rests, air suspension, fog lights, Trunk CD player, moon roof (its rare not to have it), phone (dealer install option), and a few things I might be missing.