RX in NC

The Alenzas are the best bang-for-the-buck 18-inch SUV tire out there today. 65,000-mile treadwear warranty, great wet-weather traction, and reasonably priced compared to the far-too-expensive Michelins. The first set of Alenzas on my wife's RX330 went more than 55,000 miles and would have done more than 60,000 miles if she hadn't run over a piece of scrap metal that destroyed her right rear tire last October. I decided to go ahead and replace all four and Discount Tire worked with me on their fantastic proration policy plus a $70 rebate check from Bridgestone for buying all four tires. Final cost for a new set of P235/55/18 Alenzas was $635 out-the-door with the best treadwear warranty for SUV tires on the market. You'll pay considerably more and get considerably less if you go with something other than the Alenza. Denigrate the "too aggresive" look of the Alenza all you want (such a minor complaint anyway) but if cost-benefit analysis is important to you, the Alenza tops the charts....

Ever had the misfortune of seeing one of those el-cheapo paint jobs up close? I wouldn't let those places paint any of my vehicles even if it was free.... On the plus side, if you leave your windows down they'll paint your interior at no extra charge....

I have a 9-year-old Blaupunkt audio unit installed in my 11-year-old Dodge Ram pickup. It's been a great system for the money but from time to time it will freeze up when playing a CD and display "Error Code 4" or "Error Code 5". When that happens, usually just turning off the power switch to the unit, waiting five seconds, and turning it back on will resolve the issue. On the couple of occasions when just turning the unit off and then back on has not worked, I popped off the removable faceplate, located the master reset button, and pushed it to clear everything in the unit. Once that's done I can eject the CD using the eject button. Of course, I also have to reset the time, preset radio stations, treble and bass preferences, etc. I'm assuming these RX330 units also have a master reset button, but I don't know where it is since my wife has never reported a problem with hers to me. Check your owners manual in the audio section. When these CD units start to display error codes after a number of years, it may mean that your unit's laser needs recalibration. Not too big a deal if you can remove the unit yourself and take it to an audio shop that can perform recalibrations. But you may have a more serious problem if the eject mechanism will not respond to pressing the eject button. Could be failing circuits, failing switches, or even just dirt or grime on the circuit boards.... When my Blaupunkt unit finally begins doing this frequently enough to *BLEEP* me off, I'll just replace it. These units have more or less become commodities now and if you're planning to keep the vehicle for awhile, you may be better off replacing rather than repairing. Depends on the degree of difficulty to pull the unit, whether it just needs a simple calibration, and what the cost would be....

First things first - check your fuses. Your owners manual has a schematic diagram of all fuse layouts in the vehicle. Locate the fuse that controls the right side mirror and check it. And yes, it is very common for two of the same components (in your case, left side and right side mirrors) to be on different fuses. So one could work fine while the other is malfunctioning....

Our 2005 Jaguar S-Type sedan is approximately 35% Ford heritage. It's twin brother is the Lincoln LS sedan of the same era. The S-Type's engine started out as the venerable Ford Duratech block built in Cleveland, then Jaguar imported it and added variable valve timing, twin intake manifold tuner valves, and some other special tweaks to give it additional horsepower and performance as well as highway fuel economy that the Lincoln LS can't match. The S-Type uses quite a number of electronic components from Denso and NGK as well. A true "global" automobile in every sense of the word. Ford's approach to constantly improving quality in the middle of the decade when this S-Type was built really shines through. It's been a pleasure for me to maintain and for my wife to drive thus far and if it holds up like I think it will, we'll keep it in our stable for quite a while. I believe that Ford's ownership ultimately saved Jaguar from extinction. A lot of long-time Jaguar owners resent Ford's involvement in their marque, but without it I doubt if Jaguar could have survived....

Congrats as well from those of us in your old stomping grounds. I assume you're hoping for a girl this time? Now, your next phone call should be to find a good urologist for that all-important vasectomy. This April will mark 30 years since I had mine (I was 26 and the doctor tried his best to talk me out of it). Best financial decision I've ever made. No more worries about another sneaky little devil slipping through the safety net and hitting the target. You get snipped on a Friday and you're back at work on Monday. But take it from one who knows from experience - be very careful not to accidently sit on your gonads for at least a month or so afterwards. If you do, make sure no one is within a quarter-mile of you because the language that will be eminating from your mouth will peel the paint off your walls....

A local Toyota dealership has been offering a "lifetime warranty" for nearly two years here in my neck of the woods. Of course, the owner also switched to "no-haggle pricing" (meaning you pay the price listed on the window sticker, period) at the same time.... So you can bet your rear end that you're paying full price for that "lifetime warranty" regardless of what's going on with Toyota in the news these days....

It certainly will benefit me for as long as I hold my put options position open!!! Hey, something good's got to come from it - why not some significant profit for a simple options player in North Carolina?!

Great idea - someone will make a small fortune selling that crap! My hat's off to them.... And no, I don't miss him one bit except for the constant fodder he provided to Letterman/Leno/Caliendo and all the other comedians out there.... By the way, we need to start an office pool on what number heart attack finally puts !Removed! Cheney six feet under. My money's on number 47....

I recently decided to put a little money where my mouth is concerning Toyota's ongoing troubles. So after studying my Japanese candlestick charting techniques for several days (thank you Steve Nison), I bought nearly $25,000 worth of May 2010 put options of Toyota. For those of you who aren't familiar with options, the position I purchased means that as Toyota stock declines in price, my options position increases in value. So the more Toyota stock takes a beating, the greater my profits will be. I have until mid-May (actually early May due to my conservative nature) to ride this wave for better or for worse so the more the bad news keeps coming from Toyota, the healthier my return will be on this attempt to profit from the Toyota fiasco.... You can speculate all you want about what will happen to Toyota in the long run (my personal opinion is that they'll recover in due time but at an astronomical cost). But why not take advantage of their mounting troubles and make what could potentially be some big money off what is certainly a run of bad news that will continue for the near future.... So Mr. Toyoda, please screw it up even further during your testimony today. My options position is counting on you....

Hmm, sounds like somebody's moonlighting on Toyota's PR payroll....

At this point no one can say what the extent of the issue is. Like many other folks, I've said all along that I think it goes all the way to the firmware/software in the ECUs and perhaps even to the design and/or materials of the ECU itself. I believe that Toyota has used floor mats and brake pedal retrofits as an all-out last-ditch smokescreen to the real issues because they know it will cost billions to find, fix, and implement such a massive restoration effort across millions of vehicles already out there. But by choosing the strategy they did (essentially deceit and cover-up), they have compounded their problems exponentially and must now face monumental legal scrutiny which will lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and sanctions over time. In essence, Toyota tried to put out a smoldering ember with gasoline. It took years, but the situation finally exploded in their face and dealing with the consequences will be embarrassing, treacherous, and horrendously expensive.... It will take a couple of years for the complete saga to unfold. The only thing certain right now is that Toyota's reputation is in tatters and the level of trust that the American consumer places in Toyota has fallen off a cliff. Anyone owning a Toyota product has been affected - just look at what is happening to resale values across the complete line....

Your frame of mind would be quite different if one of your family members had been among those killed in the crashes caused by the multiple defects in these various Toyota vehicles....

Okay, since you prodded me I'll give you my honest opinion.... The RX line is a stoic, bland, relatively poor-handling people-hauler. It's not a performance vehicle and it never will be. Don't try to dress it up like one. Save your trick-out money for the maintenance you'll need to do on it.... That's one guy's opinion. Glad you asked now?

Toyota's on trial because they got caught using shoddy ethics with their customers, plain and simple. Do other companies do that? Absolutely. But problems have compounded for Toyota for a number of reasons, includng ignoring and lying about the known issues while continuing to hard-sell their image of quality and reliability. The American public has picked up on that and now there's blood in the water and the sharks (i.e.the regulators) are circling.... If I were Mr. Toyoda, when I come to the U.S. this week to be grilled by the feds I would be looking for a way to safely land a fully-occupied Camry in the Hudson River....

As I said several weeks ago, by the time the dust settles on this issue Toyota will be by far the most heavily-fined and sanctioned automotive manufacturer in history. They've been both ignoring and lying about these problems for years. I'm still surprised that we haven't read about any suicides in their Japanese headquarters....

There was indeed a radiator recall on the 2004 RX330s built in Canada, but not on those built in Japan. If your VIN number begins with J, yours is Japanese. If it begins with 2, yours is Canadian.... But check the usual suspects first including thermostat, radiator cap, and servo motors....

So am I.

I left the corporate world in late 2002 just before my 49th birthday to play the stock options market. So I'm my own boss when the market isn't pushing me around and beating the hell out of me....

With my JTIS CD and the guidance by the Jaguar master techs who frequent a couple of the Jaguar forums in both the US and the UK, I can do a hell of a lot more service procedures on our S-Type than I initially thought I could do. Most experienced D-I-Y guys with basic automotive knowledge, a decent array of tools, and a can-do attitude will be just fine. There's a lot of help out there if you know where to look for it....

You are correct. To own a Jaguar without breaking your bank account in maintenance and repair, you MUST be a do-it-yourself type. I am, and so is nc211. If he had our S-Type, he would love it....

nc211, The primary reason that you don't hear me "bitching" about our S-Type is because I did voluminous research on Jaguar in general and our specific VIN before I made the decision to try to steal it during the depths of the recession in December 2008. I learned that under Ford's ownership, Jaguar made tremendous strides in overall quality and customer satisfaction and that by the 2005 model year, the S-Type was at the top of its game. So I found one that had been on an executive lease down in Fort Lauderdale, had done only 18,000 miles in three years and was in showroom condition, still had seven months of factory warranty left for me to shake out any bugs at Jaguar's expense, and then I dug up every service record or recall so I would have a completely accurate history of our specific car. I took full advantage of those seven months of remaining factory warranty by having the throttle body replaced (the slightest moisture in the throttle body can cause "limp home mode" to be engaged), the rear suspension links, bushings, and tie-rods replaced (common initial wear items in the S-Type line), the fuel filler door latch motor and assembly replaced (common failure in the S-Type), and a couple of other minor details taken care of under warranty. All told, about $3,000 worth of warranty work to get the car absolutely perfect prior to the warranty running its course at four years. You know me - I did the research (including taking photos of the affected or potentially affected parts on our car), presented it to the Jaguar dealership, and left them little choice but to take care of my concerns under warranty. All of this took place between May and July of last year in four separate warranty visits. Like Johnson Lexus, they knew I was serious, they knew I was completely informed, they resolved all of my issues, and I had a nice loaner Jaguar to drive while our car was in their shop (usually for one to two days). Come July 19th, 2009, I knew the car's care and feeding would transfer completely to me, and I spent enough time on a couple of the Jaguar forums to know what to expect and when to expect it. The beauty of one of the Jaguar forums in particular is that three or four actual Jaguar master techs (in Texas, Ohio, and California) regularly contribute. You can ask specific questions and they will answer them, sometimes pointing me to the exact page or diagram in my JTIS (Jaguar Technical Information Services) maintenance CD that I bought off of ebay last June for less than ten bucks. That is an incredible advantage to have when self-servicing a vehicle. There are also some incredibly technical owners on that forum, much moreso than here on LOC.... Fast-forwarding to today, my wife still loves this car (her RX330 is now essentially our dog-hauler and snowstorm vehicle) and will reach 42,000 miles on the odometer next week. It's perfect for her long solo highway trips to visit her elderly parents in Tampa six to eight times a year and on those long trips she averages between 33 and 34 mpg ripping down I-95 with cruise control set at 72 to 74 mph with the HVAC system comfortably set wherever she wants to put it. I wouldn't have believed that was possible if the salesman had tried to tell me that about the car before I bought it. What have I had to do to the car from a non-routine maintenance perspective post-warranty? My pre-purchase research told me that the Jaguar factory front brake pads are soft, ridiculously expensive, and might go 30,000 miles. They did 32,000 miles and I replaced them with a lifetime-warrantied set of Wagner ThermoQuiet pads that I picked up at Advance Auto Parts for less than $60. They are just as quiet as the factory pads, stop just as well, and create less than half the dust that the factory pads did. My post-purchase research told me that the factory O-rings on both Intake Manifold Tuner valves were not originally designed to be round enough or thick enough to prevent eventual slight oil seepage out of the IMT valves and down onto the engine's heat shields. Sure enough, a month ago my wife complained of a faint smell of burning oil in the cabin so I checked both IMT valves and yep, the lower one was slightly leaking. Common problem, Jaguar realized it, they re-engineered a new O-ring a couple of years ago, I purchased two of them (total cost was $4.63 at the dealership in Greensboro), and did the new O-ring job myself in my driveway in mid-January after discussing it on-line with a couple of the Jaguar master techs as well as with an owner in Charlotte who did it himself last March. Took me about two hours since I had never been into the intake before and wanted to be very careful, learning on the fly. The dealership quoted right at $300 to do it. Glad I chose to do it myself. If I had to do it again on someone else's S-Type, I could now do it in 30 to 45 minutes.... That's it. Other than oil & filter changes and tire rotations, that's all I've had to do. This S-Type has been a breeze. It's lightning fast, it gets incredible gas mileage, it's luxurious and smooth, it's a perfect highway cruiser, it's drop-dead gorgeous, and I absolutely stole it during the low point of the recession. I suggested that you look at a 2005-or-newer S-Type before you purchased your GS, but your impression of the car was based on your father-in-law's early-generation S-Type with all the known problems of failing coils, leaking valve gaskets, failing window regulators, sagging headliners, finicky suspensions, quirky electrics, and the mediocre Ford transmission. All of those inferior components were re-engineered and replaced well before the 2005-and-newer final run of the S-Type line came to market. As a do-it-yourself car guy, I knew you would be much happier with a 2005-and-up S-Type than you would be with your GS. I tried to tell you that. But you didn't listen....

nc211, No one is calling Toyota/Lexus "junk" here. But no one can deny that the entire quality aspect of Toyota/Lexus has noticeably declined over the past three or four years, either. And therein lies the crux of the matter. Toyota's reputation has taken a beating over these issues in recent months, and rightfully so.... And I have to disagree with you on "transmissions that shift seamlessly". In the two RX's that we've owned (2000 RX300 AWD and 2004 RX330 AWD), seamless transmission shifts have never been the case. My wife's current 2004 RX is light years ahead of her old dog-of-a-vehicle 2000 RX, but neither of these transmissions comes close to the smoothness of our 2005 Jaguar S-Type's German-built ZF transmission or even my trusty ol' 1999 Dodge Ram pickup (which turns 11 years old next week, by the way)....

It absolutely could happen to any automaker. But what the automaker CANNOT do when it happens is to deny it, attempt to hide it or divert attention elsewhere, and eventually lie about it. Consumers will accept and forgive glitches and even serious flaws if they are readily owned up to. But consumers get furious and are much less forgiving when the corporate execs choose to hide the details and then lie about them. And that is the reality that faces Toyota today....

There's no question that Toyota/Lexus overall quality has slipped noticeably over the last few years. Buick and Jaguar tied for the 2009 Powers top-quality rating survey. Who would have believed that was even possible just three or four years ago? Yes, other manufacturers have made great strides in improving their own products (especially Hyundai), but without Toyota's clear drop in quality, they wouldn't have been able to catch and surpass Toyota so quickly.... This stuff is not media-created, folks. Toyota has no one to blame but themselves....