lemaylexus

I went to my mechanic for a small oil/tranny fluid leak and it turned out to be $1600 worth of flywheel and torque converter. Believe me, I feel your pain.

sounds like you stole it.. congrats and nice find!

If I had to do it all over again I'd buy a 400. That's just because I'm not knowledgeable enough to do a engine swap and I just want a reliable ride that goes like stank. If you're the type to do tons of mods, the 300 is superior. But don't get me wrong, I love my 300 to death.

These damn hurricanes. My parents live in Daytona, and I know they're scared to death of them after Katrina. Fay just dumped tons of water on them, too. I'm glad you guys were able to get out in plenty of time. Let's hope by some miracle this thing fizzles out.

I've done a little searching around and haven't really found anything too similar to this yet. I got new brake pads, rotors, and calipers a few months ago. Initially I was hearing a loud knock from the wheel well area when I was braking. Didn't seem to affect the braking at all though. I took it back to my mechanic just to make sure it wasn't a big deal. He couldn't figure out what it was so he replaced all the parts with new parts. This fixed the knock for awhile, but now it's back in the passenger front wheel. He told me that he believes the sound is the pad sliding forward and backward in its bracket whenever I push the brake pedal. He assured me that this wasn't affecting the performance of the brakes what so ever, and as I've gone to him with all of my vehicles for the past few years with nothing less than complete satisfaction, I am taking his word on that. The only thing is, this just doesn't seem normal to me (not to mention it's pretty annoying). My brakes didn't do this before I had everything replaced. Has anybody heard of this or know of a quick/easy fix that a novice gear head like myself might be able to do at home? Thanks in advance.

Micah, just out of curiosity, did getting new tranny fluid help with your hard shifting? Was this problem ever resolved by other means? I have the same deal on my SC300 but I've been associating this with bad tranny mounts.

I live in the middle of nowhere, Illinois. Out here each summer we enjoy the thrill of having our roads graded to dirt and repaved using the most nomadic of materials to do so. This year the roads haven't been re-done yet. However, they are turning in to basically just straight tar. This oil gets on your car and is damn near impossible to get off without literally hours of cleaning. So what I'm wondering is if anyone knows of a quick way to get this oil to come off of the paint. It does come off with typical car soap and water, but it takes intense rubbing and cleaning to get the job done (spent 3 hours today on one quarter panel). Keep in mind, it's not like there's a ton of oil all over the car, it just looks dirty and personally, I like to keep my ride clean. I appreciate any suggestions.

I posted this question in the pinned thread about the trans and motor mounts, so maybe I'm just being impatient, but I really think it just went unnoticed because it was easy to miss. I'm experiencing the hard shifts and vibrations in the steering wheel, so I've decided to replace my tranny mounts and motor mounts. My question is what are all the parts and their corresponding numbers I will need in order to do this? If anyone knows right off hand that would help me out big time, as I've decided to just order the parts online as opposed to going through a local dealer. Once again, sorry if this is extremely redundant or if I've missed this in previous threads, but any help, even a link to another thread, would be much appreciated.

In the words of this one dude on youtube, "Dat boi be ridin' clean!!" :)

can someone post in this thread the exact part numbers that are needed if one was to replace their tranny mounts and engine mounts? i would be most appreciative.

I need one of these as well. I'm just missing one on the front passenger side of the arm rest, but you can feel the armrest wobble because of that one missing piece of rubber. Not a big deal, but a minor annoyance nonetheless.

125 in my SC300 on a rural highway in central Illinois. Didn't feel like it had a lot of room left, honestly. Plus I don't like doing that when I only have one lane to work with.

Don't know if this helps at all but on my 97 SC300, in the mornings when I go to work and the car has sat all night, the RPM's run high, between 1 and 2k until the car starts getting warm. If you take off immediately its a high enough idle to roll the car. I think it just does that to warm the engine quicker. Simple solution: Let the car warm up for a few minutes before driving. That's what I do anyway..

I'm actually just outside St. Louis on the Illinois side in a town called Edwardsville.

What's up, Bob? Welcome to LOC! Texas getting hot yet? I just moved from Dallas back to my hometown of St. Louis about 6 months ago and I gotta say, I miss that southern heat.

I have a 97 SC300 and my sunroof doesn't do this.

No idea what type of fluid is in mine, but if it's not too expensive I'll have them put the recommended fluid in there next time I get my oil changed.

My '97 SC300 has similar issues. I thought at first it might be the tranny mount, but that wouldn't explain why it doesn't do it when it's warm. I'm interested to see if anyone's got answers for this one.

Do you mean a wood grain dash kit or a head unit shelf? I don't know if this post slipped out from under your nose when you were looking around on the forum, but anyway here's a link this might help you.

http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index...showtopic=33449

Cheers.

(sigh)

Shrinks point out that humanity's knee jerk reaction is to blame. "It's the Dem's fault" ... "It's the neocons" ... "It's congress" ... "It's the oil companies" ... "It's the left" ... It's the right".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

You can pick any of over TEN THOUSAND WEB PAGES to do your homework ... but we BETTER all do our homework, and STOP the blame game. Geologist like Hubbert have known since the 1950's that U.S. spiraling consumption of fossil fuel would outstrip production by the early 1970's. Lo & behold, during that time (if you aren't old enough to remember), we were forming lines around the block to get our "fix" of more gas. And so the imports became our way of life ... now over 50% is imported. The gas lines of the 1970's were back when we imported less than 15%. So guess how it'll be if we ever loose 50%-60% of our "fix".

Peak Oil is no longer a theory, yet most are so ignorant, they're still fixed on cars with MORE POWER. Equally lame are folks that brag, "I don't care if gas hits $10/gallon ... I aint driving no slug, cuz I got a ton of dough so it won't bother me". That's not only ignorant ... but selfish as well. You see, as demand continues to ever spiral upward at an increasing rate (due to China & India now becoming huge consumers), and supplies dwindling, the cost of fossil fuel products effect EVERYTHING, from paint, plastic, asphalt, food (all fertilizer comes from fossil fuel) to manufacturing, mining. It's the new form of money. It's what allows everything to be as cheep as it WAS. So goes the cheep fuel? So goes cheep everything.

Open Alaska / Arctic? Geologists all agree, that if the U.S. was able to use that region exclusively for all our fuel? It'd last less than a year. Shale? Tar sand? All of it. It aint cheep. Experts say emphatically, we are at the apex of a paradigm shift in the way we do things. It ain't about, "hey, let's show 'em ... we won't buy gas from Exxon"

All companies feed off the same pipe. Exxon simply would sell their entitlement to Shell, Arco, etc. Sorry for the large dose of reality. Shrings say people can't handle too large a dose of reality either. Argue with it all you want, or ignore it ... we need to get off the oil addiction while we can. Be wise, it's not a price gouging thing. It's simple economics. Supply & demand and the supply is going down, never to return again. Road Warrior de ja vu? Who knows.

I agree with you for the most part. The oil will run out. I, too, for awhile was sort of "doomsdayish" about this whole peak oil thing. The truth of it all is I don't think we can go back to the old school way of doing things with horse and buggy. The human race has proven itself time and time again that as environments and resources change, we change the way we live in order to maintain our current ways of life. Hell, I'm only 22 and I remember when it was a big deal that gas was hitting a dollar a gallon. Now it's four dollars a gallon and my family doesn't make anymore money than it did then, but we still find ways to drive everywhere we want to go. It just means sacrifices in other areas. Once oil becomes too expensive to sell to the average consumer, the oil companies are gonna have to start charging for alternative energy. If I had to guess I'd say they already have the technology to let us drive without oil. If you guys haven't seen "Who Killed the Electric Car", you should check it out. When all the money that can possibly be made off of oil has been made, then they will let us have electric/alternative fuel vehicles, but probably not a minute before that. Just my two cents. :)

Yeah, kind of what I thought. This car has been a money pit for me thus far. I guess it's my fault though for not checking it out thoroughly enough before I bought it. Oh, well. I still love the car.

you should probably post this question in the ES section of the forum. this section is for SC's. :) Sorry I don't have any solutions for your problem but you'll probably have better luck in the ES section.

Just a little update. I'm now hearing a squealing noise coming from the area of the engine where the compressor is located when the A/C is turned on. It goes away when I turn it off. I assume that is the compressor trying to work. Does this squealing noise indicate anything in particular to anybody?

Thanks Tom and UCF for all your advice. I checked the HVAC door and it's functioning as I believe it should. Goes from hot to cold no problem. Fuse also okay. I'm taking it to my mechanic on thursday so I'll have him check the freon again and the compressor as well.

If you read in the manual it says that if the A/C button blinks that indicates a failure in the compressor. Looks like you'll probably have to replace it. I found some compressors for my SC300 online for around $350 US.