nc211

;)

Great story about your name, Baja.  Especially funny about the flat-black space for numbers.  Hope your friend gets the door pillars back in straight.  And Lead Foot, I also do some minor offroading.  All this talk of Michelin vs. Continental vs. Vogue tires, pfft.  I'm thinking of some Mickey Thompson Mudders and a nice lift kit.  Forget slamming the car, I want to go UP!  I was on some dirt trails the other day and took some pictures, but I also figured I'd get flamed.  So this is our secret...shhhh.

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Now that's my kind of member! I'll bring the beer, you bring the mud! :D

I can assure you, if the car was ever registered in the New Orleans area during the dates of the hurricane, there will be a warning at the end of the detailed breakdown portion on the carfax. I know this because I ran one for a member here from that area not too long ago :whistles: , and it had a big red warning to consumers that the car was registered in the affected counties of Katrina during those dates. But I can assure you his car is just fine ;) . Infact, it's got more than twice the miles mine does, and looks twice as good.

Baja, on a side note, one thing you should do is make sure the air filter is clean as a whistle. This helps big time not only in mpg, but in engine smoothness and pick-up. I've noticed on mine that it gets pretty dirty every 6 weeks or so. That big ole' engine can suck in some air! I just hit it with my shop vac and while I have the plastic air intake off, I will usually rinse it out with water and let it dry.

I agree with Blake too, I would like to see a more pronounced change in the design. It's starting to grow on me, looks a lot better this morning.

I think you can get away with mid-grade, but it likes premium and is recommended. My 95' has a 4 gear transmission, as where yours has 5. To use as a judgement, my 95' gets around 19-20 in the city, and 25-27 on the highway. Using your cruise control is a huge help! I think Blake told me that the 5 gear tranny gets around 28-29 highway? But if you put your foot in it, well, it is a V8 after all. Not as thirsty as the old 5.0 Mustang engines, but still can get thirsty.

Actually Baja, that's not that bad of a price for the car. NADA values for a 98' with 175,000 miles in your neck of the woods is:

Trade in value: $11,300

Loan value: $9,875

Full Retail: $14,575

Of course this is assuming the car is in perfect condition and does NOT have the Nakamichi Stereo or Sunroof...of which I'm positive it does have a sunroof. So for the sunroof you can tack on another $400-$450. I'm going to send you an email, check your message box. I can't send you a PM just yet, you don't have enough posts for that to be activated.

What is the price?

I ask this since you can find 95-98s with 100k miles for a fair price. No matter what the price is 80k miles is 80k miles. Of course highway is different then all around, but if you have 180k then you drove it all around more then the car with 100k.

Cheers.. Dont rush to buy, since there are plenty.

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I may have rushed a little; knowing the history made it of a little more value than it would have otherwise. AND absent the awareness there were people like you guys willing to share experience so freely left me with just the online pricing guides as a reference point. I don't place a lot of stock in eBay pricing, that would scare me to death to bid without kicking the tires. Committed now anyway. Price will be slightly less than $10k. How high is this in your opinion? Baja

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HAHAHAA!!! NICE MAN!!!! Trust me, you'll be laughing your @#$ off when you see how much it could have cost you! Especially on those air struts! I'm assuming you've got air stuts sense you said they're leaking? That dealership is going to be ticked off at whoever issued that CPO. You got 18 miles left of coverage. Are you sure you don't feel some sort of shimmy, hesitation, ooohhhh, I got it, your valves are ticking!!!! Well done man, well done!

I was thinking the same thing, especially the BMW part of the raised trunk lines. Looks pretty good though, but I don't know, something's just not right in my opinion. I don't know what it is, but something about it just doesn't say "LS" to me. Maybe it's the modern, slicked back aerodynamics in comparision to the existing LS's out there. I view the LS as more of a big, cruiser machine personally, not a sports type machine. But time will tell. I hated the new Maximas when they came out, but have started to grow on me now. Except for the grill....still looks buck-toothed to me.

Prix, you need to talk to ArmyofOne on this one. He's a great guy and might have a contact number for a cheaper price on the airstruts. I would be a little cautious about buying these parts on Ebay. Not saying it's bad, but you don't want to be in this situation again 12 months from now due to knock of quality. She's a Lexus, not a Chevy, and they can be a little tempermental with non-oem quality parts.

http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index...pic=24721&st=15

ps, yeah, the lingo for the LS is Strut = Shock in the manner you're asking about.

I thought about doing just that, but have pushed my luck with my better half on my obsession with the car. I think she might go get another cat if she catches me jacking up the car one more time in the driveway. Dude, I can't handle another curtain swinging critter who seems to like eating the insoles of my shoes. We're up to 3 as is, and none of them get along. So I think I'll just resign myself to the fact that the tires are getting close to replacement anyway due to tread conditions and let the smoke clear for a bit. Luckly though she does not have any interest in this website, thank god, otherwise I'd be living in a freakin' zoo right about now. The down side to loving a true Carolina' country girl....she looooves animals. Upside is that she hasn't the faintest idea about jewelry!

the jerking is called "Off Throttle Shock" as identified by lexus. they attribute this to the faulty ecu sending a signal to the engine that drops the fuel supply to the enging too much when you take your foot off the gas.

yeah man, I agree. It sounds like either strut rods or actual struts. you've got air suspension too right?

yeah, i think i'll pass on the toyos and kuhmos of the tire world and stick with the brand names. The tires on there now "Michelins" were put on by the previous owner. Judging by the fact that I've now put 24k miles on the car since I purchased it back in May 04', and I'm at 4/32 of tread left, I figure they were probably half used up when I got it. What really convinced the mechanic it is tire related is that the wobble feeling is at it's worst when the tires are cold, first thing in the morning. The warmer they get, the better the wobble gets. Whew, well, I'm happy it's something related to normal wear and tear and not mechanical. However, I do forsee the need for new driveshaft flex couplings in the future. I'd seriously doubt 7 years and 84k miles of having that off-throttle jerking from the old ecu hasn't had some sort of advanced negative impact on those things. The mechanic did say that when he turned the prop shaft by hand, he could hear a little metal on metal clicking...free-play. But said nothing to worry about at this point. Even if it doesn't turn out to be the tires, I need new ones anyway. But my money is on the tires too.

Just wanted to update this thread. The problem does indeed seem to be with the tires. It appears that a belt has shifted somewhere on one or two of them. There are no physical signs of this problem on the tires "yet", but professionally diagnoised as such by a local shop that specializes in older, high mileage Lexus cars. It is assumed that I probably hit a bad pothole on the right side at some point, damaging both the front and rear right tires. Since they've been rotated several times over the past few months, I have literally been chasing this thing around the car. New tires will be ordered w/n the next few weeks.

Not sure. You might want to check the rx300 forum, this is the LS one. ;)

Got the answer, it's the tires. The shop who looked it over specializes solely in high mileage Lexus cars, and the owners both have older LS's like ours. They said they couldn't find anything wrong with the actual mechanical parts, couldn't find any runout on the axles, rims or even the tires. They said the tire wear pattern is excellent, but the tread is down to 4/32. At 2/32 North Carolina requires new tires or it won't pass inspection. The shop said it can be close to impossible to pinpoint where exactly the bad belt is when the outter surface doesn't display any of the characteristics. He did mention however that he has been seeing an increase in Michelin tires coming in with bad belts lately. So, I'll drive it for a little while longer on this set of Michelins while I save up for some new tires. He said he and his busniess partner have been seeing great results with Toyo tires and recently put them on thier own cars. Anyway, don't want to start a debate on tire prefference here, but it appears the mystery wobble is indeed tire related. Cost of diagnostic and tire balancing....$100. Whew, I can live with that.

Well she's at the specialist shop now. The waiting has begun. This sucks, it's like waiting to get your final's back that you think you might have bombed, but not quite sure the damage you've done to yourself. Oh how I don't miss that. Actually, I do considering a C is much cheaper than a broken Lexus. I think it's either something very simple and I'll be out $150, or something on the other end of the stick at around $1,000. Whatever it is, it'll be fixed. I'm thinking either tires "most likely", flex-coupling(s) on drive shaft "quite possible" or tie rod / rack related "God help me, need a ski mask to rob the bank".

Kewl, I must admit man, you sure do come up with some off the wall questions! I'm not sure if the 17 inch tires will slow down a car, but I would assume due to physics that it wouldn't so much as slow it down, but require more power to keep it going. Bigger the wheel, bigger the dynamics. But I'm a finance guy, not a scientist so I'm not really sure. I do know this though, bigger the wheel, more money it costs which means less gas in the tank, resulting in reduced speed to keep the car going! ;)

That's a very broud question with several issues. These cars' suspension components "control arms and strut rods" are attached to the cars' frame via rubber bushings. The bushings wear out over time and age, creating clunking, squeeking and banging noises. You'll know it right away if you need one or two replaced. It's standard issue proceedure for these cars, and they ALL will face it at some point. It's usually in the 100k-130k range, but that depends on the way the car has been driven too...city v. highway...good roads v. bad roads. One thing you must learn about the LS400 is to avoid the dealership if at all possible. And you'll find that it is very possible to avoid them. They charge way too much, and typically will diagnois a problem with a general reply "the whole thing needs to be replaced". I suggest you learn about www.parts.com and drill down to Lexus. I like Discounted Toyota Parts website to buy my parts. To give you an example, my dealership here in Raleigh will sell a strut rod for $190. But at the website I use, I can get the exact same thing for $90. The dealership will charge 3 hours of labor @ $107 an hour to install. With the info here, you can do it yourself on some random sunday in the shade in about 2 hours...first time. Best thing to do, buy the part online and find a good indi mechanic you trust and has a little bit of knowledge of Toyota products and take it to them. The average hourly rate is around $65. You want one that won't quote by the hour for each individual part, especially when one part needs to come off in order to replace another. You want one that will combine the two. Suspension on these cars are very good, and very durable, but like all cars, they too will wear out. My signature below will show that I've replaced everything suspension related. I did this because I had the "clunk" and a squeek. Now I could have isolated the problem and maybe replaced one or two parts. But I decided to hit everything at one time and be done with it for another 100k. But my car was city driven, and Raleigh has horrible roads. So mine were worn out beyond the norm. I know Blake has over 250k on his, and it's the original parts. All of my suspension replacement parts, including labor, cost around the $2,500 range. Not too bad for everything, and ArmyofOne helped me out on getting the parts. The dealership will quote close to that for one wheel side alone probably. SK is right, this is probably the only thing you'll face with the car outside of the normal brake pads, rotors and tires. Don't use mine as a basis for the norm. I think mine was neglected a bit by the previous owner, which was a corporate car. I thought it was single owner in a corporate name "President's car", but I don't think so anymore. I think it had several drivers in the business, with no telling how it was driven. But all in all, still a wonderful car. I'm at 108k miles, and other than probably a bad set of tires, she's smooth as butter and solid as a rock. Welcome to the club amigo!

I have a high mileage 98 LS400 which i also bought only because it was perfectly dealer only maintained.

I would not worry about anything other than the usual suspension issues of such a large car.

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Thanks very much. Any specifics on suspension that you have dealt with?

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will you guys post up some links to those mich. tires? the ones i'm seeing are $160, or the wrong ones.

time to go to bed. ohhhh, i'm gonna be hurtin' in the morning.

You guys are nuts.

I'm handing over my "floral pattern" duke boys here; there is no way on God's green earth that I'm going to get away with Mich., tires this time around. They're just too expensive for my "new" blond accountant to allow. So, I'm stuck with B+ tires instead of A+. I would rather ride on a vibrating LS than listen to her remind me how smooth my $600 tires are....Guys, we might loose the battle here and there,,,, but we'll win the war.

alsalih, that is interesting about the starter. I'm just curious though, not trying to be a smarta** or anything. But wasn't there a recall for the starter on these cars many years back? The only reason why I ask is because the previous owner of my 95 had the starter replaced, and it said "under recall". The dealer told me some b/s excuse that they were too quiet and people were burning them up by holding the key in start mode too long. You sound very knowledgeable with this, do you know if it's true?

I'm actually very disturbed that you would need to replace your starter on 98 model, which is what I have! Under normal usage they should last past 200K as in my previous Lexus. In any case, Denso is OEM supplier for Toyota and is not a lower price option. The OEM components are Japanese made Denso (previously called NipponDenso ND). The ones you get in the states are US made Denso components and sometimes might have minimal variations from the original (air filter element might be colored). To get to the point, if you’re going to go through the trouble of removing the intake manifold to replace the starter on this vehicle then go with the best rebuilt starter you can buy and that would be Denso. I would only go with Bosch if I was intending on selling the vehicle in the real near future!

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You're preachin' to the choir son, preachin' to the choir. ;)

Denso is offered as a lower cost option to Lexus OEM on some parts, like the throttle position sensor and so forth. I would go with the Denso myself based upon that fact alone. And not just by the general market place either, but dealerships wil elect to use Denso to make a bigger spread on the total bill STUCK to the customer. I know my car has a Denso TPS, and it was replaced by the dealership.