Weekender

Clary's did an overhaul on my transmission and I was told where the clogging debris came from (overdrive bearing fragments) but at that point I just wanted the car back asap. One sticky thing I wasn't going to mention was I found a rebuilt tranny online and purchased it for a pretty good price and clary agreed to recieve it from UPS and install it (they really were working with me) only to have the tranny rebuild guys call a few days later and say they wanted three hundred more dollars! I told them to bite the wall and had the overhaul done locally w/ a 12-12 warranty and no funny stuff. oh and I bought it from Lexus of Seattle in Lynnwood. and if we still have it we'll be changing the fluids this time next year. thanks all. Chris

Greetings All, I thought I'd chime in about my tranny woes as I picked up my 01 Rx300 awd 87,xxx miles with it's freshly rebuilt transmission just last night. We bought it certified with about 30k on it and changed the trans fluid at 60k which seems reasonable. I generally drive my cars pretty hard and maintain them carefully and thoroughly but I never have felt like this one responded well to being pushed so I have always driven it very delicately no hard starts (or stops) for that matter. The car has never really felt durable or solid I guess so I'm not too terribly surprised with the failure I might have expected it to completely detonate at 100k but at least this way it didn't leave my wife stranded. The failure was caused by fragments of what was thought to be the "overdrive bearing" if I have it right, clogging the filter and starving the pump causing bad or no shifts and the pump to whine very loudly. When I took the car to Lexus of Seattle they were extremely polite, courteous, and gave me a case number (and a beverage) to see if lexus corporate would be willing to help with costs or something to that effect but after a few days they said nope also implying that if I had used their service dept. for all the previous maintenance it might have helped my case. Whatever. My wife LOVES this car for some reason even more than the newer RXs so against my better judgement it stays but I must say I have been sizing up the Infiniti FX 45, a 2004 w/30k can be had for $30k and that feels like a solid car. Also I'd like to recommend Clary's Transmission in Seattle they didn't offer me a beverage but they are good people do excellent work and they stand by their work. Thanks for reading my first post. Chris