1990LS400

The instructions at the following website are for a generation 1 LS400 but they will give you an idea of the work involved to rebuild a power steering pump: http://www.lexls.com/tutorials/steering/pspumprebuild.html Rebuilding PS pumps are not a big deal for mechanics who do this frequently but the task is daunting if you don't have the right tools and have never done it before.

The attached diagrams shows the timing belt on the left and the serpentine belt on the right and how the serpentine belt winds around to drive all the parts.

Yes, the rebuild kits contain the O-rings. While replacing just the one O-ring might stop the leak, normally a power steering rebuild involves placing all the other little parts prone to deterioration since the main expense is the labor to get to the internals of the power steering pump. Replacing just the one O-ring would be like replacing a timing belt without also replacing the water pump, tensioner, idler and all the other little parts involved in the timing belt system.

I'm still not clear whether or not your 01 RX300 has the OEM navigation system. If it doesn't have nav, the VAIS isn't going to work. If it does have factory navigation, you are "golden" and one of the VAIS products will work for you. I just now did a eBay search on "RX300 VAIS" and found a new "VAIS TECH Lexus RX 300/350/400 Ipod Car Kit SL2i-UP Kit" from seller imgr8180 for $199 on a "buy it now" basis or you could click the "make offer" button. Installing these things are fairly easy -- only one connection to the navigation head unit ... instructions are attached. VAIS Manual_SL2i_v444.pdf

And remember ... if it wasn't for the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (commonly called the Gore Bill), you likely wouldn't be on an Internet car forum throwing rocks at Gore.

Is your mother-in-law sitting in the back seat when it happens and, if so, is she affected by ... ahem .... flatulence? Seriously ... are you certain the noise is coming from the back of the car? The 90 LS I drove for many years made similar noises shortly after the car was shut off. The noises were caused by the HVAC system "powering down" for loss of better words. It was as if the vacuum in the HVAC system was opening or shutting flaps in the ducts or maybe the vacuum was just bleeding out. Now that I think about it, my 00 LS makes somewhat similar noises but they are much more subdued. They were very noticeable in my 90 LS.

Well, the problem seems clear. Your power steering pump failed and leaked fluid on the alternator which then shorted out. That your power steering pump reservoir was empty and had to be refilled was a strong indicator of what was happening. The power steering pumps on the later LS400's like yours and mine are far less prone to the seals failing and leaking that were the ones on the early LS400's but they are not bullet proof. The power steering pump on the 90 LS400 I had for many years also once failed and leaked badly and took the alternator out. I had to have the power steering pump rebuilt a number of times over the 13 1/2 years I owned the car to prevent it from happening again. But like I said, the power steering pumps on the later LS400 like yours and mine are far more reliable. The one on my 00 LS is still the original one and shows no signs of leaking but I still check it regularly. I just checked http://lexus.sewellparts.com for parts prices and was surprised to find the parts prices a lot lower than I would have thought. If you register with Sewell with your forum ID, the alternator (80W version) is only $215.03 (retail is $349.64). They show a mostly complete new replacement power steering pump for $503.66 (retail is $681.12) but all the parts needed to rebuild the power steering pump are way under $100. Rebuilding the pump will take your mechanic time but most people have the pumps rebuilt instead of buying whole new pumps. At best, I suspect it is going to cost over $500 to get your car back on the road. 13-14 mpg doesn't too bad for winter driving if it is mostly on city streets. The 98-00 LS400 like I have gets better fuel mileage than the 95-97 mainly due to its 5-speed transmission and the trip computer read 18 mpg average since the last fill-up when I bought gas yesterday. My driving is about evenly divided between 55-65 mph Interstate highways and 35-45 mph city streets with relatively few traffic lights. My fuel economy always takes a dive in the winter. Good luck with the repairs.

Cool! Did you have to pull the radio to plug the Sirius Direct Connect adapter into the radio antenna socket? Where did you mount the Sirius tuner and other components? Got photos?

Thank you, Steve. My bad. Single stream, nonadjustable washer nozzles on new RX vehicles? This is progress? Give me a drill and I'll make any washer nozzles you want from another Lexus model fit! I'm actually old enough to remember people installing windshield washers on cars that were made before they were standard equipment. There were even aftermarket windshield washer kits available complete with all the hoses and a water bag that hung on a bracket you mounted under the hood. One kit I remember from the 1950's wasn't electric. It had a rubber pump/bladder you mounted on the floor board of the car and you had to repeatedly pump the bladder to force water on to the windshield. Hmmmm ... maybe one of those would work on an RX.

Paranoia? There are bigger issues to worry about than power antennas getting stuck in the up position. The power antenna worked fine on my first Lexus for the 13 1/2 years I owned the car except for once when it had a close encounter with a garage door and the staff was bent and had to be replaced. The power antenna on wife's Honda was working fine when it was passed to the nephew after 12 years. A new replacement power antenna might be good for another 10 years. How far into the frozen north is daughter moving? Nome? Dallas?

Some of the most commonly installed iPod interface products for Lexus are from http://www.vaistech.com but it looks like the ones for the 01 RX work only if the car has OEM navigation. I tend to doubt that Lexus is going to have an interface -- before they produced there own, many/most Lexus dealers installed ones from VAIS. If a VAIS adapter was available, it would probably run about $250 on eBay. I just checked other brands of iPod adapter interfaces but they all also work only if the 01 RX has navigation. Check on your own -- I may be missing one. There is always the cassette adapter or FM modulator/transmitter route. Most people don't think they sound as good has a hard wired interface but it can be an inexpensive way to get an iPod or other MP3 player's music into the radio. There are even A2DP FM transmitters that can move audio from an A2DP equipped phone/music player into the FM of an audio system. I wish I could get a decent iPod/MP3 interface for my 2000 LS400 too but no body makes them for it either. I've gotten pretty good at burning music onto audio CD's. No fancy software is needed - just Windows Media Player. If your RX has a working CD player, that is a cheap way to go. If your RX does not already have audio controls on the steering wheel, there will not be any wiring to support a steering wheel that has audio controls. There are a number of aftermarket radios that are compatible with iPods and that come with wireless audio control modules that clamp on the steering wheel rim but installing all that can open up a can of worms. If the antenna is not working, replacement power antennas are not all that expensive - $144 from Sewell as I posted recently: http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=68198&st=0&p=427853&hl=antenna&fromsearch=1entry427853

Finish? Hyper silver? I think it's called "paint". :chairshot:

"Type C" ?

I'll bet I have the same little white Pro.Fit trim removal tool you have. But I don't use it to remove the wood console trim in my similar 2000 LS400. I usually use a stiff blade putty knife with its blade wrapped with electrical tape so I don't scar the wood. The wider blade spreads the force better than the Pro.Fit trim removal tool. If I remember correctly, there are three friction fittings on each side of the wood panel ... one on either side of the ashtray, one on either side of the middle and one on either side at the rear. It may take some "gumption" if the panel has never been removed before. Mine seems to come out fairly easy maybe because I have removed it quite a few times. When I helped a friend remove the panel from his 99 LS400 last year, it seemed much harder to budge and I suspected that it had never been removed before.

Does your car happen to have air suspension?

Mainly go over your car with a fine tooth comb to see if you can find any defects that might be covered by the basic warranty. Also check to see if there are any service bulletins (TSIB) and recalls that apply to your vehicle. I found your model and model year (2008 RX350) in one of your previous posts and see that there are about 70 entries in the ARRC databases in the "Technical Service Bulletins and Recalls" topic for your vehicle. That's a LOT but don't worry since many are only informational. You could ask your dealer to provide a list of the bulletins and recalls but I think it would give you more "power" to get them yourself in case the dealer is uncooperative or uninterested. A service bulletin is normally applied to a vehicle only if the vehicle exhibits the problem described in the bulletin. Some dealers will do the work anyway if it is obvious that the vehicle will likely eventually develop the problem described in the bulletin or, as it has seemed to me, to milk extra revenue from the manufacturer. In my opinion, the end of the basic warranty is a very critical time for a vehicle owner. Problems not fixed now for free can be very costly to address later. Just before the basic warranty on my 2000 LS400 expired in summer 2004, I had some expensive parts replaced under warranty including the four chrome wheels and the HVAC control unit. Even though there were other outstanding TSIB's for my car, I declined to have the work done under some of them for my own convenience and my car has never developed the problems described in those TSIB's.

I've found the following website usually accurate and it seems to say that tint is legal on the front side windows: http://www.tintcenter.com/laws/MI/ If the tint is no darker than 25-30%, consider holding off for a while and see if it grows on you. I never thought I would like tint but I found it makes cars more pleasant to drive and reduces sun damage to the interior. It also makes items inside more difficult to see for a thief especially if you use a windshield sun shade.

Have you taken your car to a tint shop? Those guys usually know all the tricks and have the tools and chemicals to remove tint - particularly important so as to not damage the rear window defroster. Is your tint damaged, too dark, wrong color, or you just don't like it?

Tuesday evening I drove my 2000 LS400 approximately 200 yards through 12 inches of unblemished snow to get out of my workplace parking lot - almost everyone else had left before noon. I didn't think I was going to make it out. I had to shovel away a three foot snow drift in front of my car so I could get a running start out of my parking space and then had to take several runs at it to get up a hill to a level part of the parking lot that was still 150 years from the street. I've got a new set of Bridgestone Blizzak WS70 tires on my 2000 LS400 and the VSC and "snow mode" transmission setting help a LOT. It's actually great fun to drive this car in snow.

I think it is just as likely that the reason the remaining nine less financially well off men could not pay for their beers was that the wealthy "10th" man laid them all off from his company and moved their jobs to a third world country! The main thing I find funny/odd/weird about the whole "tax discussion" is that I don't remember hearing any of the "PAW's" in my family or others I know personally ever complain about how much they pay in taxes. It's always the less and even the least wealthy who do the complaining. And people others see as wealthy usually don't see themselves that way. It's an odd paradox discussed in one of my favorite books: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millionaire_Next_Door Unfortunately, becoming a "PAW" (Prodigious Accumulator of Wealth) is usually not compatible with being a prodigious accumulator of Lexus vehicles and other toys. And PAW's rarely "buy the beers" (i.e. pay much in taxes) - they know how to avoid that.

I'm surprised your washer nozzles can't be adjusted upwards enough -- I keep a couple of straight pins in the console of my LS for doing that and happen to have adjusted the washer nozzles on both our Camry and LS during the past weekend. You might see if you can use nozzles made for a different Lexus vehicle. I saw a number of threads in the past where people replaced the one- or two-stream washer nozzles on early Lexus cars with three-stream nozzles like one ones that came on my 00 LS. The washer nozzles on my LS have a big adjustment range - I adjusted one too high over the weekend and the water stream from it was shooting over the roof and hitting the trunk lid. Have you tried adjusting the washer nozzles yourself?

There are no reliable information sources that can tell you if your car has been damaged or repainted -- particularly if there was no insurance claim. I've had cars touched up and even completely repainted and I certainly didn't file any reports with CARFAX.

As cduluk said in the post in this thread just before yours: "Also be aware that installing HID bulbs in halogen reflectors will cause tremendous glare, as HID bulbs have a different focal point than halogen bulbs... You also won't get as much light on the road..." If you just want a color match and don't care if your fog lights are actually useful, just get some of those cheezy blue coated halogen bulbs and spare your fellow road users the pain of HID bulbs in fog lights meant for halogen bulbs. I'm only half kidding when I say that I'm thinking about carrying a ball peen hammer to use on headlights and fog lights that have HID kits in them. People who put HID kits in light units made for halogen don't seem to give a !Removed! for the comfort and safety of others on the road.

I don't think I'm going "out on a limb" when I forecast that there is approximately zero chance that your Lexus dealer is going to somehow reprogram your trip computer to provide the feature you want.