wwest

Interior lighting. For the two bulbs over the shoulder of the rear passengers I connected a diode (1N400x series), one for each side, from the bulb that comes on with the door switch to the pushbutton bulb, both bulbs come on with the door open, more lighting for rear passengers. In the front I masked the front half of the lens off, leaving only the 1/2 projection square, with silver paint on the inside so the map light bulbs do not provide glare, only a reasonably tightly focussed beam. Then I used two PNP darlington transistors, one for each map bulb, to energize the map bulbs when the dome light comes on. I used yet another darlington transistor and two diodes connected to the rear over-shoulder lights so they come on in synchronous fashion with the front door(s). Once both front doors are closed all lamps fade to dark. You can also improve the bulb output, door mounted courtesy lights included, by purchasing high mounted brake light bulbs for the 911/996 series from Porsche. I also added a relay in the fog lamp circuit so they can be used alone without back glare from the low beams.

If like me, you don't use the nav very often you can simply open the nav dvd door. The "agree" question will not come up, but you must close the dvd door and wait a few minutes until it "cold boots" before you can use it.

Can't say about the LS, but my RX has a LAN, local area network, separate input and output at each ECU, whereby all the ECUs communicate. I couldn't get the HIDs to tilt upward with HB above ~20MPH because the LAN was being used to pass speed info to the auto-leveling ECU. I would imagine the GPS/Nav screen ECU uses the same info path.

It's springtime, time to remove the battery connections, clean and burnish and reinstall.

Wrong.... My 01 Porsche automatically tilts the HIDs upward about 1 or 2 degrees in HB mode. On my 01 RX300 I inserted a 12 volt relay in series with the low current DRL circuit and used the contacts of the relay to energize the fog lamps. Now the fog lamps automatically act as DRLs and I can activate the fogs without interference, backlight, from the low beams. Additionally, if you check you will find that the halogen incandescent HB bulbs will build up soot on the interior of the glass encapulation due to DRL low voltage operation and then eventually the glass encapsulation will begin to melt due to the heat buildup.

I'll be more able to answer that question in about 90k miles, say in about 12 years. I just replaced the original factory OEM "red" coolant with "greenish" in my 92 LS400 with 93k on the odometer.

Cooling air outlet temperature is a function of inlet temperature, blower speed, and refrigerant/system cooling efficiency. 48F might have been stellar performance for all you know.

Not as likely...

It worked for two 92 LSes that I know of, one at 150k and the other at 90k.

Geesh...... When he restarts the nengine the Trac failure light is off, car must be driven some distance, enough for ten speparate brake applications, and then the light comes on. That indicates, basically, that everything is working except the system cannot maintain brake fluid pressure between brake applications. That can only mean that the nitrogen charged accumulator has lost its charge or the system has an internal leak. Of two the most likely failure is debris (100k miles, brake fluid changed??) blocking one of the check valves. I gave my older brother, now 78, a 91 LS a few years ago. He has spent his entire life driving RWD vehicles so I wouldn't dare give him an extremely hazardous FWD vehicle. The recovery procedure for loss of control due to understeering is basically non-existent for a FWD, whereas a persons natural instincts, lift the gas pedal, is often all that is needed for recovering for oversteering in a RWD vehicle. And if lifting the gas pedal doesn't work you almost always have enough steering traction left to recover. Your father likely doesn't need Trac, his life's experience has likely told him what actions to take in a RWD vehicle and that action probably got him in trouble in the FWD accura. I'm only 63, and lucky for me FWD didn't become predminant in the market before I was old enough to figure out how hazardous they are on a slippery roadbed.

For my 92 I had to have the holes welded shut and the trunk lid repainted.

By Lexus standards my LS'es Trac is operating properly. I guess too many years in central MT taught me better how to drive a car than Lexus engineers taught the Lexus Trac. Turning on icy roads... Are you thinking of VSC? Trac knows nothing about turns, just rear wheel rotation rate vs front.

MY 01 RX300 does not adjust headlamp level above about 15 to 20MPH.

Disagree with mike523, absolutely. Unless he's talking about a FWD vehicle, or an AWD vehicle that like the AWD RX3X0 is actually FWD. I would never take a FWD vehicle onto an icy roadbed absent Trac. But. The LS is RWD. In almost all cases with the 92 LS400 on slippery surfaces I have had to disable it in order to get the vehicle to move forward. If it weren't so quick to dethrottle the engine, and take so long to recover, "un-dethrottle", then it might be of same help. Turning it off on an icy surface allows me to feather the throttle and get the car moving along. Otherwise it is a series of slip, brakes, dethrottle, lift gas pedal, wait for un-dethrottle, apply gas lightly, spin, brakes, dethrottle,...etc, etc.

First, I would flush, completely, the brake fluid. A bit of debris blocking a check value could be your problem. You have two "extra" bleed valves, one near the ABS assembly and one at the Trac assembly. If none of that works and your father is an experienced driver, know how to "feather" the throttle for accelerating on the slippery stuff, I would simply ignore it or maybe even remove the failure bulb in the panel. My experience with my 92 is that it more often interferes with my driving style than is usefull, I often find myself turning it off in order to proceed. The only good it seems to do is act as an early advisory of slippery roadbed conditions.

Very few, if any at all, cars with automatics will shift into top gear at WOT. There is a switch under the gas pedal (under the black rubber dome) that causes the transmission to downshift, and will oftentimes also prevent it from upshifting. If you want to go into fourth gear at these speeds then let up on the gas pedal just enough to release the switch. But then depending on the engine ECU you may find that you will need to let the pedal up long enough to attain "cruise" (just enough engine torque to maintain speed), and then depress it gradually in increments to attain "top speed". That's the way I did it in my 92 LS many years ago out on a very lonely stretch of highway, Browning to Cutbank, in MT. But wasn't brave enough to find the top.

Off-topic.....NO. The AWD RX is predominantly FWD and the X3 or X5 is predominantly RWD. If you spend a great deal of time driving on adverse roadbed conditions in wintertime and value your life then the BMW is the obvious choice. If you want luxury and reliability then the RX is the correct choice. Or you could always install 1.2" wheel spacers all around on the RX so rear snowchains can be used and have the best of both worlds.

Boosted brakes isolate you so much from the actual brake application pressure that you will likely never notice the difference. Take a look at what you are buying with stainless steel brake lines some time. They are simply the very same, OEM, brake lines but wrapped with a flexible braided stainless steel PROTECTIVE sleeve, a sleeve that will allow just as much expansion of the inner hose as without. The Stainless steel sleeve was designed to protect the brake lines on race cars from roadbed, flying, debris, and they serve that purpose very well.

The only RWD I have ever encountered understeer with was a 78 Porsche.

But I really did..... RWD oversteer is caused by not enough traction to support the driving torque, and in the case of entering a turn, the driving torque and the need for lateral traction. Our nature instincts when our sensor says something is amiss is to lift the throttle, removing the driving torque and most likely adding slight engine braking, to bring the rear end back into "line".

Commonly held belief...... FWD, is better on adverse roadbed conditions, if all you ever need to do is accelerate. Accidents with passenger vehicles of any kind are clearly in the minority. The majority of the time we, the average person, get into our car and drive off to work, or where ever, and worry not in the least about encountering a life threatening accident. And that is as it should be. And it is absolutely true that in adverse roadbed conditions ice and packed snow, those with FWD will have less trouble getting to the office without incident than will those with RWD. And that's the source of the common belief! But it is those "incidents" both for FWD and RWD, that are most important for issues of safety of one over the other. The most common incident for RWD is over-steering. Over-steering is readily detectable by our "seat-of-the-pants" sensor system and those with no experence at all will react naturally by lifting the gas pedal. In most cases the RWD vehicle will then "right itself" of its own accord, vehicular dynamics. The more experienced of us would most likely steer into the skid direction. Note that we're able to do that since we never lost roadbed traction at the front, steering, wheels. I think all would agree that the most common incident for FWD would be understeering. Note that with FWD we might actually travel for miles and miles with the front drive wheels slipping slightly or only intermittently with not an inkling of actual roadbed conditions. Only when we come to the reasonably tight turn in the road do we discover that we had been traveling along at the very limit of tire/roadbed adhesion. Now as we enter the turn we discover a bit of understeering. Nature instinct would be to get off the gas... a mistake, a very BIG mistake. If I could just lightly apply ONLY the rear brakes I could maybe slow the car to the point or regaining roadbed traction at the front (in point of fact that exactly what the VSC does on my 01 AWD RX300, apply both rear brakes moderately when under-steering is detected) and of course like with engien braking to the rear on RWD rear braking will help to bring the car back into "line". So, absent a clutch to disenage the driveline, what's your answer to the dilema of under-steering on an ICY roadbed with FWD at 50MPH??

And when your front wheels, driving and steering, lose traction entirely the RWD car be be continuing on because it has directional control allocated to the front wheels and driving torque to the rear. You'd need to put the ENTIRE vehicle's weight on just the front tires in order to equal the traction stability of a RWD vehicle. FWD is fine on the slippery stuff if you ONLY need drive traction or if you ONLY directional control traction, if you need both simultaneously the front and rear distributed traction of the RWD will ALWAYS win out!

If the RX330 had the X3's AWD system then I wouldn't even hesitate. If you truly have need of AWD, ice and/or packed snow roadbed travel, then the RX330 is not for you. But I can't in good conscience vote for the BMW as I have never owned one. For OVERALL safety and stability with adverse roadbed conditions RWD or rear biased AWD will always stand out over FWD or front biased AWD.

before you change the button pick a distant point in line with the top of the hood for "sighting" and try not to move your head position while the air suspension cycles to the new height. On some cars the doors must all be closed and the engine running. Takes about 30 to 60 seconds.

But remove and clean and burnish the battery terminals first.