1990LS400

The mobile version of this website disappeared around the first of 2013 .... or is this website no longer sensing when I'm viewing from a small screen device which these days is usually an Android phone and less frequently an Android tablet. I miss the mobile website - it worked great on my phone and much better than the full size website. Can we have it back?

Flaps in the HVAC system ducts close or open after the engine is shut off making sounds that I suppose coiuld be described as mooing. Mine sound more like cow farts.

Perhaps the brake rotors are unevenly worn and need to be machined. Sometimes brake pads simply need to "bed-in" - here is a discussion: http://zeckhausen.com/bedding_in_brakes.htm

There are some "UCF" designations but just about nobody uses them when referring to LS400's - nothing like the BMW designations. The two LS400 "generations" are described at http://www.lexls.com/info/lsgenerations.html "Generation One" includes the "series I" (90-92) and the substantially different but similar looking "series II" (93-94). "Generation One" includes the "series III" (95-97) and the substantiall different and less similar looking "series IV" (98-00). Most of the body and mechanicals of the 95-97 are the same and some are shared with the 98-00. The 97 was a transitional year and has some features similar to the 98 - particularly the 97 Coach Edition. There were lots of running changes throughout the LS400 run -- checking the VIN is sometimes very important when buying parts.

The vehicle registration and one insurance card are in small envelopes either inside or with the owners manual in each vehicle. Car thieves could probably find them but I doubt if they would be reading the owners manuals after stealing a car. Each of us also carry insurance cards in our wallets since we both rent cars - I occasionally and my wife about 25 weeks per year. I would hope I would remember to clear the codes from our garage door openers should one of our cars be stolen but that probably wouldn't be the first thing on my mind. We are of very few in our mostly geezer neighborhood who still work so we have plenty of (way too many!) busybody lookouts around us. That aforementioned police station within 200 yards may help too. Something that I insist on that seems to irritate my wife is to keep the entrance to the house from the garage locked although that's not going to stop a professional intent on breaking in.

Well then ... can you take your Lexus dealer and have your wife drive your RX350 and a dealer owned RX350 to compare the two in the presence of a dealer representative? If the problem is that bad, the dealer representative should be able to drive the dealer owned RX smoothly but will not be able to do that in your RX. I was fortunate for know others who, for some years, had LS400's identical to mine. It made it easier to diagnose problems when we could compare our cars.

Have you driven other RX350's of the same year to see how they react to the gas pedal? That's where I would start.

You've had better luck with navigation systems than I have. I've had navigation systems show I was driving in the Atlantic (Hertz rental car Magellan-based "Neverlost" (I called it "Always lost"), tell me to turn into oncoming traffic on one-way streets, and countless times indicate that a freeway entrance was on the wrong side of the road. I actually like that Garmin and most in-car navigation systems do not "chime" when you are supposed to turn -- makes one use his brain and pay more attention. I used to like Magellan for the turn chime and the user interface even if their routing algorithms were often incredibly poor. I think you are expecting a far higher level of consciousness than is normally associated with car dealerships! In case you decide to update your LS430 nav maps, here are the instructions. I think it applies to all years of the LS430 but not certain. nav_install.pdf

From what I've read, the limit is 10 minutes without remotely starting the engine a second time for 10 minutes more run time and cannot be extended -- maybe to keep the death rate down among those who accidentally, or are stupid enough to, remotely start their engines while their vehicles are parked in their garages. Here is a link with information about the RES+ system: https://www.lexusres...ct-features.jsp Here is a link to the RES+ owners manual which states that the engine can be remotely started only twice before requiring a manual start: https://www.lexusres...IDE_KEY_FOB.pdf I find this manual especially amusing since the vehicle it shows is a 97-98 Camry like my wife recently passed to her nephew after driving it from new. Ten or twenty minutes seems adequate to me. Idling an engine is an incredibly inefficient way to warm it and the vehicle interior. A minute or two of driving will warm an engine more than 10 minutes of idling. Does your RX have "butt warmers" that turn on when the engine is remotely started? Ten minutes should make your seats quite toasty.

OK, here it is. These diagrams are from the subscription ARRC website - available through many public libraries. 1999 LS400 sound-systems-pioneer-1-of-1.pdf

The diagram is attached. I thought I remembered people saying that some of the connectors at the nav head unit are the same as for the standard Pioneer radio head unit. I'm 97 1/2% certain that the amp under the front passenger seat is the same for both systems. 1999 LS400 sound-systems-w-navigation-1-of-1.pdf

Maybe your original "high-friction" brake pads were replaced at some point by your Lexus dealer with the "Alternate Front Brake Pads" under either the 2008 or 2009 TSIB covering the matter on thie 2006-2008 IS350. Work performed under TSIB's is often performed without informing an owner and information about the work coded on the work order, if listed at all, in a way that a customer cannot understand.

After a rash of car thefts in which thieves used the "Go Home" feature of portable and in-car navigation systems to find car owners' addresses and then used the built-in HomeLink to open garage doors, burglarize houses and perform "home invasions", I decided that I should set "Home" on our navigation systems to a location other than our residence. I had a numerous nearby choices to use as our fake home address ... cemetery, Taco Bell, grocery store .... but I decided I would rather have our navigation systems guide thieves to the front door of the Lenexa, Kansas police station which is about 200 yards from our house.

I suspect you are not going to have much luck getting reimbursed for your A/C and brake repairs on a 14 year old car. Maybe take the money and run? I never deal directly with the other person's insurance company - only with the company that insures my car and I let them settle with the other insurance company ... did this again last fall when my 00 LS suffered $7,700 damage. Did the same thing in 1999 when a previous LS was hit and the damage total was over $10,000 and two other times since 1999 - never dealt with the other insurance company.

Per your owners manual, the recommended timing belt change interval is 6 years or 90,000 miles. Be aware that actual timing belt failure, due to wear of the belt, is almost unheard of. It's usually some other component (water pump, tensioner, idler) that fails and takes the timing belt with it. On my first LS, a 1990 LS400, the timing belt was trashed at about 75,000 miles when the water pump failed. I had bought the car new and I think I was at about the six year mark. There was no damage to my 90 LS engine but the early LS had "non-interference" engines. From the 1998 model year onward and some say from the 1995 model your onward, the LS engines are of the "interference" type and many thousands of $$$ of damage are caused when a timing belt "breaks" or fails due to some other component failing. I would go ahead and change the timing belt but make sure that all the failure prone components are also replaced - water pump, idlers, tensioner and there will be a few other small inexpensive parts too.

But you said that this wrong U-turn instruction is near your home. Don't you already know how to get the rest of the way home when you hear the incorrect instruction? Navigation systems are only an aid and do not replace existing knowledge or common sense. When a Magellan portable nav told me a few years ago to turn right and cross the Missouri River on a bridge that had been removed, I stopped instead of crashing through the barrier and plunging over the precipice into the river far below. Like CuriousB said, the inexpensive current map update would be an 8 year improvement. It will likely include many improvements that address road changes over the past 8 years. You can install it yourself -- instructions are on the Sewell website or I can provide them if you don't find them. Will the current map update fix your wrong u-turn instruction? It's hard to say. Our house was built 32 years ago, near city hall in a suburb of a large metro area and our house address is still not in any mapping database -- not in Mapquest, not in Google maps, not in my Garmin GPS (Garmin HQ is located about six miles south of where I live!) and not in the navigation system of my wife's new Toyota Prius. But strangely, once I get within a few miles of my house, I can still find my way home without the assistance of a navigation system.

And some aftermarket struts have tons of closing force -- there have been a number of reports of bent LS hoods related to the use of aftermarket hood struts.

Very nice!

Of course that Alpine amp is not compatible. Crutchfield employees have been clueless since I begin dealing with them in the 70's and gave up on them in the 80's. The Crutchfield website is packed with obvious application errors. Why don't you determine which component is causing the problem before flushing more money away?

Were the replacement amps supposed to be functional? If you've tried three amps and none of them work, maybe something besides the amp is causing the problem? I've seen a number of threads over the years about corrosion in the early SC audio wiring system causing no sound. Have you checked the wiring harness at the amplifier for corrosion? I hope the Crutchfield rep knows what he is talking about ... just hearing the name gives me the creeps ... gave up on them long ago due to their cluelessness. When the sound of my 00 LS Nakamichi system failed some years back, people on forums told me that the amp was the problem so I tested my amp in a friends similar LS400. My amp worked fine in his car. The problem turned out to be in the head unit - a company in Florida fixed it but they no longer repair Nakamichi. Before you go any further, do you know anybody with a known functioning Nakamichi amp you could try in your car or try your amp in his car?

When you said you pulled the phone, did that including removing or at least disconnecting the phone ECU? According to the attached diagram, the phone ECU is at the left side of the trunk - either under a false floor or behind a trim panel. I don't know if the 92 SC phone system has the two mating connectors at the phone ECU like the later systems do ... let us know if they do. You should be OK leaving the phone controller on the steering wheel - never heard of it causing a problem and you could have trouble find the plastic blank to fill the hole if you remove it.

The service manuals on the Lexus techinfo website are in multiple (many, many) separate PDF's. They are copywritten so I doubt if you will find them on forum websites where forum admins often prohibit them. There is a link to some of the service manual sections for the 98-00 LS400 somewhere in a past thread on this forum but it is missing a very important section - diagnostics. You might check eBay for a bonafide service manual set. I think each 2-volume set of Lexus LS service manuals I've bought have cost around $250 from Lexus dealers but I've never bought the separate electrical diagram manual.

Assuming that your phone is an original dealer installed Lexus phone system ... A defective phone ECU can blow fuses and prevent sound. I'm more familiar with the later Lexus phone systems in which the solution is to disconnect the connectors from the phone ECU in the trunk and then to connect the large male and female connectors together to complete a circuit - did this on a friends 99 LS400 a couple of years ago to restore the sound and keep fuses from blowing. He had purchased both a used head unit and amp trying to solve the problem but that didn't help. You might as well rip out all the phone components anyway. Before 2004, dealer installed phone systems were all analog and they are useless today. When removing phone system components, do enough disassembly to unplug them. Never cut a phone system cable as that can cause problems.

I didn't find many on this forum but I found a lot of threads on ClubLexus when I searched for "squeak" in the SC430 forum. Here is just one: http://www.clublexus.com/forums/sc-430/520371-roof-rattle.html

I get a little confused with the option packages since they changed with the 2005 model year. The 2005 apparently has at least the Modern Luxury Package. For the price, it is doubtful that it has the Custom Luxury Package or the rare Custom Luxury Package with PCS ... even more doubtful that it has the Ultimate Luxury Package (with or w/o PCS) which has the expensive to fix air suspension. PCS is wonderful feature that I didn't appreciate until I experienced it in my wife's new Prius. PCS will literally slam on the brakes to stop you from hitting another vehicle or object or at least reduce the speed at impact while tighting your seatbelts. The manager of Lexus dealer owned body shop where my car was repaired last October told me that PCS and other electronic safety aids are starting to cut into his business. My next car will definitely have PCS ... it could be called "GPS" if that acronym wasn't already taken - "Geezer Preservation System".