Cotswold Pete

And there-in lies the clue as to why Antwerp can ban cars, and yet people can get into town, because of an integrated transport planning policy. Antwerp is a well bustling place with more Teslas than you can shake a stick at. Integrated Transport is not a phrase thah can be applied to just about the whole of the UK, In London there is some form of integration (and a shed load of UK taxpayers money being thrown at improving transport). We totally need to work out how to use the car less, as whenever I go into a major UK city I come back with my shirt collars nicely black and my snot (sorry) as black as you like. Maybe it will make out of town centers more congested, but that would probably drive the relevant authority to work out how to tax the use of those roads to the detriment of the shoppers wallet. (Personally I avoid out of town shopping - or any shopping - unless my wife ties me up bundle me in a sack and drags me along) Still the chances of any UK government over the next 25 years getting transport sorted are pretty thin based on previous experience of all the hot air generated in the House of Commons since I started working 40 years ago when driving a company car into the middle of London in the rush hour was not a problem.

Amp removal should be easy - SVT and ML As to re-repairing the door units, I would give that a swerve and go for replacements. Used to repair speakers years ago, and I know materials are different know, but the one of two I ended up having to redo, the re-repair never lasted. This post reminds me of plumbers who look at my central heating system and its quite involved electrical setup and panic. However it was set up by a plumber who understood that central heating is not just boliers but water flow controlled by solenoidsand all the associated controllers. Thanks heavens I can do electrics, so last boiler replacement was easy as the plumber just did his bit then I took over.

Not sure where the fuse is, but if your amp is 'gone', seems like over the years SVT in Edinburgh are the people to speak to, they seem to be Mark Levison capable (though sounds like they are not fans of the ML gear). Best of luck, there is nothing worse than driving a car without tunes to fill the air

Over 30 years of driving comapny cars, never had a problem getting out of my Ford/Vaux/Rover etc, and getting into another car, then 10 years of owning LS, never had a problem getting into Honda/Volvo/Jag until just recently the good lady bought a Mazda (2 year old). I felt like I needed a course on how to drive the beast, the only thing that came naturally easy was changing gear, and getting into the car without using a key (like you the start button was well hidden. I found it really distracting to drive, which is why I like my LS400, and even the thought moving to a more modern GS makes me a little nervous, as it is light years ahead of my Mk4.

I had a bit of a problem with drift (and tramlining on LS), and it was only when I had new shocks and ARB bushes sorted on front end the problem went away. Although the LS is a bit of a wallow-mobile, since the new shocks it does corner much better, and I think we mainly just get used to the gentle decline in steering and road-holding performance, though it sounds like your situation is somewhat dramatic. Based on experience I would say that cheaper tyres do show up the effects of worn suspension more so than more expensive brands, but a tight running gear setup is not so botherered by cheaper tyres.

My first port of call would be looking to see if the wiring into one of the sensors is looking a little 'dodgy', especially as the fault comes and goes. Slight possibility that the sensor is sort of damaged, but your battery is one its way out, and the sensor is complaining ahead of fully failing (This to me seems less likely - unless you have other battery-about-to-go symptoms). Does the ABS actually work (with light off and/or light on), might provide a diagnosis clue.

Given both my LS suffered leaky boot syndrome (easily fixed), and the situation desrcibed here, it amazes me given that Japan has twice the rainfall of the UK, how the heck can Lexus owners manage in Japan when their cars get a little older. My dads 20 year old Peugeot 406 (and when my wife had a 15 year old Honda) never had a leak in their lives!!!!

Stu, Totally get that the LS is not your thing with current geography. There are days when my (206K miles, Year 2000) motor seems as quiet as a mouse's f*rt, and other days when it seems be allowing too much road noise into the cabin, which makes me think about a GS450, or RX, and I am sure if I did try either it would tempt me to consider leaving the LS family. Enjoy your RX, at least it is a Lexus.

Fingers crossed for you

VPNs are totally safe, been around for a couple of decades. If all you want to do is to make the Internet think you are in UK (where-ever you are), you could use a Draytek 2762 router as your own VPN handler, and then use free VPN software on your laptop/PC/Mobile phone to tunnel back to the UK (works better if you have your ISP provide a Static IP address). The only cost then is of replacing your current routerand the time taking to set it up (Personalyl I only ever listen to BBC radio when abroad and that works fine - and I use Get_iPlayer (on Git Hub) to rip BBC TV programmes onto my phone/tablet before leaving UK so I have something to watch while on the plane) ProXPN makes it so that you could appear to be USA user, or UK user (etc) dependnig on which web site you want to fool into thinking you are a 'citizen of said country'. If only this tech was available back in the 90's when I was permanently flying here there and everywhere (with my travel case full of CDs!!)

I tend to use MediaMonkey (free version) on PC to setup the correct artists, albums and other tags. I find the way the CD creator creates filenames and other tags can be a naffing nightmare - especially on certain compilations. I tend to create a lot of my own very long compialtions of over 200 tracks, meaning I need to tweak the track IDs to get things to work well I load all my music onto my phone (with 128GB card - only half full to date) and use Neutron Player on phone, so i can search by pretty much any tag I like, date, name, artist, etc. I then plug phone into cassette adpator in my LS, or via Bluetooth in the wifes motor. I do find sometimes that Neutron player gets a bit tangled up, but never found a totally 100% satisfactory android based player.

If you goto my posting, you can see my photos. Swiss Cheese On the passenger door part of the arch it was not as bad, but in essence the only bit of the arch where the bradawl did not push through was about the top third, as I was keen ot remove any rust possible, so I was quite aggressive in what I cut out. The boot side was worse, but I think that is becuase more cr*p gets caught in the top of the mudguard so more water to metal contact for long periods In looking at it, even though it looked horrendous, there is no way it should compromise the structural integrity, and I also pked around under the sills to see if any problems (but none found). Car has got through 2 MOTs since my repairs, and have been told rest of the chassis looks fine.

I found very bad rust in rear arches 18 months ago, started with noticng water in either side of boot, only to discover it was way worse than first thought. I had a good poke with a bradawl to find about 50% of the inner arches bith sides had gone (about a 2cm inch strip). Patched up with Isopon and fine since with lots of Waxoyl to keep the tin mice away. I had no bubbling to indicate a problem, in fact the edge of the arches are rock solid (thank heavens). Now you have invested all the time and effort, it will be well rewarded.

Andy, Feel for you, and been there myself, hit some diesel at 20mph while starting to overtake a really really slow truck, my Mk3 was like a drunken whale and I managed to avoid stuffing the car under the lorry trailer but smacked up most of the off-side hitting a wall and a road sign. My experience was ruddy scary, and nowhere near as much damage as to your 430, so must have been one heck of a shock when it happened. As Phil says, anything smaller would have been more carnage. Best of luck looking for new LS when your ready.

Thats a darned good trick, might need to use that - my rear shocks likely to need sorting in next year, and the protectors do look a little past their best. When the other one starts to go, I now know the signs, and so prefer to just get the one done for now and then be listening out for the nearside failing. With the car at 206K, expecting the UCAs to need looking at (given the rears were done 50K ago) in the next couple of years, so expecting to be spending a few bob over next few years.. Having been driving around in the wifes 2 year old Mazda 2, (which would have been £17K brand new), makes me really appreciate that spending money on a 20 year old LS is still worth it, but at this time of year money a bit tight (as missus likes to do these Xmas trips, so off to Gdansk to get cold for a few days). On the other hand I might be tempted to try a GS450h, or a 460 and see if I am prepared to let my love affair with the Mk4 finish.

John Not driven one yet, but am tempted to try one next year, seem like there are some decent ones around for £4K-£5K. My missus will give me grief if I do buy one, given the money spent in last year on LS (though to be fair given the price I paid and the money spent on it in last 6 1/2 years - still only coughed up around £5K for a luxury barge). Pete

Thanks for thoughts so far. The team at Osaka have prodded and used pry-bar on all the bushes, checked wheel bearings, and other things. The vibration I get is from the side of the car that the vibration (and clunking) is coming from, which is why two other places went around with pry-bar and said all bushes fine. It is the top mount that has failed [my posting title a bit mis-leading], (which according to Google is not good!), and the signs are shown by the split at the top, due to stress on the rubber (I assume). If replacing this does not cure the vibration, I have been thinking about changing to a GS450h or some such, but would really like to keep the LS for another 5 years (to celebrate its 25th birthday if poss).

Well it looks like Osaka have found the problem to my really odd vibration. The off-side top-cap has gone, and so that does explain why vibration started at about 15mph, peaked at around 35mph, and then came back with a vengeance at 70+. Scary thing is at any time (say on speed humps) it could pop the shock off the mounting, and hey presto one big mess. Scares me that I took the LS up to the Lakes two weekends ago!!!! Been told a new part is £190, and on back order (I guess not a common failure). If I had thought just to pop the rubber caps off, could have spotted it myself. Photo attached. (That split goes all the way around) Given I had two tyre places look at my car in last 6 months -and I said can you check to see if all the front suspension is okay, and neither found any problems!!! What is odd is that the top plate was likely to be failing at the time Osaka put new front shocks on, but even they could not see a problem with it 6 months ago, and this odd vibration had been happening for about 8 weeks before I got new shocks. Just waiting for Osaka to see when they can source part, not sure if I should look at Amayama, but if someone can let me know part code for Mk4 LS400 model might see if this is quicker option. Now need to get used to driving the wifes Mazda 2 for a while.

That might not be such a bad idea, does seem like all this new tech is not as robust when it comes to extremes of weather. (Does this mean an Electric Landrover will have batteries in the roofline???) There is always a really bad flooded area between Nailsworth and Horlsey on way up to tip after any decent rain, the other week edged the LS through, suspect an EV would have gone phutt based on this post. Best of luck with getting sorted.

If you are doing exactly what you have done in the past, it could be that the CD burner is possilby starting to gradually fail. What I means is that it is not creating clean pits in the burnt CD, so that although the laptop has enough horsepower to overcome errors created by a CDs that are written badly, a car player cannot overcome errors. Also like Mark says, I have found that some brands on CD are always more dodgy in the car, or even on my Marantz KI63 home player, yet play fine in any of the computers in the house.

Long time since I get my head around LEDs but as I recall LEDs have what is called an in-rush current. This means the LED generally pull a higher current for the first millisecond or so to charge up the capacitor (which is there to keep the LED from flickering). This means the ECUs may well get a little ticked off at seeing a surge that you do not get with a filament bulb. So if the LS engineers have 'finely-tuned' the parameters to measure than it may report errors, if it thinks a higher current might indicate a short term short. It seems that the LED in-rush current is about 6 times that of the startup current for a good old fashioned Dim Yellow Filament, so it would be pot luck as to which lights in the LS range would be okay, and which ones would create problems for the fuses and or ECU. Maybe the answer is all LS400 drivers buy a decent Lenser Head torch for reading their AA road maps when parked up in a lay-bye at night!!!

As an LS owner for last 11 years, I would be going Prius in this case, the Gen 1 was good, the Gen 2 better, and amazed at the room and comfort in them. Having not been in a 220 I cannot say whether the Pruis would be noisier or quiter, but always found them to be fine at 60+mph, not as quite as LS, but then again way less thirsty than a 400.

I was wondering if the bubbling on the fuse is where the numpty who did this had a go at soldering the lead to the fuse leg, and that heat caused the bubbling. On the other hand the cable has not been tinned (solder covered before attempting to attach to fuse leg), which would mean a failed joint anyway, and from my experiencing (not on cars) tinning fuse legs usually results in the plastic melting, because it takes too long to heat the metal legs right through, so the surface heat dissapates into the plastic. Hopefully the Auto Electrician can work out what 'the four and a half' the pilchard who did this was trying to solve. Best of luck.

Nice looking 460. Had a bit of snow down this neck of woods last week, thank heavens for VSC, and recently fitted new tyres (not winter ones though - as when it gets that bad, i stay at home)

And ruddy handy it is when it snows like it did last week. A bit hairy when applying 300 horses in the raw.