Leaderboard

My company is Fuel Injector Specialists, located in Colorado. I own a 1990 LS400, and I"m not here trolling for injector business, but my advice (and experience) on these cars is this: The chance of you having 8 good injectors is just about nil. I've rebuilt plenty of these, and about 10 percent are not buildable -- the spray pattern goes sideways or they leak down. Denso from the factory. The quality of Bosch? Nope, but if you keep water out of the gas, the majority of the factory injectors will last forever, it's just that Bosch uses a higher quality rust resistant super hard stainless metal alloy. Bosch will not substitute for Denso, in this case. Alas. Rough Idle? One or two bad injectors. Same with hard start. Same with burned up catalytic convertors -- these cats will outlive the car, if they have the correct fuel ratio ahead of them. Pintle caps and seals and filters? All replaceable. Good injectors and these engines will purr. Factory shop manual (of which I just paid $350 for the complete paper set) infers that it is possible to pull these injectors with the intake on. Nonsense. Think ahead and buy the throttle body and upper plenum gasket from Rock Auto. You'll need both. As another hint, the bottom bolts on the throttle body are impossible to start without a flexible magnetic/grab hook retrieval tool. Invaluable. NAPA, $20. Best money you will ever spend. Eliminates many bad words. Put the head of the bolt on the tool, using only the magnetic function not the grab hook, then bend yourself way down to see the opening in the throttle body, insert the bolt, then slide the tool off at a 90 degree angle. Voila. You don't use this tool, and the bolt will drop into the valley. Ouch. Intake plenum off, but first, careful careful with all those hoses, and be even more careful with the hoses at the front EGR temp sensor, the one that has two plastic barbed outlets and screws in vertically into the cooling passage. Aw, forget it. These outlets all break. You will break yours. Remove the sensor (unobtainable now, and was $300 plus dollars anyway. What the?), go to Napa and buy some small plastic barbed tees, cut them to match the ones you broke off. If you can pull your broken originals out of the hoses, even better. Then, take some super glue, a powerful magnifier so you can see to match the broken edges up perfectly, and judiciously super glue the broken tee back onto the temp sensor. That means don't use so much super glue that you block the ports. You will check with a small drill bit when you are all finished anyway. That super glue's only function is to get the tee to stay on from whence it (they) departed. Not strong enough to be anything but a placement. Next, buy some J&B plastic mender epoxy. Squeeze out a small amount of this stuff from its double syringe, on a cardboard piece, and stir while counting slowly to 30. Daub this mixture onto the tee/sensor broken area, which you cleaned of course, covering all sides nicely, leaving the barb exposed. Set the sensor aside ( as mentioned, you pulled this sensor from the engine, right? 15/16 combo wrench. And drained the radiator to even make this possible? This only makes sense. Ahem. ) Set this sensor aside for 24 hours. In a warm room. Don't be tempted to readjust the tee outlets even slightly. That''s what the super glue was for. If you do, the epoxy strength will absolutely disappear. A day later this fitting will be bulletproof. Never seen an older LS where these aren't busted off. This sensor stops the EGR from working when the engine is cold, and lets vacuum pass when it's warm. Your engine needs this. The earth's atmosphere needs this. All of humanity needs this. You get the idea. Pull the intake. Put all those bolts in a container. They re-torque at 20 lbs or so. Not much. You set them somewhere under hood and they will fall off, never to be seen again. Passing children will learn new words. Now, you can easily reach the fuel rails. The supply line to the pressure regulator and the line itself has banjo bolts. Nice design, but each banjo bolt has a copper washer on top and bottom. Take a very deep breath, put on your glasses, and DON'T lose those copper washers. Factory shop manual insists you need to replace them. Not necessary. Available at NAPA if you do. The fuel rail holds the injectors in. The hardest part of injector service is removing the wiring clips from the injectors. The little tab pushes down, and the clip pulls off. Don't rush this step. Don't yank without being sure the clip is released. Push down, then pull up. If you successfully get all the clips off without breaking some you qualify for a trophy of some type. Perhaps an old bowling trophy, or a second place spelling ribbon, etc. Indeed, you are truly a master mechanic. Buy quality new injectors if you can, but you can't. Don't buy Ultra. Chinese garbage. Not worth the effort to toss in the recycle bin. Rock has rebuilds, but we kick back about 15% of them because they are defective, usually pattern problems. Or they leak down. Slow engine death. Perfect injectors and this old girl purrs. Oh yeah. There is a cold start injector at the bottom of the intake plenum. Unobtainable. We can clean and build them. If they're not rotted out. We are junkyard doggies. A proud thing. When the occasional first gen LS400 comes into the wrecking yards, we grab extra injectors, computer, complete padded dash and glove box door if possible (very rare), all the missing top engine shrouds, a mass air flow sensor, throttle position sensors (plural), door lock motors if needed, etc. Final note. Don't think you can upgrade from the Pioneer radio to the Nakamichi. Ain't like the Buick Riviera with Bose GOLD. All the good stuff is in the radio, not due to additional active amps in the door units. Nakamichi rear speaker is a monster, but needs its own amp in the back. Meaning the wiring harness. Meaning the wiring harness is completely different at the radio. Oh well. Life is too short. And Interior? Went with the Katzkin leather, $1000 plus. We shall see. Doesn't have that extra double pleat in the center, but we'll live with that.

Has anyone used Best Buy to install a back up camera in a older Lexus ? Looking to install one in a 2002 Lexus SC430. Thanks

2006 SC430 stomped a mudhole in a 2011 Camaro SS let him get two car lengths before I spanked him the second time BAD TO THE BONE

Well, after almost one thousand miles I think I've solved the problem. When I changed the plugs I found that one plug, the second one in on the drivers side which I think is no. 4 was loose. I replaced all the plugs although the old ones didn't seem that bad but while I had it apart why not? Anyway, it hasn't stumbled in almost 1000 miles so I think the loose plug was the problem. I have no idea why the plug was loose. They were the original factory plugs and had never been changed. The new plug seated on the washer normally. Very strange.