nc211

Pop the brake booster line from the brake fluid reserve tank, put it into about a cup of seafoam, have someone start the car, and then shut it off after the seafoam is pulled in "while be very quick, maybe 2, 3 seconds". Let the car sit for about 20 minutes. Then start it "it will cough, chuckle, and kick, but it will start", once it's started, rev that sucker like you stole it. It'll smoke out the neighborhood. You won't screw it up man, it's very simple. My only advice is to make sure the car is warmed up first, take it for a 20 minute drive to get everything warmed up and lubricated. I say this, because you don't want to rev up a cold engine while clearing the seafoam. If you throw a code, it's probably related to the spark plugs. Seafoam has been known to foul a plug or two. Which adds the final stage to your engine performance overhaul...new plugs! I don't guarantee that it'll foul a plug, but it could. It didn't for some, did for others. It didn't for me, but I replaced my plugs anyway afterwards. I did it again about 20k miles later, and didn't effect the plugs one bit. Another little trick with seafoam....a cup in the oil right before you change it, will clean out the oil system and smooth out the idle even more. Pour in a cup, let the car idle for 20 minutes, then drain out the old. Sacrifice an extra quart of good oil to flush out the corners of the pan "you'd be amazed how much dirty oil hides in those corners", and you're good to go! I do this on all of my cars, even my wife's new Mazda with 16k miles. Did it at 10k, and boy was that oil black as midnight coming out.

yeah, it's pretty close to the same. If there are any differences, just take a second to evaluate it and it should be fine. Mine was a 95', same as your 97', and it was not that difficult. Do a search using my name and keywords of throttle body and you should see a few threads of when I did it, with pictures. Also, run a search for Seafoam to learn more than you ever wanted to know about that... It's been talked about so much, you can't miss it. EDIT: Although my pictures seem to have vanished, here are a couple topics on the matter... http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index...e+body+cleaning http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index...e+body+cleaning

Thanks DC! That little dremel stuff is my 2nd favorite tool, next to the pnumatic air hammer. aarman4, there is another bit, I think it's the 530 series that I can't seem to upload the picture of. Go to dremel's website and look at their attachments. It's a stainless steel brush, that is very useful for the corners of the throttle housing. It's either the 530 or 531, one of which is already posted in my response above, just can't rememebr which one....

Sure amigo, no problem. I have a Sears all-in-one cutting tool, but it's pretty much the same thing. I found these on dremel's website. They are the stainless steel brushes 530 and 531. My cutting tool is bigger than the dremels, which doesn't lend itself very well to tight spaces, so I use the flex shaft quite a bit, which makes it soooo easy to get into tight spaces with. Get 3 or 4 of these little bits, and you should be good to go. Use your shop vac to suck out the dust and debrie left behind inside of the throttle body. Once you do this, then run your seafoam through the intake, that throttle body will be shiny clean my man, and you'll definetly notice a little more punch to the engine, but you'll really notice a nice smooth idle, and a touchier gas peddle. You'll also notice that it takes less gas to keep the car moving along. After I did this to mine, at 80mph on the open road, I barely had to touch the gas peddle. She just purred.

My 4runner has that Pilkington glass windsheild too. The dealership had it put in because the other one had been damaged during delivery of the vehicle from the auction "it's used". Other than poor craftmanship of the installer with regards to the weatherstripping on the roof, I have no issues with it. I think the quality of a windshield has as much to do with the installer as it has to do with the glass itself. It sounds like to me that the installer of your daughters glass probably cheaped on the windshield clips which caused a stress/flex point which created the crack. Honestly, in my opinion, spending that much money for an oem version, just doesn't make sense to me. Especially since it'll probably get beatup again anyway. If you get wind noise, just hit the windshield with some rain-x to smooth it out. The wind won't grab to the glass, but rather flow over it. But, to each is his/her own, and I can understand why OEM is used for some. As long as it is tempered "shatters in tiny pieces, not razer sharp chunks", I see little difference. When the mirror came down, it probably took with it the film on the inside of the glass that is supposed to hold the windshield together in the event of a crash.

There was a TSB, might of even been a recall for the starters on some of those gen 1 models. I know on my 95', the previous owner had the starter replaced under a recall, or possibly warranty item. I remember the techs telling me that Lexus replaced the starters because they were burning out. That people were standing on the keys too long, spinning the starters past the point of ignition. Smells like crap to me, but oddly enough, it was mentioned to me.

west, mine was the same way. There is no simple fix, you have to have the tensioner replaced. However, if you grease the wheels a littlebit at your dealership, they'll most likely cut you a decent deal. I think they did mine for like $65 bucks. Mine was the passenger side. I wouldn't do this one yourself though, simply for liability reasons in that worst case scenario. This is one of those things you want someone that can back up the work, if need be, but hopefully never will...

You most definetly want to replace it, because chances are when you remove the throttle body to gain access to clean it, that little paper gasket will rip, it's pretty much guaranteed to happen. Blake918 advised me of this, so I bought two of them just in case, and was very thankful that I did. The last thing you want to do is get in there, have that thing tear, and be stuck without one. On some parts, the online guys are great, but on the little stuff like this, just pony up the extra $10 bucks and buy one from the dealership. You spend that much on shipping anyway with the online guys. Mine was brittle, stuck to the intake, and tore the instant I removed the throttle body. Additionally, if you have a dremel tool, I'd invest the $25 for the 18 inch flex cable, and buy a couple little polishing bits. The metal ones will eat that residue off of there like nobody's buisness. The flex cable lets you actually get inside of the throttle body housing, in the corners and such, and you'll get that sucker shiny clean! And notice the difference too once it's all done! Don't forget to do the butterfly valve edges, that's where you'll really smooth out the idle and low torque pep! If you wait for the proper parts, and acquire a few little tools, you'll be super happy you did! Oops, my bad, I didn't see where you're located, probably not very easy to scoot down to the dealership. I'd order one though man, I really would. I think you'll be sorry if you go into this without one handy.

Just remember this little slogan, which got me through the accounting balance sheet stuff: R.O.L the CREDITS DEBIT the D.E.A.

Man, after reading the first sentence, I thought "oh great, another freakin' Dukie is roaming the planet"! Hahaha... But, NC-State, I have no issues with. How could anyone have an issue with the school that had Jimmy V? Although, I hear their basketball players are "amphibious". Actually, I'm part of the UNC family, the "feel the teal" side...aka...UNC-Wonderful. I'm a grad of the Cameron School of Business. I was one of the last students to get in before admissions got so tough that UNC-Chapel Hill was easier to get in. But, I did start my college career at Kansas in the early 90's, and am a fan of Roy. So, I am a Tar Heel... Just in a round-about way I guess.

Pay $173 for something that can earn you that amount by your morning coffee brake... pretty good investment if you ask me In my opinion, you can never spend too much on books like that. Now, you can easily spend too much on the instructor, and the little license plate cover in 4 years. But the books? Worth 40000 times what you'll pay. I've met some of the smartest dumbasses on earth. Folks so blinded by their education, that they're completely irrelevant in the process of which they've spent 6 figures on. Yet, the community college kid, who spent a few thousand to learn from the same text book, knows what he/she is doing, because failure doesn't have a backup plan. Just remember one thing... the formulas in that text book are no different if taught in Harvard, or Abooboo U in Abooboo, Uterkreanizastan.

1998 G3, Sold the 93 es.............NC, Wait, it's in my sig. B) How are you? Hahaha... you ole' senior... we all know what you've got sitting in the driveway! Hopefully people won't be upset by my blanketing post, but man, it sure gets old trying to pass along some info, when you don't know what your answering. I'm good amigo, just pluggin' on along! Painted the pending NC JR. room today, Carolina Blue of course! Been very busy these days with work. All of this real estate meltdown stuff has bled over into the commercial markets, and has made guys like me quite popular! What use to be four or five calls a week from brokers, is now four or five calls a day. It's been this way since November, and no signs of letting up. Very interesting times right now for this segment. But, keeping up, and getting ready for the baby in May. Loving the 4runner, almost have it as smooth as the old LS. Overhauled the rear brakes a few weeks ago, and was right back in happy times. Actually needed to use the air hammer to bust the rotors loose, due to 57k miles of grime. Going to switch out the tranny mount in a few weeks, probably due for a fresh one. But, sure is nice to have a rattle and say "well, it is an suv afterall". Really has lowered my blood pressure a bit! How about you amigo? How are you doing? Ready for some Arizona yet? Saw your snow picture in the other post..reminded me of your picture last year!

Do you only have the valet key? You can't manually unlock the doors with the key?

What year is your car? And more specifically, what type of car is it? Certain model years of the LS have been prone to a tiny leak of the sunroof that comes in around the map lights, which can run along the headliner and drip down from the sunshade. But, without knowing what year your car is, or what kind, it's impossible to offer possible solutions.

I suggest that new members be required to disclose the year of their car. I think this will open the knowledge base more for those newbie members who don't quite understand the full dynamics of the questions their asking. It's so much easier for someone like myself to respond to a question, if I know what year their car is.

For best results to your questions, please put the year of your car in your profile. Asking why something leaks, something rattles, on an LS, GS, IS, or ES only, limits you. For example: The 90-94 LS series has a well known issue with a simple tiny black wire in the trunk, that is responsible for several strange issues "and easily fixable". Not knowing what year your car is limits the advice you'll get. Same goes for the GS, ES, IS and RX. So please go to your profile and add your year! Sorry Mods, didn't mean to bombard the boards with this one.... But hopefully you can understand why I've done this...

For best results to your questions, please put the year of your car in your profile. Asking why something leaks, something rattles, on an LS, GS, IS, or ES only, limits you. For example: The 90-94 LS series has a well known issue with a simple tiny black wire in the trunk, that is responsible for several strange issues "and easily fixable". Not knowing what year your car is limits the advice you'll get. Same goes for the GS, ES, IS and RX. So please go to your profile and add your year!

For best results to your questions, please put the year of your car in your profile. Asking why something leaks, something rattles, on an LS, GS, IS, or ES only, limits you. For example: The 90-94 LS series has a well known issue with a simple tiny black wire in the trunk, that is responsible for several strange issues "and easily fixable". Not knowing what year your car is limits the advice you'll get. Same goes for the GS, ES, IS and RX. So please go to your profile and add your year!

For best results to your questions, please put the year of your car in your profile. Asking why something leaks, something rattles, on an LS, GS, IS, or ES only, limits you. For example: The 90-94 LS series has a well known issue with a simple tiny black wire in the trunk, that is responsible for several strange issues "and easily fixable". Not knowing what year your car is limits the advice you'll get. Same goes for the GS, ES, IS and RX. So please go to your profile and add your year!

For best results to your questions, please put the year of your car in your profile. Asking why something leaks, something rattles, on an LS, GS, IS, or ES only, limits you. For example: The 90-94 LS series has a well known issue with a simple tiny black wire in the trunk, that is responsible for several strange issues "and easily fixable". Not knowing what year your car is limits the advice you'll get. Same goes for the GS, ES, IS and RX. So please go to your profile and add your year!

For best results to your questions, please put the year of your car in your profile. Asking why something leaks, something rattles, on an LS, GS, IS, or ES only, limits you. For example: The 90-94 LS series has a well known issue with a simple tiny black wire in the trunk, that is responsible for several strange issues "and easily fixable". Not knowing what year your car is limits the advice you'll get. Same goes for the GS, ES, IS and RX. So please go to your profile and add your year!

Oh I know you're not blaming Bush directly RX, sorry if my post came off that way amigo. Besides, Bush is too busy creating earthquakes in indonesia, causing floods in sudan, and causing traffic jams in LA for this stuff! Hahaa...

Boy, if this isn't my kind of thread! We've got politics, economy, and money! Might have to drag up the ole' Dubbya' avatar for this one.... hahaa... In my opinion, the economic situation today is actually good, and well needed. I say this because at times, everyone and everything needs to be reminded that they're not untouchable and need a humbling. The economy is like a tempermantal teenager, and if left unchecked, will certainly get itself into trouble. The new thing with this hiccup is the classroom size is much larger, with the europeans, germans, asians and mideasterns all wrapped up in the commercial markets. There is an organization called CMSA, which stands for Commercial Mortgage Securitization Association. For those of you who know what "sercitization" means, then you understand the premise. It is basically the pooling of similar loan types into one bucket, aka, security. That pool is divided up into different levels of default risk, like a stack of champagne glasses. The cash "monthly mortgage payments" is the champagne, poured from the top down. The top glass, is the least risky, as it gets paid first. But, the problem there is the basis of risk v. return. The least risky, gets the least return "interest rate". If the champagne bottle is only half full, well, you can see at what level of the champagne glasses won't get filled. Top glass is AAA rated, and it goes down from there "AA,A,BBB,BB,B,CCC,CC,C, etc.." When this was introduced, real estate lenders/investors were underwriting similar deal types "office, hotel, single family housing, apartment, warehouses, etc..", and each property type had it's own risk rating. Some riskier than others. The problem today is due to something called a CDO, aka, Collateralized Debt Obligation. These are tricky little boogers to decode. The flow of cheap money over the past 5 years, means institutions have more money to pump back out into the economy "loans". Well, lenders had sooo much investments out there, that somebody figured out a way to swap pieces in and out of those pools, enter the CDO. Before, your pool of assets were office buildings only. You knew what your investment was backed by, period. And you can still do this as an investor. But, a pool of crappy office buildings didn't get very good ratings from Moodys, Standard & Poor, etc... and people weren't buying them. So, anyone here familiar with how a bank handles their repo-cars? You take a package of 15 cars, all crap, and try to sell them to a dealer, which didn't work very well. But, if you pepper that package of 15 cars with 2 or 3 really good cars, they sell right away! Same prinicpal in the CDO market. Take a portfolio of crap properties, reslice them up with a few good ones added in, and wa-la, better rating from Moody's and Standard-Poor. Guess what the crap properties mostly consisted of???????? SUB PRIME LOANS. Toss in a few good multifamily projects "apartments" as the lipstick on the pig, call up the european investors, and they're all over them like britney spears to a strip pole. The issue NOW, is that all of these international investors don't know what they've got in their CDO's, and they're freaking out! It is THEIR fault for not properly underwriting the investment, not investigating what the pool was made of. They simply saw an investment that could yeild them 10%, and bought it, period. What has to happen to bring them back is to get them over the learning curve. I attended a conference last week in Florida, of which Tony Blair spoke at, among others. I found it fascinating that the european markets have no clue between the difference of a single family home, and a multi-family home "apartment projects". They equate the two as the same thing, and they're NOT. In fact, the multifamily stuff is the only property segment that is forecasted to continue it's growth "gotta' house those subprime defaults". Is it Bush's fault? I don't think so, to be honest. He reacted to 9/11 to keep us spending to prevent a total economic meltdown. The fault is on us, to be honest. All the spending, the credit card bills, this drunken haze of "I'll pay it off later", and using your home's equity as an ATM machine. Granted, it is what it is, but can anyone really say they think it's wise that your home sold for $75 a squarefoot just 36 months ago is now worth $160 a squarefoot? All of those poor people out there that bit on those 125% loan to value loans, on a 5/1 arm back in 03', are now facing rate movements, they're tapped out on the Visa, got big cars, and have mortgages that are worth more than the house, and getting worse as prices slide. Additionally, the vast majority of these residential foreclosures aren't actual families being tossed out on the street. A person will dig ditches, flip burgers, and even rob a bank, before losing their home. No, it's the speculative investors that bought these houses for a flip, that can't flip them anymore, and are simply tossing the keys to the bank and walking away. Either way fellas, we're in for a bumpy landing, period. It's coming, and will go. The government is going to get wacked, no matter if it's a democrat, republican, indi, lib, etc... They're the ones with the money machines. Oh, and let us not forget the back room deals cut on 9/12 for fly-over rights, base positioning rights, etc... around the globe. You honestly don't think Turkey let us come in and set up shop for Iraq for free do you? You don't think Pakistan is really our buddy because they love us?

I haven't a clue either, but, I do think the thinking is those who really need it, will turn right around and spend it, which is exactly what the economy wants. Those who don't need it as much, might just sock it away in savings, which keeps it out of rotation.

I'm split between the guy who tosses his monitor on the copier machine, and the old guy who responds to the paper airplanes with his computer monitor!