DruLS

I told myself I'd only use genuine parts for a car as good as this. That was until I got a quote from Lexus for a new rad.

HAHA, just noticed that the eBay listing says this is suitable for both the automatic and manual versions of the LS430. How I'd wish to find one of those elusive manual versions one day.

Only the best parts for my car, so of course I went with this genuine eBay radiator. The fit was perfect everything matches to the old one and the quality seems pretty good. I think others have used this before. Beware there appears to be two different designs for these cars, one with the radiator cap and one without so this one may not work on yours. As for the ARB bushing, car seems to drive fine but it's probably been like that since I got it. I'll let you know if I notice any difference when I change them.

Big day for the LS today. New radiator and coolant flush, AC condenser, gearbox oil cooler and aux belt. Didn't even get around to doing the oil change. The whole reason the front clip is off is I wanted to make some changes to the headlights but didn't even have time to do that. I did replace all the bulbs with some nice Osram ones though. I did notice that I need new bushings for the anti-roll bar. There's also some seepage coming from the steering rack but nothing too bad.

Urgh. I wondered what you were talking about for a while there. I used at least what they called the "direct link" and when I clicked the photos in my thread it would just open the photo in the browser, not go to the Imgur website. Turns out it does that if you're logged into your account because I just tried it in a private window. Too late to edit now. Thanks for the heads up though.

Well, today I've ripped out the centre stack for about the 3rd or 4th time since I got this car. I'm a pro at this now 😂 If anybody is thinking of buying the XCarLink adapter to save a bit of dosh, DON'T. It was so bad I just ended up not using it. I mean the thing worked, but there would be constant noise/hiss in the background. Using it with my iPhone (which required a big ugly adapter because the cable supplied used the iPod 30 pin connector and the other end was propriatary so you couldn't just use a lightning cable) would introduce terrible interferance that seemed to be based on what was on the screen (more white seemed to cause more noise weirdly enough). Using it with my iPod classic, I could hear the hard drive spin up through my speakers! XCarLink support claimed this was normal! And it didn't support song text/title support while not important, is nice. So I did what I should have done in the first place and got the GROM USB3 adapter. Let me tell you this thing is great and perfect for my needs. I wanted a setup that allowed me to use my iPod classic (which I still use because it allows me to store thousands of songs which I rip from my CDs in ALAC (Like FLAC - lossless CD quality audio)), my iPhone (which I mainly use for Podcasts, Spotify, Internet Radio and as a sat nav) without the need to keep switching cables. And I still maintain the full use of the CD changer which I still use. When you first select the CD2 input, you have a couple of seconds to use the track skip buttons to change the input. The voice of a rather nice sounding lady will call out "USB, iPod, AUX" etc over the speakers. But you can customise this how you want as there's a few add-ons available such as a bluetooth module (for steaming and calls) and a DAB radio tuner. Sound quality wise it's amazing. Somehow it seems to sound better then the CD player. I don't know if it's a different EQ or something but I had to turn the bass down because it was booming. Still crystal clear though. So this is the current setup. The top mount is where my phone goes (it's not there as I had to use it to take the photo). The holders I use are fantastic. You clip the cable into them so you simply dock your device in, no faffing with cables. If anybody is interested in these mounts, they're called Brodit ProClip. Essentially they comes in two parts, a mount for the car and a holder for your device. You look up your make and model and you'll be presented with different mounts designed specifically for your car. Then you look for a holder for your particular device, be it a phone, iPod, sat nav etc. You attach them together and you have the best mount money can buy. I realise I must sound like a sales rep for GROM and Brodit, but I just really like these products. However, one issue with the Brodit mounts and the LS430 is that they offer only one mount (the one my iPod is on). Generally they offer several solutions for each car but not this one. It's not a good location for a phone which I use as a sat nav as it's far too low down and would require you to take your eyes off the road. It's fine for the iPod though. I searched everywhere for another solution but all the other mounts I could find were for LHD cars such as the Panavise mount and this wouldn't have worked properly in a RHD car. After a long time spent on Google I did managed to find a possible solution from some obscure company called Dashmout. This is the Dashmount 71521 and appears to be compatible with the LS430, GS300 and GS350. I had no idea if it would be compatible with my iPhone holder but at only £15 I decided to take the gamble and I'm so glad I did. It lined up perfectly with my Brodit iPhone holder. The mount itself simply slips between the gap between the dash and the centre stack. It's just held in place by friction but does include a strip of double sided sticky foam also. It's very sturdy and doesn't flex or move at all which I'm very pleased about. Not much else has changed as of yet. I did swap out the number plate lights for these ones from Amazon. Don't be fooled by the photo. They're nowhere near this bright and obnoxious in person it's just a bad photo. The brightness is just right and makes the rear end look a bit more modern. I also took a gamble on a full set of interior LED lights. They come from China as a kit and so are cheaper then buying the bulbs individually. Kit for cars with rear vanity mirrors Kit for cars without vanity mirrors I'd like brighter interior lights, but sometimes these LED bulbs can be incredibly white and cold so I may end up not using them. But they were cheap enough to take a gamble. I've also been getting some quotes for a new stainless steel exhaust system as the current one is shot and leaking. Luckily my MOT guy let it slide as it wasn't dangerous and he knew I'd get it fixed. No way I'm paying Lexus money so custom it is. I'm going to go for something a little more sporty as long as it's not too loud. I don't want to ruin the car by making it really loud but at the end of the day I have a V8 and at the moment I can't hear it! I'm also waiting on deliveries for some components I'll be using to make some minor modifcations to the headlights and fog lights. I'm hoping it turns out nicely but I'll keep that as a suprise until it's done. P.S. - Does anybody happen to know what kind of bulbs these switches use? I noticed the power / snow button stopped lighting up the other day. The bottom row of buttons has never illuminated since I got the car and I only just found out today that they're supposed to! Anyway, thanks for reading and have a good weekend. 😊

Rock Auto seem to have good prices on the OEM Denso ones. For the price I think I might just order them all and have the exhaust shop fit them while they're putting the new exhaust in. Even if they're not faulty they're known to go bad so couldn't hurt.

If any of you guys know a thing or two about catalysts and O2 sensors, I'd appreciate it if you could take a look at my thread here - having a couple issues with the car at the moment.

Hi everyone, So I'm currently on a mission to sort a few odd jobs out on my car and get it back into good health. I've been having the 'Check VSC' and CEL coming on intermittently so I've just done a scan with TechStream and here's what I currently have. The main issues I want to solve first are the codes for the cats and O2 sensor. Now my current exhaust is not in great condition and is leaking so I'm having on having a new one made up soon. I'm hoping that a leak could cause this but I'm not sure as I'm no expert on exhausts, and I don't know if this would be related to the O2 sensor also. Now the reason I want to sort this out first is because ECP are currently having a big sale on for the next 24 hours and I can get a really good discount on a couple of Bosch or Denso sensors. Based on these codes, would it be safe to assume that these need replacing? If so I'd like to buy the replacements right away so I can save some dosh. ECP have a 1 year return policy so I might buy them now just in case I do need them. EDIT: Just found out that these cars have 4 O2 sensors. Rock Auto lists only 3, upsteam left, upstream right and downstream. Does this mean I need two of the downstream ones? And is there any way to check which ones have gone bad because I couldn't see how to do that on TechStream. I'm also hoping a bad O2 sensor could cause the car to think the cats aren't working properly because it's receiving bad/no info from them. The car recently went through an MOT and the emissions were fine (and this was back before it was on LPG). C1713 just appears to be a faulty sensor so I'm not too worried about that for the time being. And it appears that C1751 and C1752 can be caused when the car is running but lifted off the ground. I've reset these and I'll see if they come back. C1201 seems quite worrying. TechStream doesn't give much info and my research seems to indicate it could be a problem with the ECU. Any help you guys could offer would be greatly appreciated.

I used to have a Japanese spec VW Bora but that was fine because none of the buttons had words, just icons. And the cluster can be changed to UK mode easily. The owner's manual however was useless!

I think he was just upset he couldn't figure out how to reset the TPMS, heard him messing around with the touch screen trying to do it. To be fair the reset button is in a stupid place. I would have loved to take a Celsior in and listed to them try to decipher the Japanese system 😂

The car is looking a lot better now with a fresh set of wheels, and driving much better on a decent set of tyres. Quite happy. Although I did hear the tyre fitter on my dashcam call it an antique ☹️ ...I prefer the term vintage.

That’s shocking. I’m no mechanic but at least I know what kind of oil I need. I’ve heads loads of horror stories where a mechanic has drained the oil and just never put the new oil back in. 5 minutes later and you need a new engine. I can be dumb but I’m not that dumb.

I do the majority of the work on my own cars. It probably started out of necessity when I got my first car and was too skint to pay somebody to fix it. Now I can't bring myself to pay silly money at a dealer for an oil change, and having done my work experience at a mechanics and seeing how things were done there I know they often don't put care into their work. Not to mention I can do an oil change faster then it takes for me to drive it to somebody else! Servicing, suspension work, brake jobs and basic repairs I'll do myself and leave the bigger jobs for the professionals. No way I'd do an cambelt change. I'm sure I could do it just fine but if I mess that up it's game over! If I had a new car I'd pay to get it serviced so it had history, but my cars are old so it's never going to make much of a difference come resale an with the money I save I'd still be up. I still keep and maintain my own records though so buyers can see what I've done to the car over the years.

A word of warning on the headlight reflectors - back in my VW days a member of one of the forums I was on was driving to Austria for the Worthersee car show and got a ticket for not using the beam reflectors. His headlights were not the flat beam type, but he had installed LHD headlights for the purpose of the trip. It was a show car and I guess he didn't want to ruin the look of the car. Either way the officer was having none of it and gave him a ticket, so if you're worried about that it might be worth sticking them on anyway.

I thought the average would be much older then that, although maybe a lot of the older Lexus owners aren't going to be online as much. I think the newer models are definatly attracting younger buyers similar to what Volvo is doing right now. Don't know what my excuse is, at 14 my dream car was an LS400 🤣

Your car is really coming along, looks fantastic. I'm not normally a fan of the carbon fibre wrap but it works really well in your car. Although if it were mine I'd have to change that reg plate - I'd be having the urge to get chicken every time I got in it!

This is Paul's eBay page: https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/lexussparesdirect Top bloke, didn't get the chance to meet him but just picked up a set of wheels from his garage yesterday. He's got a tresure trove of LS parts in there.

As Herbie has said, any ground strap will do if you can't find an OEM one. The alternator will already have some ground through its mount as the engine block is grounded to the body, but best to have a direct one also. It would be easy enough to pick up a new piece of wire and add a couple ring terminals to it. Just make sure you're using a thick gauge copper cable, not a cheaper aluminium one. I've seen Halfords sell pre-made grounding straps so worth a look to see if any they have would work. Failing that, look at car audio companies. They always have a stock of terminals and different guages of copper cable, especially big audio instals often require the upgrade of this grounding strap in question.

Another Andrew! Hello and welcome to the forum. That engine looks amazing. To be honest the rest of the car looks a little bland, might wanna spice it up a bit 😂 /s

Asking price was £500 but negotiated to £450. I needed two wheels anyway and they would have needed a refurb after so seemed like a good deal to me. If you want a set you can go to the same Lexus Spares eBay page, they'll have them ready in a few days. These are genuine Lexus wheels that came with the car from the factory. I still don't understand how it happend. Perhaps a poor quality repair at some point in the past? I can't find any evidence that this is a common issue. I was always under the assumption that good quality alloy wheels bend on impact and only the cheapo ones crack. Either way, I'll be sure to keep a close eye on these new ones. It didn't look like that wheel would have held on for much longer and that could have been a disaster.

Picked up a set of freshly refurbished alloys today from Paul Frost at Lexus Spares Direct, looking so much better then my old ones. Tyres are due on tomorrow.

It wasn't very hard at all, just a lot more time consuming as this is my first V8! I did make the mistake of unbolting a bracket that held in one of the plastic covers to get further access and ended up breaking the bolt. Luckily the cover was only for show, but I'd recommend getting a swivel socket so you don't have to make the same mistake I did.

Sorry for the lack of updates. The car has now been running happily on LPG for a few months, and I've had the filler tucked away behind the filler cap so no ugly holes in the body work. I did come close to a disaster the other day. I started hearing a clicking while driving and figured I'd picked up a nail. Until closer inspection and I saw this. There are cracks on all the spokes, most of which have gone all the way through. Not sure exactly how it happened but I have a new set of refurbed wheels on their way. I was planning on having a stainless steel exhaust made up for it but that'll have to go on the back burner for now. Me and a friend are taking this car across Europe next year so it needs to be in top notch order by then.

Hi all, I'm looking to get the alloys on my LS430 refurbished. It looks like they were previously refurbed at some point as the paint looked new, albeit with orange peel. However, I've since curbed one and more importantly, one of them is buckled which came to light when I had my local garage do an alignment and (attempt to) balance the wheels. The garage put extra weights on the buckled one to even it out so now it's not so noticeable and fine for my usual driving around town. However, I'm planning a European road trip next year and I certainly don't want to be blasting down the autobahn with a wobbly wheel. So my question is, can a buckled wheel be safely straightened out by a decent wheel refurbishing place or should I look to buy another wheel?