SW03ES

Thats what wwest is saying, on the Lexus you can't operate the fog lights independent of the low beams. What year was your Explorer, thats not possible on my Explorer either and its a 97.

An easy fix for that would be to install a secondary tranny cooler.

LOL, but the Highlander has the same transmission as the RX.

Nope you already had them. Like I said they're great tires in every other respect. Real shame.

Aftermarket glass CAN be fine but the quality control is not as strict as OEM. I've seen many an aftermarket windshield with distortions or other irregularities that can be very annoying. If the insurance is paying why not go OEM?

With an average mileage per tire of 3,298 miles driven per review for the Goodyears vs 13,158 miles per review on the Dunlops, I would be more confident in the Dunlops than the Goodyears, thats all I'm saying. Its unfair the way TireRack ranks tires. Sure someone may be super satisfied with their tires at 3000 miles, as I was with the Toyos, but somewhat less so at 13,000 miles, as I am with the Toyos. They're great tires in everything but snow but because of that I wont buy another set. You also have to be careful when shopping tires for a car like this based on treadwear. Treadwear is often a tradeoff for performance.

But she still lacked having an impartial expert to do the negotiating and work through the sale for her, thats what you're paying for. Like I said before, unless the buyer didn't have a real estate agent themselves she didn't save the entire commission. People go to court all the time without lawyers, and some do fine. Doesn't make it a good idea. Plus, not many people have a month to devote to getting a real estate license. In CA you can do it from home but not in most states (I think CA may be the only one). I have to sit in a classroom 24 hours a week for a month, not many people have the time to do that. Barbers don't cut their own hair, lawyers don't represent themselves in court and generally its not a good idea for a real estate agent to list their own home. Part of what you're paying an agent for is their impartial expertise based on experience in the area with pricing and zoning laws etc, the backbone provided through them consisting of an agency with mortgage brokers, title companies etc, and their impartial ability to negotiate fiercly on your behalf. Plus she didn't get the opportunity to list her home with the MLS who knows, maybe she could have made more? She owned the home, she wasn't impartial. Plus, usually when a house is listed the commission is tacked on top of the list price anyways, and technically the buyer pays the commission so she really didn't save any money. She may have thought she did.

No, several cars come with 20s from the factory now.

Most of the backroads including my road are unplowed still (which is inexcusable, it was only 4" but thats another topic) and I got to get the Lexus out today. The tires are a total disaster in the snow. As soon as they hit anything snowy they immediately get very squirrly and loose grip. Any kind of throttle makes the car immobile with flashing traction lights. Never like that with the other tires. They must have made some change to the rubber compound on these tires, my tires and mb's tires are much newer than LF's or Lexusk8's tires maybe that explains it. Definately can't drive through any snowstorms on theese though.

We got screwed (or saved depending on your outlook) and only got 4 inches lol

Don't blame you lol. Remember to check the pressures cold. I don't know what the pressure is supposed to be on your car because you have the 17s, but on the 02-04 ES with the 16s its 29PSI. It'll be written on your drivers doorjamb.

Yeah I'll never buy another Bridgestone tire for 2 reasons. 1. Their involvement in the Explorer Firestone debacle. Who wants to do business with a company like that. 2. The horrible Bridgestone Potenza RE-92 tires that came on my car. The XGT line looks interesting, and Michelin just redid the MXV4 line with their new MXV4 S8 tire that is supposed to have better handling characteristics. I'm happy with my Toyos but sure bummed about the snow traction.

No problem, that doesn't mean they are bad tires it just means that they're not neccisarily as astronomically good as the reviews make it look. Or they might be, but we need way more reviews before we can know that for sure. The best example of this is the Continental ContiExtremeContact. I didn't buy them before because they didn't have a lot of reviews but now they have 11,000,000 reported and the reviews are almost as good as they were before. I would call a good high quality tire shop that sells a nice spread of tires, Michelin, Goodyear, Toyo, Dunlop etc. Get a price of the tires on TireRack including shipping and see if they will match the price. They usually will. Now, Goodyear has a 30 day test ride program, so if you don't like the tires you can take the car back and try another set from a different brand. Thats what I did last time and it worked well, I was happy with the tires but had I not been I could have had Michelins etc mounted. TireRack's service is awesome but this new 30 day test ride all the companies are doing is going to put them out of business. Its just not feasable to ship tires back to them etc. I have Toyo Proxes TPTs on my car and like them, but they're not stellar in the snow. If you don't have snow where you live then I would reccomend them.

Doesn't matter.

Nope ;) Its a common model misspelling but they never produced an LX430.

One thing you have to be careful of with the Tire Rack reviews is the amount of mileage reported. They compare tires with 800,000 miles reported and 20 reviews up against tires with 20,000,000 miles and 300 reviews reported and compare them as even, and thats just totally unfair. Anyone who knows anything about statistics knows about "regression to the mean" this basically means that the bigger the field of respondants in a survey like this the more "ordinary" the tires will seem. Take the Goodyear Assurance Triple Tread http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?ti...romCompare1=yes And the Dunlop Sp Sport 5000 http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?ti...000+Symmetrical Now when you first look at the reviews you'll think "Wow, the Goodyears are better" but look more closely. The Goodyears have 250 surveys reported and 750,000 miles while the Dunlops have 350 surveys and nearly 5,000,000 miles reported. That means MORE surveys are availiable to rate the Dunlops AND the respondants have put more miles on the tires per survey than the Goodyears. So while it originally looks like the Goodyears are much better, upon closer inspection the response on the Dunlops is more impressive. So, don't take everything at face value. I wouldn't get so excited about the Goodyears until the reviews have a achance to regress to the mean. *DISLCAIMER* I'm not using the Dunlops for any particular reason in this example, its just what popped into my head.

With the transmissions you have to look at the # of complaints vs the number of RX300s on the road. Lexus has sold about 100,000 RX's every year since it came out in 99 (well 98 really but it came out as a 99) how many people complain about transmission problems on this board? 10? probably not even that many. Thats hardly statistically significant. You've got to be careful when using the experiences of people on these boards as a reason to or not to buy. Usually people only make the effort to discuss these cars when they are really thrilled with them or seriously down on them. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle and the people in the middle just drive them, not post about them. That make sense? The thing to do is ask people you see, see a guy walking out to his RX? Ask him how he likes it, same at gas stations etc. That will give you a better picture. I would look at a 2001+ model if you can afford it. They made a couple nice additions including new taillights and headlights/grille and the addition of a navigation option (even though its very rare) is nice. I think the small updates made to the 01 make it a much better looking vehicle. Plus there are some cool special editions like the Silversport and Coach models that are very sharp. That said, its always cheaper to keep a car you have running but I'm not like that. I work hard, I like to drive something that makes me happy. Not EVERYTHING should be a penny counting endeavor ;) Sometimes you just want a new car, when you get to that point added expenses of repairs on a current car help push you over. The RX is a nice vehicle, we seriously considered getting a 2002 model when we bought my fiance's Prius. She wanted the Prius though lol

It definately has tint, I know the tint on my dad's 98 was similar to my car and his new one so I'd guess that your 95 is similar. The tint is colored to match the color combination of the car, green or brown. Your car and my car have brown tint, both his LS' had/have green. The green is a little more noticable but they're both tinted to the same darkness. The tint is in the glass its not a film like aftermarket tint. You can see the tint in your first pic, look at the grass through the windows compared to in front of the car. Most cars come tinted from the factory nowadays, my Explorer is tinted, the Lexus is tinted, the Prius is tinted, Mercedes are tinted (the blue tint on Benzes with grey interior is VERY noticable) etc. My guess is thats where the 11% is coming from. That said, if the person who tinted it was good he tinted it to 20% including the factory tint, so it may still be wrong.

Wow thats really something. 79 too, not that old...

Is it an LS430 or an LX470? Theres no such thing as an LX430 ;)

If you have 20% tints, and the legal amount is 40%, aren't you still legal? ← No, the way tint works the lower the number the darker the tint it. The number reflects the % of light that can pass through the tint, a 5% tint only lets 5% of light through while a 40% tint allows 40% through. Took me a while to figure that out too lol. As for fighting it, always fight it! The worst the judge can do is make you pay the ticket which is just a fix it ticket anyways probably. Legally an innacurate reading will make the ticket invalid. Bear in mind though, those instruments add the factory tint and the aftermarket tint TOGETHER. Lexus windows are tinted pretty dark from the factory as it is, 80% or so so the 11% may be accurate. I've looked into getting mine tinted and the limit is 20% in MD and he told me the most he'd put on the car is 30% to make sure the added tint didnt put me over. First of all let me say stopping people for sobriety is a beautiful thing. I get stopped a lot leaving D.C. late on a Fri or Sat night, they stop everyone and check them and keep a lot of dangerous people off the road. I'm always more than happy to stop, show my registration and take a breathalyzer to do my part in keeping everyone safe. Stopping people then using that opportunity to nitpick every little legal thing with their vehicle when the driver is doing the right thing and safely getting his friends home is just dirty. Usually cops will point things out like they did with Denny's wife but to actually give you a ticket instead of concentrating on their job of keeping dangerous drunks off the road is just pathetic. If you'd had 20 pounds of crack in the trunk that'd be one thing, but illegal tint? Come on. Sober people should have nothing to fear about a sobreity checkpoint.

People around here in european cars with rear foglights leave them on in all kinds of weather, its very annoying...

Yeah windshields are usually covered as no fault damage on your insurance, especially during the winter. I've replaced several windshields in cars with OEM glass and its never raised my rates. I would get the OEM glass. Substantial doesn't begin to explain the price difference. Expect to pay $1200 for the Lexus glass and $200 for aftermarket.

There's a tensioner built into the seatbelt, as seatbelts age the tensioners stop working as well. The thing to do is to replace both seatbelt assemblies.

My guess is same shocks, stiffer springs and anti roll bars.