I have 2 ES300's. 1st is a 1998 , 2nd is a 1997 - bought for my mother.
I recently purchased them with VERY low miles and carfax report verified.
Obviously not totally fault proof , but they were extremely clean soo.....
Anyways.....my 98 ES300 I lost my remote and my key, but I have a 2nd key
which has a bigger plastic head on it, but I have no idea which was the master.
Both started my car, and I'm not sure if they had transponders in them or not.
Both keys looked like this....for both vehicles.
I did some searches on this forum already and came up with vague info just
like Lexus dealership gave me. They will "charity" me a new ECM and I have to
pay for 2 hours labor and then buy a $150 master key and have them program it,
etc etc......plus a new 3 button remote....I'm looking at $300.
Now I talked to some other people and they told me they got these keys on Ebay
cut by a Locksmith and they work just fine in their RX300
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/LEXUS-ES300...emZ150305283990
Thoughts?? They flat out say NO TRANSPONDER chip in them and they are "master keys"
so I'm not sure what the real difference is between a master and a non-master valet key.
I'm familiar with the whole Lexus dealer solution and it's not an option for me.