SRK

I keep forgetting about the water pump drive on these engines, but yes all items driven by the serpentine belt can be eliminated as a cause of the noise by dropping the belt off for a short time.

The easy thing is to drop the serpentine belt off and start the engine briefly. If the noise doesn't happen, check the alternator and water pump. If it does, it's the starter.

Yep, that's a bunch of crap. In the bad old days caster was sometimes "split", made greater on one side to cause the car to climb the camber (rise in the center) of the road, but that's rarely done anymore. On a flat surface the car should drive absolutely straight. On a cambered road it should drift slightly to the curb. Split caster causes the car to drive straight on camber, pull left on a flat surface. Lexus specs do not call for split caster. The "collision center" has screwed up, or failed to notice a bent suspension member before the alignment. Give them one more chance, and then find a shop that knows what they are doing if they can't adjust it properly. A "safety" feature for falling asleep at the wheel - that's a laugh.

Once you have a salvage title, everything else is irrelevant. So the low mileage means.....nothing. The issue is that the car was hit badly enough to be written off. In BC a car can be written off as salvage only or rebuildable. If rebuilt it must undergo a stringent inspection before being re-registered. And usually the car is photographed before and during the repair. I don't buy rebuilds, or deal in them, and neither do car dealerships. I do all my own work and document it in a log book. When I sell a car the log book I create goes with it. My advice on this one? Run Like Hell.

Sounds like loss of fuel pressure. You have good cranking speed, good compression on all cylinders, ignition. You need to check fuel pressure at the rail.

A reading below 10 is no good. The battery is probably undercharged or has failed. For sure the terminals should be removed, cleaned and re-tightened.

Some cars run the pump for second or two as the key is first turned to "run", others during cranking. Usually an RPM signal is needed to keep the pump running once the engine has started. You seem to have fuel pressure. So you're back to battery voltage. Check the voltage during cranking - should be no less than 10v.

It's not the spark plugs, it's not the injectors, it's not the air filter. It will be something that affects all eight cylinders at once. So as Landar suggests, check fuel pressure. If that's ok, then check for codes ( or do that first if they are present) and then check for system voltage. The ECM will shut off below a specific voltage. At the very least monitor voltage while the engine is running with a multi-meter. Place the battery on a charger if you suspect the battery - ensure it is fully charged. More than likely it is something simple. And I would suspect the battery, or it's cables, and/or the alternator. Given the effort needed to re and re the alternator I would not re-install it without replacing the brushes, which cost about $20.00.

An 11 inch wide wheel on a 1990 LS? The rear wheels on my Corvette are only 10! And it has 295 wide tires! This may not be the site for you......

Do you mean a full eight degrees or .8 (decimal 8) degrees? There is no technical reason for 8 in terms of handling so I suppose you're doing it for looks?

I think you have it figured out. That guy doped the coolant expansion tank. For sure he could "fix" it. And cheaply, then charge for a head gasket. Head gaskets are a rare occurrence on these engines. I know the tech at the local Lexus dealer quite well and he told me he has never had the heads off the V-8's, only the V-6's. Glad you dodged that bullet!

Thanks for the update. I'm glad everything is OK.

You're going to be removing the knuckle in any event, so when you do take it to a good automotive machine shop. They'll get the snapped bolt out. They have means and skills not understood by most people. Don't waste time in a wrecking yard unless the machine shop fails. And whatever you do don't attempt to remove the broken bolt yourself if you have no experience with that type of work. Easy-out brand removers are junk, penetrating oil is useless, drilling freehand destroys the adjacent material. A pro will fix it easily and you'll get back on the road. Which is the goal of course.

Agreed - the wife has the GS now and when I replace the Corvette it will be a 04-06 LS430. Is that a Mark V Dalek Manny? The Mark 1's scared the crap out of me in the sixties when I was a kid!

Tom I'm with you on keeping the car. My 98 GS is the exact colour combo I wanted, it's still got less than 100k miles on it, runs like new, and is better than most new cars I've ridden or driven. Until it decides to break in some major way, it will be in the family. Even then I might fix it.....

I don't know what kind of booster is used on the 430's, but if it is the combined master with traction and abs control, and uses a servo motor to build hydraulic assist pressure like in my 98GS, then the key has to be in the run position to get fluid to move. With the key on bleeding happens just like normal, off and it doesn't. Head Lexus tech told me that, and I think I read about it as well someplace else. It worked well for me and I found a couple of bubbles of air in the front callipers ( been there for years I think from the previous owner) and removing them sure improved the brake feel!

It would take a little while for the converters to overheat, and the colour is best seen at night. They'll also smoke a bit as road deposits burn off. The coils on your car are the normal external armature type. Each one fires four cylinders in alternate sequence with the other coil, so the engine will appear to idle quite well, but have no power. The cylinders that do not fire exhaust unburned fuel into both cats, which is why they'll overheat. The next thing to check would be fuel pressure and you'll need a gauge that can hook up to the schrader valve on the fuel rail. Pumps rarely fail. Coils fail though. When I sold my 92 LS I gave the manuals to the next owner - a buddy. He had a coil fail last year, and the primary resistance proved which coil quite quickly. Test both, and compare - they should be exactly the same. If not, the one that is outside the normal range is the culprit.

Sounds like one of the ignition coils has failed. Very common, and no codes are produced. Check the primary winding resistance of each of the two coils. I believe they are supposed to be around 5-7 ohms, but more than likely one of them will have a resistance substantially more than the other. The other option is to hook a timing light to the secondary wire coming out of the each coil and see which one is not producing spark voltage. Easier to check the primary though. Are your converters overheating and turning red hot? That's another sign. Stop driving the car until it is repaired too.

The mpg calculator in my Corvette is very accurate. I've since learned how it is measured. Apparently it is quite simple - injector dwell time ( time it is open ) gives fuel consumption instantaneously and then road speed is determined from the speedo signal ( usually in the differential ). Those two inputs are enough. Looking at the display in real time the merest movement of the throttle changes it dramatically. Then the average is calculated for that measure.

Great call! Well done with so little information.

The poor hot start, uneven idling, and O2 sensors reporting lean makes me think you've got an intake air leak. Something may not be right between the mass meter and the throttle valve, or even downstream of the throttle valve. It's worth considering that the O2 sensor may not be at fault, but reporting a fault - lean mixture. It's seeing excess oxygen, and that's interpreted as a lack of fuel to consume it. The trans may be hunting because the throttle is being held at a different angle to compensate for the lean condition - the trans shifting is controlled by many factors and probably throttle angle is one of them. Chances are good it's one thing, causing a lot of other problems, and finding the root cause is the goal, which then corrects everything else. Good luck!

That's great news! If the pump is silent, it's happy. The reason for the noise is that the clamp would have produced very high pressure on the discharge side of the pump, but reduced pressure at the fuel rail. The pump was under a huge load in other words, and removing the clamp allowed it to run at the designed pressure. And that's a cheap fix, which is good too! SRK

Whoever is replacing the pump should have the gauge to check fuel pressure - it's a simple hook-up. If the pressure is good during this "self-limiting" period then you know it isn't the pump, and you can save that money for the real problem. If not, it's the pump. The pump should be replaced because it is diagnosed to be bad, not because it is suspected so.

As I mentioned months ago you need to have the fuel pressure checked. Hook up the gauge, tape it to the windshield and drive the car. If the gauge is steady at the correct pressure, then the secondary ignition should be placed on a 'scope. You're looking for something that doesn't produce a code - that means it isn't a sensor that is monitored and something that affects all cylinders equally.

Yes I've tried the lottery thing, and I can only hope that the winners enjoy my money..... :cries: