harjp

I have the same year car as you. About 108K miles on it. When I got the car, the keyless entry/alarm wasn't working. I put in an aftermarket alarm with remote start. Better setup than stock. Had no sunroof, so I went with an ASI Moonroof. Had the Pioneer cassette deck, which in the year 2003 proved useless. Found an audio installer who was able to make a very nice faceplate to surround an Alpine deck and also replaced the stock speakers and sub with Alpines. 500w amp in the trunk. Tokico shocks, window tinting, 16" wheels and tires, K&N air filter, new exhaust, dual all the way ....it's a whole new car and I love it! By the way, as far as dents and your quarter-sized ding go.... I dropped my dirt bike against the passenger car door a few months back and created a "karate chop" sized dent in the door. Really bummed me out. Just last week, I came across a body shop that does "paintless dent removal". In my case, they "massaged" the dent out from behind the door panel. Came out looking like new and it cost only $75. For your ding, there are suction approaches to pulling it out. Bet you could get rid of it for $50 or less.

Hey, thanks for that explanation! I appreciate it! After the last re-set, the CEL has remained off. We'll see if it comes back on.

New guy here. Just wondering how things turned out with Canada's dilemma. When my car had somewhere between 80-90K, the shocks/struts were kaput and the car drove like a drunk boat. It was actually dangerous on twisties at 70 mph. A set of new gas shocks fixed that very nicely. Wider tires helped too. As you all know, 70K on the LS400 is nothing. But 0-60 mph in 13 seconds is awful. Something is truly wrong. I imagine he looked at the obvious and that no mice or birds have taken up residence in his airbox. Could it have been something as simple as a very dirty airfilter? Also, I've found that running some fuel system cleaner through things seems to perk everything up. 300C's are gorgeous. I want one someday. But would hate to give the LS400. What's an NSX?

Where do you read the code? And which connector, which pins? I search for a thread on this, but came up empty. If there's one out there that I missed, let me know and I'll keep searching.

Well, that was fun! Re-set the computer and took her out on the freeway. The exhaust sounds even deeper, car had much more kick to her. She must be breathing better!

I don't know how to pull codes. Is there a tutorial on that somewhere? What equipment do I need?

ECU. That's the computer, right? Don't know about the piping, except that it was 2 1/4". Aluminized vs. SS -- what are the pro and cons? By the way, I did the Lexls.com method of adjusting the TPS to bring my idle speed back to about 650 rpm. With no load, idle speed was around 200. Since then, every time I take the engine up to 4500+ RPMs on the road, my "check engine" light comes on. My battery was going bad, so I was hoping that was it. And after the new battery was in, the light stayed off for a day, but I didn't rev the car/engine up. Today, after I got the car back with the new exhaust, I was accelerating hard and the "check engine" light came back on. Any thoughts? In any case, I'm heading down to the car to disconnect the battery for 90 seconds! "Dramatic gains" sounds good!

After seeing SKperformance's diagram of the exhaust system (below), I thought it would be fun to get rid of some of those sharp bends, multiple resonators, and the single pipe mid section. I took my car to Chris at Scottsdale Muffler. He suggested using DynaMax Super Max mufflers and alloid-packed resonators. All-in cost was $525 -- which I think is a great price! (Midas charged me about the same for doing less to my F250. Don't go there!) Here's the job Chris did: The car now sounds aggressive, but not loud. It has a rumble to it, but nothing crazy. You have to be outside the car or have the window down to hear anything more than a slight change (deeper) in tone. Performance-wise, it's a little more aggressive too. I'll know better when the outdoor temp drops below 110 degrees! And here's my car looking all happy with her new exhaust system.

How do I email that guy?

Hello all. I found this forum last year. If I remember correctly, I was looking for info on how to remove the subwoofer. I was living in Greenwich, CT at the time, and have since moved to Scottsdale, AZ. I own a 1990 LS400 with under 110K. Since the book valve on the car is so low, and the cost of repair is high, I've decided to learn whatever I can about the car so I can do whatever little I can manage to keep it up myself. So I'll be reading this forum regularly now. The only "mods" I've done are 16" wheels (I think I went to a 235 width), tinted windows, Alpine deck and speakers (got a nice custom faceplate made to fill the tapezoid), had a sunroof installed, and put in an alarm with a starter kill, auto-start, etc. Oh, and Tokico gas shocks. I also pulled all the plastic off from before the air filter housing, so the air filter box is semi-open. I'm throwing a K&N filter in there as soon as it arrives. Finally, I had the car at a local custom exhaust place today. The guy who runs the place told me he can do a true dual exhaust. Basically replace everything from the cats back with 2 1/4" pipe running to two high-flow mufflers (one left, one right). I'm going to pull the throttle body off and what kind of cleaning it needs. Has anyone ever turned their First Gen LS400 into a race car? I'd love to "play" with this car over the years to come since I don't plan on ever selling it. In any case, just wanted to say hello.

By the way, I spoke to a local tach and speedo repair guy today about the LS400 problems. He claimed to be very familiar with the problem. He told me the only reliable way to do a fix was to change out the pc board that is failiing. And Lexus charges about $600 for those boards! Not only that, this guy says that down the road, sooner or later, the NEW BOARD will fail just like the old one! Basically, he told me not to bother spending my money. That if I wanted to sell the car and make the speedo run, I should get a used board from a junked car, which will work for a little while. And I tend to believe anyone who gives me advice that runs counter to their finanical interest. Now am I way off base here, or is the cost to manufacturer those boards fairly cheap? Who do I talk to at Lexus to "demand" that they start giving these boards away for what it costs to make them, which is the least they could do for making faulty boards in the first place.

Beleive me , Mods will help you with this. ;) Just start cursing and saying really nasty things to other members, and those emails should go away! As will you! :)By the way, I've never received a single email from this site, so like the mods said, it's you who has brought this on yourself!

Agreed!

Thanks!

There are, as a search reveals, in fact only a few posts on this issue. And none of them resolve the problem. The only thing you can find out from reading these posts is (1) a number of LS owners experience their speedo and/or tach going out, (2) some are able to restore functionality by banging on the IP, (3) for some, the odometer fails in combination with the speedo (which appears to make it a speed sensor problem and not a guage problem), (4) a part supplier in CA sells used tach and speedo guages which fix the problem, and (5) you can re-solder the connections at the back of the speedo and/or tach and this will fix the problem. Here the "fix it" post: Unfortunately, this was the posters fifth and last post, and he hasn't been heard from since. And no other member has verified or amplified on this advice. I had the intermittantly working speedo for several months a couple of years ago. Since then, it has died completely. My tach, odo and trip meters work fine. Two dealers have generously offered to fix the speedo problem for a mere $1000 or about 1/5 of my car's book value. I'm fine without the speedo, really, but my girlfriend and son aren't. Which is kind of OK since it discourages them from driving my car, but sometimes they need to. I would love to try fixing the speedo if someone could walk me through removing the dash and instrument cluster. Another option is to send the cluster off to lexustech.com --- who WILL show me how to remove and re-install the cluster. My last option is to buy a GPS device which will cost less than $1K and give me speedo, direction, elevation, maps, and all the other features of a good GPS. Nonetheless, I'd really like to get the speed working again.

Thanks for showing me what's under my car. So it's not a true dual exhaust, huh? The resonators, are they catalytic converters? I wonder what eliminating the second one does to emissions. And the O2 sensors -- there's one (or two?) in the exhaust manifold. Are there any further back? I guess, since the "dual" exhaust is cosmetic only, I'm wondering what the possibilities are for replacing everything from the exhaust manifold back with say a 3 1/2" exhaust system.

Thanks for posting this. I read what's involved in draining the coolant and its kind of a PITA. I was thinking of disconnecting the coolant hose anyway since it's so high up in the system. Now I know that will be OK. Also, it sounds as if you were able to do this while leaving the mass air sensor in place. That's good to know as well.

Here's another how-to on cleaning the throttle body. http://www.lexls.com/tutorials/EFI/throttlebody.html This one shows how to remove it completely, which means draining the coolant. But if mine's as dirty as Homer's, I'd like to be able to clean it without worrying what's getting into the air intake chamber. I'll also be able to wipe out the air intake chamber some. The one thing I won't do is use a screwdriver to scrape the throttle plate!

Hey, this is great! I'm bored and looking for something to do, so this is it! And the website on which this how-to is located has all sorts of other great stuff. Thanks!

One of the things I like about my LS400 is that it is unpretentious looking. While I agree that the new Maserati sedans are beautiful, I don't find myself expecting to drive something that looks like a Maserati for 1/3 the price of one. That's cheesy. If you want something that looks like a Maserati, go out and buy the real thing. As for the cost of premium gas, I assume you're kidding. For a 20 gallon tank, at $0.15 more a gallon than regular, premium gas adds $3.00 to the cost of a tank.

Well, now you guys have me thinking I should go with 15" custom wheels to get a nicer look, but to make sure I don't sacrifice anything in terms of ride. And of course, it would be less expensive all around. I'm getting the windows tinted (found a guy in New Rochelle, NY that tints for new car dealers, which I hope means he'll new a great job and the film won't look like *BLEEP* in a couple of years), I'm replaced the stock audio with Alpine equipment all around (same guy who's doing the tinting will make a custom installation kit and faceplate), and just down the road I'll have a sunroof installed. When I get to Arizona, I'll get the new rims and tires. Seems dumb to drive 2500 miles on new rim and tires. Thanks for all the comments. I'd love to read more about what 17", 18" or 19" rims do to the ride. Harry

I had no idea that custom rims were so fragile. I was thinking about going with 18" Zenetti Mystics. They are so beautiful....I feel like a teenager gazing at !Removed! for the first time! I'm moving to Scottsdale AZ from the NYC area, so I'm trying to convince myself that the roads out there are in very good shape.

I'm looking to pimp up my 90. With the window tinting, custom audio, and sunroof I'm having installed, I feel the need for some nice rims. I'd thinking 18" with low profile tires. Anyone with thoughts or experience on this? Thanks.

You can buy mine. I'm installing a Alpine system. Found someone who will make a faceplate to replace the trapezoid shaped piece of plastic that covers the Pioneer radio. I won't be using the subwoofer, which I had installed for $400 14 months ago because the old one burned out. How much you want to pay? Harry

I had the same problem with my 90. It would stick until 20 mph and then register about 15-20 mph slower than I was actually traveling. After several months the speedometer stopped working altogether. In a way, it is liberating not to know how fast I'm going, except that I start to wonder when I'm passing most of the cars on a 60 mph road as if they were standing still. At that point, I slow down a bit. I was going to ask the dealer about replacement cost. Someone here says $1000. If that's the case, I'll continue to drive speedometer-less. I've also looked into GPS-based speedometers. Apparently they work best when you're driving at a more or less constant speed since it takes a few seconds for the speed to be calculated by the unit as it reads your position off the GPS satellite. Since I am limited in my ability to custom-mount things, once I find someone who will install this kind of unit, I will buy one. Harry