VBdenny

Don't forget to run the heater on high while you do that.

Caught me off guard as well. Never heard of a double engage before. Sounds like when the car is put in reverse that it goes forward then back. I say (as well) huh?

What the car dealer did was clear the codes with is OBDII scanner. You can even borrow them for free at Auto Zone or Advance. The codes usually stay off for awhile giving the computer time to determine new codes. I use the OBDII to turn off a CEL before I get one of my cars inspected. In my opinion, the dealer was born at night, but not last night.

If you are serious about waxing and not just looking for quick clean/wax, I would suggest Collinite #845 Insulator wax. Best stuff made but requires a lot of prep time.

Here is the deal, offer them $500 for it and maybe negotiate out to $1000 at most. It depends on you financial situation so it's your call. I will tell you this, Lexus dealers are big time pocket suckers so if you need service, find a Toyota dealer in your area that doesn't own a Lexus dealership and they will gladly service you at a much more reasonable price. Having a program as you presented makes sense if expensive repairs would put a burden on you. If you are in the position to suck it up, don't buy it. When I bought my Nissan truck, I bought the program for $400 and they wanted $1750. Sounds like I made a hell of a deal but I never used it so who got what?

MY wife has an 04 ES330 and the cup holders are terrible. I can't believe Lexus allowed them to be place in their cars. It looks a lot like the same one that broke in my daughters Corolla.

I would also be interesting in improving the braking on my 1990 LS400. These cars move pretty quickly and the brakes are certainly inadequate for the weight of these cars. I'll check back to see what you find. I think you 92 came with even better brakes than mine.

Before OBDII

I had the same warning using IE7. I didn't go past that. The other day when I opened a PDF pix, right after that, I started getting weird stuff on my computer. McAfee found a problem when I scanned. Next day is when I got the IE warning. I kind of thought it strange because I have never see that type of warning previously. Now I am up in my second home where I use Firefox and expeirence no problems. I suspect there was an infected file that a loyal member inadvertently uploaded. As I was writing this, I looked up how to spell inadvertently correctly and noticed that the Tab heading indicates not LOC but that "This website has been reported as unsafe ? (USA & Canada). Yet, my Comcast Norton here detects nothing. I'll try it on Time Warner Roadrunner in a few days. vbdenny

I would suggest that the LS400/LS430 sub-forum, be divided into a LS400 forum, and an LS430 forum.

90% of all starting problems are electrical. Knowing where the starter is always concerns me but keeping my car inside in a southern climate helps a lot on my 90.

Oh yeah, put a long pole on a breaker bar with a 6 point nad you will either break it loos, or just plain break it. In the event it breaks, as you stated earlier, "why are there 5 bolts" I wouldn't worry if one was missing. As SRK said, Yank on it.

I know it's pretty tight in there where you are working but if you have room to slip a long piece of pipe over your 3' breaker bar. I had a bolt on a caliper stick like that and my breaker bar left me sweating and annoyed. I looked around a found a piece of fence pipe and let me tell you, 3 feet might not do it but 6' did.

MIne made nosies like that when a ball joint was bad, upper ball joint on the magnesium wsihbone. I didn't notice any driveability issues but I heard the noise. Take it to an alignment shop and they will find the problem.

Mixing R-12 and R-134a will cause your system to fail. I had my 90 converted to 134 for about $300 at a Honda dealer a few years ago. Then the compressor went south so now I pretty much park the car in the summer. Toyota dealer estimated $2500 to repair. I went and got my truck keys.

My 90 has never had any ping issues. Perhaps landar said it best, use Top Tier fuels as they meet exceptional standards far exceeding minimum requirements. I try to use Shell but Exxon or BP works good. I guess I dropped BP from my list and by the looks of things on my my last road trip, so has everyone else. Another source of pinging is a carbon buildup inside your cylinder heads. If you drive normal, never really exceeding 3,500 RPM's, then sometimes, especially when combined with using discount gasoline, carbon buildup will occur. I guess due to my rather heavy right foot, I haven't had such problems. I would suggest going to Advance Auto and buying a bottle of Valoline Complete Fuel Syetem Cleaner ($10), dump it in, add some top tier and take it out on the Interstate and accelerate heavily. If you look in your mirror and see black stuff then you might be carboned up. What happens is that the carbon deposits actually build up inside the combustion chamber. Some of these deposits can get quite thick. The carbon remains glowing after the compression and ignition cycle and it ignitites the mixture prematurely as the intake cycle begins. The result is pinging or pre-ignition or as it is often called. The computer is suppose to !Removed! the timing in such events but when there is a constant source of premature ignition, there isn't much even it can do. Left unchecked, it will damage an engine. Good gasoline, high RPM's

In that case the seat is working as designed. I will say that the seats in the early LS cars sat very low and don't raise all that much. For shorter people I can see where they still might be low even when raised all the way. I saw someone mentioned about all the adjustments but even with all of them I have never been able to adjust the seat exactly how I would prefer.

The dimmer knob has an adjustable level with a default full on at one end. If you put it on the "click" setting, the lights stay bright all the time which is very annoying at night. Therefore, Lexus installed a dimmer which automatically dims the instrument panel illumination when the headlights are on. If the exterior lights are off, the instrument lights remain on full. Like swo said, twixt that knob and you are good to go.

The seat raises in the front and back and I guess the front part on yours isn't working. Could be the switch, could be the motor, could be trash jammed in it. I'd start by looking under there with a flashlight.

I'll stand in agreement with gg's opinion. Take the snow tires off before you decide anything. Snow tires really heat up in the summer and the were not designed for high heat roads. I'll bet those things are coming apart and that is causing the noise. When I have the snow tires on my ES330, they are quite loud. Don't let some shade tree mechanic touch your wheel bearings.

I must also agree with Banshee365. Excellent my friend. I change my fluid about every 50,000 miles by draining, filling, driving, draining, filling, driving about 4 or 5 times. With a case you can do about 5 changes by draining. Regarding what hanging on said about his Ford experience, you compared apples to oranges. Ford transmissions are made to last about 100,000 miles and usually don't last that long. Lexus transmissions are built to last 10x longer. My brother had 2 POS Ford Taurus cars and both blew the transmissions before 60,000. My last Ford, a 1970 Gran Torino 351C dumped the transmission. I would be afraid to own a Ford.

I would suggest you follow the advice curious offered. Don't screw around, drive that unit over to Advance or Auto Zone and use their OBDII scanner to find out what is wrong. Not sure if you mentioned the Check Engine light but it seems that if the car is running that badly, there must be a code stored. Both places let you use the OBDII for free. I use it to turn off the CE light on my truck before I get it inspected. Regarding the sputtering, the cheapest solution I can suggest is to dump in 2 bottles of Valvoline Complete Fuel System Cleaner. They cost $10 each so for $20, you might fix it. I had a friend that had a Cadillac doing the same thing. The dealer replaced the computer which didn't fix it but the Valvoline cleaner did. Check the codes.

at least you will be able to see through it. Mine has many sand pits and when the sun hits it, it can be difficult to see.

I have always used K&N oil filters which I buy at Advance or Pep Boys. Some people do not have the facilities or tools to change their own in which case I would use a Toyota dealer. I never take my car to Lexus because they are wayyyy to expensive.

Luckily (for me) mine has never had a problem. In the past I had a Cadillac that had the antenna stop going up and down and I found that they usually have a plastic cable inside which does the lifting. The motor is much more expensive if that goes but I was able to find one in a junkyard.