1990LS400

Cloth Interior and rear sunshade photo.

Cloth Interior - 2nd photo.

Here (if I do this right) is the first of several low resolution photos of the cloth interior (including the original retractable rear window shade) of the 1990 LS400 I recently sold plus a picture of it and the 2000 LS400 which replaced it. The new owner of the 90 LS is apparently also a reader of this forum. I'm already missing the cloth interior although I have to admit the seat heaters make the leather on the 2000 LS easier to deal with than I thought it would be. Too bad the rear seats don't have heaters - I noticed in the owners manual that there is a fuse for the rear seat heaters but apparently they were not available in the U.S. or Canada until on the recent LS430. I wonder why - they couldn't have cost much more.

I sold my 1990 LS400 last Wednesday to a much younger co-worker after driving it for 13 1/2 years and 183,500 miles. It was and still is a wonderful automobile. The main thing is to keep on top of repairs and maintenance. My 1990 had very few things "wrong" but all could be easily corrected. The remote locking functioned only below 32 F. degrees and two radio button lights were out -- that's all. Virtually no oil consumption (Mobil 1 synthetic since 50K) and the cloth interior was in almost perfect condition. Probably helped that the car was garaged except during the day and that I always had the retractable rear window shade up and a removable folding shade in the windshield - winter or summer - and that I had the side windows slightly tinted a few years back. All this does wonders to preserve the interior, especially where it exceeds 100 F. in the summer. The early LS's seems to get some flack for its smaller brakes but I am convinced that the main shortcoming in the tires. Substituting 225/60-15 for the original 205/65-15 tires does wonders to improve handling and especially braking and also preserves speedometer accuracy. 225/60-15 tires fit just fine on the orginal 6 1/2 inch wide wheels - just don't overdo the tire pressure. And the early LS's seem, at least to me, to handle better, or at least be more balanced and predictable, than the later ones - I can't imagine trying to do a four wheel drift in my 2000 LS but it was great fun in the 1990 LS. How long your LS will last is largely up to you and also how long Toyota/Lexus continues to supply all the necessary parts.

This string of posts isn't getting tedious at all. Having owned several Mercedes, including a V8 450SEL way back in the 70's, with chain driven cams and having personally rebuilt an SL engine just for fun, I think I am accurate in saying that the chain is within the engine block and head housing, bathed in oil, but works just like the LS400 belt in turning the camshafts to open and close the valves. A chain driven camshaft in a non-interference engine is probably no more likely to bend the valves than a belt driven camshaft in a non-interference engine although I hate to think what the chain might do to other components when pieces of it flop around in the housing after it breaks. Maybe timing belts aren't so bad after all although I'm glad to see Toyota start to use chains instead of belts in some models. I'm guessing that one reason repairing your 400SEL chain costs $3,000 was that is a Mercedes. In the 13+ years with my old LS400, it has rarely been in the shop except for scheduled maintenance -- and only every 30,000 miles at that since I do all the intermediate maintenance myself. Gosh, it seemed like my Mercedes cars were always in the shop with some strange problem and the repair cost often seemed so outrageous it was almost funny. I knew the Mercedes 380 V8's had a bad chain breakage problem but I hadn't realized that the problem continued into all the way into the 1990's with the 400SEL - bummer! (I know this is a Lexus forum but I still love the 400SEL of the early 90's.)

Wow! This string of posts seems a bit odd with so many completely opposite opinions. I had a timing belt break, after the water pump seized, on my 1990 LS400 many years ago at 84,000 miles and absolutely no damage was done. The car just coasted to a harmless stop and I even had time to pull off the road and coast into a parking lot. Some dealers and repair shops probably enjoy (and profit by) this confusion since needlessly replacing timing belts can "enhance" revenue. Only recently I decided to have the belt replaced a 2nd time at 180,000 simply to avoid the inconvenient of being stranded again. If I didn't use the LS400 for an occasional 400 - 800 mile round trip weekend trip, and after discussion with the owner of my local Lexus repair shop, I would have just driven the car until the belt broke again - just for the fun of seeing how long it would last. We also have a 1998 V6 Camry which I verified aso has a non-interferance engine, which we never drive outside of town and which we will probably drive until the belt breaks or the water pump fails. That's why we program our favorite tow truck companies into our cell phones! The reason that I bring this up is that 1999 seems to be the first year that Toyota went on the interferance engine bandwagon. My advice would be to be sensitive to the smell of antifreeze which might indicate that a water pump is failing and, if so, could lead to belt failure.

I checked the original window sticker and the alarm was standard in 1990. The keyless entry was optional at $250 and is one of only three options I bought - the others were the $900 sunroof and floor mats. One of the main reasons that I bought the car in the first place was that it has cloth seats - and of course it was an absolute bargain -- was cheaper than a 1990 baby Mercedes 190E 2.6. And the alarm still works fine after 13+ years.

The timing belt on my 90 LS400 broke at 84,000 miles when the water pump seized. My local independent repair shop, specializing in Lexus, said it is not a problem because it is a non-interference engine. I think the first interference engines were used in 1999 which is how they got 290 hp from the LS400 engine. 16" 5-spoke GS300 wheels fit fine on a 1st generation LS400 although the the speedo reading will be off a little if you don't use lower profile tires - my next door neighbor used them for his snow tires. The 2nd generation LS400 (93-94?) came with 16" wheels standard instead of 15".

After about 13 years of ownership, the exact same thing happened on the driver's seat of my LS400 a few months ago. My local independent Lexus repair shop fixed it for about US$190 including about $21 for a new "seat back transfer bar". I was told that it was a very common problem for the threads to get stripped.

Although I have not yet purchased a vehicle with DRL's, my wife and I have driven with headlights on in and outside of the U.S. since the mid 1970's - ever since I ready a study which correlated crash rates and daytime headlight use in northern Europe and before daytime headlight use was legal in some U.S. states and the U.K. If you don't like DRL's you probably don't want to know about the studies correlating car color and crash rates. I first saw statistics on this in the Mercedes owner magazine "In Aller Welt" in the 1960's - since then the only acceptable car colors for us, even in cars we rent when away from home, are white or bright yellow. There has even been discussions on using car color a factor in setting insurance rates - and yes I am with a large multinational insurance company. Another factor is that vision requirements getting a drivers license are not particularly high. I suppose that governments could make the requirements more strict but it is a fairly high priority of governments to allow as many people as possible to drive -- there isn't much public transportation in the U.S. It is not that I like or dislike DRL's. Driving is an amazingly dangerous activity - the number 1 cause of death of younger people - and DRL's and the daytime use of headlights provide a big edge for protecting the safely of you and others.

You might want to consider how and where you drive (and your tolerance to pain!) in deciding whether to replace the timing belt now. Since my wife drives her non-interferance engine 98 V6 Camry, similar engine as the 98 ES300, only within about 25 miles of home, we will probably just wait for the timing belt to break or for the water pump to show signs of failure before replacing the belt and the water pump. The timing belt on my '90 LS400 was replaced when it broke when the water pump failed out at about 60,000 miles and the replacement belt and water pump are going strong many years later at 174,000 miles. I was told that early LS400 water pumps were notoriously failure prone but that the redesigned replacements were far more reliable. It is unfortunate that Toyota started using the interferance engine design - especially in the Lexus line. It seems very out of character for a "luxury" car to be subject to very expensive engine damage when a belt or water pump fails. :(

Having owned my 90 LS since new, I can say that has been much more reliable and satisfactory that any previous car that I have owned. It has required far less service and expense that any of the Volvo and Mercedes cars that we have purchased. My CPA wife hated it when I spent so much money in 1990 but now agrees that the cost has been a very efficient use of our money. As with any 13 year old car, components will fail and probably at an increasing frequency. Assuming that you are purchasing your 90 LS at a relatively low cost, that it is very good condition, that you are willing to suffer the occasional $1,000 repair bill, and willing to risk the car being "totaled" for insurance purposes by a relatively minor crash, I think you will find that a 90 LS will be an extremely pleasant automobile. It is certainly not a sports car but it is extremely well balanced and you will find that it is very controllable even at its cornering limits.

Have you checked with a Lexus dealer? I had all the handles replaced several years ago by a Lexus dealer on my 90 LS, long after my original warrenty had expired, and it was as if Toyota had recognized a problem and was almost giving them away -- quite inexpensive.

For the past several years the keyless entry in my 90 LS400 has functioned only in winter. It now functions only when the temperature is below about 32Fº. The colder the weather, the more reliably the keyless entry works. My guess is that the keyless entry stops working as the interior temperature of the car rises although I have never tried leaving the heater off to verify this and it is a long time until winter. My local repair shop is baffled and does not seem to really want to chase electrical problems. Any ideas?

The A/C in my 90 LS400 was recently converted to R134a by a non-dealer Lexus repair shop for about $200 (US) including charging and seems to be providing plenty of cold air in current 100+ Kansas temperatures.

Wow! Yesterday (July 5) in 100+ degree Kansas City weather, my 90 LS400 started exhibiting this exact same problem with the "R" (reverse) dash light coming on whenever I pressed the brake pedal while the shift level was in "D" (drive) and with irregular shifts between gears. And for the past three years or so, the "light out" indicator in the instrument cluster had frequently illuminated even thought no exterior lights were out. My local non-dealer repair shop tried several times to trouble shoot to no avail. The solution from Lextek was exactly correct. This morning I found that, while the insulation for the "white with black stripe" ground wire was still intact, it was obvious that the wire core had broken at the point where the wire makes that 360 degree turn in the trunk lid hinge. What a quick fix for a nagging problem! Thanks for the help!!! We still love this car after 13 years of ownership.