jpinkert

Three of us spent a good two hours getting the spare tire off the truck the other day, trying to get access to some other parts of the truck.

We followed the 04 lx 470 instruction book to the letter.

Finally, I called up the dealer (quite frustrated and upset...afterall, doing this in 20 degree weather for over two hours and getting nowhere was not all that fun!).

Guess why we could not get the tire to lower??

The instructions in the book are WRONG!  It tells you to insert the "hook" end into the little cup, through the rear bumper access plate.  Come to find out, that is the outdated instruction.  You dont use the hook end at all...you use the silver metal end with the hex-like key to do it.

The dealer confirmed that the book in indeed wrong...

So, I hope this post helps someone else in the future.

p.s., once we used the right adapter end getting the tire lowered down, it took us less than 30 seconds to do it!

p.s.s.  my dealer was very very helpful over the phone.  Afterall, at first, they must have thought me some sort of babbling idiot....untill they realized the instruction book is wrong.  They treated my very nicely through the whole process.......another reason I am glad I have a Lexus!!  They even offered to have someone drive to my house to help!!!

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The only issue I had with mine was that it was frozen after being unused since new (1999). I was just lowering it to install a hitch, so I was at home with a full tool set. There's no way my wife could've broken it free...

Make sure you check it yearly...you'll be glad you did in case you need it.

I bought a set of manuals for my '99 from ebay recently. They were expensive, but cheaper than any other source I had found. Do a search on ebay seller 'manuals4you'.

The height control is pretty sophisticated. As has been said, the -low- mode is only for loading/unloading. My experiences have it raising to -normal- at anything faster than a crawl. It also seems that the shock dampening goes really soft when you go into -low-. I wouldn't recommend trying to fool the system to drive in -low- for any reason. I think it would be unsafe, floaty, and you'd risk hitting your bump stops.

Based on the manual, there's also an extra-high mode that it goes into when you're stuck offroad. I guess it assumes that you're high-centered and need a little extra clearance to get moving.