blake918

Any of your neighbors get a video clip of this?? Just imagining someone hopping in to their trunk and jumping around makes me laugh histerically!

Absolutely! I love before and after pics. Well it looks like the Leatherique won't be here until tomorrow. :( I guess it's for the better because I want it to warm up some more(only 70 deg down here) so that the leather pores open right up to gulp down the Leatherique! Lexol is everywhere(Pepboys, AutoZone, etc.)...I think WalMart even carries it! For a cleaner, nothing-for $5 atleast- is better than Mr. Clean's magic erasers. I took some before and afters of what it did to the interior my car...all I can say is it was Amazing! The pics are in a post a few topics below in "great New Cleaning Tool" if anyone is interested.

My Leatherique treatments should be here tomorrow. I've used just about everything: Lexol, Coco Butter, Griots Garage Leather Rejuvinator. They all soften the leather a very little bit. Since the Leatherique was $70-Rejuvinator Oil and Pristene Clean...I bought the big bottles since I'd consider my leather almost to the cardboard stage, I hope it will work the wonders they claim on their website! I'll let yall know how the Leatherique stacks up to the competition. I'm confident that it will work great! :D

Lexur, I was thinking the same thing about the tax and shipping charges with newlexusparts.com that showed up on their website. So, I called them before I ordered, and they said that there is no tax and shipping and to disregard the website indicators. I was skeptical, but I went through with the online order. It all worked out perfectly-no tax(for residents outside of TX) and no shipping! $5 for a hood strut?? Tell me more! Irontoad has many, many parts; you have to email them for anything that's not on their site....I like newlexusparts better because they have every single componet of the car listed! I'm going to be calling Sammy real soon because my burnt LCD is driving me insane. Aww two LS's...I'm jealous! ;) :D

I agree! I found someone on ebay that was selling OEM hood struts. I convinced them to sell me 2 of them for $90 shipped to my door. Not too bad for the real deals. B) I mainly wanted the real hood struts, so I guess that's why I ponied up the extra $$! Also, lexur, newlexusparts.com is an excellent OEM parts source. I made an order from them and got it in about 3 days...1 day to pull everything together and 2 day shipping-as per their order status viewer. With their great prices, no tax, and free shipping, they're hard to beat!!! BTW, what car do you have? 96 or 01(your profile says 01 and a post says 96)?

Congrats! :D :D I'm glad it finally worked out for you! Good luck witht the legal battle, and enjoy the "new" car!!!! B)

Denny, I'm with you on the tailgating. "LLB" that's great! :) Around town I don't do it and I certainly don't do it for sport like our little friend in the Hyundai, but when some iddiot is doing 50 in the far left lane with no other way for me to get around, I have no problem with riding their bumper a little to move them out of the way. Tailgating is no more discourtious than them doing 50 in the fast lane especially here in LA we have signs posted on the hwy that say slow traffic keep right...IMO. My favorite is to come up on put-putting Mercedes Benz because they give you this look like you're not good enough to tailgate my $85k car.

Yikes! 6-8 times??? My car only gives me one very controlled and firm 'up and down' motion when I Slam on the brakes. This might be something to look into, but since your vibrations only come through the shifter and gas pedal, it would lead one to believe that you would have a bad motor mount or something. Does the car idle smoothly? Start the car and grab ahold the steering wheel; you shouldn't feel anything. My machine has 5x(225k) your mileage, and I have trouble telling if the car is on or not. Look in the paper to find a 93-94 to drive as the 00 is quite a different animal. Just pretend that you're going to buy it as I'm doubtful that many sellers would let someone just go and drive their car for comparison! I agree your thoroughness is quite impressive! ;)

You couldn't pay me enough money to ride a motorcycle in the States! I'm even paranoid of the saftey of small cars like Corollas or Civics. My Uncle just got his halo off last month from his motorcycle accident. What's a halo??? A 15lbs. structure that has 4 posts that holds the 4 pins drilled into your skull straight so that his neck would grow back properly. He got his halo through a motorcycle accident; he lost control on a hill and went down a cliff totaling his gorgeous $25k Harley. A pretty bike definantly isn't worth the inevitable risk to me! A few months before this accident, there was another involving a heavy duty truck-luckily just the bike was hurt because he jumped off of the bike. I much rather riding in the lap of luxury in my fully enclosed, 2 ton LS400. B) Another thing, bikers in Louisiana drive like iddiots-going in between traffic(I want to open my door up when they do this!) and what not. Today I took a little 400mile trip to go pick up something for my dad. On the highway, this group of bikers cut in front of me-going 70- and then slowed down to 55 with no traffic is in sight. Wtf??? Do they want me to run them over? Not a single 1 was wearing a helment. Even better, our "great" state doesn't require helments! How smart is this??? Why not get rid of seat belt laws while we are at it? It's not much different to me!

We'd like to think so, but obviously it hasn't. You give Lexus too much credit! I'm in no way bashing Lexus, but no car manufacture is perfect. With this mentality, you should just let the tranny lag which I know drives(no pun intended...lol) you insane rool off your back because Lexus engineered the tranny and electronic throttle to act that way. Or I should let my burnt LCD go(I've never ever seen this on any car but Lexus!)? Right? NO, I don't think so!! Somewhere along the way things didn't do according to their plans. Regardless of the wire being corroded or not(-in my case it wasn't, I changed because of suggestion), I replaced my ground with a wire that is probably 2-3x the size of the OEM wire. So, even if you could say that my OEM was still good, this much, much larger wire is better by default.

Were these your own personal cars that you drove regularly? Didn't you work as a mechanic for a while?(I think you've said that before @ a Caddy dealer, huh??) So, you would at most drive the car around the block for a test to makes sure all is well-never for an extended period of time. That is simply not good enough. You need to drive the car every single day of the week so you can know exactly what has changed. If I didn't drive my ES regularly, I would have never know that there was any change, but I do, so I know.

This is so not true! A bolt in OEM supercharger would be awesome, but I don't think I'll be seeing them at my local Lexus dealer(muchless the factory) anytime soon!!! I think we could all think of at least 1k different items that would improve our cars, but because Lexus of New Orleans doesn't offer it at their parts counter or they don't bolt it in in Japan it's junk??? Come on!!!! Grant it, a new ground in your 2003 ES would do very little as your's still brand new, but in the MCV10's-like the bulk of us have-they do make a difference as the wires get old and don't work as well as they did in back in the early 90's. I'm just curious about why you and several others are so doubtful of a $10 DIY modification. It's not like I or SK or any others that have done this work for wire manufacturers! lol Bran, take a look at what happened with my car after the new ground... http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index...&hl=ground+wire . Gain in hp??? That's not why I did this! I did it because I read on this site that it would improve my car in some way, shape, or form, and this claim was delivered upon perfectly!!-Thanks SK. I felt an overall improvement in my car's behavior specifically in the powertrain as noted by my own consistant "experiments." Worth $10? You bet your sweet Toyota! Why are you guys so inclined to bash something you haven't even tried??? I'm not offended at all. However, I'm just confused by the responses from people that haven't tried this mod before! <_<

Get a new ground wire! I got my setup from PepBoys for $12 and 30min. of installation-at a very relaxd pace! I and a few others on here ACTUALLY have experience with new ground wires, and we can all verify that they are worth the time and money-$10 and 30min! Go look at your current ground; if it's anything like the one in my '94, it looks like a little shoe-string...lol. When/If you buy a new one, buy a 1gauge wire-it's massive!!! If your ground is similar to my '94-which it should be!-there is 1 ground with 2 wires coming off of it. I bought a 1gauge and a cheapo 4 or 6 gauge wire to serve as the smaller wire that goes under the battery. Ever since I changed the ground, my car has been better in a number of ways. There is a post somewhere on here where everyone is telling me that all of these improvements are coinsidences(or my imagination!...one of the 2!) that just so happened after I put in a new ground! Everyone who hasn't done this to their older car will definantly debate it with you. ;) Try it, and you'll see for yourself!

1995 LS400 with 225,000 miles and going strong! B) BTW, 90LS that's probably my vote that you saw as I voted a few days before I wrote this.

Looks very sharp Silver. B) Keep up the good work!

My '94 has a very random overheating problem. Somedays it's fine, and then all of a sudden the temp races up to the red marking. The car will overheat while it's moving and/or while it's motionless, but when I slip it into neutral and goose it a few times, it makes the fan kick on and the car is fine. The problem is the fan doesn't kick on when it's supposed to. Any ideas?????? I've already replaced a fried cooling fan relay. I'm thinking some sensor is gone because when the fan kicks in the car is very, very cool. After reading through numerous old posts, it seems as though low p/s fluid and low coolant levels are common causes. I checked both, and all fluid levels look fine. And to top it all off, I sold my Lexus repair manuals because I had a buyer lined up. Needless to say, I'll be putting the sale off until I get this fixed.

I feel like a total a_s for this post because I didn't even refill the car with conventional oil(...a sudden change of heart I guess!) !!! Stevie, I did what you said...on Saturday, I filled the LS up with Mobile 1 full synthetic and a Toyota filter(it was good to see the previous owner had a Mobile 1 filter on the car as I hear that they are pretty decent filters too!). The car has been under close surveilance, and no leaks in about 4 days, so I think all will be well! Thanks for all of the help :D ! At least we have some suggestions for those not wanting to use synthetics(for whatever reason!)!!! :whistles:

What is the kick down switch??

Thanks :D :D

I was just being facetious! I did get a good bit of "black"-I suppose oxidation and what not-when I used the Klasse AIO. Can any dirt on the paint's surface be hazzardous when you use the car duster? I'll have the pics this afternoon-my mom has the LS because I needed her SUV to go get my seat, console, and steering wheel :D ).

'93- Thanks! I used Mr. Clean Magic Erasers; see the post above(Great New Cleaning Tool) for the whole story and some before and after shots of the "Magic" they worked on my seats. I use Griots Garage Leather Rejuvinator to maintain, but I'm going to fork up $60 for Leatherique real soon! Steve-I'll get those pics today. First, I need to go get a scraper to get all of the pollen off of the car! For the gauge cluster, I think I'm just going to replace the lense because the marks on there are really bad, and the ECT Power light is burnt and I want to get that replaced, so I figured I might as well change the lense while I have the thing open-newlexusparts.com has it for $20...not too bad to me! I don't ever, ever use the mode, but it just bugs me knowing that it's burnt out!

Bandit, I never did thank you your your recommendation of the Erasers, so THANK YOU :D !!!! I bought all 3 of those pieces from a junkyard in Little Rock....AA Auto: 1 (800)336 2231- ask for Mike-he was most helpful and great to deal with! They only carry foreign parts, so there's a good chance they'll have what you need, and they ship for free! I had American Stitches do the wheel in my ES300; they did a fine job, but I'm not up to spending $320 on a wheel that I can get something very similar for $100. ;) Jo, I used Mr. Clean Magic Erasers to cut through all of that grime Woolite didn't even phase it! They are about $5 for 4 erasers. Check your local grocery store's cleaning isle. ;)

Yep :D ...pretty incredible! My 'new' driver's seat, console, and steering wheel will be here today or tomorrow. I can't wait!

Littlerock, how did you go about ordering from Pioneer? I need an lcd for ls LS400 that has the Pioneer system. Any leads would be awesome(website, phone number, etc.?). ;) I didn't think about this when I first read the post, but all Pioneer systems are called "Lexus Premium Sound" systems, and the Nak has the Nak logo along with their name...likewise on the newer cars there is a "Mark Levinson" logo. What dealer told you that you'd have to pull the entire stereo out?? :o

I did search and everything is on synthetic oil(mainly mobile1 vs. amsoil) and "should I switch to synthetic?"...not the info I need! My car has 225k, and I don't want to take any chances at all with a possible oil leak! Jim-you like Pennzoil and Valvoline? Thanks for the suggestion!