OK Folks,
This is my first time on here, so be gentle. Bought my wife a Certified Pre-Owned 2000 ES-300 in 2001 and she has loved this car like no other. It has given her few problems and she loves driving it. The car now has 75,000 miles on it.
However, on a recent road trip, she noticed some light knocking from under the hood under load. She thought she might have gotten a bad tank of gas as she had stopped at an EL CHEAPO filling station along the way. At any rate, after filling the tank with a higher octane fuel, the knocking seemed to go away and returned only occasionally and with no discernable pattern.
A month later, the Check Engine AND the Traction Control Caution lights illuminated. They went out after refilling the car, but she wanted to have it checked out anyway, so she took it to our friendly Lexus Dealer.
They did their magic and diagnosed the car with the following problems:
Air Flow Meter - BAD
Bank1, Sensor1 Air Flow Sensor - BAD
Bank2, Sensor1 Air Flow Sensor - BAD
And then they told me what it was going to cost to fix it.
Now I need to replace my own personal Head Gasket because (drum roll please)... the quoted price to replace these three sensors is:
$1245 US !!! ($283 each for the bank sensors, $168 for the Air Flow Meter, and the rest is labor)
I told them to button the car back up, don't do anything to it and I'd get back to them later. I also told the guy he ought to come to my house and paint the damned thing for that kind of money. I think he felt I was being a bit of an !Removed!.
At any rate, I've seen some comments about this kind of problem before, but if any of you are experts, I'd appreciate a bit of advice. I'm thinking of farming this problem out to the local Goodyear service center - or even attempting the fix myself.
All replies are welcomed.
Thanks Much,
Al Greene
g4driver
night56owl@yahoo.com