My 1999 ES 300 has been a great car thus far. The only problem I have had is the trac off and engine light come on. The Lexus dealership said it was the throttle postion sensor, and that I could get it fixed any time. The only thing I might notice is the engine cutting out.
On my last long distance trip I noticed that the overdirve was not kicking in on the highway. Also all of the lights started to pulse. They would get brighter then darker like a heart beat. The radio started to shut off on turn back on, and the acceleration was very jerky. My wife usually drives the car and when I asked her how long it has been doing this she didn't know it wasn't working properly. In any case we I got back from our trip and took it to the Lexus dealership. They siad the throttle position sensor needed to be replaced. The service consultant said that should fix the problems I am having. I drove the car back home a 50 mile trip and the lights came back on. The dealership hooked it back up and pulled the codes, then they said the knock sensors needed to be replaced. After I gave them the go ahead to replace the sensors they called back two hours later and said the transmission had a frozen cylinoid. The cost to replace the transmission would be $4,200. After I got back up off the floor I said to hold off on the replacing the trany and knock sensors. Long story short, I bought a used trany and had a local trany shop replace the trany for $1,400. When driving the car back from the trany shop the overdrive was working fine. I took the overdirve off and everything was still okay. When I had to accelerate hard to enter traffic the trac off and engine light came back on and the trany would not kick into overdirve again. Will relacing the knock sensors fix this problem, and does anyone have an idea on the plusing of the lights? The plusing usually is happening on start up and will stop after about 10 min. I would appreciate any help anyone can provide.
Thank you in advance