1990LS400

I have to say that I fascinated by Toyota's hybrid technology. We have a 2012 Prius v wagon and I love the absence of noise when stopped in traffic and the electric A/C compressor that can run with the gas engine off. If it wasn't for our good experience with our Prius, we wouldn't be planning to buy a 2014 Highlander Hybrid Limited with PCS. But I keep wondering if I really want to switch to a Highlander after 24 years driving LS400's. Wife doesn't want me to buy another new LS but she might go for a used one since she sure likes riding in them. I actually looked for a 2011 or 2012 LS600hL a few months ago as an possible alternative but I couldn't not find a low mileage one in a color combination I like. I found very few LS600's at all. Last week I asked the local Hendrick Lexus dealer to see if he could find a short wheelbase 2012 LS460 AWD with PCS in an acceptable color at one of their other locations - no success. They have several 2012 SWB AWD LS460's in stock but they are all black (I prefer white) and none have PCS. (I'm not buying another vehicle without PCS and AWD.) You need to drive these cars to see if you really want one. I didn't like the LS460L with air suspension I drove a few years ago due to its boat-like size but I would tolerate air suspension and LWB on an LS600hL to get the hybrid drivetrain. I think all LS600hL's have PCS if that makes a difference.

The "fiberglass part that rests under the headlights" and above the chrome strip is part of the bumper cover that contains your side marker and fog lights. Bumper covers come unpainted so you will need a body shop to do that. The bumper cover isn't all that expensive - $555.31 from Sewell Lexus ( https://lexus.sewellparts.com ) but that does not include shipping. Register with Sewell with your forum member name to get that price. You can see diagrams on the Sewell website without registering but you won't be able to see the "Club" discount prices. That little strip is expensive - $129 with discount. I don't think the one you have can be reused but I'm not sure. I've had had three bumper covers on LS400s replaced - One front and two back due to hitting flying debris and being rear ended. You could look for a used bumper cover - maybe locally. I suspect you could find one - maybe even in pearl white/silver - especially if your "AZ" location means Phoenix metro. I doubt if a body shop would charge all that much to remove your current bumper cover and install a new one. It doesn't take long for someone who knows how to do it and has the correct tools. White was an especially popular color on the LS400 in Arizona. Hmmm .... I wonder why? (I'm kidding. I've spent enough time in Arizona summer heat.)

Register with your forum member information at http://lexus.sewellparts.com and see if you can find it - they give discounts to forum members. I assume you are referring to the little pop-off cover that inserts into the larger driver side cover. I can't find it in the Sewell diagrams. If you can't find it and the price, contact Sewell for a price quote.

My Garmin's power cord / traffic information receiver is attached to the same accessory circuit that powers the cigarette lighters so that the Garmin automatically turns on and off with the ignition key. The cables for the Garmin are mostly hidden as are the cables for my phone cradle. This is the third portable GPS installation I've done this way. The Garmin is mounted on a Pro.Fit "Bravo Ball" which is attached to a modified Pro.Fit Legend bracket as shown in the attached photo. There are probably a number of ways a portable GPS could be mounted in your GX assuming you don't want it attached to your windshield or to a dash-top disc. The Garmin's display in the attached photo may look "washed out" by the camera flash but it is really perfectly clear. You can see the Garmin power cord running down into the phone console which is where the traffic information receiver is hidden. From there, the Garmin's power cord runs into the dash under the radio and behind the ashtray - lots of empty space there in my car. I did not trash the Garmin's power cord to attach it to the accessory circuit. I instead bought a $5 12V extension cord, chopped the plug off it and attached the extension cord's wires to the power wires leading to the aux power port underneath the armrest of my 2000 LS400. I then plugged the Garmin's male power cord/cigarette lighter plug into the extension cord's female port. A coworker recently returned from spending several weeks driving around Spain and France. I don't remember if he said he used a TomTom or a Garmin in his rental car but I do remember him saying that it worked just as well as in the U.S. I assume that map coverage in Italy would be as good.

There is an excellent article on Wikipedia on DVD region codes. Yes, DVD players for Europe require a different region code disc that those for DVD players for North America. This question has arisen a number of times over the years on this and other Lexus forums. I have never seen any solutions for this issue from the North American side but I have seen information on creating "hybrid" discs that can fool North American Lexus navigation systems into displaying maps for Europe although with limited functionality. There have also been companies in Europe that have offered conversion services. You might find information on a European Lexus forum such as the German language http://euro.lexusownersclub.com Have you considered using a Garmin, TomTom or similar portable GPS unit or using a navigation app on a smartphone? The Garmin I have mounted on a bracket and hardwired into the accessory circuit in my 2000 LS400 works is easier to use than the OEM in-dash navigation in our 2012 Prius v (Prius+ in Europe) and provides excellent voice control for both navigation and hands-free phone.

You must have gone to Harvard Business Elementary School. Not many people understand the economic ups and downs of the past few hundred years. I want to assure everyone that my mentioning the stock market bubble yesterday did NOT cause today's biggest drop in the stock market in the last 1 1/2 years. My point is that this period in history is not a good time to be in debt whether by lease or by loan. Of course when it comes down to it, our view is that it is never a good time to be in debt and that it is always better to have others pay you to use your money than for you to pay others to use theirs.

Try probing the vehicle interior with an inexpensive (< $10) automotivie stethoscope while the car is being driven to locate the noise source.

I saw in your similar thread on ClubLexus that you had removed the inner fender liners when you lowered your car. Yours is not the first case where wacky problems have occurred when a wiring harness in the fenders gets friendly with a tire. That has happened even when the fender lines have not been removed and a tire on a lowered car wore through a fender liner and chafed a wiring harness..

I'm not talking about exceeding the difference between the after tax returns between a particular fortunate technology stock portfolio and the nondeductible cost of a car loan. I'm talking about the difference between a reasonably conservative overall investment portfolio and the nondeductible cost of a personal car loan. Don't starting feeling too "flush" with money just because we have another bubble in the stock market going on. The "real" average overall return from the stock market has hardly changed in a hundred years adjusted for inflation.

That assumes that the purchaser has enough cash to comfortably buy the vehicle outright but chooses to invest the money elsewhere more profitably. I agree. A person should never finance a vehicle that he/she could not comfortably purchase with his own money. But how easy and reliable is it to obtain an after tax yield on an investment that exceeds the nondeductible interest paid on a car loan? Let me know how and you can be my and my CPA wife's financial planner. :whistles:

BTW, the 2000 is the first year with Brake Assist. That may be the difference.

Sorry. Yes it is 89541-50111 Typing on a phone not so easy!

According to www.toyodiy.com the part number for your car is 59541-50111

My experience is that all tires have gotten a little noisier as they have worn down. Other than snow tires, the H-rated MXV4's I bought several years ago for my 2000 LS400 are the first tires with less than a V-rating I've put on an LS in my 24 years of driving them. I went with the H-rated MXV4's this time hoping they would last longer, be quieter and ride a little softer. My MXV4's still seem very quiet and were at about 7/32" when I stored them for the winter last November. They are certainly the most pleasant riding tires I've bought - ever. Handling is very good although not as sharp the Z-rated ultra-high summer-only performance Bridgstone RE750's I used before the MXV4's. The RE750's were fun but they were noisy, rode rougher and were worn out by 20,000 miles. And I decided that maybe someone in their 7th decade of life shouldn't be driving that fast anyway! My understanding is that V-rated tires use softer "rubber" compounds which is why they don't last as long. The longest a V-rated tire has lasted for me has been 40,000 miles and at that point they were worn to the point of being unsafe in rain. So ... my recommendation would be to stay with H-rated tires, rotate them often and have your wheel alignment checked at least every time you have new tires installed. I rotate tires every 5,000 miles with the first rotation being at around half that when they are new.

"Parental lock" and "Parental level" are explained on page 212 in the 2007 ES350 navigation system manual. If you don't have one, you can view and search it on drivers.lexus.com There is no need to register to view the manuals online.

Thank you, Randy. Maybe he's talking about the 194's in the bumper side light modules.

If you are talking about the "city light" modules outboard of the headlights, then you want 168 bulbs - same ones as the license plate bulb. It's been over 10 years since I've owned a gen 1 LS400 but the "168" number is burned into my mind. Look at the auto bulb guide at www.sylvania.com I don't see anything close to a number like "159" bulbs used on a gen 1 LS400. Could you have some aftermarket light modules that use different bulbs? Do they say "Toyota" or "Lexus" somewhere on the housing or lens?

Yes, keep the RX and let that slacker son of yours buy his own car. Or maybe buy a slightly used (off lease?) and less expensive car. I have to say that our Toyota Prius is a phenomenal and fascinating vehicle (super nice fuel economy too) which I like more than the RX loaners I've been provided by the Lexus dealer. Maybe one of those would suit you? Your location does say "California" - aren't Californians required to drive Priuses? And, no, we didn't get to the point of being able to pay cash for cars through extraordinarily high levels of income. We simply learned to make monthly car payments to our own "reserve funds" set aside specifically for car purchases - month after month, year after year. We do the same for home repairs with our "house fund" and with our various retirement funds. Fortunately, my wife and I are of fairly like minds on these issues. If anything, I'm the one who is attracted to "bright and shiny" temptations but I'm pretty good about lying down until the feeling passes. We definitely don't "follow the herd" when it comes to financial matters and, so far, haven't been effected by ups and downs of the economy as much as many people although we've had our share of job and financial losses over the years. The herd sometimes stampedes over a cliff and I've learned that I don't at all like splattering on the rocks below when that happens. I know it's not that simple. People have different psychological needs and goals. What works for us will not work for others. Everyone has to find his/her own way.

I would have to pull out the unit to take a photo of the back, asking to see if anybody already has a photo. This will just save time. I just checked eBay and saw several navigation units for sale with photos of the front, back and sides of the units. It's barely a five minute job to pop out your navigation/radio head unit. It's held in place by only four 10mm bolts which are visible after removing the center vents and console wood.

Why am I speculating that your Magna !Removed! Laude was not associated with a business degree? There are plenty of "Buy vs. Lease" articles on websites like Yahoo Finance and Kiplinger that you can review. DO NOT trust the buy vs. lease calculators at car dealerships - they are sometimes (always?) rigged to make the most profit for the dealership. Personally I can't imagine financing or leasing a vehicle unless the outlay could be charged off as a business expense. The only way my CPA wife and I have bought cars for the past few decades is to save the money up, buy our vehicles with cold hard cash and then keep the vehicles 10 to 15 years. Well that's not exactly correct. My wife did charge something like $25,000 of her Prius purchase last year on credit cards to get frequent flyer miles and then she paid off the $25,000 the next month without paying any interest. I have assumed that there were undisclosed incentives from Toyota that allowed the dealership to do that and still make a profit since we paid substantially under invoice for the car. I suppose I might "finance" a vehicle if I got a super good deal on the purchase and a zero interest loan. But that doesn't happen since I would have to pay more or forgo rebates/incentives to get a zero interest loan. I really don't like the idea of any monthly payments other than utility bills.

Explain the laws of physics to which are referring and I'll run it by the PhD nuclear physicist who sits near me at work. I'd ask him today but this is a holiday for us. You are far from the first person who has thought that the sticky tach and speedometer needles have to be caused by something mechanical. I wish it was. The tachometer and speedometer are not mechanically driven but are instead driven by electronics. While you currently can tap the dash to get your tach working, I can tell you that it usually gets worse and especially when outside temperatures spike. Have you ever wondered why the previous owner sold this car? I got another quote today on refurbishing the instrument cluster - this one from the independent Lexus repair shop I've used since it opened in the late 1990's and owned by a man I met when he was a Lexus dealer service writer in the early 1990's. His quote was $750. He would also send the cluster to a California company. I didn't ask which one but it could well be the same company the Lexus dealer uses. The $150 that the Florida company I mentioned charges is for fixing only the speedometer. There are additional charges for refurbishing additional gauges in the cluster. I don't know those people and am reluctant to send the cluster to them. By all means do more research .... maybe contact some of the companies that repair these instrument cluster issues.

I don't have photos but I can provide the diagram for the 98-00 GS navigation radio system - see the attached PDF. Why do you need photos if you have a GS that has the nav system? There is a huge thread in the audio subforum of ClubLexus on how to hack into the CD changer cable to add an aux-in: I would paste the URL into this thread but "paste" seems to have been deactivated on this forum. Or you could contact Factory Radio Service about adding an aux-in to your radio: http://factoryradioservice.com Factory Radio Service installed their most deluxe aux-in on my 2000 LS400 Nakamichi radio for only $85. It has the aux-in port on the back, an on-off button on the front and came with a six foot audio cable. The sound quality streaming from my phone through the aux-in was just as good as from the original commercial CD in my Nakamichi's CD changer. A popular mod is to install an aftermarket double-DIN audio unit - looks especially good in a 98-06 GS. You would need the HVAC controller from a non-nav 98-00 GS to do it ... pretty cheap to buy on eBay. You would be able to use your existing amplifier and all the original speakers if you choose a compatible head unit. I had a Kenwood DDX470 installed in my 2000 LS400 by a pro a few months ago and the total cost was less than $500. (Photo attached.) My money would have been better spent going with the Kenwood in the first place. The DDX470 doesn't have nav (I didn't want it) but still has Bluetooth phone and A2DP audio streaming, single disc CD/DVD, Pandora, USB, aux-in and can accept an optional $49 XM tuner. It also supports a backup camera, has 18 FM presets and there is an optional $20 remote control for it. There are even cheaper aftermarket double-DIN's but this one is great. 1998 GS300 nav audio diag.pdf

Since you just bought the vehicle, just be patient and see if the spots disappear by magic. I once used Rain-X on exterior mirrors. Bad idea! It left spots but they disappeared after a few car washes.

It has nothing to do with lubrication of the tachometer needle shaft. It is an instrument cluster ECU board problem. I got an updated price from the local Lexus dealer two days ago for refurbishing the instrument cluster in my 2000 LS400: $1,025.30 including tax. It will be easier for me to get fixed at a much lower cost after I buy another vehicle - which might be very soon ... wife and I are test driving a new vehicle tonight! I could then pop out the instrument cluster at my leisure and send it someplace cheap to fix.

There are lots of "older folks" with vinyl record collections too. That didn't stop the demise of in-car vinyl record players. And who remembers 8-track tapes? I used to have those. That a lot of people have large CD collections hasn't stopped Toyota from dropping CD changers from its Lexus vehicles which now at most have a single disc CD/DVD player. I'll go out on a limb and predict that the future of iPod and standalone MP3 players is also dim as is the future of satellite radio which is far worse. The smartphone is becoming the center of the in-car entertainment universe. Who even needs broadcast radio anymore? We listen to broadcast FM radio while in town but when we travel we stream whichever of the 100,000 radio stations we want to listen to through the free "tunein" application on our Apple and Android smartphones. It looks like all 50+ radio stations that can be received over the air here in the Kansas City area can be streamed from tunein. Although all the audio a person has stored on an iPod or MP3 player can now be stored on a smartphone even that is going to change as phone service improves since it is now possible for a person to store and stream an entire personal music collection from services on that mysterious "cloud". I don't know what your definition of "older folks" is but I know a lot of 60+ year old geezers like me who stream audio from their smartphones. One of my younger (he's "only" 62) coworkers used to kid me about all the media stuff I do with my smartphone and tell me that he had absolutely no interest in ever doing anything like that. Then he bought a Samsung Galaxy S4 a few months ago and became an streaming media addict.