Bykfixer

Years ago I developed a habit of using my t-shirt to wipe off lenses. If they got dirty, spit was my lens cleaner fluid. Ah, but back then eyeglasses had……glass lenses. So no issues with scratching. I work construction so dust is the norm. Well one year I bought these new fangled hard coat plastic lenses. Tranistion, polarized, the works. $500. The lady gave me a nice micro fiber cloth and said to always use that. On day 1 a machine went by me blowing dust everywhere and using the old t-shirt method taught me a hard lesson. On the drive home after dark those lenses had a million-billion little scratches. Holy crap!! It was looking through wax paper trying to drive at night. My next pair of glasses had glass lenses again and I generally buy glass lens sunglasses. Ray Ban had a pair of wayfarers a few years back with rubber frame and plastic lenses. Nice shades. They are flat black. My son remarked how he liked them so I gave them to him before I screwed those up too. Many people swear by Costa and Arnette for good plastic lenses. Gargoyles are able to withstand a 22 bullet from 10' so those are truely "bullet proof". As in even a June bug at 65mph won't phase those. A coworker has a pair with prescription inserts on the inside of his.

Could be as easy as a clogged filter. Or it could be the famous Toyota 1st to 2nd shift solenoid has begun to fail. If the tranny fluid is brown or darker I'd opt for a fluid change and see if that solves the problem. But first make sure the fluid level is correct by starting the car, set the parking brake, put the tranny in neutral and check the dipstick for proper level of fluid.

I personally would start out with the second hand leather but have an upholstry shop install it. If you end up not liking the results, many people swear by 'leatherseatsdotcom' for new covering(s).

Not sure if on star uses same scoring but the on star site went more in depth in what is a good score.

You say she drives pretty conservative so I would surmize a cornering score of 126 is good. http://toyota.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/10536/~/what-is-driver-score%3F

Being a fan of Bausch & Lombe Ray Ban's, American Optical and Maui Jim I just discovered Caribbean Sun shades at my local Wal Mart eye care center. For the money they seem pretty solid. I like Foster Grant shades too. Their wayfarer style iare a favorite. And those Terminator/Dale Earnhardt Gargoyles are an old favorite. Collecting them from the 1960's and 70's for a while was fun but then word got out and prices sky rocketed. So I turned to 80's Maui Jim and Hobie breifly. Anybody else have an assortment of shades or an old favorite?

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For baked on brake dust on alloy wheels I use Bar Keepers Friend as a paste with a tooth brush to gentely scrub it away. For plastics inside the car I use furniture polish instead of Armor All and the other products that leave things all slippery. For getting molding looking great I use Shin Etsu grease. A little bit goes a long way. When I wax my car I wax the windows to let me know when it's raining and I'm driving if it's time to wax the car. It also helps keep bugs from sticking as bad. For removing glues like when the rear view mirror falls off or the stuff left behing when removing logos finger nail polish remover works well.

This post is to say thanks for the write up. I washed a fairly dirty car today and was amazed at how clean the wash water was when done. Using a 2 gallon car wash bucket for soap water, a 1 gallon bucket to dunk the microfiber cloth in to rinse and straight lines to clean it was new to me but it worked beautifuly. The Mothers car wash and wax still had lots of suds when done. See, I bought this Lexus car back in March and just now got license plates and registration. Due to covid my states DMV does things one person at a time. Figuring having it titled by mail would be faster I found out that no good deed goes unpunished. My son had glued some Aristo logos to the trunk lid. Today I spent a couple hours getting the super-duper miracle glue off that remained. That left a haze. So while installing the plates the haze was driving me bonkers. I whipped out some Mothers polishing compound and it was like magic. Trouble was where the haze once was looked great. The rest of the car…… not so great. I could see the reflection of a house 100 yards away where I polished. Now the car looked a heck of a lot better after using Mothers California Gold wash and wax. Using a shammy cloth after really helped too. Two washes later the water was not beading anymore but was shedding instead. I washed where the plates go too. The 2004 GS 300 has lots of highway miles and lots of parking lot battle scars. So to get the finish all proper will take a while. Heaven knows when the wheels were cleaned last so baked on brake dust will require Bar Keepers Friend in a paste using a tooth brush to scrub them. The gas cap door looked like it had never been washed so that and really dirty door jams and truck area took a little while to clean too. But it looks a heck of a lot better. Then I noticed how dirty all that tan carpeting and leather has gotten in 17 years. Ugh! A quick jaunt around the neighborhood and it was time to put the cover back on it.

Like RX said, close it and keep it closed. If you feel industrious do a web search for a local junkyard and join the wishlist where they send you an email when the vehicle you choose comes in. Most will "pull" the part for a fee. Now to the industrious part…If you have a door panel popper tool and a set of 1/4" drive metric ratchets and screw drivers you can go to said junkyard and commence to removing one from one of their vehicles. Then you'll learn whether you want to pay somebody to install it or DIY that sucker. It's not real hard to do, it just takes several hours because you have to remove a bunch of plastic panels in order to remove the head liner. The hardest part is holding that heavy sucker while you fasten it to the roof.

If it starts the car it's probably original equipment. My GS 300 came with the one black key. And some things work, others do not. In my case for example the doors don't lock via the fob but that is due to faulty locks not the fob. I often wonder what became of the "other" keys as my GS is the 3rd vehicle I bought with only the one key. But then one day I noticed the spare to a van I sold was hanging on my car key holder rack. Oops.

Welcome aboard Eric. We look forward to seeing those pix.

Presuming you mean stock wheels and tires, sometimes the tires can get what is called "cupped" for various reasons. That means the tire is no longer completely round. Sometimes belts move around, sometimes alignment issues (as in not in alignment) or other factors can cause it. My former boss used to say "you can balance an egg easy, but you can never make it roll good". One thing many don't think about is water in the tires. As a teen I worked at a gas station and every season a lady came there to get the air exchanged in her tires. She was a widow whose husband exchanged the air in her tires each season due to a buildup of condensation. She had the person remove the tires from the rims, check for water and reinstall the tires 4 times a year. Spare tire too. Think about it this way. A 1 ounce weight can make your wheel "balanced" so 1 ounce (6 teaspoons) of water can make your wheel "unbalanced". Often those air pumps at gas stations do not have a dryer between the compressor and the filler nozzle at the valve stem. And in many areas when weather changes drastically from warm to cold the pressure in tires drops a few pounds. Topping up at a gas station can lead to a few ounces of water in the tires over time. If you suspect that may be the case have the tires removed and reinstalled on the wheels at the place that does the balance.

In a nutshell, yes but you do use some of your parts like the oil pan, wire harness and ECU. In Japan there are really strict emissions rules so when a car reaches 45k to 60k miles (72k to 96k kilometers) they have a huge fee at annual inspection so the citizenry trade in the cars that end up being scrapped by the dealer. Parts like engines and transmissions are then sold as exports.

Shops in the US use a guide book that says a given repair takes X hours. So the book says dash thing mentiomed takes 11 hours. At X dollars per hour, lets just say $100 then you are looking at $1100 plus the part. Say the part is $200. They quote you $1300 for the $1100 plus the $200. Now the shop I use would quote $1300 but if the job ends up taking 12 hours they don't charge me more. However if it takes less time they give a discount. Many shops charge a fee to diagnose the issue, even if you tell them "hey my radiator has a leak around the filler hole"…… Now a shop that charges the fee then adds the cost of the repair is one I avoid. One my work uses charged my company $75 to say a light bulb was out. Then they charged $75 to say the radiator leaks at the petcock even though when I dropped ioff the company vehicle I told them about the bulb and where the radiator was leaking. Then they charged $400 to fix the light bulb and $1100 to fix the radiator in addition to the two diagnosis fees. My personal shop would have dropped the dianosis fees. And that's why I keep going back. Many shops pay the mechanic a given wage then a commision on the jobs they perform. That can lead to the mechanic taking shortcuts to get jobs done faster so they can squeeze in more jobs in a day. Or it can lead to competition among employees or both.

Was that before or after the SunBeam Tiger with it's Ford engine?

Check solders and wires at connection points. They are 22 years old afterall.