Depot

Thanks for the bulletin eatingupblacktop. By the looks of it no grease gets applied on the shims themselves, as many have recommended.

It's a done deal, and I did NOT turn the rotors. I did crosshatch them inside and out with 80 grit emory cloth though.

Bedded them in (30/30/30) and test frove it on the interstate and have no issues.

Oh, the brake quiet? I didn't use it. I may regret that later, we'll see.

My brake wear light is still on, so I simply cut the wires and tied them together. I don't need an idiot light anyway to tell me when I need brakes PLUS it lied to me, I had another 10k left!

Ok I'll get the brake quiet grease and use it. Does this go on the outside of the shim, or the side that goes against the pad, or both?

It appears I'll only have to get the front rotors turned, but they must have gotten this way before I bought the car, given my pads aren't critically worn.

This is my first disc brake job, I hope it goes well!

They told me at Pep Boys today that the noise stopping grease isn't necessary with pads that use shims. The grease I did look at said do not use with shims, so maybe he was right. Dunno...

Although low mileage is desireable you really need to find out the nature of it. If the car was city-driven its entire life or even put up on blocks for several years you could be in for a slew of problems down the road.

I think folks sometimes forget the many differences that the 98+ LS have over previous models. Your throttle body can and will get dirty but this will not cause the problem you noted. The 98+ LS does not have an EGR system as the earlier ones do, they’re able to reduce emissions through the use of VVT-i. You have an electric motor mounted at the throttle body which controls the throttle, and is most likely what caused your intermittent problem. That still doesn’t justify replacing the complete throttle body, rather the motor assembly only, which runs about $290.

Question, what is this electric motor. If the code comes up as the TPS, would replacing the electric motor instead of throttle body fix the problem and stop the error code? Do you know this for sure?

I recently had a TPS replaced on my '99 LS 400 and I'll tell you what my mechanic told me, "TPS malfunction came up on the diagnostics, and this could be caused by one of three things: faulty wiring, a bad computer, or the TPS itself. Since Lexus seldom have wiring issues, and a bad computer would more than likely produce additional symptoms, chances are it's the TPS itself."

So it's more or less a crapshoot. He replaced the TPS and it fixed my problem.

Twas difficult to find decent looking rims in a stock size, but these BBS's worked.