Richard Carver

They are my second set. I had them on my original 16" factory wheels and the comfort, noise level and handling are great but the rain performance is astounding. I've been caught in two Texas frog strangler rain storms on freeway trips and they are like a rock, best I've ever had. We don't get much snow here but for our climate, they are superb.

I recently got a set of 18x7 chrome with a 35 offset which is factory. The tires are 235/55/18, again factory. Your Toyota wheels may fit with no problem, at very worst you'd have to get some spacers. I found a set of Lexus caps on eBay, they seem to be readily available.

I've had cross drilled Brembos on my RX for four years with great success. It was in the shop recently for the 75K check and still had 8mm all around on the Akebono ceramic pads. (click the pic)

That's very good information, from what I'm hearing in this thread 11K is probably reasonable for my car.

I've owned this car longer than any car in my life and it is the best car I've ever owned. The problem is, I'm bored to tears with it. New car-itis is a daily itch. I've been looking at some ML350s and want to try one of those for a while. I would buy the ML350 and then sell my RX300 to an individual. I don't even want to bother trying to trade it and fortunately, I don't have to. LOL, I should probably try to find an ML350 owner with a similar itch and simply trade cars for 6 months. :)

It's been a long time since I posted here, I'm sure there's some old timers around. :) I have a 2001 RX300 with 73500 miles, locally serviced all it's life and records available, it's had it's 60K service and I'm about to get it detailed and an oil change next week. It's white with tan and has no issues. It has been on Mobile One since 52K. It's good cosmetically, I had the leather seats resprayed to freshen them, no cracks or holes, non smoker. There are a couple of minor blemishes and a scrape on the left rear corner of the bumper. With very little pushing I would get that repainted. I have the books and two masters and a mechanics key. From what I've seen pricing is all over the place. I see them from 8k to 15k but that doesn't tell me what they will actually bring. Hopefully you can give me an idea what I should ask for a car in this condition.

Try to keep it in perspective, the people who do have trouble are vocal about it. There are literally hundreds of thousand of owners who don't complain on internet boards. The car has earned it's reputation and with care you'll most likely have a good experience. In many areas there are garages who specialize in Lexus and Toyota and can give excellent service at far less than dealer prices. Do some research *before* you need anything and ask around for your local guru. :) Like you, I read the horror stories about 5000 dollar transmissions jobs and maybe people pay those prices but it is just a Toyota tranny, millions of them out there, how much could it cost? I checked with a local guy who has done transmission work for me in the past and he said he could do a complete overhaul for 1250, 400 labor, 600 parts kit, 250 for a TC. The point is, plan ahead, make contacts before you need them, don't be at the mercy of the dealer. Have the dealer run the service records for you, see what has been done to the car. If it's made it 100K its probably a pretty good car and seeing maintenance records can let you know what may be coming up. The RX is pretty predictable as far as what consumable fails when. As far as the price, take heart that a dealer sold it. Lexus dealers have a choice to make on their used cars, questionable cars are wholesaled, the good ones go on the lot, if they thought you were going to be haunting them with that car, it would have been shined on down the road before you ever saw it. There's a lot of negativity on the boards from people who have had bad experiences but try to balance that with the thousands who haven't found it necessary to come here and complain. :)

I'm a little PO'd about the cost of changing the tranny fluid at my dealer (Sewell). I asked for a flush which on my Lincoln was an actual flush by circulating the fluid through the tranny *and* the torque converter until clean, took 15 quarts to do it. That's what I was expecting at Lexus but come to find out, all they do is pop the plug, drain 3.7 qts, put the plug back in and refill with 3.7 qts and they charged me 129 dollars for it. The fluid was contaminated by the TC within 1 mile. That is actually less work than changing the oil for three times the cost, I am not pleased. When I go back for an oil change I'm going to let them know what a rip it is and ask for the three drains in 500 mile trick for the cost of the fluid, I figure I've already paid the labor.

LOL, do you offer to "have a little meeting of the minds" with all your corespondents or was I just special? :D At any rate, I'll let you get back to "helping" folks make their decisions. :D

As I mentioned in my original post there seems to be a personality type that "gets off" on the possibility of negatively affecting someone's decision to purchase an item, it's a control issue for them. Every board seems to have one. There are two or three posters on this board who are so unrelentingly negative it makes it unpleasant to even come here. Reality is, the RX series is the most successful mid-sized SUV on the market. There are hundreds of thousands of them out there since '99 and obviously, *most* people are having a good experience with them or they wouldn't occupy the place they do. I think *most* of the people here are having a good experience with the cars and the unbelievably prolific output of the ones who had some trouble with them is completely out of proportion to the experience of the majority of owners. I think it's telling there's a new thread by some guy who has become spooked by the negativity of these posters and want's to dump his RX for a Range Rover and guess who the last post is by warning him about RR! Obviously, I'm not a regular poster here and don't plan to be and if I ruffled a few feathers too bad. When the reaction of someone who has been criticized is to to offer to get together personally and have a "meeting of the minds" I have to think my original assessment was correct, there's some control and anger issues at work here.

LOL! That would be nice. :D

..yada...yada...yada... Everytime I come to this forum, you're here bi!tching and moaning about the worst car you've ever owned and now you don't even *own* it any more and you're *still* here b!tching and moaning. Do you think you might just have a little bit of a problem? Have you considered anger management courses? You remind me of a guy that used to hang out on a vintage watch forum and every time someone would post about possibly buying one of these watches he would jump in and whine about how the stem fell out of this supposedly high end watch and how horrible the service was and how expensive everything was and he could never recommend this watch because of all the problems he had with it...and he hadn't owned one in years! He became such a joke he finally got embarrassed and went away...think about it.

I had good luck on ebay, just try to stay with a real locksmith to make sure you get the right "guts". 20-60 bucks for a remote blank.

I have no hesitation of any sort. Could your hesitation be fuel related?

My '01 doesn't do anything like that at 54K. Of course, cold in Texas isn't the same as cold in NJ. :) Or are you talking about cold as in not warmed up? At any rate, have it checked out. Have you ever had the fluid changed?