DSES350

below is the inspection and estimate i received from local toyota showroom, I asked one from lexus showroom , but they disappeared.

VSC lights came on, in my ES350, and very soon the car stalled. luckily I was able to pull off at a safe spot next to the street. The car would not start after that, and had my car towed to a toyota service center. Since I did not know good Toyota mechanics in the area, I opted to get it towed to local toyota dealership’s service center. They did a scan ($220 waived off later), found that the alternator was dead, the dealership mentioned it is better to replace both alternator and battery ( $1900 Alternator Job + Coolant change, $300 Battery), I asked them to do the Alternator Job and skip the $300 Battery replacement. Later I found from Walmart that my battery was good and did not need replacement. My car had alternator fail at 58k miles first time and was fixed by warranty, and then it failed again at 135k leading to expensive repair. Yes toyota / lexus are reliable vehicles, and parts are very much available and all that’s fine. But the labor in getting things fixed is super expensive. With little or no background fixing vehicles, one needs to keep aside a reserve fund of $5k for these expensive repairs.

Yeah makes sense. Here is a good overview.

For high miles, instead of transmission flush, i think it is better to just do drain and refill, preserve the drained ATF for a while and observe for any anomalies during shifting, if things go bad, drain again and refill older ATF.

Yes this generation cars are very robust, reliable and comfortable. Not sure about 08, but in 07 ES350, there is no such feature. What we have is the aux cable input. well one could plug in a customer bluetooth adapter that plugs into aux socket in order to get this done. the out of the box bluetooth only connects to phone for calls only, i wish they had provided an option to connect to streaming music like we have in the recent versions of the software.

I had found a no name simple mount with rubber clip that fits into the vent for about 3 to 4 $ at a clearance sale few years back. I keep it in the cup holder and use it when I need to mount my phone. This has worked very well without any issues. Not thinking of upgrading to any other mounts in near future.

I get the synthetic oil and long life filter changed every year and drive roughly 5 to 6k miles. Have consistently done this last 8 years. Last few years have got this done at Walmart, and find their job reliable.

Check on ebay, do make sure you read the reviews, before ordering. I tried once in 2016 still using the same. Have to get the recent one, if available. But the older one still works and gets me out of places where there is no internet. Life saver for sure !

I just load premium fuel at costco. have used regular in the past, but stopped doing it after 2020, when used car prices went up :D. premium fuel with additives, is doing a great job, and have not found any issues. Also regular synthetic oil changes at walmart has worked well. Have used mobil 1 , penzzoil in the past. thinking of shifting to valvoline next year.

Would recommend pumping it out of the reservoir, and refilling ATF as recommended in owners manual. I used valvoline ATF and just pumped out the ATF fluid from the reservoir, refilled it with fresh up to mark. And the noise is gone for ever. I found my reservoir was empty and hence the noise. Every year after engine oil is changed, I do the same step manually, just as preventive maintenance. And this has really worked well. Good luck!

I did two steps to secure this thing. 1) used a thin plastic string and tied it to the trim and the door handle 2) added silicon glue to the edges of the trim before securing it. This piece is prone to dropping off, have ordered twice from ebay, the second time I made sure I used the above steps to secure it for good and has worked well. it did drop off even after doing the above, but I did not lose the trim piece as the hidden plastic thread held it hanging. silcon glued it again and should be good for a few more years with out losing the trim.

Thanks for sharing the steps. From what I’ve read and seen in youtube videos, this looks good to me. Never done it though. Are the gears shifting well ? any slipping of gears ? This is on my list too, but have not found the courage to do it myself.

Not able to make sense of the proposed estimate by Toyota showroom service center. Looks like my 2007 Lexus ES350 (135,000 Miles) has issues with front lower ball joints, sway bar links & tie rod ends. The Toyota Service center rep, quoted nearly $3300 dollars for the fix, Upon asking if there is any overlapping work for which they can reduce labor, they said there is none, but dropped $300. I looked up the OEM parts costs, it looks like they are not that expensive at all. But is the quoted estimate justified ? How many hours work is needed approximately for the below job ? 1) Replace Front Lower Ball Joints 2) Replace Front Sway bar links 3) Replace Tie rod ends (possibly the one connected to the tires) 4) Wheel alignment after this is done. The quotes shown on MyMechanic & RepairPal looks way lesser, but still seems high, plus it looks like they are not using OEM parts. Has anyone got similar work done ? And share any details ? Any suggestions where I can get this done ? Toyota service center is charging so high, how much would lexus service center charge for this kind of job ? I have never done any work by jacking up my car. But it looks like that the way forward going forward.