1990LS400

Mera, are you sure your shock absorbers are worn out? Shocks on the LS400 and lots of other Toyota products can last the life of the car - sometimes several hundred thousand miles. The ones on my 90 LS were fine when I sold it at 183,000 miles and I am pretty sure that the current owner would have told me if he had changed them - the 90 now has over 250,000 miles on it.

When to give up and move on is a very personal decision. I'll tell you why I moved on when I sold my 1990 LS400 after driving it from new for 13 1/2 years and 183,000 miles. Due to issues partially related to aging and more related to unusual vision isses, I needed better headlights. The headlights on my 90 LS were absolutely horrible and made driving at night scary. My wife expressed concern that there was no passenger side air bag for her and that my 90 LS didn't have the side air bags her 98 Camry had. We also concerned about what would happen to her if she ever got into a serious accident while driving the 90 LS. She's a little thing and has to sit very close to the steering wheel. The 90 LS had the old style high powered driver side air bag of the type that had been known to maim and kill smaller people. If not for the above issues, we would be likely be driving the 90 LS today. The old 90 LS seems to be doing quite well with its new owner at over 250,000 miles and the owner tells me every few weeks that he plans to keep it forever. If I had fully appreciated other newer technologies, I might have moved on to a newer car sooner. The VSC and snow mode of my newer LS sure makes winter driving a lot easier. It is possible to "spend through" periods of repairs like you are experiencing. It is starting to fade from my memory but I think I was averaging about $1,000 in repairs each year during my last four years of ownership of the 90. But that was still pretty cheap compared to replacing it with a much newer car. When I finally replaced the 90, instead of buying another new one, I replaced it with a like-new 2000 LS that had just come off a 3 year/36,000 mile lease. It was easy to pay cash since I had been socking away money for a new car during the 13 1/2 years I had the 90. I don't know the tax laws of Canada but here in the U.S. a personal (non-business) auto lease, my C.P.A. wife tells me, is an absolute financial disaster. The way we look at it, owning is good; owing is bad. Pretty simple.

OK ... creative ways.. Have you paired down the number of pause commands to the absolute minimum? For example, if you are using consecutive pauses (e.g. pppp), you might try cutting down the pauses to the absolute minimum number of pauses that the target phone system will accept most of the time. I used to have to have eight pauses to navigate to my corporate voice mail -- don't know why but now I can get by with only three. Does your Lexus phone system (and phone) allow using a "wait" command instead of a pause? Probably not but you might check. Any chance you can use a shorter password on the target phone system? Might there be some "fast path" tricks that would allow you to by skip a menu option or two on the target phone system? When all else fails, I've found that govelling to my corporate phone system adminstrators sometimes works wonders.

I don't think we can call what happened a "Rip Off". The chrome wheel option list price has hardly budged in over a decade and was $1,700 for for chrome wheels (without a chrome spare) the first year it ws an official option on the GS in 1996: http://www.lexus.com/contact/pdf/1996/1996GSspecs.pdf The 5-wheel chrome option on the LS in 2000 on the LS - the first year (I think) a chrome spare was an official option - was $2,125. The official chrome wheel option is thought by some to be of higher quality and more resistant to rust. Are you going to be using your chrome wheels on roads where salt is used? Dealers have always been known for making a lot of extra money by adding all sorts of accessories and F&I products to the deal during the delivery process when customers are most excited and tend to let down their guards.

Customizing door lock settings requires a handheld tester and the exact correct program card. Attached is a complete list of what can be customized on an 01 LS430. Personally, I would NOT want to have all my doors unlock when shifting into Park. It's a personal safety (robbery and car jacking) issue. 2001_LS430_LPS.pdf

You can find plenty of customer ratings of tires at http://www.tirerack.com I've bought 30 - 40 tires and four wheels from Tire Rack over the past 20 years and have been very satisfied with their prices and service. If you have to drive that gravel, potholed road, you might be happier with the 16" wheel size that was standard for the LS430 for the 2001 model year. All season tires might hold up better than performance summer tires; 16" tires are going to be substantially less expensive and ride better - particularly on rough roads. There is an interesting and relevent comment in this recent thread ( http://www.clublexus.com/forums/showthread.php?t=332064 ) from wheel shop owner "LA Wheel": "I've gone from 17" stocks, to 20's, then to 18" Sport wheels and now on 16" 2002 LS430 wheels on my 2004 UL. Most dramatic difference was going from 17" to 18". Even 18" to 20" wasn't as dramatic. Now my car rides like a cloud." Consider getting a set of mudflaps before you do much driving on gravel roads. Although the mudflaps for the 95-08 LS cars do not provide as much protection as the ones for the 90-94 LS, they will still reduce the paint nicks and scouring from gravel being thrown up by the wheels. I do a fair amount of driving on some pretty lousy gravel roads and speak from experience. Since you are in the "PNW" you could likely buy mudflaps from the dealer in Victoria where I bought the ones on my current LS: http://www.metrolexusvictoria.com/index.htm Here is another source: http://www.l-tunedparts.com/product/?id=11

Sewell has all sorts of manuals for your car: http://www.lexus-parts.com/parts.asp?id=1289&pid=1270

IMO all the valuation guides are mostly worthless. None seem to accurately reflect the market. Your best bet is to get a feel for what cars are really selling for in the geograhical area in which you are buying. This takes patience unless you are fortunate to know a auto broker who is willing to share this sort of inside information with you.

I think everybody should own at least one Mercedes during their lives. Look at my signature, below!

Have you checked your owner's manual to see if it tells you how to reset your VSC after replacing a battery? The owner's manual for my 00 LS400 has this information: http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index...ost&id=8204

It looks like Sewell still sells the repair and electrical manuals for a 1993 LS400: http://www.lexus-parts.com/parts_detail.asp?id=87195 I have a similar set for my 2000 LS400 and also had a set for my previous 1990 LS400.

That is not a "fog light kit" you are seeing on the U.K. LS400 in that photo. Those are the factory installed fog lights in a completely different bumper that also has brake cooling ducts and headlight washers. The U.K. LS400 you see in the photo has H4 bulbs in the headlights with a dash mounted beam adjuster. The inner lights next to the headlights are high beams which work in conjunction with the high beams of the H4 bulb in the headlights. The headlights of the U.K. and Europe spec gen 1 LS400 had a Euro code beam pattern too which is similar to the beam pattern allowed by the DOT in the U.S. beginning in about 1994. Headlights from the U.K. would work poorly as the cars are RHD. You would have to purchase all the parts from European where the LHD gen 1 LS400 was much rarer than was the RHD LS400 in the U.K. When I priced all the parts in 1990, it would have cost $thousands$ to do the conversion with new parts and it would have been difficult if not impossible to obtain and install the wiring harness and the dash mounted beam adjuster switch on a U.S. spec LS400.

There are at least three TSIBs for the tilt/telescope problems on the 98-00 LS400. I posted them on this thread in another Lexus forum: http://www.clublexus.com/forums/showthread...;highlight=tilt Last time one of my fellow 98-00 LS400 owner friends checked, getting the work done on an out of warranty car was going to cost about $2000.

First of all, a 1994 LS400 and a 1998 LS400 are not equivalent cars. I owned a 1990 LS400 for 13+ years and it was the same generation and very similar to the 1994 LS400. Now I have a 2000 LS400 which is virtually identical to the 1998 LS400. I found the two generations of LS400s to be so different that I found it hard to believe that they were from the same manufacturer let alone the same model. The driving experience is completely different. You might find the gen 1 LS400 a little more "sporty" but the 98-00 LS400 handles quite nicely. The interior of the 98 LS400 feels and is substantially larger than the 94 LS400 including at least two more inches of rear leg room. The seating position of the 98 is higher and more like sitting in an armchair. The 98 has a 5 speed transmission and vastly more power - and gets better gas mileage. And the 98 has side air bags, VSC and the "snow" transmission mode. The radio antenna is in the rear window of the 98; in the 94 you have a motor driven antenna to deal with and occasionally fix. We will NEVER buy a another car without a VSC type stability control system - I consider it the single most important automotive advancement in the last 10 years. And the 98 has the "de-powered" (safer) airbags which all cars had starting in 1998. The 98 LS even has a much more complex and feature rich keyless entry system with a remote trunk opener and being able to open all windows and sunroof remotely as you approach the car on a hot day. Most 98 LS400s have auto leveling HID lights too - but even if the one you are considering does not, the headlights are still vastly superior to the headlights on the 94 LS400. I could write a book about the differences between these two generations. The 1994 LS400 is a very good car. But by comparison, the 1998 LS400 is an incredible car. I drive on gravel roads quite a bit too which is one of the reasons I bought a set of mudflaps for my 2000 LS400 from a dealer in Victoria BC. I bought a set for my previous 90 LS400 in England in 1990.

I bought the same 10 pack of V8 engine oil filters from a Toyota dealer last year for $40 and they threw in a 10 pack of oil plug gaskets - same as they did twice previously. Their single filter price was about $5.00. Lexus and Toyota V8 vehicles use the same filter. I recommend staying away from aftermarket oil filters. Yes, the drain plug washer is sold separately. Some people don't change the drain plug washer but I always do.

Chrome rims don't do well in Kansas winters either with all the salt used on the roads here. That's why I use my chrome rims only spring, summer and fall and have a set of painted wheels and Blizzak snow tires for winter use.

The beep feature of the keyless entry was added to the LS400 for the 1993 model year so it might have been the same on the SC. The range of the keyless entry on the 1990 LS400 I had for many years was always only a few feet when it worked at all - even when I bought the car new in early 1990. I was told to hold the key near the right rear quarter panel when hitting the button on the key. When my 90 LS was under it's original warranty, the dealer changed components of the keyless entry, including the keys, several times trying to improve its performance. Nothing helped.

No, it depends on whether you have a deductible on your comprehensive coverage. My co-worker who had his LS400 windshield cracked by a rock last week has a $100 deductible on comp coverage -- it was his very first day with a new insurer and he told me that his new insurance agent was not pleased. My wife and I have zero deductibles on comprehensive coverage since there is little savings in going with a higher deductible - at least at our rather high ages. However, I have a very high deductible on collision -- the maximum allowed -- since I have never (knock on wood!) had an at-fault accident in my 42 years of driving and maintain a reserve fund for losses to both cars and real estate. My wife has a lower deductible on collision coverage since she seems to run in to all sorts of things -- walls, concrete pillars, etc.

Small nicks in the windshield can quickly turn into cracks. That's why many insurance companies will have a nick epoxied at no cost to the insured even if the insured has a deductible on their comprehensive coverage. A small nick can quickly turn into a long crack even if the nick is epoxied. A dealership is not going to be responsible for glass breakage. Maybe a kid threw a rock at your windshield when it was parked or shot a BB or pellet gun at it. There is no way of telling how it happened if you were not in the car when it did. I once had a windshield on my first LS400 severely nicked while driving on I-35 on the west side of Kansas City with no other cars around me. It made quite a bang and I suspect it was caused by someone shooting a pellet gun. A coworker had the windshield in his 99 LS400 cracked yesterday on I-35 by a rock on his way to work. $#It happens.

You can usually find a VIN on ebay. Here is a VIN for a 1990 U.S. spec LS400: JT8UF11E0L0033275 It takes a little work to invent a fake VIN since there is a check digit that must be computed -- you have to understand the VIN number format to make one up.

Are there no wheel shops in Milwaukee that can have your wheels rechromed? There are several in the Kansas City metro area. My next door neighbor had his LS wheels rechromed and they came out looking great. If there is nothing in your local area, look up Phenix wheel on the Internet. I recently bought a new set of chrome center caps from Sewell Lexus (lexus-parts.com) for less than $100. They are the small caps that fit the 2000 Platinum LS400 and the 2001-2002 LS430.

Try these instructions posted by ylekiot1: http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index...&hl=keyless The keyless entry system on the gen 1 LS400 is different than on the later ones.

A dealer should be able to easily search the nationwide inventory - even for cars in the pipeline and not yet delivered to dealers. About 10 years ago, a local Kansas City Toyota dealer found one of the few 98 Camrys with TRAC, ABS and side airbags that was in the pipeline and was able to have it diverted from being delivered to a Minnesota dealership to his own dealership for us to buy. Surely a Lexus dealer can do the same thing.

IMO, having all the doors automatically unlock is not a good idea. It's a safety issue and I passed on that one. The only setting I had customized was to keep the interior lights on for 30 seconds instead of 15 seconds. I would have liked to have had the brightness of the "indicator lights (Shift, taillight, headlight, cruise, and power mode indicators) when headlights are ON" toned down a bit but my repair shop did not have version 1.1 of the program card. CBES.pdf

When I asked Lexus corporate about taking my U.S. spec LS400 to Switzerland for one year in the early 1990's I was told that there would be no warranty coverage while the car was outside the U.S. or Canada. Has their policy changed? I later found out that, while Euro spec LS400s didn't look all that different the U.S. spec ones, there were actually many differences that could have made getting repairs rather difficult. BTW, Lexus cars sold in Germany had to conform to requirements (e.g. rear lights) that were different than in adjacent countries. My suggestion would be to leave your RX at home and lease a car in Germany. The maps in your GPS are the least of your concerns.