jgr7

Here in California as of the 1st of Jan if you have your windshield wipers on you also must have on your headlights. DRL might keep you from getting a ticket if you live in Calif. Jeff

Ericok, I had a 93 previa with 216k also until a guy made an illegal u-turn in front of me on a 2 lane hwy and I center punched him and totaled it. That was 3 years ago. That van was bullit proof only changed the tranny fluid one time, at 90k miles. Other than brakes ,tires , one set of shocks and struts and one starter at 45k and 2 sets of plugs, cap rotar, one set of wires. I never had to fix anything else. I was going to drive it till it died, which I'm sure would have been many more thousands of miles. Great car.

A most important thing to remember is that your tires are also rated for a certain MPH and the limit is also so you don't have a tire fly apart at a speed that it is not rated for. If you change the limiter change your tires also to the proper speed rating.

Run a carfax report and it will tell you the in service date, the date the dealer sent registration to DMV.

What i'm looking for is not a frame but the holder that lets the frame sit against the bumper flat. The bumper on the 2000 is not flat in the center and with just a frame the plate has a gap behind it, or if you tighten it down tight it bends the plate. This holder or spacer goes between the plate and the bumper. Jeff

Could someone with a 2000 tell me if these parts no 16 and 15 in the picture in this link are what I need to mount my license plate. I didn't have the holder and the cheapo frame holder that came with the car came off when my wife went through the car wash. The dealer told my wife $50 for the plate holder. http://www.trademotion.com/partlocator/ind...=16&catalogid=2 Thanks Jeff

I will wish you good luck labs4me and hope all turns out the way you want. Jeff

sorry for the long posts but I think you guys will like it. Also from the same GM guy. The octane rating of the fuel simply indicates the resistence to detonation that the fuel has. It really has nothing to do with "quality" of the fuel or anything else. When the spark is ignited in the combustion chamber the fuel/air mixture starts to burn in an orderly fashion across the chamber...much like the ripples in a pond from a stone dropped in. As the burn progresses the heat and pressure in the combustion chamber builds. If the end gas (the unburned gas) in the farthest reaches of the combustion chamber gets too hot and under too much pressure it can spontaneously combust. That is called detonation or spark knock. It is the rattling sound that you hear in some cars when you run low octane fuel. It is not good. The octane rating of the fuel indicates how "good" the fuel is at resisting that detonation or spontaneous combustion of the end gas. The spontaneous combustion of the end gas is potentially damaging to the engine and creates the noise that you hear because the normal "gradual" pressure rise is suddenly changed due to the high pressure spike in the chamber caused by the spontaneous combustion of the end gas and the rapid, sudden expansion of the gases at more than one flame front. That sudden pressure rise "rings" the structure of the engine much like hitting it with a hammer would and the resonance of the engine structure is what you hear as spark knock. (The higher the octane, the slower burning the fuel. The slower burn produces a more even combustion, preventing hot spots and making a little more power.) This statement is a common misconception about octane ratings of fuel. There is no difference in the burn rate of the fuel whether it is regular or premium. All gasoline burns at the same rate (within practical reason..at least close enough for this discussion). The only difference in the fuel is it's resistence to that spontaneous combustion in the end gas that is being heated and pressurized by the normal burn in the chamber. No difference in burn rate. This is easy to prove as , if there WAS a difference in burn rate between fuels, an engine would make different power levels on different fuels and/or the spark timing would have to be adjusted to account for the change in burn rates. This doesn't happen. On an engine dyno, the engine will make the same power regardless of the octane rating of the fuel at the same , fixed spark advance. If the engine starts to knock due to the lower octane rating then the spark would have to be retarded to stop the detonation and the power would drop...but...the power is dropping due to the change in spark advance...not a change in the burn rate of the fuel. This issue gets really confusing, leading to the idea of different burn rates, etc... because there are many different ways to increase the octane rating of commercial gasoline. If the gasoline is pure gasoline the gasoline that is higher octane rating will be blended differently and will have a higher percentage of...octane in it. But, adding lead to fuel increases the octane rating. Adding alcohol increases the octane rating. MMTBE and other compounds increase the octane rating. Alcohol burns slower than gasoline....so...a "premium" fuel spiked with 10% alcohol to get the octane rating (common) will burn a little slower. Not because of the octane rating....but because of the alcohol in the fuel. This also leads to the myth that regular fuel will "make more power" ... someone must have run regular and premium on an engine on a dyno that was jetted perfectly and when they put the premium in (spiked presumably with alcohol 10%) the engine ran a little lean (10% alcohol will make it 5% lean) and made less power. So...the old wives tale of regular making more power is born....

I borrowed this from another forum. The author is a powertrain engineer for GM. There is a big difference between a phenomenon called pre-ignition and another , related but different phenomenon called spark knock or detonation. If the end gas in the chamber spontaneously combusts due to heat and compression from the normally burning mixture that is called detonation or spark knock. Key here is that it occurs AFTER the spark plug ignites the mixture normally. The mixture ignites, burns and if the end gas gets too hot or too compressed it spontaneously combusts. The octane rating of the fuel tells how well it resists this spontaneous combustion. Detonation or spark knock makes the characteristic "pinging" or "knocking" marbley noise from the engine. If the fuel/air mixture ignites BEFORE the spark plug arcs as suggested then that is called preignition. The mixture will NOT just spontaneously combust under those conditions...it needs an ignition source such as an overheated spark plug electrode or glowing carbon deposits in the chamber to ignite it before the spark. There is simply not enough compression in a gasoline passenger car engine to spontaneously ignite or combust the mixture. Since the phenomenon of pre-ignition requires an alternate ignition source increasing the octane rating of the fuel will not prevent pre-igntion. Octane rating has virtually no affect on pure preignition. Also, you cannot hear pre-ignition and if preignition occurs it is almost a guaranteed engine destroying event. Holes in pistons most likely.

My 2000 doesn't have one.

If you lost the last key with the remote in it you are screwed. When I bought my RX the dealer only got 1 key with remote when they took the car in on trade, not a Lexus dealer. I made sure that the dealer bought me another remote key. The catch was though I had to take the car to the Lexus dealer with proof of ownership before I could order a new key. The Lexus dealer told me that it is a good idea to always make sure that if you loose one of the remote keys to get a new one as you would have to replace the computer if you loose both remotes. It seems that you need one to get into the computer to program the other one. I hope you find the key. Jeff

The rattle that developed after I bought my RX has been fixed. It sounded as though it was coming from the front passenger side of the car, between 20-45 MPH it would come and go mostly on rough streets. I checked everything I could check. Then I had to make a kind of hard stop and I heard another noise like something moving around in the rear area. I get looking around in the back and I found the large nut holding the spare tire was so loose that the tire was sliding around, and the rattle was the washer between the large nut and the rim. Tightened it up and no more rattle. :) Jeff

bartkat, I'm not hollering about dirt in my engines I use a paper filter and change it once in a while. The debate is about the type of filter. K&N filter alone isn't going to increase anything enough to talk about so have fun with your mods just don't expect too much. Thats all I'm saying. The VVT engine will help with emmisions but is really to give a broader power range to an engine which will lead to better fuel economy as well as fewer emmisions. Here is a link from Toyota on VVT. http://www.toyota-europe.com/technology/gl...gloss_vvti.html

bartkat that is true on the mid and low end cars that compete for high mileage etc. but we are talking about high end fairly high HP VVT engines that were designed for racing. I don't know about yours but my RX only gets about 20 mpg, not exactly high mileage. My Eldorado got 22 mpg with the same driving except I used to do a lot of WOT with the caddy getting on the freeway. Love the sound of that Northstar engine. I'm sure that in racing applications you will be able to squeeze out more HP but were talking about a stock engine in a Lexus. Most of the HP gained with air cleaner/filter mods are only seen at WOT. Not your average driving style I hope. I really don't think that the air cleaner/filter has anything to do with emissions either. It is there to protect the engine thats all. The EPA could care less if our expensive engines wear out faster from dirt getting sucked into the intake. Jeff

TunedRX300 I'm not sure what transmissions have to do with K&N filters and increased performance. Yes Toyota is in business to make money that is why the make such a quality product. If all those Transmissions are bad then they would be up the creek with out a paddle, just how many is "so many" I can't even find any numbers. I'm sure that there are bad transmissions out there but what is the % to the number of this type transmission. It does suck to have gotten one of the bad ones, but I see these cars every where I go and if the transmissions were that bad people wouldn't buy them. Jeff

I can't help but thinking that Toyota has put much time and money into R&D for these engines. To think that K&N is going to make a drop in that will make the Toyota perform that much better just seems off to me. Most modern VVT engines as well as others have been tuned to perfection by the engineers. These guys don't build an engine and say well thats close enough lets let K&N finish the job. I think that it takes at least a 15 HP increase to give you a seat of the pants indication of more power. I've seen guys try to put a new throttle body on a car that can't use all the air it gets now and lose power. If you want more power you have to spend $$$. Pull off the heads and open them up , different cams new throttle body, new intake, then the new air intake and exhaust. Now you will have some HP if you can get the computer to work with all these mods, which you most likely will not. If you are trying to get better gas mileage well good luck, if your like me I love the sound of full throttle and there goes the MPG straight down the crapper LOL. So have fun putting stuff on your car, thats what is fun about owning a car. Just don't have to high of expectations.

One of the features in the Caddy is the OBD that is accessed thru the AC controls you turn on the ignition but don't start car and then hold the off button and the warmer button at the same time and it will go into diagnostics mode on the display. You check all trouble codes as well as trouble shoot many items. Like you can turn off the fuel injectors 1 at a time and check for a clooged injector by how the engine idles, lots of other neat things you can do also. All cars should have this built in.

I agree with wwest, trans fluid is in a closed system and unless there is some kind of event that has happened to the trans, like over heating, towing a trailer or something causing a pressure drop that would lead to slipping. Trans fluid should and does last into the 100ks on many cars. I hate to keep going back to my Cadillac that I traded in on the RX, but those have a Northstar with 300hp, front drive a 4T80E automatic trans and it goes 100k+ on the fluid change. Many of the 4T80E failures that I have heard about were reported within a few thousand miles of having a trans flush. I haven't seen any stats on how many trans failures Lexus as well as Toyota have had on these transmissions. And I know that there are some members here that have had failures, but man I sure see a whole lot of these cars running around and haven't heard of any recalls. It may be just the luck of the draw. Jeff

My 94 Eldorado had the oil life monitor also and it never let me get much past 6.5k with out hitting 10% oil life left, at that point it comes up in the DIC display every time you start the car until you reset it. Cadillac also has a Transmission fluid monitor. Most of the guys that I've talked to about the trans monitor say it stays at 100% until you have an event in the trans like shift solinoids or an over heating problem. At that point the life indicator drops real fast to 10% and you change and reset. Cadillac recomends a change at 100k for the trans. Jeff

I picked up my 2000 with 17.5K for 26k lile new but no Nav, oh well I guess I will have to use the map program from my computer. If you haven't bought it yet and its not from a stealership you can get service info on it from any Lexus dealer with the VIN number. This will let you know if Lexus did the recomended service. Jeff

SK I haven't had my 2k RX long enough to have done the brakes yet,it only has 19,500. I'm not sure what type of e-brake it uses. Jeff

SK with the c clamps what do you use to turn the pistons on the rear? When I tried to use a c-clamp it wouldn't work you have to turn the pistons as well as push them in and with the c-clamp the c foot didn't rotate and screw the piston back in. The one that I got from autozone has a pin to rotate the c foot as you turn the screw in and it rotates the piston back into the caliper. Did you drill your c-clamp and put in a pin?

Does there seem to be any kind of pattern on the trans failures? Towing or using the ect button in either mode?

When I do rear discs I get the loaner from AutoZone, free. Same type of tool. Jeff