1990LS400

The Toyota Land Cruiser Prado is currently being manufactured in mainland China where, according to what I read last week, the average auto worker is paid the equivalent of 95 cents per hour versus $24/hour in the U.S. and $38/hour in Germany. At labor rates like these, who knows how low prices can go.

In the "olden days" car doors were more likely to pop open in a crash if unlocked allowing ejection of occupants and injury/death from being run over by your own car. Now the main reason to keep your doors locked is to prevent car jacking or robbery. Google "lock doors while driving". Here is a link on the subject at the web site of my favorite car nuts, Tom and Ray: http://www.cartalk.com/content/columns/Arc...October/04.html Car Talk is on Public Radio every Saturday at 9:00 AM Central Time. I almost never miss it. If I do miss it, I can listen to the show on their web site.

agc, In a previous post you seemed very concerned that you were feeling too many bumps which we later determined by your having the tires at 36 psi. I suspect that you are going to have as much or more degradation in ride quality by going to 17" wheels with 55 series tires even if you watch the tire pressure closely. The ride will not be terrible but you will notice it at first until you get used to it. Since you seem so concerned with the comfort of the ride, why are you considering this change? I see two 99 LS's in the parking lot with the same wheels (one standard and the other chrome) as yours and they look very nice. There was a post on one of the forums a while back from someone who bought a used 2001 or 2002 LS430 and was disappointed that it rode so much rougher than the other used LS430's he had driven. Turned out that it had the optional 17" wheels. Another question is tire life. This is from the CPO model library for a 2002 LS430: "Optional 17 x 7.5-in wheels with 225/55HR17 tires are expected to experience greater tire wear than the standard equipment tires, 225/60HR16. Tire life may be substantially less than 15,000 miles" Whoa! I've put over 200,000 miles on LS400's and have gotten at least 40,000 miles from every set of non-winter tires mounted on the standard wheel size. Just trying to be present other information for your consideration....

Here are the Nav hard drive removal instructions ...

This is not one of the optional settings for the 98-00 LS according to the list provided to me by 99lsguy. I already checked whether this can be done since I would have liked to have the doors automatically lock when the gear selector is put into "drive". I have read that later model years have additional settings but I don't know if this is one of them.

Just drop by any Toyota or Lexus dealer - they all use the same size bolt. Maybe even all Japanese cars use the same size - fine thread metric of course. Dealers usually just throw these things at you - have bags of em just laying around. Or stick a sharped pencil into the hole hard enough to made an impression in the pencil tip and then take the pencil to a hardware store. I bought chrome plated bolts at the hardware store that require an "allen" wretch to remove. Maybe not a good idea in the front if your state requires a front plate. A woman barely "tapped" my rear bumper at a stop light two years ago - one of her pertruding license plate screws did almost $1,000 damage to the bumper cover.

Have you tried more than one 12V device to make certain that it is not the plug on the cord? I've seen at least one poorly designed plug that would not make a good contact. Does the accessory 12V socket in the storage area under the center arm rest not work either? (I assume yours has one since my 00 LS does.) Does your 12V device work without problem when connected to the accessory socket and the two rear lighter sockets? Be gentle if you have to pop the wood off the console - it is not as thick and sturdy as the wood on the early LS. My favorite tool to remove the wood is a 1 1/2 inch puddy knife with a very stiff blade well wrapped with electrical tape.

No, you are at risk only if your phone settings allow it to be discovered and used by a non-paired device. Forget my "WiFi" comment - I threw that comment in since my PDA can connect to devices via both Bluetooth and WiFi - even at the same time. I'll bet that your phone's owners manual covers this topic in depth.

But mrsel3, 98es is from Tennessee - not from NY where all those dishonest people are! Seriously mrsel3, NY people (OK, I don't know about Brooklyn) are darned nice and helpful - just like in the Midwest - maybe even better - I have spent quite a bit of time in the Albany area over the past few years. Upstate NY roads are very good compared to where I live. Missouri where I frequently drive was rated as having the 49th best roads in the U.S. - that's next to last! Only one southern state (not saying which but the name also starts with Miss and ends in I) was rated worse. I think Kansas City was recently rated as having the worst streets in the U.S. - damage from potholes and worse cause many hundreds of $ of damage per car annually. I absolutely agree that it is best to buy a car with complete records and receipts although these records usually do not get passed along through an auto auction. If you are going to buy a formerly leased vehicle, try to buy one serviced at a dealership - it is easy to check to see if it was. The lessee of my LS was an "old !Removed!" so I might have been lucky. The main flaws on the car were two little marks on the rear bumper left by the wheel chair he hoisted into the trunk. Hardware on my wife's wheelchair matches up perfectly with the marks.

This is a very good point. With leases expiring there will be a nice influx of supply of cars. Try to go for cars from warm states and states with nice roads unlike new york. ALso check the leased cars throuroughly. People do tend to abuse their cars if they now they will be changing it in 2 - 3 years for osmething new. ← I doubt if one needs to worry all that much about whether a leased vehicle was maintained or abused. Lease agreements require regular maintenance - the person who leased my current LS when new never missed a scheduled maintenance at the dealer and obviously took good care of the car. Abuse of a leased vehicle carries some very harsh financial penalties the end of the lease. An ES isn't the kind of car that people usually "drive the wheels off". Not that you couldn't get a bad one, but buying a formerly leased vehicle is these days a low risk proposition.

Actually, I think Lincoln towncars are quite fun and comfy. I accidentally rented one for a tour of northern California wine country in 2003. It was probably like steering the Queen Mary -- HUGE. Got terrible gas mileage too -- literally coasted into Bodega Bay (where Hitchcock's "The Birds" was filmed) with about a cup of gas left in the tank. About six months ago, one of my brother-in-laws bought a really nice late 90's, low mileage (I think about 35K miles) used Towncar "for a song" for his college age son. The kid is about 6' 4", 250 pounds and plays football (that's the "real" football!) for his college team. He didn't fit too well in the Honda Accord he got from my wife but he and his even bigger team mates (some weigh over 300 pounds!) love the huge interior of the Lincoln. Now the kid is always the one who has to drive his mates around. Oh, did I forget to say that the Towncar is HUGE?

The absolute handiest thing I did to my 00 LS was to hook my Nokia phone kit to the phone pre-wiring of the car. There is a connector under the back of the center console on the drivers side (under the air vent you can see when the console lid is up) that contains a mute pin (center front pin) for the audio system that can be connected to a phone kit's mute wire by simply jamming the mute wire in and securing it with a wire tie. There is also power in the same connector. There is likely a link to the audio system speakers too but I used a separate speaker rather than risk frying the system. Nearby, there is a coax cable for the phone antenna imprinted on the rear window. Connect this to a phone kit's antenna lead and then connect the two coax cables hiding under the floor and behind the trim panel at the right side of the trunk. When my phone rings, the audio system volume automatically mutes and my phone automatically answers after two rings. I can decline the call if I am busy or don't like who I see on the phone's caller-id by pressing the "decline" button and send the caller to voice mail. When the other person hangs up, my phone automatically hangs up and the audio system volume is restored. I never have to remove my hands from the steering wheel unless I want to press the voice dial key (10 stored names) or speed dial one of 10 stored numbers. Using the car's built-in antenna causes the phone's strength meter to go from 3 bars to the full 7 bars when the car is in the garage - I have NEVER been without phone service even when driving in rural areas where others in my car could not pick up a signal on their phones. Search the forum and you can find links to docs on my website that contain photos.

how do u do that, keep the bluetooth headset off?? ← I was not talking about Bluetooth "headsets" - only Bluetooth "handsets" - the actual phone. A few weeks ago a co-worker (let's call her SARAH! for the benefit of another co-worker who reads this forum) was showing me her new Nokia phone. I asked her if her phone had Bluetooth and she asked "What is Bluetooth?". I pulled out my Dell Bluetooth/WiFi PDA and found that her phone was "discoverable" by both paired and unpaired devices and that this was the default setting. I assume that Sarah's phone must have a setting (like my PDA) to allow her phone to be discoverable and paired only with previously paired (with a password) Bluetooth devices. Instead of changing her phone settings so her phone would be discoverable only by previously paired devices, Sarah instead complete turned off Bluetooth in the settings and said that she would never want to use it anyway. I don't know how wireless Bluetooth "headsets" pair with Bluetooth handsets - I assume the headsets pair to a phone with a password or identifying key so that a headset picks up only your own phone.

Bluetooth is also an easy way to use a PDA on the Internet through a cheap USB Bluetooth "thingy" plugged into a PC. A Bluetooth PDA has entertaining ability called commonly called "Bluesnarfing". While waiting for my wife's luggage at the airport each Thursday night, I can use my PDA to view the contents of the Bluetooth phones of the people standing there with me. More fun than using the airport's WiFi to surf the net. Make your Bluetooth phones nondiscoverable!

You are in the perfect time frame to find a low mileage 2002 ES coming off a common 36 - 40 month lease. These cars should be hitting the auto auctions right now. Find an auto broker or small dealer and tell him what you are looking for. This how I bought my current LS when it was three years old and I got it at almost $9,000 less than what the local Lexus dealer was asking for similer 3 year old LS cars.

I hope you have success with getting the used car dealer to honor the 30 day warranty. The issue your car is having may be covered under the emissions system warranty but it is hard to say. You might need to take your car to a Lexus Dealer to see if the problem is covered. Superior Lexus in KC might be able to help. Hard to believe that there is still only one Lexus dealer in the entire state of Kansas and that the one dealer is in Wa-chee-ta. If there is not an independent repair shop specializing in Lexus in Lawrence, I would recommend Ben Bennett's Exact Performance in Shawnee, Kansas, ph. 913-384-4555 http:///www.exactauto.com Ben and his mechanics were formerly with Superior Lexus and I and a few others I know have used his services for quite a few years. Another suggestion, long term, is to try the Toyota dealer in Lawrence. We have a Camry V6 and I know that a lot of the mechanicals are identical to the ES. PM me if you like. I'm only 30 miles away from you and know some of the Lexus ropes in the KC area. Now, if only KU had a basketball team... (I went to MU. Go Tigers!)

The very brief instructions on how to remove the Nav hard are in one of the two repair manuals for my 00 LS. All you have to do is remove the Nav ECU by removing the three bolts holding it to the floor in the right well of the trunk. Remove the two screws and little cover over where the hard drive slides in. Pull the hard drive out. The manual includes a caution about being gentle. Looks easy but who knows? I can scan the page if you run into problems. It has been only a bit over a year since the last Nav update so I doubt if not having a newer update is an issue yet for very many owners. Lexus has not been particularly sensitive about providing service for some features that were not widely sold. For example, support was dropped for its dealer installed phone systems while the some cars having them were still well within the basic warranty.

Most recently my local Lexus dealer provided a loaner RX330 and ES330 but I have received more non-Lexus loaners than Lexus cars from the same Lexus dealer. Sometimes the non-Lexus cars were quite nice - sometimes Cadillacs. I think a front drive Camry is perfectly acceptable as a loaner car from a Lexus dealer and I suspect that it will easily cope with the 3 - 5 inches of snow forecast for tonight for Glen Cove. Our Camry V6 does very well in much heavier snow than that and it does not have snow tires.

I've only spent about a total of two weeks driving in the U.K. but I call tell you from these experiences that there are many left hand drive cars on the road there - including lots of visitors from Europe - and a surprising number of left hand drive American "muscle cars" like Mustangs. I've always thought that the main problem with driving an "opposite drive car" was in passing on two lane roads. I drove a friend's RHD Jag XKE 3.8 a few times in the 60's (in Missouri) and it was difficult trying to peek around the vehicle ahead of me to see if it was clear to pass.

Why don't you just pop out the hard drive and see if it is proprietary or a standard hard drive interface like IDE, SCSI, USB or PCMIA. My suspicion is that it is proprietary and that the software and data are not separate but combined in "object code" as they are for most highly specialized devices. Is the Nav hard drive in the Nav ECU in the right rear of the trunk under the pop-up floor panel where the Lexus phone transceiver also goes? I don't think my repair manual covers removing / replacing the hard drive but I will check.

There were several $1,000 increases in the list price in the first year or two and then the new "luxury tax" kicked in and made the price really zoom upward. The original $35,000 base list price was seen as quite a bargain which is why more LS400's were sold in 1990 than any other year. U.S. automakers accused Lexus of "dumping" (selling below manufacturing cost) which also contriubuted to the rapid price increase. Lexus jokes were a staple of Jay Leno on the tonight show in late 1989 - mostly about the melting high mounted brake light. A lot of people made fun of my LS when I first bought it - it was rather entertaining. I still have and just looked at the 1989 Automobile mag article that compared the LS to a BMW 535, Infinity Q45 and Mercedes 300E and which many thought was responsible for kickstarting Lexus sales. The article essentially said that BMW and Mercedes was doomed by the introduction of Lexus.

Looks like the vote is getting a bit messed up unless someone really did purchase a brand new 90 - 96 LS for under $20K. The lowest dealer cost for a basic 90 LS with no options was right at $29,000. My total sticker price when I bought my LS brand new in early 90 was about $36,500 (I paid far less than that) and the only options it had were a $900 sunroof, keyless entry, and floor mats. A completely loaded 90 LS with the options I got plus leather, Nakamichi, air suspension, traction control, chrome wheels and Lexus phone could be had for way less than $50,000.

Recent Lexus/Toyota Nav DVD's are sometimes for sale on eBay - I saw one today with a disclaimer that it is not compatible with older Lexus/Toyota DVD-based Nav systems. You could buy one of these DVD's and take a look. And remove your Nav hard drive and see if there is any way to hook it to a PC. I would be surprised if the data were not embedded in the software on both the hard drive and DVD systems and incompatible with each other. I wonder what percentage of 98-00 LS400's sold in the U.S. had Nav. Of probably 20 98-00 LS400's I've seen since just before I bought my 00 in 2003, only one had Nav. I think SW03ES said that Nav equipped LS400's are a lot more common on the east coast. Probably not that many people here in the central U.S. need Nav to find their way from pasture to pasture.

Our V6 Camry came with the same wheel and tire size that the ES had in the same model year and we got more than 60,000 miles from its OEM Dunlop SP4000's. The OEM SP4000's on our 00 LS lasted over 40,000 miles. The tires on your 17" wheels will likely last far longer than 20,000 miles. Use a digital tire gauge, check the pressure weekly, keep them close to the recommended pressure, and don't drive (all the time) like a bat-out-a-hell. Don't worry and just enjoy your ES and those 17" wheels! That 20,000 miles disclaimer could be related to the class action suit in the early 90's where Lexus reimbursed 100,000+ LS400 owners, me included, for the premature wearing (more like a melt-down) of OEM Goodyear Eagle GA's.

A lot of people seem to use these guys: http://carstereohelp.com/lexus.htm They even have a "Do it yourself repair" section for repairing the most common amp problems.