ambermarine

Are we saying over time unused or used I bought a replacement audio visual A/C centre console as a precaution when I bought my Mark 4 and it is sitting patiently in a sealed container waiting to replace if needed the one that was in the car when new. The price for it was £40 and the new price was £5K it came off a 40k miles write off and I think the seller assumed it could'nt be used as it had no code but it can be started then re-coded with the switch dance and to that end was a steal.

The Lexus brand including the ls400 as met emission criteria of the State of Califoria since its inception and that criteria is the highest in the world a lot of the vehicles built in europe and sold in Britain during the 80's and nineties would not have met the criteria and even some that were built in the 2000's would not. I once had a ignorant neighbour accuse me of owning a highly polluting car until I pointed out that is 1.6 litre kia was a bigger pollution emitter than my mark1 4 litre Lexus.

The system they are offering contains a cataytic converter which serves both banks, if they have designed it for a LS430 it must be a fit in terms of O2 sensers etc. Perhaps an email asking them the question.

There are reams of buyers guides for this model in the club archives that have been compiled over the decades by members of the forum Good luck

I would use a heat gun on the corner peices as they are mastic fixed, the border trim to the rear screen is fastened with clips and you should be able to start prising it out from the edge of where the corner peice is after that is removed,take it slowly and work from both edges when it as come away, when you get to a clip pull straight up from both sides of the clip or you could break the clip or crease the trim.

The original wiper on the car as the Prefix DM and the new style is DU40R passenger and DUR55R Driver in relation to the catalogue.

Hi Guys I received my new Denso wipers from Euro parts today and proceeded to fit them they are well made and the design cuts out the seperate wind foil on the original drivers side and creates one on the passenger side and they both look the same although different lengths . They are a tight fit and the drivers side especially it took me half an hour of struggling in various scenarios of wiper position. I found eventually the best position was pre park and lying over the engine to get the right orientation and best applied pressure to push in the clamp it also required some silicone spray (applied with a small paint brush to avoid getting it on the rubber )to finally get the clamp fully home so the clip could be applied. It looks a little bare now on the drivers side because the spoiler is gone the proof of the pudding will be 90mph in a thunderstorm and crosswinds to match, hopefully in the distant future.

Just ordered mine and only £14 with free delivery for the LS400.Last time I got new rubber from Lexus but after 22 years the wiper frame is now a bit tired and they are expensive from Lexus.

Thanks for the reply and it more or less confirms my findings I was originally considering fitting a towbar for caravan towing but came up against a brickwall trying to find one. When I delved deeper it turned out Lexus did not approve the Mark 4 as a towing vehicle.I suspect the towbar on Qamar's 99 model was originally fitted to a earlier series car.

Hi Stu I would be interested in how your ex got a tow bar when they have no UK designated safe example for the Mark 4, Lexus quote it as no towbar available as vehicle not designed for towing. And non of the recognised tow bar manufacturers support one.

If you want to be sure you are not stressing the bearing with blows when inserting it into the pulley place the bearing into the freezer overnight and use a heatgun on the pulley for a few minutes at mid setting ,the bearing will then slip in with a slight tapping from a wooden mallet.

Had one go on my Mark1 that was due to the prevelant power steering pump leak recovered on the M8 and taken to The Arnold Clark Lexus dealership in Glasgow which they lost shortly after, they were not very good. The issue on the PSP was an o ring failure which as now been irradicated on the Mark 4.

Good luck Stu and enjoy your new steed.

Just a rider to this Topic, another reason for the USA differentials on parts and distribution is the fact that they build Lexus cars there in Kentucky and employ 7000 US citizens .Now the deal to build a Lexus factory in the US will have major input on the price of Lexus cars in the states and not just the ones they produce in Kentucky, there will be concessions on import duties as a trade off by US officials for the benefits of the factory location. It is well known that there is a substantial difference in price on any Lexus bought outside of the USA this is sometimes a lot to do with the spec as they don't do all up models like we do in the UK one of the reasons for that is they sell a lot more cars there and can bespoke offers ,here we are given little choice as volume sales make it impossible with the import cost and jit system. Take a look at the factory its very interesting. google" Lexus enthusiast Kentucky factory."

The cost of the replacement part is set at the time of the production commisioning and usually lasts for the life of the part regardless of consumption,so the cost of parts that are still in production are a constant but will rise later when other varible cost are added. The clue to how Toyota operate their Spare parts diciplines can be explained by a experience I had a few years ago in Florida I went to a Lexus dealership in Fort Myers and requested a serpentine belt for My LS400 The guy at the parts counter recognised by my accent that I wanted to take the belt back to the UK and informed me that Lexus had an embargo on any parts being sold from their dealerships overseas outside of the USA he did not enforce the rule but stated it does exist. So what Lexus are doing is protecting their market places in designated areas for the overall benefit of the company bearing in mind my earlier reference to custom tariffs and currency fluctuations ,they dictate what is a level playing field by setting the price of OEM parts and protecting their dealerships from cheap undercutting.

Malcolm very good point on longevity of plugs, I doubt the cars of the 70s and before would have been still around at the 60k plug change service on a LS.

The manufacture and sale price of any product is subject to a number of variables that are influenced by factors outside of the manufacturing process and invariably it is these that add the biggest cost to the end figure. Factory gate price is usually easy to ascertain and can be fixed over a long period ,in the case of a replacement part that could be years the uncontrolable factors are beyond that gate,the transport storage and warehousing cost the import and export costs dealership costs and profits currency fluctuations and volume of sales and the last one is the biggest cost in keeping the spare part available. The reason is the warehousing cost and keeping enough stock available for future requirements and in some cases it is a toss up between keeping idle tooling maintained or making hundreds of thousands of a product that may never sell, the cost of which lies on the books and as to be paid for . The other variables mentioned in other posts such as brand image and the units being made by one manufacturer and distributed under different titles is not entirely correct as these manufacturers produce parts under liscense if they quote the original part number and manufacturer and conditions of those liscences determine the quality of the product they can produce and it is never as good as the original. Anyone who owns a Lexus LS knows they have one of the most reliable cars ever made and to that end be happy that when you have to shell out it is infrequently.

The lights and bulbs were actually in the top of the binnacle surround and it came away with two or three screws as a seperate piece in fact the bulbs were easier to get at than on the later models which requires the instrument cluster removal and then some separation of that to get at the bulbs. When I bought a second donor car for my Mark 1 I stripped it bare and that included the instrument panel which is one of the benefits of getting a donor car for spares you get to pull it apart as a no risk learning tool.

Sounds like they would be happy for you to take it off there hands for £500?

The car interior will not be the same as the pics on the ad as they were taken before the damage was done and the airbags will have gone off everywhere with the impact damage, There may be damage to the transmission and braking abs and vsc as the wheels are badly gouged and obviously been impacted during rotation.

The answer is in the question,use the Lexus sourced specification as they were designed to work in that headlight housing.

I think I saw a u- tube video about this issue on a US car guy blog it might be written up on the owners club in the US as they tend to do big mileage.

The last time I bought number plates was for the Mark 4 and that six years ago .I remember at the time the suppliers name & postcode at to be on the plates as a legal requirement to prevent cloning.

The Ls400 was developed in an era when LED technology was in its infancy regarding automotive application and to that end the circuitry and safety of circuits in the LS was designed for conventional bulbs . The phrase" horses for courses comes" to mind here and to take things further along that course if you don't want to come a cropper over the fences stay on the flat. The statement as already been made with regards the finite engineering within the LS400 and that extends to the circuitry . The reason bulbs don't fail in a LS400 is more to do with the circuitry than the bulbs and my Mark 1 never had a blown bulb in its 23 year life. The new technologies are just that but keep them for the new cars where they are designed to accept them.

I have now dug out the archive and it was the tool made for extracting the hub bush, it is made from I think either a short piece of scaffold tube or a lesser diameter piece of tubing of that gauge and the nuts threaded rod and a big cupped washer shown in the pics. then just wind the silver nut until the bush come into the tube,neither bush sleeve came out but seperated from the rubber The dremel sawzill was used to cut through the sleeve of the bush when it seperated from the rubber. The tool was then used to push the new bushes in with plenty of lubricant