Colin M

Hi Mike Sorry for delay in replying - he is based in Wybunbury in Cheshire. Have you managed to get the part you need? Regards Colin

Hi Mike, It might be worth contacting Kyle McKee about the part you are looking for. He breaks Mk4 LS400s and I have had a few parts off him for my Mk3. His mobile number is 07769 355594. I hope you manage to get the problem sorted. Colin

Not cheap for a rubber boot, Stuart, but hopefully the quality is good - perhaps that's why they don't put the price on the website! Many thanks for the offer of a replacement boot if mine are OEM and get a split in them - I will have a look to see what they are like when I get back from holiday. Cheers Colin

That's good to know - thanks, Stuart. Next time I have a front wheel off, I will check the measurements on mine. I may have OEM arms still on or they may be Chinese ones or some other aftermarket ones - who knows, but they have passed the last two MOTs on each car.

Glad to see you have managed to obtain the pipe. Even if pipes are not available from Lexus, I am sure if you can find a good air con specialist he/she can either make up or source some suitable pipework. I hope the pipe sorts the problem and there are no further leaks elsewhere.

My 1997 LS is either the same or a similar colour. It is described as Regent Green in the Service Book but it looks more like black in most lights. If you ask anyone the colour, they are likely to say it is black. But it shows up as a dark metallic green in some lights, particularly if there is bright sunshine on the car. Nice colour and I like it.

Sounds like a great buy - enjoy the car! As Jonathan says, they are fabulous cars and they are great value for money.

Watling towbars do a towbar for the LS430, although it is not cheap. According to their price list, it is £510 incl VAT - see Watling-towbars.co.uk and look for the price list on the website for towbars.

Pleased to hear it has passed the MOT, Stuart. There are always jobs that need doing on older cars but, unless you are unlucky, it does not work out as expensive as the depreciation costs involved with newer cars when you keep changing them. Perhaps you are due a period of trouble-free motoring. Let's hope so! Anyway, good news on the MOT front. Colin

Am I correct in thinking, then, that there is a 17mm hole in the boot on OEM arms but only a 13mm hole in the Chinese and Taiwanese arms? If so, strange indeed. Is the hole in the large end of the boot the same I.e. 38mm in both cases? Hope you get a pass on retest.

Hello Stuart Another possibility might be to check out the measurements for the lower front suspension ball joint rubber for a Mazda MX5, because the hole sizes might be the same as on the LS400. I have pasted in below a post from the MX5 Owners Club website, on which it is stated that the large hole is 38mm, the small hole 17mm and the height 28mm - see below. "Not sure on the track rod end size but I have some Genuine Mazda top swivel boots here waiting to fit and they measure about 28 to 30mm for the large hole and 13mm for the small hole and 25mm high, so looks like these you have found may do. Just for info the lower swivel boots measure large hole 38mm, small hole 17mm and height 28mm approximately. If you have the suspension appart to change shocks then fitting these at the same time should be fairly easy." It does say "approximately" when referring to the measurements, so it would be best to check the actual measurements with a supplier. I think the boots are available from Mazda themselves but there are other suppliers - Autolink seems to be mentioned a few times on the MX5 website. The boots are the ones fitted to early MX5s from 1989 to about 1995 - the design was apparently changed on later cars. Hope this helps.

Yes, DC176K looks a good bet if the rubber in the 13mm hole will stretch enough. If it does not stretch enough, it might be possible to make the hole a bit bigger by using a round file to file a bit of the rubber off. I managed to do this with a dust boot cover for a brake wheel cylinder that was just too tight a fit to go over the end of the piston.

The rubber in the link looks dreadful!! I'll have a look at the DC176K tomorrow - just on my way out now.

Thanks, Stuart. I don't think it should make any difference whether the gaiter is concertina style or not. As you say, the part does not compress. So long as the gaiter covers the joint to prevent the ingress of water, dirt etc, it should be fine. How long it will last is down the quality of the rubber, or lack of it, and only time will tell. Gaiters can last a long time - the ones on the track rod ends on my Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire have not needed replacing in the 28 years I have owned the car and the car had been laid up for 10 years before I bought it, so the gaiters are probably 40+ years old!

Hello Stuart Thanks for posting up the dimensions and the photo which is very helpful. I have not located a gaiter with these exact measurements but have found one with the correct size large hole (38mm) and the two other measurements are around a couple of mm oversize. The 38mm large hole measurement is, I think, a critical one as it is at the top and needs to be the correct fit to prevent water ingress. The small hole in the one I have found is 19.2mm rather than 17mm but the extra couple of mm might be taken up by a 17mm 'O' ring placed on the ball joint to seal the gap. The height is 26.7mm rather than 25mm but such a minor difference may not matter. The gaiter is available from southwalesprops.co.uk - if you click on ball joint rubber boots in the left hand margin on the homepage, the boot in question is DC168K. I think a cable tie would be the best means of securing the boot at the large hole end. Hope this helps.

I doesn't sound like a massive fail at all, although it would be a massive bill if you had the work done by them. Re the old rubber gaiters that you still have, can you post up the internal diameter of both the small hole and the large hole in the gaiter, and the uncompressed height of the rubber gaiter? It may be possible to obtain a replacement rubber gaiter that will fit over the joint. There are various size gaiters that can be bought and it would be good to know whether there is one available that will fit. I will do a bit of searching online to see whether I can find anything if you can post up the measurements. Thanks.

An alternative source is Amayama in Japan, which stocks genuine Lexus parts. The parts are cheaper than in the UK, even when adding shipping costs and import duty. I bought a rear suspension strut rod for my LS400 from Amayama and it worked out about half the cost of buying one from Lexus here.

Looks great!! Must give mine a clean soon ...

Small pit villages must attract LSs - we live in a old pit village and there are two LSs within a quarter of a mile of our house. One is a 2005 LS430 several houses further down our road (the person living there previously had a 2001 LS430 before he bought the 2005 car) and the other is a 1996 LS400 owned by a person who lives on the main road going through the village.

Pete If it is the Y pipe, I have used Wynn's Black Gasket Maker on both of my LS400s with good results. It is a silicone based product. It is flexible (so does not crack and fall out like compounds which go hard), is heat resistant and compatible for use on cars with O2 sensors. It was recommended to me by my MOT tester. I have had it on the Y pipe joins on both cars for well over a year now and there are no leaks there. Hope this helps and if the leak is elsewhere you can probably use it there too. Colin

I had some from Steve2006 as well and I haven't got round to getting mine done yet either! It is on the list of jobs to do at some point ...

According to my Mk 3 Owner’s Manual, the threaded towing eye, which lives in the boot on the near side of the spare wheel under the boot mat, screws into a threaded hole which is visible through the long (top) slat in the front bumper. It is at the nearside end of the slat and there is plastic peg screwed into the hole (presumably to stop corrosion of the thread through water/salt etc getting into the hole) and the peg needs to be removed by screwing it anti-clockwise before the towing eye is screwed in. I thought I would give the towing eye a trial fit on both my LS400s just in case I ever needed to use it. Being an automatic, I would not tow the car any distance but if it broke down in a dangerous position I might want to tow it a short distance to a safer place. The plastic pegs, which I suspect have never been removed, showed no signs of movement and there is hardly any room to get your fingers or any pliers in the slat in the bumper to twist the peg. I eventually managed to remove the peg on one car using a multi-pin socket i.e. a socket with lots of small steel pins inside which depress around whatever size nut you push the socket on and, in theory, enable you to tighten or loosen the nut. Some gentle levering of the socket backwards and forwards when it was pressed over the rectangle shaped end of the peg eventually loosened the peg and it screwed out. Heartened by this, I tried the same on the peg on the other car and the end of the peg promptly sheared, which meant I had to drill the plastic out. So far so good, apart from wrecking one peg, and I now come to screw in the towing eye. But it does not screw in because the thread on the towing eye is bigger than the hole. I use a vernier gauge to measure the width of the inside of the hole and it measures 15mm in diameter. I measure the diameter of the towing eye thread and it is 17mm. I get the towing eye out of the other car to see if it is the same 17mm size and it is. The hole on the other car is also 15mm, so neither of the towing eyes will fit in either of the holes. I have a look to see if I have a 15mm diameter bolt with a metric thread which I can try in the two holes. I have but only with a finer thread. I do not screw it into the holes but it is clear that this is the correct 15mm size to fit the holes. I have taken a picture of the 17mm diameter towing eye and the bolt with a 15mm diameter. Is your towing eye diameter 17mm? Have you ever tried to use the towing eye and, if so, have you encountered the same problem I have? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. (If you click on the thumbmail, it will show the picture in full)

Yes, it does have an extra digit, an extra 5 which needs removing - it should be 07769355594. Sorry about that. No, sorry, Keith, I do not know whether the rear bumper skin is common to Mk3 and Mk4. It would not surprise me if it was, as the Mk4 had a front end restyle but there does not look to be any difference at the rear. It might be worth trying to find out part numbers if you can e.g. from Amayama website or Toyodiy.

Hi Keith There is a guy called Kyle McKee who breaks Mk4 LS400s and often advertises some but not all of the parts from the cars on eBay. I have bought a few parts off him for my Mk3 (parts that are common with the Mk4) and it might be worth a try contacting him to see if he has the parts you are looking for. His mobile number is 077693555594. Colin

I'd endorse everything said above. The LS400 in my view is a great car - the best I have owned - and you will not be disappointed. Fuel cost is only part of the running costs. If you pay a bit more for fuel but the car (hopefully) does not run up expensive repair bills, the bit extra you pay for fuel will seem well worth it. Go for it!!