RX450h F Sport misfiring then almost dying completely

[JBPRX400h]

On a short 1.5 mile journey home last Sunday my car (RX450h F Sport Gen 4) suddenly began misfiring very badly accompanied by a multitude of warning lights and dire warning messages (including “Stop as soon as possible within 0.3 miles) on the dashboard.

I pulled into a layby and turned the car off for a few minutes then started it up again. It started OK and the engine idled but the orange engine management light stayed on.

As I was only a few hundred yards from home I pulled away gently but the car very nearly ran out of power as I negotiated a roundabout so I pulled in to the side of the road and turned the engine off again. Tried starting it again and managed to limp home.

Rang Lexus Milton Keynes the next morning and they told me to contact the AA to bring the car in so they could look at it. Because I had to take my wife to hospital for an appointment at lunchtime I couldn't call the AA until mid afternoon. When the AA man arrived in his van he connected up an OBD scanner and it came up with a number of errors including

P0202 Injection valve cylinder 2 Component open

P0204 Injection valve cylinder 4 Component open

P0206 Injection valve cylinder 6 Component open

P1235 Fuel high pressure pump circuit defective

P3190 Engine Engine power too low

The AA man said he couldn't tow the car to the dealers and would have to arrange for a flat bed truck to do the job. He couldn't guarantee the truck would get to me in time to get to Lexus before they closed so it was arranged for the following morning.

Tuesday morning the truck arrived and the car and I were taken to Lexus MK where they have been trying to diagnose the problem since then but have not found the cause yet.

Has anyone had any similar problems and if so what was the solution? Any ideas or answers would be greatly appreciated as we would love to get our RX back soon.

Kind regards

JBP

PS The only up side is that I have been loaned a UX300e fully electric car in the interim which makes for an interesting comparison.

[rayaans]

43 minutes ago, JBPRX400h said:

On a short 1.5 mile journey home last Sunday my car (RX450h F Sport Gen 4) suddenly began misfiring very badly accompanied by a multitude of warning lights and dire warning messages (including “Stop as soon as possible within 0.3 miles) on the dashboard.

I pulled into a layby and turned the car off for a few minutes then started it up again. It started OK and the engine idled but the orange engine management light stayed on.

As I was only a few hundred yards from home I pulled away gently but the car very nearly ran out of power as I negotiated a roundabout so I pulled in to the side of the road and turned the engine off again. Tried starting it again and managed to limp home.

Rang Lexus Milton Keynes the next morning and they told me to contact the AA to bring the car in so they could look at it. Because I had to take my wife to hospital for an appointment at lunchtime I couldn't call the AA until mid afternoon. When the AA man arrived in his van he connected up an OBD scanner and it came up with a number of errors including

P0202 Injection valve cylinder 2 Component open

P0204 Injection valve cylinder 4 Component open

P0206 Injection valve cylinder 6 Component open

P1235 Fuel high pressure pump circuit defective

P3190 Engine Engine power too low

The AA man said he couldn't tow the car to the dealers and would have to arrange for a flat bed truck to do the job. He couldn't guarantee the truck would get to me in time to get to Lexus before they closed so it was arranged for the following morning.

Tuesday morning the truck arrived and the car and I were taken to Lexus MK where they have been trying to diagnose the problem since then but have not found the cause yet.

Has anyone had any similar problems and if so what was the solution? Any ideas or answers would be greatly appreciated as we would love to get our RX back soon.

Kind regards

JBP

PS The only up side is that I have been loaned a UX300e fully electric car in the interim which makes for an interesting comparison.

Itll be the injector or fuel pump.  Had the injector on mine but was sorted under warranty

[JBPRX400h]

I just found this on the US forum which sounds exactly like what happened to our car last week.

https://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/topic/94700-my-fuel-pump-issue-~-rx-450h/

Have sent a copy to Lexus MK for their information.

JBP

[JBPRX400h]

Well that was back on 5^th March.

The fault was eventually diagnosed as high pressure fuel pump failure and Lexus MK said they would order one in for replacement. In the interim we were loaned a UX300e electric car.

A few days later I was given the shock news that the earliest the new pump would arrive was 6^th April as it had to come from Japan.

My wife and I had previously booked a trip to France but as a result had to cancel our original dates and rebook the ferry for later in April but we had to be back before the beginning of May as both my wife and I had been given early May dates for hospital operations.

Then we received further shock news that the date for the pump to arrive had been pushed back until 26 April.

In the meantime we had been promised a suitable loan car from Lexus GB (which we could have taken abroad) until the repair could be carried out but we decided to cancel our ferry booking again as there were too many unknowns and we didn't want to miss our hospital dates.

The loan car duly arrived from Lexus GB. We were expecting from the paperwork we had received earlier that it was going to be an RX450+ plug in hybrid and we were quite excited as it would mean we could have a real world extended test drive. Unfortunately they had made a mistake and the car we received was "only" a non plug in RX albeit a brand new Takumi one with just 40 miles on the clock.

The pump eventually arrived at Lexus MK on 26 April and was fitted and tested OK and we finally got our car back on 27 April eight weeks after it had broken down.

I sent a letter of complaint to Chris Hayes, CEO of Lexus GB, outlining all the hassle and anxiety we had suffered and commented on the ridiculous amount of time it had taken for a simple part to travel half way around the world. The matter was of course handed down to their Customer Relations department and was dealt with by Stephen Hinshelwood. I must say that he took the matter extremely seriously and I managed to negotiate a very generous settlement from Lexus GB as a gesture of good will for all our troubles.

Throughout all this Lexus MK, and Andrew Riley in their service department in particular, were absolutely brilliant and couldn't have been more helpful and accommodating.

It is great to have our dear old car back and, touch wood, it seems to be running better than ever.

 

[GSLV6]

Sorry to hear of your plight John and glad it was resolved in the end.  It seems to be a very rare occurrence for a fuel pump to go, so let's hope this doesn't knock your confidence in Lexus which remain as reliable as cars get these days.

Had it been bmw or mercedes, I daresay you'd have had just as much hassle getting things resolved.  At least with Lexus, they take customer service more seriously, or at least that's been my experience to date.

[JBPRX400h]

A very rare occurence indeed, Paul!

We still have every confidence in the Lexus brand.  In fact we have had 12 different Lexus cars since 2001 and the only problems we have encountered before were a steering rack problem with our first RX400h (swiftly sorted under warranty), a rear hatch motorised strut on our current gen 4 RX450h that didn't actually fail but shuddered slightly when opening and closing (again replaced under warranty) and this fuel pump failure again all sorted under warranty. Although it took a long time to ship the part we were well looked after by Lexus.  I hate to think what would have happened if it had been any other manufacturer!

 

[Spock66]

According to the Service history my 2018 RX had the fuel pump replaced as a recall.

[JBPRX400h]

Hi Andrew.

Was that the low pressure pump in the petrol tank or the high pressure pump on the engine?

[Spock66]

It was before I owned the car, the documentation states Recall VGG05, if you google that there is some info from Lexus Australia, looks like it's the low pressure pump.

https://lexusmanuals.com.au/docs/safety-recall-fuel-pump-replacement-vgg05/

[GSLV6]

There were several issues with 2016 and 2017 vehicles (well documented, including oil leaks) but I thought they'd had them all sorted by 2018 models.  I think all of the issues were learned from by 2019, and from then until 2022 cars have a very solid reliability record.

[CT200h-TL]

22 hours ago, Spock66 said:

According to the Service history my 2018 RX had the fuel pump replaced as a recall.

My 2018 one has the same history too