Nails

Hi All On the way to work this morning, my Lexus starting "jolting" into gear rather than the silky smooth changes it usually does. I think it was just doing it from 2nd to 3rd. Could this be something as simple as gearbox oil or is it time for my car to meet its maker? The car is only worth peanuts so I won't be spending hundreds getting the gearbox fixed. Thanks Mike

That is true, but my mechanic is friendly and will just turn the light off. It takes a while to come back on and certainly won't come back on during the MOT.

I really wouldn't bother. Mine does this and it still passes the MOT fine, the tester just turns the light off and emissions wise it is fine. If it starts to fail emissions tests you might have to get it changed. Just live with the light being on is my advice.

Well it isn't coming from the sunroof otherwise the car would be a swimming pool by now, I have had the car around 2 months and the carpets have only dried out in this time, not got wetter. Perhaps the drains were partially blocked, causing the problem. Either way, it appears to be sorted. The air vents on the passenger side will get looked at eventually but is not urgent.

I better check the expansion tank at some point, I checked the radiator cap and that was full. I have been driving it 50 miles a day for work for a couple of weeks now so I think if it was losing coolant I would have noticed by now. Plus, as I say, there is no water in the car now. I bought it with wet carpets, the person I bought it off blamed the people he used to valet the car. I seriously doubted this story but seeing as I cannot recreate water coming into the car now I am beginning to wonder. I thought it might be the sunroof but when it has rained I have checked and there is no more water getting in. I even had the carpets up for a few days and left it like that while it hammered it down and still nothing. The only thing I have done is clear the sunroof drains, yes some stuff came out but it didn't seem that bad. When it goes in for a service I will ask my mechanic to flush the matrix, thanks for the advice 🙂 The main thing is, there is no water getting into the car and the miss fire is fixed 🙂

Update: The remaining "problems" with this car are: I still am not 100% sure what caused the wet carpets in the car, they are pretty much dry now. Perhaps linked to the above, the passenger side air vents only blow cold air. Could the heater matrix have leaked all it's fluid causing the wet carpets? That is it really now. It could do with some tyres at some stage. MOT and Service not due until August. I am going to leave the heating issue for the moment as it doesn't really affect me. I have to admit, I am starting to like this car now. Without the miss fire it is a pleasure to drive and I actually look forward to driving it to work and back. Weird 🤨

@TigerFish Thank you I will take a look behind the kick panels at somepoint. I tested it out earlier and if I turn the air con off, it comes out warmer from the left side, like actually warm, but not has hot as drivers side. Does this indicate anything?

Thanks All. I am finding new problems daily. Next, the passenger side vents in the car only blow cold air regardless of the temp I set it too, drivers side is totalky fine. How do I go about sorting this?

Yes this is exactly what my mechanic did, hopefully that's the end of the miss fire issue. We will see. I can see how owning a code reader might be useful, anybody got any recommendations on which one to get? The cheaper the better.

UPDATE: The clip was missing on number 5 lead so this was not firing at all, and there was water in plugs 3,4,5 and 6. So as my mechanic was down there, it was worth replacing all plugs, coils and leads. It is now fine. We will see. My concern is why was there what appears to be rain water in there? Anyway I will monitor and see how it goes.

Comment deleted, wrong thread 😊

Thank you for the info re the VSC, this only came on soon after the miss fire started.

@kayble Thank you very much for that. I will discuss this with my mechanic when my cheapo pattern part coils arrive. If it turns out we don't need the coils, I can just send them back, but at least we will have them should we need them. Once it is all apart, if none of the obvious fixes it I will have no choice but to sell it for spares or repair because I am not throwing too much money at this, the car is simply not worth it.

Thank you very much for the offer Rick, however you are in Hampshire so I suspect a good distance from me and I wouldn't want to put you out. If I really want to keep the costs down it could be an option though...... I hear you and it is difficult repeating what the mechanic said word for word as I can't remember exactly. I do know it is miss firing from 4 cylinders. Actually I am the project type, I love cars, I have a Honda Prelude Type S freshly imported from Japan tucked away in the garage for show season. However, I don't tend to do anything but the simplest jobs myself. The lexus was supposed to be a reliable workhorse to get me to work and back, I wanted to run it in banger economics fashion, basically spend as little on it as possible, this was never going to be a restoration project. Also, to be clear it is not leaking from above, we have had several bouts of heavy rain since the drains were cleared and I had the rear carpets up and was checking daily for water ingress and nothing. The carpet is now dried out, I stuck some socks underneath it filled with cat litter which did the trick. Now all removed and carpet refitted. Compression is something I raised early on, my mechanic doesn't suspect it, but again, he still has to take everything apart in order to do that test and once he takes it all apart I am then into spending on it regardless of the diagnosis.

I wish I could but am not mechanically inclined at all, I have a desk job, and my weekends are mainly taken up with family life so time is also an issue. If someone was willing to help I might be able to 😁