1990LS400

Numerous issues can cause hard starting. The first thing to check is that the battery terminals and cable clamps are spotlessly clean - bright and shiny - and that the cable clamps are tight around the terminals. A terminal/clamp cleaning tools is less than $5 at an auto parts store if you don't have one. The battery is the next thing to check. I've had batteries fail in as little as one year. And then there is the alternator .. should be easy for a shop to test its output. The last dead battery starting problem I had on my 2000 LS400 was caused by a failing starter. The starter was pulling such a wild amount of amps that the battery never had a chance to recover during my short commute. The amperage draw of the starter should also be easy for a shop to test.

A transmission drain and refill is all that's ever needed. If the fluid looks really awful when it's drained, consider doing another drain and refill after driving a few thousand more miles. Never flush a transmission with chemicals or add additives. According to the maintenance booklet for my 2000 LS400 which also covers the 2000 ES300, a transmission fluid change is never required: "Only if vehicle is operated primarily while towing a trailer or using a camper or car-top carrier." Even under these special conditions, a transmission fluid service is specified only every 60,000 miles. Regardless, if you have no maintenance history, change all fluids immediately - coolant, brake fluid, engine oil, transmission fluid. 210,000 kms is pretty low. My wife drove a 1998 Camry V6 automatic - same engine and transmission as in the 1998 ES300 - to 125,000 miles and it ran, drove and looked like new when she parted with the car last year ... but it was perfectly maintained since she bought it new.

Disconnecting the car battery for a few minutes "usually" erases all the preset stations on many (all?) vehicles made by Toyota. Or you could set those 22 extra buttons to your favorite favorite stations. If you disconnect/reconnect the car battery, you may have to initialize other features ... windows ... sunroof ... VSC. Be careful or you will wind up at the Lexus dealer.

Is this a new problem? The valves on the 90-94 LS400 are notorious for ticking - especially when the engine it cold. Adjusting the valves is quite a chore - most people just put up with the ticking. I did for several years before I sold my 90 LS400.

Attached is the diagram for the Nakamichi in the 2000 GS. 2000 GS Nakamichi audio diagram.pdf

Well, I've given you everything a professional installer or most amateurs would need. Ask if you need help understanding the wiring diagram I provided.

Those were fictitious bonus points I was referring to except that my perception is that Lexus is more likely to extend a warranty in a situation like this if the owner owned the vehicle while under warranty and more so if the owner purchased the vehicle new. It has also seemed that some car dealers - not just Lexus - are more willing to go to bat for an owner if the vehicle was purchased and serviced at their dealership. It's largely about relationships. If you are on a first name basis with people at the Lexus dealership you may be treated better. The TSIB was not a safety recall so you would not have received a notice about the noise issue. Issues like this are rectified only when an owner complains. You can buy the roof rail removal kit at any Lexus dealer - register with your forum member name on the following Sewell Lexus website and maybe get a discount: http://lexus.sewellparts.com/accessories-catalog/Exterior/RX350-2010/4608.html Or tell your local dealer that you will have them install the roof rack removal kit after they apply the noise TSIB at no cost! There seems to be a market for the roof rails if you want to sell them after they are removed.

How can you be in the "middle" of your install without this information? The attached diagram from ARRC is supposedly for the standard 2000 GS400 Pioneer audio system. There are different diagrams for the Navigation and Nakamichi audio systems. I was surprised recently when I had a Kenwood double-DIN installed in my 2000 LS400 to find that profession installers now have methods and specialized parts for attaching wires from aftermarket components to Lexus OEM audio system harness connectors without using aftermarket interface harnesses and without doing any "slicing", splicing or soldering. It made the installation super-clean and allows for the quick and easy reinstallation of the original components without evidence left that the car ever had aftermarket audio. I thought the 2000 GS400 had the radio antenna imprinted on the rear window like my 2000 LS400. No? You'll probably be wanting to tape-up and ignore the small antenna connector and use only the large one like the installer did on my LS - reception seems unaffected but I don't listen to radio much. 2000 GS Pioneer audio diagram.pdf

You get bonus points for owning the vehicle while it was under the basic warranty and more if you bought it new. Being told that "they all are noisy" before the TSIB was issued is an excellent argument. Something I did before the basic warranties expired on both my LS400's was to review all TSIB's that had been issued for them. If I had had a TSIB on the trip computer in my 2000 LS400 applied in 2004, I probably wouldn't be dealing with a speedometer issue now. I thought the occasional trip computer issue was too minor to deal with the inconvenience of having my car out of service for a week but my view now is to have all TSIB's applied no matter what.

Try using an automotive stethoscope to locate the noise source. Mine looks exactly like the one in the attached photo. In a previous Lexus I had, a buzzing sound was caused by debris contacting the HVAC fan under the dash - it was a cheap fix. But locate the noise source first - it may be coming from somewhere else. Be careful when using a stethoscope around moving parts.

I forgot to mention that, if you have documentation that if a complaint about the wind noise was made to a Lexus dealer while the vehicle was still under warranty, then you are "golden". Under these circumstances the repair will be performed with no questions asked.

First contact the dealer. 10 months out of warranty is nothing. If the dealer balks, contact Lexus customer service. Repeat the procedure as necessary. Do not give up!

The halogen headlights do not have the auto-leveling feature - only the HID headlight units have it. Even if your car had auto-leveling headlights - which it does not - self leveling occurs only upon initialization when the engine is started and not while driving. If you can't find the headlight adjustment screws, I assume you don't know how to adjust headlights so that they do not blind oncoming drivers. It is an exact procedure and not something done by trial and error. Take you car to a Lexus dealer.

As someone who has driven LS400's for nearly 24 years, I suggest that you slow down. You are considering the purchase of a 19 model year old car that has minimal value. These cars are not bullet proof and a single repair can easily cost more than $2,000. Just a regular 90,000 mile service can cost more than $1,500. A few repairs in combination will easily exceed the value of this car. First make sure that EVERYTHING on the car works and that it has a history of proper maintenance with no skipped services. If it has air suspension, run away as fast as you can. With that said, any wheels from a 1995 through 2006 LS will fit for certain. There are a few GS wheels that will fit and lots of aftermarket wheels will too. There are usually shift knobs on eBay that will fit. Provide more information about this car before you commit to buy it and maybe we can help.

I've never installed a sat radio kit but I've done a number of car audio projects, looked at sat radio interface kit install instructions and followed threads on people having it done or doing it themselves. As far as I know the integrated sat radio kits from VAISTECH.com, eBay and Lexus dealers all provide the same features. VAIS seems to be the industry standard for aftermarket interfaces like this and their price for a basic XM kit ($250) is about the same as on eBay and Amazon. Lots of people install these things themselves but it requires quite a bit of interior disassembly - not hard if you are familiar with the techniques. If you pay to have it done, $150 should be at the very top of what an installer should charge. There are good and bad installers. I had awful experiences with installers in the 1970's so I since did projects like this myself and have all the needed tools. After "interviewing" a Geek Squad / Best Buy installer a few months ago, I had him replace the OEM Nakamichi radio in my 2000 LS400 with a Kenwood screen based unit - the installer was brilliant. I'm not a fan of sat radio but I would likely appreciate it if there weren't other choices I like better. We've had SiriusXM in our Prius for 16 months and it's used maybe once a month for a few seconds to verify that it still works. I think your 07 ES radio has a 3.5mm aux-in port which would allow streaming internet audio services from a smartphone through an audio cable. Attach a Bluetooth receiver to the aux-in port and you can stream wirelessly from your phone. (There are many Bluetooth receivers. The Blackberry Stereo Gateway routinely gets good reviews - most think that the newer square-ish version is better.) There are 70,000 radio stations on the free Tunein service including virtually all the stations here in the Kansas City metro area - we can listen to them or stream from Pandora, Slacker, iHeartRadio, etc. wherever we are as long as there is at least 3G phone service.. Kuda (www.kudausa.com) has some nice leather phone consoles for the 07 ES350. Positioning a phone in a convenient location is important for safely controlling streaming from the Internet while driving on older cars that don't have streaming applications built-in to the radio. I've had a Kuda in my 00 LS for about 10 years and it's a nearly perfect match to the car upholstery. And you asked a simple question ...

There is a TSIB for the noise which involves installing acoustic glass in the front side windows - see attached. If your basic warranty has expired, ask that the repair still be covered or at least that Lexus picks up most of the tab for the repair. Noise might be reduced further by removing the roof rails - Lexus has a kit for doing that. TSIB - 2010 RX Wind Noise from Front Side Glass.pdf

Try using multiple small screwdrivers if there is anything left to grab on the broken clips. It sounds like the spring loaded clips are similar to those holding in the center vent in my 2000 LS400 which I have removed countless times. Looking at photos of the 2009 IS250 center vent assembly, it looks very similar to the ones on my LS. I use a plastic trim removal tool to gently pry around the edges of vent assembly as I pull the clips gently inward with the screw drivers. The word "gently" is important as these vent assemblies are fragile and expensive. Here is a photo from an instructional document I did showing me prying the center vent out on my LS. Your IS may be different but I've found over the years that the interiors of a number of Toyota and Lexus cars are held together in mostly the same ways.

I can mainly tell you what has caused low battery charges on our Toyota/Lexus cars: * Corroded battery cable clamps - they should be spotless clean and bright and shiny where they contact the battery terminals * Cracked battery cable * Failing alternator * Failing starter * A loose/defective ground or problem in the circuit between the alternator and the battery Early this year my 00 LS400 was sometimes starting slowly, would take repeated attempts and sometimes the engine would die in traffic. It acted like a bad battery but the battery always charged back up to full charge when put on a battery charger. It turned out to be a failing starter that was drawing a massive amount of amps with the battery never getting a chance to recover on my short daily commute. The amount of amps a starter draws is easily tested so a repair shop shouldn't have to guess if that if the problem. If your old battery was the original one, I would have replaced it too without much or any diagnosis since getting seven years out of battery is very good. I've had name brand batteries last as little as one year and one was defective right off the shelf. If replacing the car battery with a new one immediately caused your car to barely start or not start at all, the first thing I would suspect is a defective battery cable or clamp - items that would have been disturbed during the replacement. Was your car starting properly when you took it in for that oil change? I think your best bet is to return your car to the repair shop and let them diagnose the problem.

Bare minimum liability-only on a 2011 ES350? Sounds OK if you are independently wealthy and don't care about losing whatever money you have in the car if it is crashed or stolen and whatever other assets you have if you cause a really bad crash, injuries/death(s). Of course, if you have any wealth at all you need high liability limits and most probably an umbrella policy that covers your entire net worth. That may sound excessive but it is not very expensive. (Retired from the insurance industry with a CPA wife.)

Check your owners manual for the devices that are compatible with the USB in your car - I don't see iPhone listed in your owners manual. It's on the Lexus website but I can't seem to paste a link to it. I know that the USB in my wife's 2012 Prius is not compatible with her iPhone - only with "dumb" MP3 players, flash memory and specific iPod's. What we did was to buy a 2-outlet USB adapter for the auxiliary power port (i.e. same adapter as used in a cigarette ligher port) and plug the USB phone chargers into it. The twin outlets allow charging two phones at the same time.

The SC430 is actually fairly rare over here. I probably see 100 Lexus LS cars for every SC430 I see. The older pre-2001 SC300 and SC400 are still much more common than the SC430 where I live. You might look at http://www.toyodiy.com You may have to register to see the diagrams. It shows part numbers for vehicles made by Toyota from 1969 through 2011 and sold in many world markets including the U.K. and should let you identify what suspension parts, if any, were changed on the SC430. I'll never forget the BBC Top Gear episode about the SC430.

Sorry but I don't remember this question coming up. Maybe diagrams on the Sewell website might help: http://lexus.sewellparts.com/oem-catalog/6762672971-Body-GX470-2006.html

I don't think you are missing anything. You just need to be sure to buy 17" snow tires in a size that provides the same diameter as the 18 inch tires you have now to keep your speedometer accurate. I agree that you are better off with Toyota wheels than aftermarket wheels. I've been regretting for 10 years the wheel/snow tire package I bought from Tire Rack. I was in a hurry at the time and didn't bother to try to find OEM Lexus wheels to use with the snow tires. We have TPMS on one of our cars and I really, really think it is of great value. I'd sure get a set of TPMS sensors to use with your Highlander wheels - you can get them pretty cheap in the aftermarket - look on Amazon or eBay. If you are used to buying snow tires, I assume you appreciate the "real" ones with the mountain/snowflake label on the sidewalls - the only type I would ever buy. Exactly eight months ago we had 12 inches of snow here in the Kansas City area followed by another 12 inches of snow four days later. The city was paralyzed - not equipped for that much snow - but I got around quite well on my Bridgestone Blizzak WS70 winter tires except when I encountered snow so high that it high centered my Lexus and I had to dig out. I sometimes think I'm the only one in town with winter tires.

I recommend that you contact Lexus customer service - either at the toll free number or by email. According to page 159 of your navigation manual ( http://drivers.lexus.com/t3Portal/document/omnav/OM48B55U/pdf/06.pdf ), "XM NavTraffic and XM NavWeather require separate XM subscription(s)." However ... in August Toyota announced that on its Toyota brand cars that traffic and weather information was going to be free for current owners instead of on a subscription/pay basis: http://pressroom.toyota.com/releases/toyota+next+generation+entune+audio+2014+tundra.htm I wonder if traffic and weather are now also going to be free on Toyota's Lexus vehicles. It might be worth checking on. Toyota/Lexus seems to be "caving" due to a huge number of complaints about it's Entune and Enform systems. We have Entune in our Toyota Prius and there was no way we were going to pay a subscription fee for its pathetic capabilities. It's still pathetic but at least we are not expected to pay to continue to use it. Good luck!!!

Removing the analog Lexus Link was free under a program that expired years ago. There may be an easier way but attached are the official instructions. campaign-lsc-4la-2001-2004-ls430-lexus-link-system-removal-implementing-instructions-.pdf campaign-lsc-4la-2001-2004-ls430-lexus-link-system-removal-overview-.pdf campaign-lsc-4la-2001-2004-ls430-lexus-link-system-removal-technical-instructions-.pdf