1990LS400

Gosh, Craig. Are you actually reading the Consumer Reports articles and year book ratings about Mercedes vehicles? There has been lots of very detailed information about the issues with Mercedes vehicles over many years. We've subscribed to Consumer Reports for around 30 years and participate in its annual survey where we report problems we have had with autos, appliances, etc. Most of what you see in Consumer Reports ratings comes directly from people like us who are members of Consumers Union and who participate in the surveys. We owned Mercedes cars for a total of 16 years before we switched to Toyota/Lexus products. My last Mercedes went through three engines (the original and two "caged" factory rebuilds) in the first 150,000 miles. There are five S-class Mercedes cars in households in my culdesac. My best friend has a Mercedes E320, purchased new, which has left him stranded on several occasions with fuel and electrical system problems. Based on my experiences with Mercedes and those of my friends and neighbors, I would suspect that Consumer Reports is very accurate in its reporting of Mercedes quality.

Tire Rack is not always cheaper or that much cheaper than buying locally. I generally buy from Tire Rack because it is more convenient and cost effective (time, money, gas) to shop on-line than to cruise local stores looking for what I want. Hey, $15 is $15 -- enough to buy a couple of cheeseburgers and fries -- at least here in Lenexa a few miles from where you live in K.C. I have sometimes found incredible deals at Tire Rack by buying winter tires at the end of the winter and summer tires at the end of the summer. In around 2002, I bought eight Dunlop 4000s at once (our 90 LS and 98 Camry used the same size) when they were on sale at $50. I bought eight tires and four wheels (for snow tires) from Tire Rack in 2003 when I purchased my current LS. When one of the wheel center caps didn't fit exactly right, Tire Rack sent me a complete set with no questions asked -- didn't even ask for me to send the defective one back. With regular shipping my purchases from Tire Rack usually arrive in 2-3 days. I wish all companies gave such great service.

These cars could simply be coming off a three year lease. 2004 LS430s were sold beginning in September/October 2003 and now it is the time for off lease 2004 models to begin showing up in the market place in large numbers. This is called an "opportunity"! If the mileage is within 36-38K miles on these cars, I think you can bet that they have come off a lease. I purchased my current 2000 LS400 after it came off a three year lease on August 1, 2003.

What is a "sunscreen"? Are you talking about the sunroof/moonroof?

It is a good to learn how to use the advanced search function of this forum -- most common problems have been covered before. By doing a search on "antenna" in the LS section of this forum, I found this link: http://www.lexls.com/tutorials/audio/powerantenna.html Welcome and good luck!

I replaced the bulbs in the high mounted brake light on my 00 LS today for the first time. One bulb was burned out but I replaced both since the glass on both was blackened. The key to removing the high brake light housing seems to be to lift the forward edge of the housing up far enough so that the three red plastic prongs on each side of the forward edge of the light housing clear the forward edge of the hole in the rear parcel shelf. The red plastic prongs appear to be fairly fragile. The removal procedure is certainly different than on the gen 1 LS I had where the subwoofer and brake light were in the same housing -- more difficult to reach back to the separate light housing on the 00 LS.

My suggestion is to go to a body shop. There are often inexpensive partial wire harness bits available for collision repair. I bought inexpensive partial wire harness parts manufactured by Toyota/Lexus for collision repair when I added side turn signals to my first LS400. If you don't have success at a body shop, a salvage yard might have a GS that has want you need.

Your question has been asked countless times on this and other Lexus forums. There is no RCA jack on the radio and the only commercial ipod interfaces that I have seen are for 2001-up Lexus cars with nav that can emulate an MD changer. The most common solutions for the old cars seem to be an FM modulator or a cassette adapter with a 2.5 mm input jack. Sorry ...

I can't find a separate fuse for the intermittent feature in the 2-volume manuals for my 2000 LS400 but that doesn't mean your LS430 would be the same. There are some diagnosis steps, including continuity testing, described in the 2000 LS repair manuals but they are a little lengthy to transcribe here and the connectors could be quite different in your car. One of the first steps in the procedure is to "Disconnect the switch and wiper relay connector". My repair manuals don't even show the relay's location in my car although they show the location of lots of other relays -- maybe it is connected directly to the switch. Assuming that your 2004 LS is under warranty, this sounds like one for the dealer. But, my bet is on a bad wiper relay. Let us know when you find the real cause! I remember back 30+ years ago when intermittent wipers were just beginning to be an option on inexpensive cars. When I bought a VW Rabbit in 1975, the salesman told me that intermittent wipers were not an option. I went to the parts counter, bought an intermittent wiper relay for a VW Scirocco, plugged it in under the dash and, voila, I had intermittent wipers.

I would be very interested in seeing the details on your Parrot installation. Sooner or later I will have to give up on my old Nokia phone kit and install a BlueTooth kit of some sort. I keep looking for a good place to mount a Parrot or similar control module in my 00 LS. I would like to mount it so that I don't have to look down at a display or move my right hand more than a few inches from the steering wheel. There does not seem to be a really good place to mount it in my car. If my phone kit died today, I would buy one of the aftermarket navigation products that has a BlueTooth phone function and permanently mount a bracket for it just above the center dash vents. But from the research I have done, only the ones from TomTom can mute the car audio system automatically. Your "glitch" with the contacts sync may be a "feature" since some (all?) BlueTooth kits sync only with the phone's SIM card and not with the phone's internal memory. When I copy the contacts from my Nokia phone's memory to its SIM card, the same thing happens -- contacts with multiple phone numbers are converted to multiple entries. The charging and antenna issues are a pain. The coming replacement/revision of BlueTooth uses a tiny fraction of the battery power that the current BlueTooth uses. The same goes for the antenna -- it often takes an external antenna to get decent reception and to prevent interference with the car's radio. Phone manufactures seem to be ignoring many of these issues.

My 2000 LS400 in "snow mode" does not drive anything like my wife's V6 Camry with TRAC/ABS. Snow mode is a "necessary evil" when driving in heavy snow or on very slick roads. I can't see how snow mode could improve gas mileage since higher engine revs are required to move the car away from a stop in 2nd gear and since the car stays in a lower and less fuel efficient gear with higher engine revs more of the time. Don't get me wrong. I love snow mode coupled with VSC. The earlier Lexus cars with or without TRAC were an absolute bear to drive on slick roads compared to the later ones with snow mode/VSC. If you have not yet driven your car on really slick roads, I suggest you take it to a large empty parking lot on a snowy/slick day. Drive your car car like a complete idiot and experience the wonders of VSC. We will never buy another car without it.

I am not an expert on the maintenance requirements for all model years of the LS400 but do know about a few revisions to the maintenance requirements during the 98-00 model years. I suggest that each LS owner obtain a maintenance manual for his specific model year and read it. This forum is sometimes very helpful but it is better to get reliable information from the manufacturer's maintenance manual than to rely on heresay.

Although they may look the same, the maintenance requirements of the 2000 LS400 are a little different than the 98-99 LS400. The specific requirements can be found in the 2000 LS400 maintenance manual.

I also have a 2000 LS400 although I am a year or two away from 90,000 miles. Your maintenance manual has detailed information about what is needed at 90K so I am not going to rehash what is documented in it. If you do not have a maintenance manual, you can get one from your Lexus dealer. The 2000 LS400 requires less frequent maintenance than earlier models. For example, the recommended change interval for spark plugs is 120,000 miles. While some people seem tempted to "over maintain" a car, I think the key to making a car last a long time is to consistently follow the "normal" service recommendations of the manufacturer and to fix things as soon as they break.

I have never heard of an Internet site that can provide this information but a "trim level" code may be in position 8 of the VIN. A Lexus dealer may be able to tell you if there is a trim code for the Ultra in the VIN. I would tend to be very suspicious of an owner is says that he can not tell if his LS430 has the Ultra package. An Ultra can be easily identified by the cooler box behind the rear arm rest, the A/C and radio controls in the rear armrest, the rear reclining seat and the much smaller trunk. Is it a used car dealer who is telling you this? An original owner would have dropped an additional $10,000 for the Ultra package and I would think that he would remember if he did. It sounds like the seller is "playing dumb". LS430 Ultras must be quite rare. I tend to check out LS430s when I walk past them and I think I have seen only one Ultra out all the LS430s I've seen.

After having central vac in a house we had built in 1982, the only houses my wife would even consider when we bought an existing house seven years ago all had central vac. The dirt cannister on our central vac needs emptying about once a year -- it would be longer if there was no pet hair to clean up. And the noise of the vacuum is isolated mainly to a closed off utility room. It is important to properly size a central vac main unit to the size of the house. When in doubt, bigger is better. An electrically powered head with beater bars is a must for properly cleaning carpets. The air powered beater bar heads are much less expensive but don't work nearly as well on carpet. We feel the same way about intercom/music systems -- we won't buy a house without one.

A common cause of this problem is a defective brake light switch -- it is located under the dash at the brake pedal arm. Next time it happens you can confirm whether or not this is the problem by checking to see if the brake lights come on when you press the brake pedal.

I don't know if the 96 seats will fit in a 91 but I think the seats are quite a bit higher in a 96 like they are in my 00. The interior dimensions of the 95-00 LS are very different than the 90-94 LS. It sounds like your seat back has a common problem which is fairly easy to fix. When it happened on the 90 LS I used to have, I had a mechanic repair it. I posted the cost in a previous post -- I don't remember how much I paid but it was fairly inexpensive. Try doing a search in the LS portion of this forum.

I don't know about the absolutely widest tires that will fit but I can tell you that the 98-00 LS400 sold in the U.K. with the DHP (Dynamic Handling Package) came with 245/50-17 tires on 17" wheels. (You might want to search the U.K. forum.) That is a big increase over the standard 225's. The U.K. DHP models also came with revised springs that lowered the car a bit -- maybe some other suspension modifications - don't remember. I have noticed that some in the U.K. think that the DHP package makes the ride too firmly but others seem to like the handling improvement.

According to a service adviser at my local Lexus dealer, a feature of the 98-up LS prevents valve train damage by keeping the transmission from shifting into higher gears and limiting the action of the electronically connected throttle until the engine is warmed up a little. I mostly notice it when the temperature is below 50 degrees. I have to drive several 25 mph blocks until I reach a main street so I may not notice this feature as much as others. You might ask your dealer to explain this feature as I don't remember it being documented in the owners manual. New engine mounts can do wonders to elminate vibrations and I assume your new transmission mount helped some. 8-9 years on motor mounts is a lot regardless of mileage; I need to think about having mine changed since my LS is six years old.

If you want "a more LS-like ride", you could try a set of wheels and tires in the size that was standard on the 2001 GS430 - 225/55VR16. Your car apparently has the optional 235/45ZR17 tires on the optional 17" wheels -- probably improves handling but at the cost of a harsher ride. Or play with tire size calculators like the one at http://www.1010tires.com/TireSizeCalculator.asp to find a size that does what you want on 17" wheels. Most speedometers are off about as much as yours is -- Tom and Ray Magliozzi had a segment about this last week on their radio show "Car Talk" -- very funny but serious in that your odometer is reporting about 4% more miles than is really on the car. My handheld GPS shows that the speedo error on my 00 LS400 is similar to yours -- indicated 75 mph at an actual 70 mph.

As to the battery issue, thats odd I'd never heard of that before. I agree - I have replaced a lot of batteries in customer cars over the years, and only once have I seen a cell disconnect from the others, and that battery failed completely in less than 30 minutes. To have four seems a bit unlikely - change brands for sure eh? Two of the batteries that failed were the OEM batteries that were installed at the factory or when the two new LS400's were unloaded from the boat - whenever the OEM battery gets installed. At least one of the other batteries that failed was an "Interstate". I have provided this same information on this and several other Lexus forums over the years and have have seen that several other LS owners have replied and said that replacing the battery resolved the problem. But of course the cause of the problem could be something else.

As I mentioned in past posts, a similar problem occured every 3-4 1/2 years on two different LS400's. I always took the car directly to the shop and each time the problem was a broken connection between battery cells -- the connection would break and reconnect when hitting a bump or turning a corner and the problem was intermittent. A new battery solved the problem every time. When it happened on my current 2000 LS400 in 2004 when the car and battery were almost exactly four years old, I simply took the car in for a new battery and didn't even bother to have the battery tested. I don't remember if the A/C was on or not but I almost never turn it off so it was probably on. The problem always happened spring, summer or fall and never in the winter. The repair shop owner (Ben Bennett, Exact Performance, Shawnee KS) - a former Lexus dealer service writer - told me that this is a common problem on the LS series. Of course it could be something else but this problem has happened at least four times to me and a new battery always solved the problem. I've got a reminder on my PDA for a day in 2008 -- when the reminder alarm goes off I will drive directly to the shop to get a new battery.

Owners of 93-94 LS400's who want to install a phone kit might want to check under the rear of the center console to see if there is a phone mute point in a second (driver side) phone connector similar to the one Blake918 found on his 95 LS and the somewhat different one I found on my 00 LS. In 1992, Lexus mailed a promotional video tape on the 1993 LS400 to current owners. I happened to pop the tape into the VCR a few weeks ago and saw that a new feature being offered on the 93 LS was an optional portable wireless phone that mounted in the center console. I'm not certain but I suspect that the second under-console connector with the mute point began with the LS400's that pre-wired for both the portable and fixed phones. My 90 LS did not have the second under-console connector with a mute point and only the fixed phone was offered during the first few years. If there is a mute point under the console, it would be easier than running a wire from the trunk and safer than looking for a mute point on the head unit or amp.

I think it is safe to say that no one has found a way to truly integrate a non-Lexus phone into the old non-Bluetooth Lexus phone systems. I've spend hundreds of hour researching this question. Do some searching on this forum and you will find quite few threads about deinstalling the Lexus phone system and installing aftermarket traditional and Bluetooth phone kits. About the best you can do is to make an aftermarket phone kit mute your radio when a call is in progress. But I have not seen much (or anything, for that matter) in aftermarket phone kits for LG phones. The LG AX4270 appears to be non-Bluetooth so a Bluetooth kit isn't going to do you any good.