1990LS400

There are a variety of names for the strut bars/rods including "semi-longitudinal tension rods" -- the premature wear issue is discussed at http://www.autospeed...ms/article.html The bushings can be purchased separately but the labor cost of having the old ones removed and the new ones pressed in can equal the cost of the whole assembly. I've read that there is an "up" and "down" side to the bushings -- be sure they aren't installed upside down ... maybe that's why some people have reported continued noise from pressed in bushings. If I remember correctly, the bushings have not always been available separately. Now that I think about it, with a full load of passengers and a full trunk, my trailer hitch sometimes scrapes on curbs when I leave or pull into driveways - but its frame hangs below the car and the scraping is not a routine occurance.

Did you just get this car and, if so, do you know its history? My 2000 LS400 is at 160,000 miles and is virtually the same car as yours. Mine never bottoms out with a full load of adult passengers. Has your car been lowered? The "clunk" could be a front suspension noise ... front strut bar/rod bushings rarely last 100,000 miles on these cars. Shock absorbers can last a very long time - far longer than 200,000 miles - but I suppose it depends on how much stress the car has been under.

Does your car have air suspension, non-original steel spring suspension or broken springs? The car is held up by steel or air "springs". I don't think a bad shock absorber on steel springs can cause a car to bottom out on a gentle turn. A bad air strut - if the car has air suspenstion - could cause the car to sag so much that it bottoms out. Did you have some really, really heavy people in the back seat? Were you on rough roads or going over rail road tracks or something similar?

According to a parts number website I use - see attached - my 2000 LS400 appears to use the same mirror switch as the 2011 ES350. The sides of the switch are somewhat rounded. Measured with calipers, the switch is about 31mm tall by 34mm wide at the tallest/widest points. These may not be exact measurements but are probably within 1mm of actual. What are you trying to do? There are many versions of the mirror switch in vehicles made by Toyota.

There is a bulb replacement guide at http://www.sylvania.com/en-us/applications/automotive-lighting-systems/Pages/lrgallbulbs.aspx?year=1998&qual=10&model=1011&make=54

I've never understood why some people love the blueish tint of higher K bulbs or those trashy short life blue coated halogen bulbs. Maybe it's because some European cars have slightly blueish tinted headlights but those (e.g. BMW) still use 4300K bulbs with no reduction in output with the slight blueish tint caused by other factors in the design. Generally, 5000K seems to be seen as the highest K bulbs that can be used that generate enough visible light that the decline in output is not very noticable. Are your plastic headlight lenses in good, clear condition? By the time the lenses on my eight calendar years old (not model years) the light output of my 00 LS headlights was horribly diminished by the foggy, cruddy lenses. A headlight lens restoration kit made them look like new and improved the light output dramatically - attached are before and after photos of when I last restored mine. Could something be wrong with the voltage going to the headlights? Do they seem dim? Have you had them properly aimed? As Consumer Union has reported numerious times, HID headlights are not necessarily better than halogen headlights. The halogen headlights in the cheapo $14K Smart rental car I recently drove for a month were some of the best headlights I've ever experienced and better than many HID. HID bulbs in foglights defeats their purpose besides often spewing out uncontrolled blinding light. The yellowish light of regular OEM 3000K halogen bulbs picks up the detail of the road and shoulder surface in blowing snow and heavy rain better than HID with its whiter light.

Why did you put lower output 6000K bulbs in your headlights? I've done headlight mods numerous times since the 60's and I'm not understanding.

For one thing, 6000K bulbs emit far less usable light than OEM 4100K bulbs. Please do not put HID bulbs in foglights designed for halogen or raise your headlight beam level above specification - dangerous and painful for other drivers.

Yep, the Avalon limited is very cool - especially with the inexpensive Technology Package that gets you PCS which I have decided is a necessity on my next car. It's looking like an Avalon Hybrid Limited is in my future -- sooner than later. Congratulations!

Sad indeed. This is such a common problem on the 98-00 LS400 that anybody who regularly repairs them has to know what causes it. If they don't, they are either dishonest or clueless - take your pick.

Thanks, Jorge! I will try the exact isolator you bought.

From the symptoms, it sounds like a failing TPS (throttle position sensor). Here is a thread about it: http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/topic/69501-unresponsive-gas-pedal-2000-ls-400/page__hl__throttle#entry434119

Have you tried deleting and re-adding your phone to the car system? Do other phones work OK?

The fuse box diagrams for the 1999 RX300 may be viewed on the U.S. Lexus website at http://drivers.lexus.com/t3Portal/document/om/OM48402U/pdf/lexomsou/99lexom/99rx3009/sec64.pdf

There is not much to see in these photos but they show the small on/off button that Factory Radio Service added to the face of my 00 LS Nakamichi next to the Fader control and the 3.5mm aux port added to the back of the radio with a cord attached to it. Workmanship of the added switch and aux port is flawless and the sound quality is excellent. The radio must be in FM1 or FM2 mode before the aux switch works. Yep, the first photo shows streaming from Pandora to my Nakamichi system. I found that the 3.5 mm audio out of my Samsung Infuse charging cradle is two low to power the new aux-in. Instead of being able to permanently plug the aux-in to the charging cradle, I have to plug it into the top of my phone each time i want to stream audio. Also, I'm getting some interferrence when I charge the phone while streaming audio from it ... will try to resolve with filters. I could have added an A2DP Bluetooth adapter to the new aux-in but I have to get my phone out of my pocket anyway to stream audio ... decided there wasn't emough benefit to bother. For an extra $10, Factory Radio Service replaced both head unit display backlight bulbs ... no more flickering! Service was fast ... radio received on a Thursday and shipped back to me the following Monday. I've VERY happy with this mod. 2000 LS400 - removing the radio head unit..pdf

Well sure. The clear coat can be removed and reapplied - sometimes after applying additional color coat. This was just done on several undamaged panels of my 00 LS when other adjoining panels were replaced and/or repainted. The process is commonly called "blending". In my case, this was a part of a nearly $7,000 repair. It's not going to be cheap as a standalone job -- probabaly $2,000+.

This company in Florida resoldered my balance control: http://carstereohelp.com/strlexus.htm I remember they were surprised it was the balance control and not something else. You could check ebay for a replacement radio and/or amp ... getting pretty cheap as these cars age.

The intermittent right channel audio outage in my similar 2000 LS400 with Nakamichi was caused by loose balance control connection - resoldering it fixed it. An HVAC blower speed issue like the one described can be caused by a phone circuit problem -- has this car ever had a dealer installed Lexus phone? When a phone call was in progress, the blower speed was reduced to its lowest speed. Consider checking the phone system wiring harnesses on the right side of your trunk or corrosion or dampness. If your car has never had a phone, the phone harnesses will be attached to a plastic bracket attached to the bottom of the recepticle. into which the tool kit slides.

The problem is caused by a warn shaft/sprocket in the lower seat back or thereabouts - very common problem. Some people are able to fix and reuse the shaft/spocket. I had the one on the 90 LS I used to have replaced. I think I paid my mechanic around $100 for the fix including the new part but that was maybe 15 years ago. I'm sure there are photos and details on this forum on how to fix the problem. Try searching this LS400 forum. Edit: I found this tutorial on Clublexus by using Google to search on "LS400 driver seat tilt problem": http://www.clublexus.com/forums/ls400/442318-how-to-fix-the-problem-with-non-working-reclining-on-drivers-seat-pictures-inside.html

The LCD's for the clock and outside temperature of the 95-97 LS400 are in the center vent assembly and separate from the HVAC LCD. Check fuse #11 in the driver side kick panel. According to your owners manual, it is the only fuse shared by the clock and HVAC system. Fuse #11 is also for the front cigarette lighter ... plugged in a cell phone charger lately?

According to http://www.city-data.com , the median household income of Beverly Hills is less than $10,000/year more than where I live in lowly Lenexa, Kansas. There are certainly some very, very nice areas of Beverly Hills but there are also some very "not nice" areas. I'll bet that the higher cost of living in BH more than makes up for that $10,000 difference. Even "lowly" Leawood, Kansas here in Johnson County, which has about the same population as Beverly Hills, has a medium annual household income of nearly $45,000 more than Beverly Hills. Johnson County suburb Mission Hills has a medium household income that is three time that of Beverly Hills. It's interesting how a city gets a reputation based on relatively few residents.

The instructions on that website are for a 90-94 LS400. I owned a 90 LS400 for 13 1/2 years. It's actually a little easier to remove the radio on a 95-00 LS400 than on a 90-94 LS400. The "secret" to removing the center vents without them falling apart or breaking (they are fragile) is the pull the inner side clips inward with a small blade screw driver as you gently pry the vents out.

Wheels can usually be straightened and refurbished. My next door neighbor took the entire set of his LS chrome wheels to a local wheel shop and they came back looking like new. Or check out this company: http://www.phenixwheels.com/

Googling "XM antenna" comes up with lots of hits. Judging by the instructions, installing an antenna looks fairly easy. The main thing is for the replacement antenna to have a compatible connector or adapter.

VAIS sells them both direct and they may still do on eBay: http://www.vaistech.com/dev/sl3x.php There may be other sellors on eBay that you can find by doing a search. Installing these things may seem scary but its fairly easy pull out a navigation or radio unit from the dash to plug the sat unit in. The most difficult part may be to run the antenna cable. Unless there is a particular satellite radio you especially like, have you tried simply streaming Internet radio and music from a smartphone? TuneIn, Pandora, iHeartRadio, Slacker, etc. XM/Sirius has been in the news due to it's deep financial trouble and hemorrhaging customers. I'm betting they will be gone in a few years unless some automobile company group buys them which I think is unlikely. Internet radio and music services are blowing sat radio away except in rural areas with poor cell phone service. Sat radio was a wonderful technology when it was conceived in the 1990's but technology has passed it by. We didn't even think about renewing XM when the trial period on our Prius expired. They wanted something like $600 to renew for a service we used maybe twice just to see if it still worked.