Peter67

Fuchs Titan is a good oil so you should be good with that. They are very reputable and in my experience the Titan range of products are widely used in industry. The first time I became aware of low coolant was when I was stopped in traffic on a warm day and from inside the car I could hear the rad fans running at higher speed than normal.Usually you cannot hear them. I thought the heating early that morning was not great so I investigated. I found the level in the tank was slightly above the low mark so this surprised me. I topped the coolant up and it took about 3 litres with the heating system on and the bleed valve opened. I then found the leak on the top of the rad where the rad tank aluminium seam is crimped to the plastic. I was surprised I had no coolant alert but there doesn't seem to be one. Use ultra caution when closing the plastic bleed valve as the whole assembly is plastic. It really just needs to be closed not tightened in any way otherwise the housing will break.

Yes. They have a point. Nothing worse than an intermittent issue to track down and of course it will never play up when they have the car in! ! You might get lucky and not have it occur to frequently. Stick with a good 0W20 oil and change it at the specified interval or less. This can have a surprisingly big influence on the VVT system performance and response. See how you get on. In terms of rad replacement I did mine because it leaked at the top seam which is a common failure mode. I wasn’t aware of the known issue / risk of gearbox failure potential. The rads are not expensive and are easy to change out so its a good piece of mind perhaps. While there are aftermarket rads available such as from NISSENS beware they may not fit early cars (as I found out) so buy the Lexus / Toyota rad for a small bit extra. As an aside I find it odd that these cars don’t seem to have a low coolant level alert, something which I had on cars from the mid 1990s yet not on these cars. Unless you keep a regular close eye on your expansion tank you will not see the coolant level running low until you may hear a gurgling or whooshing noise from behind the dashboard signalling low coolant and air in the system. Peter

Re some earlier posts on oil contamination within the spark plug tube. The tube seals can leak over time. Replacements are very cheap. They are easy to pry out when coil packs are being removed for spark plug replacement. the new tube seals are just pressed into place. If you see oil on the coil pack then make sure you remove the oil in the tube, remove the plug for cleaning as well and fit a new seal. I use the camera on my phone to see if there is any remaining oil.

Hi Thought I’d post this for information. The LS460 has oil pressure actuated variable valve timing on the exhaust cams (electric actuated on intake cams). Like a lot of these systems on Toyota / Lexus it uses a solenoid to control oil flow through passageways into a cam phaser allowing the timing to be changed by the PCM in response to power demand etc. These systems have a small Dedicated oil filter Which is usually accessible but on the LS460 its inside the valve cover in a small housing. The filter is a plastic housing with stainless steel mesh. There is a filter on bank 1 and bank 2. If you had sludge or a previous owner with long oil change intervals these could have a build up on them. It’s a few hours work to get to them if you need to but fairly straightforward. In the photos showing the valve cover you can see the housing and I have a photo of the housing removed To one side and you can see the tip of the stainless filter screen Bank 1 or Bank 2 both the same Remove residual fuel pressure Battery out Coil packs out High pressure fuel pump out Wiring harness and connectors pulled back Valve cover off Remove housing and replace VVT filter Replace All VVT system oil seals O rings and P Seal

Many thanks to all for the excellent advice. My LS has the Mark Levinson sound system and I must say its very good. I will be buying in the UK and importing the car into Ireland. Reasons for this are choice of cars and slightly lower cost. Seems a good time to buy as the UK September plate change has lots of trade ins available. Most of the cars for sale here are through Toyota dealers and are imported from UK also. The one I tested last week came from Lexus in Cheltenham. Large Toyota dealers here seem to get a delivery each month of 5 or 6 RX450h ex UK cars typically 3 year olds. Looks like Lexus dispose of the volume to help keep residual values up. Road tax for the 450h here is only €270 per year compared to the LS €2000 per year! so that would be a welcome change. I will keep looking for the right colour / spec combo.

My LS460 is getting on a bit now as its approaching 400,000km. Budget wont stretch to the new LS yet so I’m considering A straight purchase of a 2017 RX 450h in either Lux trim with pan roof or the Premier trim. Preferred colour Sonic Titanium with a lighter interior if possible although most seem black interior. I’d welcome any particular advice on what to look out for when buying or any particular dealers to contact in the UK? I have test driven a 450h recently and was impressed ( i did miss the air suspension and grunt of the V8 power). Thanks Peter

In terms of the repair cost, in my case I did the work myself. I only had to replace bank 1 exhaust cam actuator as it was the one with that was sticking, they have a spring loaded unlocking pin and this was getting stuck so was intermittently throwing out the timing on that bank hence low power especially under load. If I recall the exhaust cam actuator was about €250 from Amayama. Once you have a reasonable manual and take your time and be fairly methodical its not too bad. The time consuming bit was correct diagnosis and then all the time for stripping the rocker cover. Once that was done the rest was quick enough. When you have the rocker cover off you should clean or replace the small VVT filter and test the oil control valve solenoid for correct operation, they are about €80 each (buy OEM for these as lots of spurious versions on eBay and they are a precision part). As I said in an earlier post get a good tech to monitor the 4 x cams under load and see what’s happening before diving in. Peter

It’s the same symptom as I had. Revs cleanly with no power. Then sometime later its back to normal. I assume you have no codes or pending codes? Looks like VVT issue to me. As the VVT system is complex you will need to get it clearly diagnosed before throwing money at it. Basically you have an electric actuator (Phaser) on each intake cam (VVTie) and an oil controlled actuator on each exhaust cam (VVTi). The exhaust actuators are controlled by an oil control valve on each bank and there is a small VVT oil filter inside the cylinder head cover for each valve. Each cam has a VVT position sensor reporting to the ECU so 4 of them total. There is also 1 camshaft position sensor which is located on Bank 2 intake cam. Techstream software can connect to the VVT components and test them individually for operation. Depending on the diagnosis the simplest issue is to replace the oil control valves, these are standard Toyota solenoid valves that slot into the rocker cover exterior on each bank and replacement takes only a few minutes. To access the VVT oil filter screens you need to remove the rocker covers (relieve fuel pressure, remove high pressure fuel pumps, remove rocker covers) then the filters are in a small housing on the inside of the cover. This also gives you access to the camshaft actuators as well and its possible to replace the exhaust cam actuator In situ without removing the main timing chain. Again genuine Lexus parts are not that expensive if you buy from suppliers such as amayama.com. Its possible to buy certain parts second hand. Regards

From the description the issue is quite possibly in the VVTI system. It’s unlikely to be on the inlet side as they are electrically actuated more likely exhaust size which is oil actuated. There are 2 main elements to this on each bank - the oil control valve and the exhaust camshaft phaser / adjuster and either can cause problems. It Intermittently affects the engine timing and power and does not necessarily throw up any engine codes. Power delivery can be much reduced despite engine revving cleanly especially under load going uphill. The oil control valve and the VVT phaser on Toyota engines is known to have issues with sticking operation. The Oil control valves x 2 are very simple to remove and test for resistance and apply 12v to see if they move smoothly and replace if necessary. They are not expensive. The exhaust cam phaser is a bit more involved. It is likely to be one bank of the engine that is affected but I guess you need to figure out which one. It’s possible to either use a garage level scan tool that displays the position of the 4 x camshafts to see if they are in phase or which one is out. Alternatively the output from the cam sensors can be mapped on something like a Pico scope and again you can see if you have an issue. If you have Techstream you can set the vehicle software in diagnostic mode to be more sensitive and to throw an engine code on 1 trip event logic.This might reveal a pending code for you and identify which bank you have an issue with. Good luck - these issues are very hard to pin down. Peter

The issue with the plug exterior oiling up is the spark plug tube seal on that cylinder. Its a common issue. Part 11193-38020 x 4 per side. They are only €2 or €3 each from Amayama.com. Worth checking inside each tube for any oil when you are doing spark plug replacement. After you remove the coil pack but before you remove the plug take a photo with your camera phone "down the tube". You will see the plug surrounded by oil and then its replacement time for the seal. Worst case this may cause a misfire.

Hi. I ordered new controls arms for my LS460 from Rockauto. I’ve used them before a few times and they have been a good supplier for bit and pieces. Anyway 1 of the 4 control arms was completely incorrect (see picture). Rockauto replaced the arm with the correct one which was good (although I got hit for taxes and import duty again). So I have this Unknown control arm and am happy to offer it free to any club member. I think it is a front right arm for a LS430 or 400 but I’m not sure. Be a shame to dump it. Anyway let me know if anybody can ID it and if they want it and I will figure out how to post it. Peter

Hi Steve. I did look for the VVT oil filters as I suspected they could be blocked. However on the LS460 unlike other Lexus models the VVT oil filter appears to be in a gallery accessible only with the rocker cover removed and this of course necessitates the dismantling of the High pressure cam driven fuel pump assembly as well as draining the fuel system. I don’t see any other way so I might have to do it. I do think the exhaust cam is more likely to be at fault because when i replaced the OCV it was perfect for a few months. This suggests the filter could be blocked or partially blocked. Re Newbie1 posting this was something I considered the electric motor on the bank 1 intake side and its easy enough to replace but expensive (part is €500 or so). I ran the Techstream tests on it and it seemed to respond ok as per the manual. Regards Peter

Oil level is perfect. It never budges on the dipstick Battery is good, I replaced it last year. Given the intermittent nature of the issue I would like to think the timing chain is unlikely to be at fault. There is no record of any work on this and the timing cover looks like it has never been touched. That sort of points back to a vvti issue as I have already replaced the 2 x oil control valves. I come back to the question about a vvti oil filter mesh located inside the rocker cover on the parts drawing. I wonder if this could be at fault.

Thanks. As the crankshaft sensor is just one device and its comparing / correlating to the 4 x Camshaft vvt sensors and the 1 x camshaft position sensor I would have thought if it was the crankshaft sensor at fault that it would throw different codes and also conflict with more of the 5 x camshaft sensors than just the one. I would expect to see P0017 and P0018 at the same time surely? As I said I pulled the sensors and tested them for resistance but not a dynamic test. Do people think its worth sticking in a new sensor or should I just go and get it thoroughly checked for timing settings and various sensor responses? When the loss of power is occurring It does feel that the vvt on just one bank is not engaging correctly. If one cam was not phasing correctly then in theory I would expect this sort of correlation code. Regards Peter

Hi. I’ve been running this car for 4 years and very occasionally I had a loss of power on acceleration when the car was under load such as a slight up hill etc. I had it checked out and my mechanics could not really find anything definitive, no codes etc. About 4 months ago it became much more frequent and although there were still no codes I left it with my mechanics for 1 week and they could not fault it at all. Note the car now has 275,000Km (170,000 miles) up. Based on internet research I suspected a dodgy camshaft Oil control solenoid valve. I replaced both of these myself and the car was immediately perfect. It drove like a new car with super power and engine response I change the oil regularly every 15000km with Mobil 1 0w 30 and use a Lexus oil filter so I was surprised because these OCVs are known to be an issue with extended oil change interval and dirty oil. Anyway, 4 months passed without incident then the problem has come back. Exactly like before. The car occasionally (2 or 3 times a week) bogs down when applying power from low speed. The power then suddenly comes in like a turbo. Also When cruising at 60-80kph the engine will “flutter” and run rough and then after a while its ok. The issue will disappear for several days. To me it feels like a valve timing issue / cam phasing issue and because its intermittent I don’t think the timing chain could be in trouble (please not). I normally connect an Autolink Al519 OBD code reader to see whats going on but yesterday I connected up my Techstream and I discovered for the first time a pending code of P0017 which was related to the last journey and has a description “Crankshaft Position - camshaft position correlation (Bank 1 Sensor B)”. I took out both VVT camshaft sensors from Bank 1 and inspected them and measured resistance between the pins. I am not sure what value to look for but they were both the same resistance so they appear ok. I checked the wiring and connections and all seems ok. That leaves the camshaft timing / vvt phasing. The car drove well today for 200km with no loss of power or engine bogging down. Question 1 - Is sensor B the exhaust or inlet camshaft? I think its the exhaust. Question 2 - Does the camshaft oil control solenoid valve on the LS460 have a mesh filter like other Lexus vehicles like the IS? I looked on engine diagrams and parts lists and it appears that it does seem to have a filter but that its inside the rocker cover in a gallery. If it was meant to be accessible for cleaning like the IS then you would expect it to be easily accessible ? Question 3 - Could a blockage to the OCV result in a P0017 code? Question 4 - Could a camshaft phaser be stuck or sticking in position and could this result in a P0017 code? Question 5 - If it does come down to a full timing chain replacement has anybody had this done? And is it something a good tech / mechanic can manage without any specialist Lexus tooling? I assume all chains would need replacing. Question 6 - Any idea on the number of labour hours to repalce the timing chains and tensioner? Question 7 - Does anybody have any other suggestions? Regards Peter