1990LS400

One of the reasons that the "Lady heard the horn but didnt "put it together"" may have been that the horns on the early LS400 were unusually weak and hard to hear. Although the weak horn issue apparently did not lead to a TSIB, I was told by a Lexus dealer employee that Lexus had replaced the horns on a large number of early LS400 cars with louder horns at no charge if the complaint was made while the car was covered by the basic warranty. I replaced the horns on my 1990 LS400 shortly after being forced onto the shoulder by a bus changing into my lane while I laid into the horn. I think the replacement horn was the design used on the LS400 beginning in 1993. By then, my basic warranty had expired so I had to pay for the replacement horns - they were not very expensive and I think the dealer sold them to me at cost due to the problem. The replacements were noticably louder but nothing like the volume put out by the horns on any of the many European cars I have owned. It might be worth going to a car dealership and doing some "test honking" on later model Lexus LS cars to compare the volume to the volume of the horns on your 92 LS. If anybody needs some original 1990 wimpy LS horns, I'm pretty sure I still have them in a box in the garage.

I just purchased the Parrot, unfortunately for my 2004 ES330 I have no idea what wires are what on the factory radio plug. Does anyone have any information on the 2004 ES330 radio wiring diagram? I basically need to know the following: What are the colors for the following items: 1. Front and rear speakers, both +/- 2. Radio Mute I don't have the Lexmark radio, just the standard factory radio. Am I correct that on this radio there is NO external AMP. Meaning the wires coming out of the wiring harness are direct to the radio. PLEASE HELP! Attached is a wiring diagram for the standard single CD 2004 ES330 audio system. Parrot sells an inexpensive external speaker for their phone kits if you don't want to tap into the door speakers. You can also use a Nokia or similar speaker. Using an external speaker can simplify the install but plenty of people tap into a door speaker. IMO, using a piggyback fuse connector at the underdash fusebox is the easiest way to power a phone kit. 2004_ES300_Std_audio_wire_diagram.pdf

Don't all RX330s have a trip computer that displays "MILES UNTIL EMPTY" so you don't have to guess? The "miles until empty" display on my LS is incredibly accurate and I would hope it would be similarly accurate on an RX.

ECT = electronically controlled transmission. It needs electricity to work properly.

thank you all guys for ur input.... really appreaciate it!! Do you from where I can get the replacment key and the card key you mentioned in the SF bay area? Thanks. jhussain, you still don't have an extra key? You asked a similar question in July 2006! :whistles: I don't know about the SF area (other than I froze my butt off at sea lion pier in July a few years ago), but you can buy keys at a modest discount from Sewell Lexus for your 91 LS: http://www.lexus-parts.com/parts.asp?id=1288&pid=1287 Sewell has provided excellent service in the past and the parts usually arrive within 2 - 3 days.

I find that snow tires are most important when driving in deep snow on unplowed streets and parking lots and up and down steep hills on unplowed streets where the snow is fresh and has not been beaten down by traffic. I could get by with all season tires on plowed streets and parking lots or when the snow has been beaten down by traffic -- if I had all season tires. But I do not have all season tires and have driven lots of times on streets which have not been touched by snow plows or other traffic -- particularly when we travel in Iowa. I use high performance summer tires on my 2000 LS400 -- similar to what was OEM standard equipment. All season tires were never standard on the LS400 and were a no cost option. IMO, all season tires are "OK" but summer tires make the car a lot more enjoyable during spring, summer and fall. My "lead foot" co-worker with his 99 LS400 with Turanzas (sorry, Steve, if you read this!) seems pretty unhappy with the way his car handles in the snow. If he wasn't too CHEAP (sorry again, Steve) to buy a decent set of real snow tires, I think he would be very happy with the way his car handles in the winter.

A page (180) in the 2000 LS400 owners manual is dedicated to resetting/calibrating the VSC system and eliminate the warning message. The same thing happened in my 2000 LS400 the last two times the battery failed. I did not have to follow the procedure described in the manual when I replaced my battery - it apparently reset on its own. It did, however, take a day or two for the VSC message to stop re-displaying.

I passed all the records for my 1990 LS400 to its new owner - he is still driving it and I see him most days at work. From what I remember, the approximately $4,500 I spend over the last two years of ownership included the 180,000 maintenance (timing belt, water pump, all fluid changes, etc.), still another power steering pump rebuild, another battery (probably its 5th since new), a new windshield (about $200), another set of four snow tires, another set of four summer tires, a suspension part or three, driver seat back repair, an A/C compressor and related parts, conversion to R-134a, various miscellaneous repairs, etc., etc. I loved my old 90 LS400 and might be driving it today if it had better headlights.

gcal, it sounds like our ages and goals are similar. For reference purposes, during the last two years of ownership of a 1990 LS400 (owned from new until 2003), I spent about $4,500 at an independent repair shop to get the car to 183,000 miles. The work would have cost perhaps 15% more at the Lexus dealer. $4,500 also happens to be what I sold the car for in 2003 -- it looked and drove like new and all maintenance was current. I suspect that my current 2000 LS400 (now at 94,000 miles) will require similar repairs at similar costs as it ages. $1,000 average per year in repairs is pretty inexpensive to keep a car like an SC or LS running well and certainly far, far less than it costs to buy a comparable new car. We aim to keep cars until they are about 13 - 15 years old. By buying well optioned cars with the latest technology, and particularly the latest safety features, we keep from feeling too deprived as the cars age. For example, our 98 Camry is one of a tiny number that was sold with optional side air bags, ABS and traction control. The Toyota dealer here had it trucked in from a dealer 600 miles away. Sure, we now wish it had VSC, more air bags, and a few more comfort options, but we can easily get by another six years until its planned retirement date. Personally I would not dream of asking the indie repair shop owner to use parts that I had purchased elsewhere. He is also my friend and I know that the mark-up on parts is an important part of his revenue -- and my helping him put his kids through college! It might help address VMF's questions if you listed the specific repairs that you expect to be required on your cars. Although I did most of my own car repairs when I was younger, these days I would rather take our cars to professionals for most everything. The only tasks I do now are oil changes, wiper blade refills and tire rotations and weekly checking/top-up of all fluids except the rear differential. Well, that is not exactly correct -- I sometimes, for fun, rip the interior of the car apart while installing gadgets like phones and navs.

amf1932, wwest, You two are a real hoot! I always enjoy reading all the posts from both of you. This is the probably the most humorous exchange on this forum I have seen. Keep it up! Merry Christmas to you both.

I am in my 18th year of driving Lexus LS cars and have rarely taken them to a Lexus dealership due to the high cost of service and the all too frequent poor quality of workmanship. Most of the times I have used a Lexus dealership are for warranty repairs or when my favorite indie repair shop is too busy or does not have the equipment (road force balancer, for example) to work in our cars. If you are at all handy with simple tools, it should take less than one hour to change the engine oil and filter - should cost less than $20 if you use a quality non-synthetic oil and a Toyota filter and a few bucks more if you use synthetic oil. For example, I buy a 10-pack of Lexus/Toyota oil filters for my LS400 at a Toyota dealer for less than $40 including 10 oil plug gaskets. I assume that the filter for your RX is the same as on the Highlander and Camry so you can likely go to a Toyota dealer to get them or buy them from Sewell Lexus (www.lexus-parts.com). I was at the local Lexus dealer last spring having my tires balanced. I sat a nicely decorated waiting room in a comfortable leather chair, watching a Plasma TV, using the WIFI Internet service and sipping gourmet coffee. A variety of snacks were available. It was a nice experience but one of the reasons that service costs so much at a Lexus dealership.

The dealer is completely "BS-ing" you if he is telling you that 225 tires are "too wide for the snows back east" on a car as heavy as a GS430. The snows in the Northeast are nothing comparied to what I've dealt with in decades of driving around Colorado ski areas, the bases of which are often at over 7,000 elevation. I've driven over Loveland and Berthoud passes a bazillion times - more than once in a full blown blizzard - and never once got close to getting stuck driving normal passenger cars. Colorado mountains are much larger than that wimpy little Whiteface ski area at Lake Placid where I skiid a couple of years ago. 1.57% speedo error is well within the acceptable range of variation. Sounds like the dealer wants to sell you what he has. I can't blame him. Snow tire supplies get short in the winter which is why I avoid buying them then. The best prices and supply of snow tires are usually in the summer or early fall. You will be fine with either size. Don't worry, be happy.

There shouldn't be any damage from a timing belt breaking on a 92 SC. It is not an interference engine. The timing belt on my 90 LS400 broke at about 75,000 miles - absolutely no damage and I drove the car another 100,000 plus miles before I sold it.

You can calculate the differences in tire sizes at http://www.1010tires.com/TireSizeCalculator.asp 215/60-16 tires would make your speedometer read 1.57% slower. I would recommend staying with the OEM tire size unless you are going to frequently drive in unusually severe snow conditions. 225/55-16 tires are a reasonable size for snow with your GS. If you were to go with wider tires (235, 245, etc.) the traction could be fairly bad even with Blizzaks. We don't get much deep snow where I live, but the OEM size Blizzaks I use on my 00 LS (225/60-16 is OEM for it) provided stunning results in the few 6 - 10 inch fresh snowfalls I have driven in and on many less severe slushy days. Another thing to remember is that snow tires provide less grip when the roads are dry or simply wet. Using 215/60-16 tires on your GS would provide even less stopping power in these conditions. If I am correct that you recently purchased your GS or moved to the Northeast, I think you will be surprised how well your car gets around in the snow with Blizzaks and the transmission mode in "Snow". The VSC is particularly effective when driving in snow - mine hardly ever kicks in outside of winter. Not that you want to "go crazy fast" in the snow, but, if you haven't already, take your car to an empty, snowy slick parking lot and drive it to and past the limits (when the audible alarm sounds) to get an understanding of how VSC works.

This article has a comparison between the spring based Sport Suspension and the sport setting on the Ultra air suspension system: http://www.automotive.com/2004/12/lexus/ls...iews/index.html Regarding the information in the article about using the high setting for driving in deep snow, I would hope you would not need that very often in Forida! Maybe it would help when it rains really hard, LOL.

Of course you can use snow tires on your OEM wheels. But one of the points of buying an extra set of inexpensive wheels for winter use is to preserve your nice OEM wheels for the other three seasons. If you are not going to keep your car for very long, mounting snow tires on the OEM wheels might be a better option financially. Also, switching back and forth between winter and summer wheels over and over tends to damage the beads on the tires. However, tires on 18" wheels often have an extremely short life so you wouldn't be switching the same tires on the wheels as many times as on cars where the wheels are smaller and the tires last longer. Another good aspect of going the minus one (17" inch wheels in your case) route for winter tires is that they give you a little more comfort in the winter when tires are stiffer due to the cold and there are more potholes caused by freeze and thaw. And snow tires on 17" wheels will likely last a little longer than snow tires on 18" wheels. The staggered size wheel setup on the IS350 seem to make the cost of snow tires (and tires in general) a bit painful.

No one can guarantee that using snow tires on your car will make it perform like you would like it to. Even with snow tires, you will have to drive with extra caution on snow and ice - especially to keep out of the way of those who are not using snow tires. All I can tell you is that the dealer is right - there is a "night and day" difference between using dedicated snow tires (with the mountain/snowflake label representing a certification) and using summer or "all season" tires. I get a kick out of driving up hills with my Blizzak equipped 2000 LS400 while passing stuck 4-wheel-drive vehicles helplessly spinning their all season tires.

Are you saying that you have snow tires and are still having a problem? The first thing I do when I buy a car is to buy an extra set of four wheels and a set of dedicated snow tires - tires with the mountain/snowflake symbol on the sidewall. If you have especially wide tires you might want to go with slightly narrower snow tires for winter use and even go with wheels of 1 inch less in diameter. If you choose to go the "minus one" tire/wheel route, be sure that the circumference of your winter tires are within one or two percentage points of your summer tires. I wouldn't dream of driving my LS in snow without dedicated snow tires and I live way south of Chicago!

Here is a link to power steering pump and parts for an 06 LS430: http://www.lexus-parts.com/assembly.asp?id...10&year=167 The basic pumps seems to be the same but there are lots of variations in other parts depending on the "Mark" designation - I do not know what the "Mark" means. I clearly remember a thread on this forum started by a person who drove a number of non-sport LS430s and then bought a sport version without driving it. He was not happy.

I had the timing belt replaced on my 2000 LS400 last summer at 90,000 miles and almost exactly seven years from the car's July 2000 in-service date. I went one year past the number of recommended years on the timing belt. The old belt looks good as new with no signs of wear or cracking. I kept it as a souvenir. I guess I could have let it go longer but I would rather trust Toyota's (ahem, Lexus) engineers than my visual assessment of the belt's condition.

I think if you look closely that you will see a 17th character in the VIN. One of the positions in the VIN is a "check digit". When a numeric calculation (alpha characters are assigned a number for purpose of calculation), the result of the equation equals (or is supposed to equal) the check digit. Only 16 characters of the VIN actually describe the car (country of origen, manufacturer, etc.). I used to be pretty good at interpreting VINs, including the old pre-17 character formats, but it has been nearly 20 years since I did that. Yes, I occassionally saw invalid VINs on vehicles back in the 1980s - I probably saw only three or four kick out as invalid of the many millions that a computer program analyzed.

Duh! Regarding using the piggyback fuse connector, I forgot to include that you would have to find a place to attach the ground wire from the cigarette lighter extension cord. You can find out which is the hot wire and which is the ground on the extension cable by plugging it in to the cigarette lighter and probing its two wires with a 12V test light. For my phone kit, I attached a ground wire to a bolt on the firewall. If you don't mind using t-taps or scotch connectors, the wires leading to the accessory port under the front armrest in a 98-00 LS are exposed after you pop up the wood console panel. For my nav, I used scotch lock connectors to connect an extension cord to these wires. There is plenty of room to route the extension cable receptacle forward under the wood console panel and/or behind the carpet on the side of the transmission tunnel. If the extension cord receptacle is hidden behind the carpet to the right of the gas pedal, it is especially easy to peal the carpet away from the transmission tunnel to plug and unplug accessories such as a radar detector or nav.

No curb feelers please, No fuzzy dice either. LOL :chairshot: I have Nav and it does not work that great. Was looking at options to maybe help the reception of the stock one or an external antenna for another Nav unit. I'm just kidding you! Seriously, modern nav units almost never need external antennas anymore. The cheap Magellan nav you can see in my avitar mounted above my phone console has the SirfstarIII chipset and almost always shows that it is receiving maximum signal strength from 11 or more satelites and operating in WAS mode -- without an external antenna. The nav in the 98-00 is light years behind even the most inexpensive aftermarket navs available today.

IMO, the easiest way to power your detector is to use a piggyback fuse connector and a cigarette lighter extension cable. Cut off the end of the cigarette lighter extension cable (the end you would plug into the cigarette lighter) and wire it to the piggyback fuse connector. Remove the accessories fuse from the fuse box under the dash and replace it with the piggyback fuse connector. Plug your radar detector into the extension cable receptacle. Tie the tangle of wires up under the dash with a cable tie. The nice aspect of this method is that you do not have to remove or damage the connector on the end of your radar detector's power cable . This method works for just about anything else too - navigation devices, MP3 players, etc. - without having to tie up your cigarette lighter or accessory port or splice in to any wires in the car's electrical harness. The piggyback fuse connector and the extension cable are available at many auto parts stores. The extension cables are commonly available at discount stores like WalMart and Target.

I absolutely agree with everything that SRK says with one small amendment ... I am fairly certain that the timing belt change interval for all U.S. market LS400 models is 90,000 miles or six years. The recommended change interval for SRK's Canadian market models could be a little different. Do you have the maintenance manual that came with your car? It probably tells you the timing belt change interval. The great thing about the belt on the 90 LS400 is that no damage is caused if it should break. If you don't mind having to call a tow truck when it finally (if ever) breaks, you can drive your 90 LS until it does. The bigger problem on the gen 1 LS is the water pump. The water pump on the 90 LS I used to have failed at around 75,000 miles and took the timing belt with it when it seized up. Supposedly the water pump was replaced with one of an improved design but I had the water pump (and timing belt) replaced again at 180,000 miles shortly before I sold the car to a coworker. If you ever smell coolant, your water pump may be leaking which means that its failure is going to happen very soon. If this happens, you might as well drive directly to your favorite Lexus or indie repair shop and save yourself the trouble of getting stranded.