BillyShaft

Best to call your dealer and ask them...they may need to order the parts for you so they can do it all at one time!

Honestly, for a car that new and low miles, I would consider getting a Lexus Extended Warranty. There is a sponsor here named Toby Rivers and he is supposed to be "The Man" on these discounted Lexus Warranties. If your car were under warranty again, I suppose that it would be covered :)

Awesome info. Am I understanding that the water jacket is only on the forward (front of vehicle) bank and that the firewall side has no water jacket? If so, I totally see what you are talking about with more build-up on the far side. My background is in Electrical, Electronics and Nuclear engineering...no real formal mechanical training as such, but like you I have some good aptitude for it, and I enjoy it. Luckily on my engine builds, I had help of a couple Navy Master Chief Machinists helping me out and drinking all my beer. :D Was your XKE build a 12 cyl?

There is an awesome thread by sakataj that goes into gory detail on how to troubleshoot and repair this type of problem. Check it out!

Just garning info...I am assuming that you have done your typical thorough research on the proper break-in procedures and I am interested in what you guys have figured out. I have not heard of a home-spun rebuild on a vehicle of this type. Not a typical event I don't think. Frankly people who drive these types of cars have not been the shade-tree types who bravely tear into that beast and rebuild it(look at that pile o' parts back there in the first pic!)...I am glad to see it! :) I have not built a motor in years, one a 307 that I put in an ElCamino and another a 350 that I built for my 79 Camaro. If I remember correctly we used a generic as possible non-detergent 30-weight or something for the break-in. It has been a lot of years... :( Very interesting info on the passages and galleries. Wonder if the heat just bakes that oil into those narrow galleries, and is it just this vehicle? Just thinking out loud.

Yay! Good news! Congrats on having heat!

x2 What G man said. Get them to resolve this for you.

Yea, there are a couple threads about this service campaign. Something to do with replacing the fuel lines due to ethanol causing corrosion in those lines. Ethanol apparently absorbs water and that is causing problems. And yea, Ris got himself into some drama. Sad really, he had been warned.

Is that based on seating rings?

whoa! Nice detail and writeup!

Shoot EUBT, if it isn't about Navigation stuff, I just parrot what I see you and the other guys put out there. Good to hear you are doing fine, just missed you around the playground! And yea, option 3 seems to be the big winner thus far...may need to put a sock in it! :cries:

Roger, Sorry about your loss man...sounds like your project will be missing his knowledge as well :( Good Luck with your rebuild. lenore, you say you guys will be breaking in with dino and then switching to synth? I have been reading a lot recently about differences on the two and the need for break-in with a particular type is hotly debated (what else is new?). :) Interested in your perspective.

Nice overview! You say you liked the mousy thing they have for the RX...is it like the nightmare I-drive thing they have for BMW or different? I always likeed the intuitive touchscreen :( Also, the pictures of the new RX make it look kinda chubby: did you get that impression? Did they have a price on the Prius listed?

newspapers...I had a flashback there for a minute. Used to have to polish dads chrome bumpers with newspaper! I buy my microfibre(fiber?) towels in a 30 pack at Costco and they do window duty, then detail duty, then rag duty(change my own oil and Jeep stuff), then landfill duty. Package lasts about a year. I have not had my towels lint up like you guys have had sw03 and cduluk. Check out these costco ones. I think the 30 pack was only 10-12 bucks.

Sorry man, I misunderstood then. :( I thought you were comparing driving in 95 degree stop-go traffic to any type of competitive driving. Think we both agree that the two have little in common.

TRUTH! Always buy name brand TP, toothpaste and beer. The biggest thing I miss living here in Yootah is easy availability of Corona. They sell it in grocery stores, but it is the watered down special 3.2 Utah beer. They have pacifica at the State Liquor Stores, but it is like a crazy $10/6 pack. :cries:

Holy Moley! He-men that made Chuck Norris look like a wimp... Saw this on another Forum I frequent. Geez.

If I lived in an extremely cold climate, I'd definitely be using full synthetic lubricants!! :P X2 I run full synth in the Jeep and Lexus and the F150 uses the synth blend Ford recommends. I still change oil at manufacturer recommended intervals, however...the Jeep gets a workout offroad so I want it to last and the RX400 is under warranty and I don't want to void it. We aren't in the tundra here or anything, but it do get cold and independent testing certainly shows synth flowing better than dino.

I think RXinNJ (sorry if I butchered your name, man) was saying that his Jag specifies 15,000 miles and with DINO oil. I was shocked reading that. Maybe it takes 18 qts of oil or something and uses a filter the size of a 5 gal bucket?

While I can see you relating your track experience to "real life" and I understand that philosophy, I think you lose a little credibility equating stop and go traffic in 95 degrees to anything done at the track. My track time in a 95 M3 was in the middle of the desert, 110 deg plus...speeds up to 125mph on straights, brakes smoking into turn-in, redline in every gear until the next straight. Even after a cool-down lap the hood needs to come up to let the heat escape. Comparing that to driving to work is not even in the same universe. I know I am not telling you anything you do not know. That is the same type of argument the anti-smoking crowd uses...their message is good and valid until they start saying things like 2nd hand smoke is more dangerous than the 1st-hand guy who filters ALL the smoke through his lungs first. Not realistic and defies common sense. I'm not really interested in debating the pros and cons of Amsoil. Amsoil is more like a religious faith than a lubricant, and the discussions always end with hurt feelings. I would simply point out that this is the internet age and if there were a secret product with space-age capabilities baffling scientists worldwide, it wouldn't be a secret anymore. There is no magic and there is no product that is head and shoulders above everything else out there. If a product were significantly superior, someone would reverse engineer it and reproduce the formula (a lab can tell you the components of a liquid in short order). Some products deemed to be superior are often specified by manufacturers for use with their products (Corvette and Mobile1 comes to mind) and if I am correct, no manufacturer is specifying Amsoil. Amsoil is not a secret, has been in the market for decades now but still manages to elude all the manufacturers and professional engineers as the panacea of all lubricants. Really? Not likely. The synthetic/dino oil argument and the associated extended drain intervals would seem to me to have some merit depending on application, but comparing one synthetic to another made from the same base stocks seems a little silly to me. Prediction: Before this thread is done, no fewer than 12 pages of Amsoil in-house "testing" literature and multiple links to bobistheoilguy will be cut and pasted into this thread. Meh.

Superior lubrication is not the only reason people buy expensive motor oil. I HATE changing oil, and I don't trust anyone (quick lube) locally, nor am I going to drive 70 miles to pay Lexus $100 to change it for me. So, switching to Amsoil was an easy choice. Now, instead of changing the oil at least 5 times per year, I change it once. It is so nice. Also, my fuel economy has gone up 4%. I picked up an additional 1 mpg on the hwy after switching (yes, same driving style, speed, climate, traffic, terrain, octane, etc.). It saves money too. An oil change with Mobile 1 (and conventional oil is not much cheaper) cost me roughly $35 * 5 changes/year, so I would have spent $175/year on oil changes. Now, I spend $100/year on an Amsoil oil change. Saving time solves my problem. Saving money with improved fuel economy and less oil and filters to buy is just an added bonus. :) I would strongly recommend against this practice with a Lexus still under warranty.

Take a look at some of the threads on this subject. I believe lenore has a recent one with pictures of the part that is assumed to be causing the premature failures. That would be more of a bad-design/weak-part mechanical failure and not fluid temp/breakdown problem. It is possible you have a tranny cooler if your RX has the tow prep package. Tow prep is fairly common.

I like using a product called Invisible Glass by Stoner and a microfiber cloth. Spray on the cloth not the glass. Doesn't leave that film like windex. Available at Wal-Mart in the auto cleaning section.

Great news! Thanks for posting back what fixed your issue! That will help the next guy for sure. Glad it wasn't the weak actuator issue...