Jim Walker

Tommy, save yourself a lot of trouble and heartache. I can take car of this problem for you for not much money and it only takes 1 day. I ship it back the next morning. Over the many years that I've been doing these repairs, I have found a LOT of other problems. It's no longer a matter of changing a few caps here and there. There are a lot of different problems that these cluster can have. I can fix anything that can and do go wrong with your instrument cluster. Thanks to all the people I have helped over the years that found me through the Lexus Owners Club, I have built a successful business. I have not expanded beyond the repair of Lexus LS400 Instrument Clusters and Climate Control units. That is ALL I work on and I've got to admitt, I'm very good at what I do. Just look at all the posts on the Lexus Owners Club of all the customers that have good things to say about my work and my honesty. I appreciate all of you and the Lexus Owners Club for making this possible for me. I plan to keep doing this for as long as there is a demand for my fast, reasonable, honest, and thorough service for you. Call or eMail me if you need real professional repairs and updates for you LS400 problems for a real engineer. Jim Walker TheLexpert@yahoo.com jimlwalker@sbcglobal.net

My dash is completely out except when I start my car. The pointers flicker and all of the sensor lights light up but I have no idea how much gas I have or how fast I am going..(not good for a girl with a bit of a lead foot). I have a '93 LS that I love but don't want to spend thousands to repair the dash. I am in the Indianapolis area if you know of anyone here, but I would also love to have the info on repairing it. I can get a friend to help me. Thank you soooo much!!!! My email is misshooty2004@yahoo.com Hi, do you know where to get those two oval shaped flourescent bulbs that go in the instrument cluster to light up the speedometer and tach gauge? My dash is completely out except when I start my car. The pointers flicker and all of the sensor lights light up but I have no idea how much gas I have or how fast I am going..(not good for a girl with a bit of a lead foot). I have a '93 LS that I love but don't want to spend thousands to repair the dash. I am in the Indianapolis area if you know of anyone here, but I would also love to have the info on repairing it. I can get a friend to help me. Thank you soooo much!!!! My email is misshooty2004@yahoo.com Hi, do you know where to get those two oval shaped flourescent bulbs that go in the instrument cluster to light up the speedometer and tach gauge? Yes, I have those oval lights, but chances are they are not bad. There are other reasons for those not to light up. Email me directly so I can send the info. jimlwalker@sbcglobal.net

Hello everyone. First of all, I want to thank all of you Lexus owners that have put your trust in me and my repairs over that past several years. I have repaired many hundreds of these (probably well over a thousand, I lost count). I appoligise for not coming onto this forum more often to clear up a lot of the mis-information that crops up all too often. It seems that if someone writes some misleading information it gets repeated by others without verifying if it's true or not. If something gets repeated enough, it seems to be eventually accepted as fact. I don't mean to offend anyone that may be doing this, I'm sure they are just trying to help. Case in point - The sticking speedometer problem WILL NOT, I repeat, WILL NOT be fixed by cleaning the silver eyelets on the circuit boards. Those eyelets carry the high voltage to the needles to light the needles. They have absolutely nothing to do with the deflection of the speedometer or any other gauge for that matter. The ONLY sure cure for the sticking speedometer gauge problem is to replace the speedometer gauge assembly with a brand new Lexus factory speedometer gauge. Being a Lexus Factory part, you can expect to pay quite a bit. I stock those speedometer gauge assemblies and I buy them in quantity to get the best price that I can get. I pass that savings on to my customers. That is just one example of some of the mis-information that is being tossed about on the internet. This forum is one of the best sources of information that I have ever seen. However, there are a few people that insist on spreading mis-information even here. LOC is the greatest! Keep up the good work! Jim Walker the Lex-pert

UPDATE I have 100 of the LCDs being manufactured in China right now. I have already paid for the engineering. I'm supposed to receive 5 engineering samples on Aug. 20. If they test ok, I will then approve the order to proceed with the initial order of 100. That will take about 6 more weeks. So realistically speaking, I should have them for sale at the beginning of Oct. I plan to sell them for about $150 each with instructions on how to change it yourself. I'll also offer to install them into the customer's climate control for a small fee. If I can get a few bad climate control units, I will do exchanges. I'll post on this board when they come in. I'm sorry for the delay in completing this project, the manufacturer had some mistakes to correct. Thank you for you patience. Jim Walker jimlwalker@sbcglobal.net

Hi everyone, thank you all for all the replies, both on and off the list. I recognize many of you from my doing the repairs on your instrument cluster lighting problems. I want to thank all of you for trusting me to repair those units for you. Now I want to update everyone on my progress of solving the problem of the climate control modules with their smudgy blacked out displays. The problem is the LCD display itself, the part that you see that is glass. The rest of the unit that houses the display is called the climate control or AC control unit. The climate control unit itself has a surprising amount of electronics inside and is quite suffisticated and complex. The unit as a whole seems to be well designed and reliable. It's just the LCD that goes bad. Several weeks ago I did the engineering drawings and specifications to have some LCD modules manufactured. The first 5 units are due to arrive in mid July. These are the engineering samples. If they are good (which I expect) I will then give them the approval to manufacture 100 of them. The 5 engineering samples are already promised to people that have helped me out, such as Mark (Desertred) who sent me his climate control months ago for me to figure out the problem. Thank you Mark! The specifications that I wrote for these units are the broadest possible temperature range that is available in the industry at this time. The LCD displays are going to be as near to factory appearance and function as possible. However, I used the 90-92 LS400 as the model. The reason for this is that this model has the majority of the problems. The 93-94 LS400 display is slightly different. It has a divider in between TIME and TEMP sides if the display and it will display the word MAX TEMP if you run the temperature setting up as far as it will go. Since I followed the 90-92 display as a model, if you were to install this on your 93-94 LS400 climate control unit, you would no longer see the words MAX TEMP when you run the control all the way up in temperature. You would also not see a divider between TEMP and TIME sides of the display. In addition, there are more connecting pins on the 93-94 model display. In order to accomodate this difference, I will offer an adaptor of sorts for use of my display on the 93-94 LS400s. In addition to that difference, I found that vehicles with right-hand drive have the display showing the TIME on the left and the TEMP on the right side of the display. That's just opposite what we have in the US. Again, I will offer an adaptor for this as well. But those of you with right-hand drive vehicles will then see the TEMP on the left and the TIME on the right anyway. The adaptor only allow the display to be used on your climate control module but can't switch the words TIME and TEMP from right to left and visa-versa. This will have no effect on the display as far as Celcius and Fahrenheit. It will show the proper temperature whether you have C or F. However, it will only show metric time (just kidding!!) How difficult is it going to be to change one yourself? On a scale of 1 to 10 I would say an 8. It is fairly difficult I'm sorry to say. However, I plan to write very detailed step by step directions for those of you that want to do it yourself. I will send those to you if you ask before you buy so that you can judge for yourself if you want to tackle it. For those of you that don't want to try the self-install, I will offer for you to send your unit to me for repair. I will charge you for this, I haven't determined how much that will be yet. I would like to purchase some complete climate control units that have the bad LCD module in them. I would like to have several of these to use for exchanges. If you have one or know of someone that has one that is good except for the blackened out LCD, please contact me ASAP. Thank you!! Jim Walker jimlwalker@sbcglobal.net

I have instrument cluster removal instructions that I will share with anyone that asks, no charge of course. I have been repairing this particular dash light problem for several months now. I have done many many of these. The problem is caused by the aging several components in what Lexus calls the "power source" circuit boards. This particular design flaw is unique to the 93 and 94 LS400 vehicles only. When I repair the circuit boards, I not only replace the components that are currently bad, but also the ones that are potential future problems as well. The components that I use to replace bad ones with are of higher quality rating than the originals. After I repair the boards, they are essentially rebuilt and you should never have the problem again. Lexus cannot make that claim because they simply replace those bad circuit boards with new circuit boards with the same design flaws built right in. They WILL fail too, eventually. I have one customer that had the dealer replace his twice. The last set of boards lasted him less than 2 years. He then found me and I have repaired his and I guaranteed his for as long as he owns the car. You can find several posts elswhere on this forum of people who's circuit boards I have repaired for them. You'll find that in every case, they are happy with my repair and the price. I don't have a business, I'm just an individual that happens to be an electronics engineer and a fellow LS400 owner. I offer my services to others because I think Lexus charges way too much for this and I want to make a few bucks for myself in the process. If you are interested in having yours fixed (rebuilt) please Email me and let's talk about it. :) Jim Walker -----New Email : jimlwalker@sbcglobal.net

Hi Rob. I had the same problem last year with my 93 Lexus LS400. I took mine to the Lexus dealer here in Fresno. They wanted $1400 to fix it!!! To make a long story short, since I'm an Electronics Engineer by trade, I decided to fix mine myself and then offer my repair to others with the same problem. Well I did just that. As of now, May 4, 2003 I have repaired almost 50 of these for people as far away as The Netherlands and England. I'm in Fresno, California. The problems I found are on 2 printed circuit boards located within the instrument cluster. If you want more information on how to get your dash lights repaired, just Email me at: jimlwalker@sbcglobal.net Jim

I am in the process of purchasing a large quantity of LCD Displays to replace all the bad ones out there on 90-94 LS400s. I know the Lexus dealers want $600 plus to replace the whole climate control unit whenever there is a failure of the LCD unit. I can get better discount with larger orders so I just want to get a feel for how much interest there would be. The smallest quantity that I can purchase is 100. At that quantity, I can sell them for about $150 each. If I can order 250 at a time, I can afford to sell them for about $120 each. If you might be interested in purchasing a replacement LCD display for your 90-94 LS400, please email me. Again, let me emphasize that I'm not selling anything at this time. I am simply looking for possible interest in such a purchase. Jim Walker jimlwalker@sbcglobal.net

They're not cheap! I recently bought a 92 LS400 (1 of 3) for almost $100. But they are very good manuals. If you see those manuals on CD that people are selling on Ebay, don't waste your money, they're almost worthless and they are the same whether you buy one for $1 or $35 one thinking that if you pay more, you're getting more. They are basically all Mitchell repair manuals. You may find a factory manual on ocasion on Ebay or try books4cars.com that's where I have purchased before. Jim Walker

Hi Lex. Although I haven't worked on an ES300 before, I have repaired a lot of LS400s with dash light problems. I'm pretty sure that yours does not use the Cold Cathode Florescent Lamp technology like the LS400s do so I would not be able to repair yours. However, if you will Email me, I will Email you back the Removal and Reinstall Instructions that I have compiled for people that want to get their LS400s repaired. Those instructions should be very close to what you need to remove your instrument cluster. I don't know if you have an electronic odometer or a mechanical one. If it's the electronic type, I have heard that Lexus will charge you at least $200 to set the proper mileage. I have also seen a web site that claims to set mileage on most cars but they wanted something like $600 to do it! If you do decide to purchase a used one off Ebay, I would be interested in checking out your old one for you just to see how they tick. Also, if you need any electronic advice, email me. Jim Walker My email address is jimlwalker@sbcglobal.net

Lexus LS400 '93 and '94 have a problem with the instrument cluster lights (dash lights). Many many people have this problem. The dash lights won't come on for a while, then they will flicker and finally come on. This is more evident in cold weather. This problem gets worse over a period of weeks or months until they will refuse to come on at all. When the light are off, the fuel gauge points to empty as well. The problem, I found, is in the power supply circuit boards. They are located behind the instrument cluster. I have compiled some detailed instructions on how to remove those boards. If you want a copy of those instructions, just Email (PM) me. I'll Email them to you, no charge. I would attach them here, but they are larger than the 102.4KB limit on this board. My car did that. '93 LS400. The Lexus dealer wanted $1400 to repair it. I repaired mine myself, I'm an electronics engineer and I can help you repair yours too! Email me or PM me Jim Walker jimlwalker@sbcglobal.net -------------------- I have the Repair for your '93 or '94 LS400 flickering INSTRUMENT LIGHTS! I'm an electronics engineer and have found the solution to this common problem on my own car! I want to help you with your problem too.

Lexus LS400 '93 and '94 have a problem with the instrument cluster lights (dash lights). Many many people have this problem. The dash lights won't come on for a while, then they will flicker and finally come on. This is more evident in cold weather. This problem gets worse over a period of weeks or months until they will refuse to come on at all. When the light are off, the fuel gauge points to empty as well. The problem, I found, is in the power supply circuit boards. They are located behind the instrument cluster. I have compiled some detailed instructions on how to remove those boards. If you want a copy of those instructions, just Email (PM) me. I'll Email them to you, no charge. I would attach them here, but they are larger than the 102.4KB limit on this board. My car did that. '93 LS400. The Lexus dealer wanted $1400 to repair it. I repaired mine myself, I'm an electronics engineer and I can help you repair yours too! Email me or PM me Jim Walker jimlwalker@sbcglobal.net

Lexus LS400 '93 and '94 especially have a problem with the instrument cluster lights (dash lights). Many many people have this problem. The dash lights won't come on for a while, then they will flicker and finally come on. This is more evident in cold weather. This problem gets worse over a period of weeks or months until they will refuse to come on at all. My car did that. '93 LS400. The Lexus dealer wanted $1400 to repair it. I repaired mine myself, I'm an electronics engineer and I can repair yours too. Email me at: jimlwalker@sbcglobal.net Jim Walker