Cotswold Pete

I would say that your looking at a car that is at best going to be 3 years older than your GS300, and if anything like mine at an age where even though looked after things like seals are really starting age, rust bubble now appearing and other stuff (such as SatNav display faded when cold) that is making me think do I spend £2K+ really get the car back to really nice (has had new shocks and brakes in last two years) running condition. I have not been in a GS300 for a good ten years, and I cannot recall if I thought it was a better car then LS but certainly a smaller boot. To me its the quiteness of the LS that still gets me, and with that in mind I am prepared to see my 209,000 mile 21 year old car be with me for a year or two more before I decide if it is time to move on, and it would probably be a GS of some sort I would be looking at. I think if you bide your time you could get away with spending under £3K, but less and less I think. I am quite shocked at how few LS400 there are on ebay or anywhere else compared to 3 years ago. That one in Clacton certainly worth an day out from Oxford, as it seems in good internal nick compared to the Mk3 I got back 10 years ago (with 150,000+ on the clock), only advice is the ECU problems with Mk3 might need looking into. Reason I say that was mine was becoming undriveable before I gave it to a mate for spares.

Maybe get yourself down to Osaka in Newport, Lexus specialists and not too far away from where you are (probably)

I hate it when I do not listen to my brain telling me to stop. Plenty of expensive mistakes made over the years.

From my experience of German marques, they all can warm your backside to slightly cooking in very quick time. Makes you wonder if the people of the Far East have thinner cheek skin than the hardy Northern European? My missus gets to warm in my LS in next to no time, where as I find it takes my backside a while longer to let me know time to turn off.

So true, having watched the rise of 'ISO this' and 'BSI that', we have ended up with lots of documents and less ownership and responsibility. I wonder if we 'obey' the rules more because we are a more litigious country than a lot of places in Europe.

As per Razor61 port, pretty certain this is ECU problem. I had it on my Mk3, once it started happening the deterioration was quite rapid. I never got around to sorting out ECU as gave car to a mate for parts to use on his. There are a couple of places that will install new capacitors if you can get the ECU out, but this was very common problem with cerain capacitors of that era (not just in ECUs). I thought I had some notes on where in UK you could get this done, but seem to have lost my notes on computer But this link may be useful How to check ECU

Will be giving this a go, sounds like a real time saver, as I prefer to have MP3 physically on phone to play in car, but at home on PC just stream spotify. I have been using Audacity to record and then edit for last 12 years, works well, but time consuming, given I have about 4000 tracks stored from Spotify. By the way anyone wanting a DRM for BBC iPlayer, should look at Get iPlayer (on Github). Means I watch the programs I pay my licence fee for, when I want, not within 28 days. Get Iplayer (Installation)

My employer was expecting me to go back in office at least one day a week, and was surprised when I expressed my concerns. Thank heavens they were beaten up verbally by another manager who defended my 'Why go in when I can work from home'. I am still recovering with Long Covid issues, but at least I am getting better. I know if two people who have dies of Covid, one of them was isolating to the ultimate extreme due to their other health issues, but the bug still got them. This bug still ain't finished messing us about, so anyone who has suffered, i know how yuck it is, and anyone who thinks its not a problem to them, well I say otherwise, and I suspect people being forced to be in work (because the boss thinks they are shirkers) is creating the right conditions to spread the beast. Some day life is going to get back to normal(ish) we just need to keep on doing the right thing.

Colin, at a guess it looks like same product for all the backlighting. I assumed it was a probably a no-no mucking about with taking the thing apart, to try and put new CFLs in.

Has anyone ever taken apart a Mk4 Sat Nav to see how the light tubes are fixed inside the unit. I assume the CFL tubes were a standard product from that era and possibly still made up until a few years ago, and so wonder if possible to refresh a Sat Nav. Mine if very faded first thing on a cold morning, which is sign of CFL being totally naff in next few years.

Maybe I will get my two mates who own LS's and go for a spin along the M4 one day and try this technique. I (do though) expect slightly different results as none of us has a black car!!!

If I were a betting man (which I am not, cure of that habit when I was 14 on the penny arcades at Westward Ho!, back in the 70's), I would expect this to go for £3.5K at least. Looks a ruddy site tidier than my Mk4, and same year as my first LS. My only reservation would be the ECU, as my N reg was a real pain once it warmed up on a 15 mile run (or longer) and then would stall at every opportunity. Was fine on my commute to work, but that was only 10 miles.

Used to knock up cheap valve amps as a teenager, gave myself a 600volt shock once, that hurt, but as I was using the trick of only use left hand to fiddle inside high voltage systems, heart was not touched. Also fiddled with a flash gun once, did not appreciate how ruddy painful the discharge on them is. Now I just stick to fiddling with 240volts, much safer!!!

Totally agree with Kieran about a darned good clear out and making sure shims and copper grease sorted. If calipers are not 100% moving as needed, then chances are the pads are sitting on the disk when they should not be, they then start bonding small amounts of material to the disc, and over time the disk surface is out of true. I would say lumpy surface not a warped surface. Once this process begins then the only way is to clean the disc as well as the pads, and work out what is causing pad to disc contact when there should be none. I assume if runout not correct then that causes problems from the word go. Also seen some people say a dirty interface between wheel and hub can cause odd problems, but usually when there is really significant build up of filth on the hub. Being in Dublin its a shame you could not take the care to Japex in Hemel Hampstead, they might have some ideas. Maybe they might know of a company your side of the water that could help.

Looking at that, cannot see why the bridge rectifier failed just because you were using a dimmer, but dimmable LED systems usually have slightly more sophisticated circuitry to allow external dimmers to work with them. IMHO not so sure I would any form of dimmer with the new one that has arrived. To think that when I was doing A-level electronics in 1976 that LEDs were rare and expensive, and we used to build LED matrices, and something like the picture, the LEDs alone would have cost about £15 (average weekly wage about £100 back then), and we used to use the valve technology for numbers as it was cheaper. How much we have progressed in over 40 years, thank heavens. For dimming we probably just put a piece of cloth over our eyes!!!

Just seen this post, having been off-line for a couple of weeks. LEDS that can be dimmed require a trailing edge dimmer technology, which is a little more expensive that the dimmers used for non-LED (which is leading edge dimming). LEDS that are not suitable for any form of dimming certainly go AWOL as you get really odd current surges across the Diode junction which means they get too hot even though you are trying to dim them by reducing voltage. Your lamp sounds a bit odd, as I would have expected at least one resistor as well as some capacitors.

I always scream when I hear 'a mechanic says the brakes are warped'. Discs only warp if run red hot glowing and then you hit them with a ruddy great hammer, and as they cool down they are now warped. Either that or the discs are made of such cr*p metal they warp because they are just good at bending themselves, but you still would need to lump the disk with some force that no brake pad is ever going to exert. I had problems with my LS until I went back to OEM disks and OEM Pads new shims and a darned good clean up of all that is to do with braking, and also making sure after any period of braking to take foot of the brake pedal and apply handbrake or park. Any inferior junk in any brake pad is more likely to stick itself to the disk when both are heated and stationary (so no air moving over the interface). The pads may be sticking more than usual due to other problems with the braking system, which comes from the other parts bringing pad and disk together are possibly sticky/sticking or slightly out of true. As you have (from the sounds of it) already had new OEM discs and pads, gotta be something else, and making sure foot off brake pedal is the order of day as soon as you come to a stop (eve for a few seconds). I feel for you having been on the same journey over 2 years with various mechanics who wanted to un-warp my discs.

Pacific

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Crook

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