Bykfixer

A few years back I had peeling trim on another brand automobile along the front windows. It was normal for that car for the rubberized coating to get brittle and flake off. These Lexus cars are plagued with the coating delaminating from the metal underneath. With the other car I found some strips at a junkyard, peeled what I could by hand of the flaking stuff then sanded the rest. Part of the sanding was to scuff the exposed metal and part was to get a feathered edge at places where old coating remained and metal was exposed. Next was buying a small can of black oil based rust-o-leum and spread it on with a decent paint brush. I don't mean gentley like art work but slather on a nice thick coat. By doing a nice thick coat there were no brush marks. Next was find a window with lots of sunlight at a location where fumes don't matter because oil based paints put out fumes. In my case the dashboard of my moth balled truck was the green house. Let it "cure" for a week. I had not done a great job at sanding edges so some dimples showed. I resanded and reapplied more paint, let it cure another week and it looked great. Ok, so the original strip I was sprucing up had a slight texture to it so I lightly sprayed acrylic black paint from about 18" away until I got the "splatter" texture I wanted. I did a set for my sons car and he did not want the texture. That was in 2014 and both sets of trim have held up well. The trim on my 04 is peeling so at some point I'm going to try it on that car too. The restored trim installed, original set on top as comparision back in March 2014. March this year

I'm talking about 2nd generation cars. 98-05 models. The working man's LS.

Vehicles have a reset button for when the tires are rotated. Say you have the system that reads all four (or five) monitors and provides a reading for each one, when the front tire is now on the back the restet button makes sure the tire now on the rear is being read by the monitor system in the correct location. Modern vehicles with full sized spares have a 5th pressure monitor. That can be a pain if you swap a leaker for the spare and the system still thinks the leaker is one of the four primaries. Again the reset button causes the car to disregard the leaker since it's no longer one of the four primaries. My bosses wife had a vehicle with just the yellow dash light and not the readout per wheel. The spare tire kept throwing a low pressure code even though it held air just fine. Key word is had……

I see classic LS cars every day. Often middle age guys in suits driving those. I checked car sites like auto trader, craigslist and car fax from coast to coast. Most were at used car dealers. One mountain dew green one had ferarri type doors, some had wagon wheels but most seemed to be either traded in and somehow ended up at those corner lot used car sites that line Main St USA like check cashing businesses. Florida and Texas seem to be where many landed. PA and NJ have a bunch but I figure winter roads have many of them rusting underneath. I checked junkyard inventory's in a 250 mile radius and found very few there thank goodness. Ha, there's a pink one near me. But my fear of many being crashed or modified to death was not confirmed. Phew! With these cars resale values still mainly between $6k and $10k I probably won't see many in my area since the general market is either pretty new vehicles or "cheap" older cars like Honda Civics or Toyota Corollas. And for whatever reason (thankfully) the luxury cars with crooked wheels and satellite dish wings are beamers and infinities. Looking around for "better" 2nd gen cars it seems like I would spend more for that than to sink a couple of 5 gallon buckets of $20 bills into the one I already have. That too was a relief. So if anybody has a notion to buy a high mileage one and fix it up, if they do mainly DIY fixes that one would be the way to go if one can live without some of the things that break after a while like electric door locks until they fix it themselves. The basic drivetrain is very reliable, even after nearly two decades.

Riverfront

Looking at the wiki page for Lexus GS cars it appears there were a couple hundred thousand made between 93 and 05. Between 98 and 01 especially. Yet I see zero around anymore. None. What happened to them? I came from owning a 5th gen Honda Prelude (97-01) where about 58,000 all total were made and distributed across the planet yet I see a few of those a month. I bought an 04 GS 300 in March and have only seen one and that was a third gen even though my job puts me up and down the interstate every week day. On occasion I check car sellers across the US and hardly see any there either. It is just me or are these cars all disappearing?

events

The car with dual climate controls have sensors for inside the car and to guage outside temperatures for each climate control zone. If the sensor(s) on the driver side is/are malfunctioning it may do what you describe.

My sister bought a Prius way back in 08(09?) Other than regular stuff like tires and wiper blades it went 250k miles with no issues. She traded it for another brand in 019 but was very satisfied with the Toyota.

Impressive!! That sounds pretty standard these days but that must've raised a few eyebrows back then when a premium car stereo would turn up the volume based on road noise, but to lower the fan speed of the comfort system when the phone rings? Heck, I think in my modern day appliances called automobiles they still don't do that.

Have you parked under trees recently? Sometimes an errant leaf can find its way into the air circulation system and flitter about. Try raising your fan speed and see if it gets more noticeable. I moved this to the 10-15 RX350 section so that folks who know specifics about that model can see this and perhaps provide information.

Maybe take a garden hose to the car and run water out of the end with no nozzle and see where it comes out, probably near the door hinges. Place spray nozzle over the end and spray up and into where the water exits from when your tree is dropping all those pollen pistols. Mrs Fixer parks under a willow oak and we found that to work in spring.

Great that you found one. If you feel up for the challenge and can take your time swapping it out it sounds like a fun little project. But if you need the car to get around asap it would probably be good to let the pro handle the job. Thanks for the update.

Nice!! Thank you.

Often folks wait too long to get a front end alignment so that can lead to something called "cup'd" tires. In other words they are no longer completely round. So they ride like your tires are egg shaped. It's something to do with the steel belts getting out of a proper alignment. Some tires sucumb to it easier than others. My boss used to say "you can get an egg to balance but you can't make it ride good." Old school tire shops used to shave the high spots off. My former mentor told me his wife had a new set of tires go to shaking and the shop reveresed them and it solved the problem. Say you have a black wall with logos on the inside on the driver side front. They revered that tire on that wheel so the inside was now the outside. Now why your car rolled good one day and not good the next? That's strange. Did he rotate your tires while doing the work? Perhaps a wheel weight fell off without knowing it? Good luck and we look forward to hearing back from you.

Electrical

It's best not to delete it. Especially if you live at a place with annual emissions checks as part of your annual safety inspection because it won't pass without one. Plus these engines are built with a known certain amount of back pressure in the outgoing system so if you upset that balance without tuning the computer that pretty much runs the car the results would be a confused computer. Who knows what squirrley stuff would happen after that? Try cleaning it.

Makes me wonder if the mechanic just used some kind of cleaning agent to unclog pores and now the super heated exhaust gases inside the cat are burning it off……

Woah, woah back up a few ticks. The fan is also controlled by the phone system? You mean telephone, right? As in cellular? As in those big ole bag phones? Or walkie talkie type? In 1990?

I joined my first forum nearly 20 years ago. Skateboarder forums for those over 30 called skate geezers. They were like chat rooms with a library. It was not unusual for members to toss books at each other back then but it just seemed kinda normal. I remember staff asking folks to reduce file size of photos because it was costing them more $ for the extra bandwidth. I also have some stuff they'd sell to raise funds to keep (then ad free) sites going. Those places are long gone. So is the dial up bandwidth I used. DSL? That's for wealthy folks. lol. I was called 'cracked-frisbee' back then. See, once a frisbee cracked in the center people threw them away. I'd super glue mine and keep using it. Then I joined a car forum about 10 years ago that had ads but they weren't in your face nor the pop up type. However if you posted a photo there it was not uncommon to see your photo pop up in Google searches for a brand of jacket or something. By then I did all of my forum time on a smart phone. Again it was like a chat room with a library. Then long time users began to fade away and the places began to become more like facebook where new members would post a question, recieve an answer (or not) then disappear. That was not new, but it became the normal traffic since "the family" had all but gone away. At that point in life I used to fix neighborhood kids bicycles and teach them how to. Eventually kids called me "that bike fixer guy" so I went with that name. A few years ago I joined a flashlight forum while searching for ways to convert interior car lighting to LED. That one was very orderly and drama free like this one. It still has a bunch of activity by long term members who call themselves flashaholics. You may know one. That guy with 44 flashlights…… but it is paid for by flashlight company's buying ads. Many are small companies and the community there buys products from them instead of Home Depot. Again, the family is starting to slowly go in different directions. My son sold me his 2004 GS300 with a few gremlins so I joined here to learn all I can and share some know how I've learned over the years. And if you hadn't noticed by now I like to tell stories of life's good times. Maybe someday I'll be saying "my gosh, where did the 20 years go?" but for now I've recently celebrated 30 days. Phew that sure went by fast.

I watch the "oil life remaining" in my work truck if it looks like life is about to make it inconvenient to get it serviced at 5k miles. Not a good thing to get in the habit of doing, especially if it's still under warranty. Oil life remaining is based on the hours the engine has been running so if it's all highway miles at 60mph+ you may show as much as 25% remaining. If that is the case, don't panic and stop in some quicky-lube joint right at 5k where they may not tighten the filter proper and you end up losing oil while driving that vacation trip. Sometimes you just have to go a little past the 5000 mile service. Just try not to make a habit of it.

When my Lexus car was built they came with whatever G service your cellular phone used, if you had one. Roaming was typical. Navigation was your passenger reading a map. Roadside emergency help was a nice person pulling over to help. And if your car started talking to you it was time for a straight jacket. Ah, the good ole days.

Triangle

The LS is one fine automobile. Welcome to LOC.

When the plastic lenses get cloudy it becomes like sticking wax paper over a flashlight. Light still comes out but it is evenly spread out instead of being focused forward by the reflector. The thing about using the 3m kit (or other kind) is taping around the light so you don't scratch paint around the lens. It basically starts out as a fairly course sand paper but don't be alarmed as it looks like you are ruining the lens with all those scratches. You use the course paper, then one a bit finer and another even more fine. By the final course you begin to see what looks like magicaly turns your cloudy lens clear again. Many kits are available. Some are meant to be hand sanded while others use a drill, which goes faster and is easier. The Rain X kit works well if you don't want to use a drill but the kit is good for one lens. I like the 3m because it uses a supplied drill bit applicator tool and is good for two lenses. Please let us know how it works out.