1990LS400

From my 13+ year experience with a now departed 1990 LS, my opinion is that the generation one lights are mostly hopeless. The main problem is with the sloppy beam pattern created by the lens. Using high wattage bulbs mainly emphasizes the bad beam pattern and blinds other drivers. I even had a high wattage (100/80) bulb explode and had one heck of a time cleaning the resulting residue off the reflector. I was told once that H4 light assemblies from a 93-94 LS could be used on 90-92 LS but that it was an all or nothing deal -- replacement of the entire headlight assembly, including the backing frame, and side lights was required. I never tried this due to the $1,000+ cost at the time. But maybe the 93-94 lights could be found in a salvage yard at a lower cost. The best bulbs I found in terms of cost and longevity were G.E. 9004HO which produced a much whiter light, filled in the gaps in the light pattern and cost less that $15 for a 2-pack --> http://www.gelighting.com/na/faq/faq_auto.html I sure wish there was an easy solution as I struggled with this problem for years.

CanadaCraig, Your observation on the longer wheelbase of the 98-00 LS is of course correct and certainly explains how Lexus squeezed out the additional backseat legroom. It is interesting how the length was kept the same over an 11 year period but how so much between the bumpers was rearranged. Another important change, at least to me, that my 160 mm snow skis easily fit in the trunk of the 2000 LS; my wife's 150 mm skis could just barely be forced into the 1990's trunk and there was no way mine fit in. And SW03ES, I love the HID lights too and it is fun to watch them go through their automatic leveling dance each time the car is started at night -- almost looks like the car is "showing off". If all cars with HID had auto leveling (and if improperly aimed non-HID with "cool blue" or similar bulbs were not around), HID lights probably would not be getting a bad rap. Back to cloth seats ... I think I remember that the early 300 SC sold in the U.S. came standard with cloth seats - and that the initial price of the 300 SC was only about $32,000 US. I sure am sliding around a bit on the leather seats (too small a butt) and I'm not sure I like the "La-Z-Boy chair heighth" on the 2000. But the increase heighth does makes it easier for older people to get in and out. And only last week did I find the First Aid kit under the drivers seat cushion. Need to re-read the manual ...

Hey Canada Craig and others, Regarding the questions, comments ... Whether or not one likes cloth or leather is a personal preference. Where I live in Kansas it can get very hot (100+ F.) in the summer and cold (-10 F.) in the winter, cloth just seems more comfortable - no burns in the summer when wearing shorts and less of the "sitting on a sheet of plywood until the seats warm up" on cold winter days. And you don't slide around on cloth when you decide to blast around a highway entrance ramp. I doubt that the cloth made the car quieter but I really don't know. My opinion on cloth is in the minority and if I want Lexus, or virtually any other nice car these days, I am going to have to learn to live with leather. I was quite stunned at the difference between the 1990 and 2000 LS. Originally, I wanted a 2000 LS mainly for the HID lights (OK, I have not yet warmed up to the look of the LS430) and I really liked the idea that almost no one would notice that I was driving a different car. I even put the same Toyota license plate frame on the 00 LS that I had on the 90 LS for all those years. I placed the two owner's manuals side by side -- surprisingly the wheelbases and lengths were identical. While the 90 LS always seemed a little cramped inside, the 2000 seems huge inside. When I did some measuring I found that the heighth of the side windows on the 2000 were at least an inch taller and the rear door opening at least two inches wider. The interior seems a bit wider and the dash has been recontoured to seem less massive. The 90 LS seems far more nimble than the 2000 LS and has much better steering "feel". The 00 LS steering is Cadillac-like in its lightness. Yes, the 2000 LS seems quite a bit quieter. The first thing I noticed was that the steering wheel silently tints and telescopes on the 00 LS while the one on the 90 LS has, since new, made quite a mechanical buzz as it moved. And the 2000 has tires of a more appropriate width than the 1990 - really helps braking - and does less of a nose dive during a quick stop. The 00 LS seems a LOT quicker. But I retired the radar detector in '95 so the increased power doesn't matter much to me. And with the 00 LS, I have to be concerned about damage if the timing belt breaks -- not a worry with the pre-VVTi 1990 engine. And of course the MOST important improvement (kidding, really) -- the 00 LS has rear beverage holders! Everything about the LS has been changed yet everything seems familiar - probably as Toyota/Lexus intended. My opinion is that that the target markets of the 90 LS and 00 LS were quite different. In 1990, the LS was aimed mainly at midsize Mercedes and BMW customers, or at least this was the opinion of the 1989 Automobile magazine article that encouraged me to take Lexus seriously and then to buy the car shortly thereafter. How many remember all the Jay Leno jokes about Lexus in 1989? But by the last half of the 90's, Lexus was aiming the LS squarely at the Mercedes S class and BMW 7 series and still are today with the LS430. Why am I buying parts for the 2000 LS from a Victoria BC dealer? I was mainly looking for parts (e.g. mudflaps) that have been deleted from the U.S. catalog. I occasionaly drive on rural gravel roads (but nothing as severe as BC logging roads where I once destroyed a wheel on a rental Ford Escort) and mudfaps do a great job of keeping the damage down and far less tar and other residue (e.g. paint spills on the road) has to be cleaned off. On the downside, I remember reading that mudflaps on the series I LS add about one decibel of noise at highway speeds - which is actually quite a lot - but the Lexus ones are probably quieter and look a lot better than others I've seen. My apologies for the novel-length reply. I've always been a "car nut". Regards!

Yes, I spent about five minutes wondering about this same thing when I bought an LS in early 1990 and noticed that the ES250 had a model designation emblem on the back but the LS400 did not. (At that time there were just these two models.) I thought it might be a marketing gimmick - as in "if you don't know what model it is then you must not know anything" approach. Or maybe the U.S. dealers cringed when they saw the Celsior emblems that were on Asian market cars. Here is a photo from the web.

One last photo of the 1990 LS400 with the cloth interior and the 2000 LS400 Platinum Series that replace it. Oh, and I just ordered some parts from Metro Toyota/Lexus in Victoria, B.C. -- They were very helpful! (I've even been to Victoria a few times doing the tourist thing before going up the west coast to Bamfield and Long Beach.)

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.