A few 2001 GS300 issues

[Nails]

1 hour ago, The-Acre said:

Could the debris be caused by mice, especially if its been laid up?  Mice also love to chew their way through wiring.

I asked the same question. The mechanic can't be sure until he starts taking it apart. Once he starts doing that he is going to need to start charging me as he has already spent quite a few hours on it and not charged me anything. Like I said he is very honest and looks after his customer's. Most garages would have charged me 50 quid for just plugging in the code reader!!! 

[TigerFish]

Do you not fancy having a go yourself at any of it? Doing the coil packs is a pretty simple process, only complicated slightly by the throttle body over the top, which is not a big job to remove. It certainly help lighten the impact on the wallet, and gives a huge amount of satisfaction.

I’ve just saved £570 by fitting a new air suspension compressor and aux belt on my Merc last night (£130 on parts plus my time, compared to £700 for the garage). Plus the added bonus of finding the underlying issue which cost £1.99 to fix. I dread to think why that would’ve cost me if left at the garage to find and fix.


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[Nails]

1 hour ago, TigerFish said:

Do you not fancy having a go yourself at any of it? Doing the coil packs is a pretty simple process, only complicated slightly by the throttle body over the top, which is not a big job to remove. It certainly help lighten the impact on the wallet, and gives a huge amount of satisfaction.

I’ve just saved £570 by fitting a new air suspension compressor and aux belt on my Merc last night (£130 on parts plus my time, compared to £700 for the garage). Plus the added bonus of finding the underlying issue which cost £1.99 to fix. I dread to think why that would’ve cost me if left at the garage to find and fix.


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I wish I could but am not mechanically inclined at all, I have a desk job, and my weekends are mainly taken up with family life so time is also an issue. If someone was willing to help I might be able to 😁

[TigerFish]

I wish I could but am not mechanically inclined at all, I have a desk job, and my weekends are mainly taken up with family life so time is also an issue. If someone was willing to help I might be able to [emoji16]

It depends how quickly you need to get it done I guess. I could come over for an afternoon one weekend, but it’d still be family time at that point I suppose. Can’t do evenings as I don’t get home early enough to travel that far.

Don’t let a desk job put you off though. I’m an electronics engineer and computer programmer by trade, so that’s no limiter. It’s just a confidence thing at the end of the day, once you’ve done a few simple jobs, it’s normally only prohibitively expensive specialist tools that limit things after that. Even then, I’ll normally still give it a go :)

One thing when it comes to the coil packs. If you, or a garage have gone to the effort to get them out, change the plugs at the same time regardless. It’ll need plugs at some point, so don’t waste more time/money at that point, removing coil packs again.


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[ColinBarber]

8 hours ago, Nails said:

His code reader says it is a coil miss fire.

There is no such error code on a GS300. There is a random misfire code, and a specific misfire code for each cylinder. Misfire does not mean directly mean a coil issue.

The trouble area(s) are shown below, any of these can be the cause - ordered from most to least likely, however the more cylinder affected the more the troubled area points towards something in common with them all - i.e. air or fueling. 

[BachelorDays]

Glad you've got this rapport with your garage. I'd advised earlier to have it checked there and suggested that it wouldn't take more than an hour to diagnose. Well, you've got your diagnosis and it didn't take an hour. In fact, it didn't take 10 mins. The moment the cover came off the real reason for the troubles became evident.

Now you have an 18 year old car that has not been kept well. It's leaking from above and found to be filthy underneath the covers. And you are not the project-car type.

I think the writing is pretty much on the wall.

If you do go ahead with the fix, do at least ask your garage beforehand if they think there might be a compression issue with the engine. The last thing you want is to find out the coil packs are going because of the engine.

[Nails]

18 hours ago, TigerFish said:

 

It depends how quickly you need to get it done I guess. I could come over for an afternoon one weekend, but it’d still be family time at that point I suppose. Can’t do evenings as I don’t get home early enough to travel that far.

Don’t let a desk job put you off though. I’m an electronics engineer and computer programmer by trade, so that’s no limiter. It’s just a confidence thing at the end of the day, once you’ve done a few simple jobs, it’s normally only prohibitively expensive specialist tools that limit things after that. Even then, I’ll normally still give it a go 🙂

One thing when it comes to the coil packs. If you, or a garage have gone to the effort to get them out, change the plugs at the same time regardless. It’ll need plugs at some point, so don’t waste more time/money at that point, removing coil packs again.


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Thank you very much for the offer Rick, however you are in Hampshire so I suspect a good distance from me and I wouldn't want to put you out. If I really want to keep the costs down it could be an option though......

15 hours ago, ColinBarber said:

There is no such error code on a GS300. There is a random misfire code, and a specific misfire code for each cylinder. Misfire does not mean directly mean a coil issue.

The trouble area(s) are shown below, any of these can be the cause - ordered from most to least likely, however the more cylinder affected the more the troubled area points towards something in common with them all - i.e. air or fueling. 

I hear you and it is difficult repeating what the mechanic said word for word as I can't remember exactly. I do know it is miss firing from 4 cylinders. 

1 hour ago, BachelorDays said:

Glad you've got this rapport with your garage. I'd advised earlier to have it checked there and suggested that it wouldn't take more than an hour to diagnose. Well, you've got your diagnosis and it didn't take an hour. In fact, it didn't take 10 mins. The moment the cover came off the real reason for the troubles became evident.

Now you have an 18 year old car that has not been kept well. It's leaking from above and found to be filthy underneath the covers. And you are not the project-car type.

I think the writing is pretty much on the wall.

If you do go ahead with the fix, do at least ask your garage beforehand if they think there might be a compression issue with the engine. The last thing you want is to find out the coil packs are going because of the engine.

Actually I am the project type, I love cars, I have a Honda Prelude Type S freshly imported from Japan tucked away in the garage for show season. However, I don't tend to do anything but the simplest jobs myself. The lexus was supposed to be a reliable workhorse to get me to work and back, I wanted to run it in banger economics fashion, basically spend as little on it as possible, this was never going to be a restoration project. 

Also, to be clear it is not leaking from above, we have had several bouts of heavy rain since the drains were cleared and I had the rear carpets up and was checking daily for water ingress and nothing. The carpet is now dried out, I stuck some socks underneath it filled with cat litter which did the trick. Now all removed and carpet refitted. 

Compression is something I raised early on, my mechanic doesn't suspect it, but again, he still has to take everything apart in order to do that test and once he takes it all apart I am then into spending on it regardless of the diagnosis. 

[kayble]

On 1/5/2019 at 7:55 AM, Nails said:

I am no mechanic but there are a few reasons. Firstly in this instance, when the garage took the plastic cover off he found loads of damp debris in the area, and when I say loads he said he had not seen anything like it. The previous owner did have the car laid up for long period of time. Perhaps it was sat under a tree? Anyway I think his theory is that this debris has in someway damaged the plugs/leads/coils as he cannot find any other cause. His code reader says it is a coil miss fire. He has cleared the codes several times and they come back each time on the same 4 cylinders. I could take the car off him now and sell it for spares or repairs and he wouldn't charge me a bean. Or I can go with the theory that clearing out all the debris and changing the plugs, leads and coils will solve the issue. What would you do? I have sourced coils which would now bring the total cost of this work to more like 300 quid? Worth a punt or good money after bad?

Nails - you still monitoring this thread? I may have a solution for you/mechanic to investigate.

[kayble]

for missfire/running issues provisionally traced to coil packs.

Yes - the 2JZGE is a wasted spark engine - so 3x coil packs, directly connected to 3x plugs 3x leads to the other 3x plugs. I've just done the rocker cover gaskets on my car, and had to address coil packs at same - take a look at my progress thread.

What may have been overlooked is the condition of the connectors off the vehicle loom to the coil packs. These absolutley will be brittle to the point of falling apart if they haven't been attended to previously. Mine were all damaged from 17 years of heat-cycling and I broke all three getting them off the coil packs. My point is with the connectors potentially damaged from previous attempts to remove them - it could be that you have poor connections to the coil packs - causing missfire issues. I don't have a picture of mine - but once damaged through removal, the pins were essentially free to move around inside the housing of the connector - it's a wonder the car ran at all as a result.

Good news is that - if you find the connectors on your car are damaged, they can easily be replaced. You can de-pin the old connectors (or in my case just push the pins out the back of the now hollow connector, then they click straigh back in to a replacement connector you can get from Toyota.

Depinning:

Installing pins in to new connector (pay attention to orientation of the pins against the old connector) - pushing in from the rear and then clicking the white bit of the new connector in to place:

The part number from Toyota for the connector - order 3x:

I feel a poor connection with the coil pack is far more plausible than compression issues and/or failed coil packs. You do of course need to remove the throttle body/ y-pipe to get to all of this. plug/pack valle on my car was also mucky, mostly due to leaking rocker cover gaskets - if you/your mechanic strips the intake off to get to this, you might as well do the rocker cover gaskets if not already done - my progress thread has pics/part numbers (01 vvti GS300 2JZ-GE).

My valley with intake removed - coolant there from removing the feeds on the throttle body/y-pipe:

Loads of oil in the plug wells on mine (come to think of it - this may also be a contributor to ignition issues) - suck it all out with shop vac, clean the whole area up and reassemble. No histoy or coil packs being replaced on my car, but plugs were replaced 3 years ago, so checked torque on them and left in place.

It's an easy job to strip the intake down to get to the above. Just remember to replace the gasket on y-pipe to the rest of the intake if you do:

[Nails]

@kayble Thank you very much for that. I will discuss this with my mechanic when my cheapo pattern part coils arrive. If it turns out we don't need the coils, I can just send them back, but at least we will have them should we need them. 

Once it is all apart, if none of the obvious fixes it I will have no choice but to sell it for spares or repair because I am not throwing too much money at this, the car is simply not worth it. 

[kayble]

1 hour ago, Nails said:

@kayble Thank you very much for that. I will discuss this with my mechanic when my cheapo pattern part coils arrive. If it turns out we don't need the coils, I can just send them back, but at least we will have them should we need them. 

Once it is all apart, if none of the obvious fixes it I will have no choice but to sell it for spares or repair because I am not throwing too much money at this, the car is simply not worth it. 

NP - keep us aprised. I have money on crappy connections to the coil packs - particularly if someone's been there before.

No question about it - the intake will need to come off to investigate plugs/coil packs/leads - that's less than an hours work IMHO. Once there, you can do rocker cover gaskets, plugs etc.

I also spotted you have an itermittent VSC issue? Be aware that some diagnostic scanners can trigger VSC fault codes - and it can be reset by bridging a couple of pins on the OBD socket - have a search on this site as someone has already posted the procedure (Tigerfish already posted it: here). PO of my car thought laterally and simply removed the bulbs in the dash cluster for the VSC/ABS warnings - you may have another issue, but this is a good shot in the dark..

 

 

 

[Nails]

27 minutes ago, kayble said:

NP - keep us aprised. I have money on crappy connections to the coil packs - particularly if someone's been there before.

No question about it - the intake will need to come off to investigate plugs/coil packs/leads - that's less than an hours work IMHO. Once there, you can do rocker cover gaskets, plugs etc.

I also spotted you have an itermittent VSC issue? Be aware that some diagnostic scanners can trigger VSC fault codes - and it can be reset by bridging a couple of pins on the OBD socket - have a search on this site as someone has already posted the procedure (Tigerfish already posted it: here). PO of my car thought laterally and simply removed the bulbs in the dash cluster for the VSC/ABS warnings - you may have another issue, but this is a good shot in the dark..

 

 

 

Thank you for the info re the VSC, this only came on soon after the miss fire started. 

[kayble]

If only the car was in Merseyside I would offer took at this with you obvious caveat being I'm not a professional - just an avid DIY'er with recent relevant experience on this engine.

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[Nails]

UPDATE: 

The clip was missing on number 5 lead so this was not firing at all, and there was water in plugs 3,4,5 and 6. So as my mechanic was down there, it was worth replacing all plugs, coils and leads. It is now fine. We will see. My concern is why was there what appears to be rain water in there? Anyway I will monitor and see how it goes. 

[kayble]

Glad to hear it's running well again - but you probably didn't need to replace it all. The factory leads have replaceable clips that go round the connection ends - they can be purchased separately (predictably mine disintegrated on being handled) - I ended up cleaning my coil packs and leads, ensuring there was no failing insulation on the leads and re-using them with new clips.

There's also plastic holders at both ends of the valley that hold the HT leads in place and stop them from rubbing on the rocker cover - one of mine was brittle/broken, the other still intact.

Suck all the crap out the valley with a shop vac, give all your elec connecitons an application of di-electric grease and you should be good to go.

 

[Nails]

15 hours ago, kayble said:

Glad to hear it's running well again - but you probably didn't need to replace it all. The factory leads have replaceable clips that go round the connection ends - they can be purchased separately (predictably mine disintegrated on being handled) - I ended up cleaning my coil packs and leads, ensuring there was no failing insulation on the leads and re-using them with new clips.

There's also plastic holders at both ends of the valley that hold the HT leads in place and stop them from rubbing on the rocker cover - one of mine was brittle/broken, the other still intact.

Suck all the crap out the valley with a shop vac, give all your elec connecitons an application of di-electric grease and you should be good to go.

 

Yes this is exactly what my mechanic did, hopefully that's the end of the miss fire issue. We will see.

I can see how owning a code reader might be useful, anybody got any recommendations on which one to get? The cheaper the better.

[Britprius]

24 minutes ago, Nails said:

Yes this is exactly what my mechanic did, hopefully that's the end of the miss fire issue. We will see.

I can see how owning a code reader might be useful, anybody got any recommendations on which one to get? The cheaper the better.

If you have a laptop buy a Mini VCI from the bay or similar with Techstream software. This will cost around £20 and give you dealer level of diagnostics, and service features.

John.

[kayble]

If you have a laptop buy a Mini VCI from the bay or similar with Techstream software. This will cost around £20 and give you dealer level of diagnostics, and service features.
John.

As above. An old laptop running win 7 32bit is ideal. A generic obd2 reader is also useful- but be prepared to do the paperclip trick linked previously- to clear spurious codes for abs/vsc ser as a result of using the reader.

FWIW I use an icarsoft i930; this is intended for JLR cars but has a generic obd2 function as well - and its quicker to pull that out than fire up the laptop

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[Nails]

Thanks All. I am finding new problems daily. Next, the passenger side vents in the car only blow cold air regardless of the temp I set it too, drivers side is totalky fine. How do I go about sorting this?

[TigerFish]

Thanks All. I am finding new problems daily. Next, the passenger side vents in the car only blow cold air regardless of the temp I set it too, drivers side is totalky fine. How do I go about sorting this?

 

A decent place to start is to drop both kick panels from under the dash and check that the three servo motors that move the flaps about are doing what they should when you alter the controls. A couple of pics below. Use the part number to look for replacements rather than GS300, as they are the same as the GS430 and some interchange with items from the IS200 for example (which is what the one came from that is in the pic when I did one of them on the GS430 I had).

 

From memory, you can see them all with the kick panels off, but to change them needs some other bits off. I have some other pics if you need them.

 

.

 

If they are all working and the linkages all good, then you might be looking at a flap inside being broken. That’s not so easy to sort.

 

 

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[Nails]

@TigerFish Thank you I will take a look behind the kick panels at somepoint.

I tested it out earlier and if I turn the air con off, it comes out warmer from the left side, like actually warm, but not has hot as drivers side. Does this indicate anything?

[TigerFish]

[mention=19263]TigerFish[/mention] Thank you I will take a look behind the kick panels at somepoint.
I tested it out earlier and if I turn the air con off, it comes out warmer from the left side, like actually warm, but not has hot as drivers side. Does this indicate anything?

Not really mate. As soon as the aircon is switched off there will be a temp increase in general (and always cools slightly whatever air is flowing when switched on).




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[Nails]

Update:

The remaining "problems" with this car are:

• I still am not 100% sure what caused the wet carpets in the car, they are pretty much dry now.
• Perhaps linked to the above, the passenger side air vents only blow cold air. Could the heater matrix have leaked all it's fluid causing the wet carpets? 

That is it really now. It could do with some tyres at some stage. MOT and Service not due until August. I am going to leave the heating issue for the moment as it doesn't really affect me. 

I have to admit, I am starting to like this car now. Without the miss fire it is a pleasure to drive and I actually look forward to driving it to work and back. Weird 🤨

[Farqui]

The heater matrix may well be clogged on the passenger side, the design isn't great and could just need a back flush. Another forum chap did this recently with favourable results (eventually). I intend to do mine at some point but can't be without at least some heat for the mrs, so I will wait until the weather improves.

If the heater matrix were leaking then you would be loosing coolant, is the fluid within your expansion tank consistent day/day, week/week?

[Nails]

2 minutes ago, Farqui said:

The heater matrix may well be clogged on the passenger side, the design isn't great and could just need a back flush. Another chap did this recently on here with favourable results (eventually. I intend to do mine at some point.

If the heater matrix were leaking then you would be loosing coolant, is the fluid within your expansion tank consistent day/day, week/week?

I better check the expansion tank at some point, I checked the radiator cap and that was full. I have been driving it 50 miles a day for work for a couple of weeks now so I think if it was losing coolant I would have noticed by now. Plus, as I say, there is no water in the car now. I bought it with wet carpets, the person I bought it off blamed the people he used to valet the car. I seriously doubted this story but seeing as I cannot recreate water coming into the car now I am beginning to wonder. I thought it might be the sunroof but when it has rained I have checked and there is no more water getting in. I even had the carpets up for a few days and left it like that while it hammered it down and still nothing. The only thing I have done is clear the sunroof drains, yes some stuff came out but it didn't seem that bad. 

When it goes in for a service I will ask my mechanic to flush the matrix, thanks for the advice 🙂

The main thing is, there is no water getting into the car and the miss fire is fixed 🙂