Jerky ES Tranny

Ans: No, it just diminishes the driving experience significantly. While some folks claim it's a safety issue, I think that's a stretch.

No, but it does decrease your life expectancy. As you jerk your neck repeatedly, you wear down the bones protecting your spinal cord. Finaly you have no bone protecting your spinal cord, and when you jerk the car one too many times, you snap your neck and that is it!!!!! So you may want to talk to your life insurance agent. Oh yes - get some blood pressure pills from your cardiologist because your blood pressure will increase as you step on the gas and the car jerks or doesn't go anywhere. And you wouldn't want to stroke out before you snap your neck. And don't really drive it in heavy traffic cause when you step on the gas and the car just sits there, sometimes you can get crushed by an oncoming truck. Again, the crushing could end your life prematurely before the ultimate neck snap, and you wouldn't want that! So your worries are groundless becaue these cars are bullet proof - virtualy indestructible, barring unforseen crushing by trucks, of course.

It is a safety issue, your opinion does not correlate with ES drivers' actual experiences.

The jerking behavior will definitely diminish the life of the transmission, that's common sense.

Uh, yeah, it is a safety issue. I have the ES300 (Especially Shitty). Do you own it? I wish it were a stretch to say that one's life is not endangered by this hesitation. If you put your brain to work for just 2 seconds and think about it, you can see how transmission hesitation = safety problem. That's about the amount of time it takes sometimes for the car to respond.

Yes.

OK, let's review the logic.

You believe it's definitely a safety issue and you still own it.

And you're suggesting that MY brain needs to be put to work?

Before this turns really ugly, please park the attitude. That's great that you've learned how to diminish the safety aspect of the poor transmission design and behavior, kudos to you that you are not an aggressive driver. But the reality is that there are times presented in the real world where you need to punch it to merge into a faster-moving lane of traffic, or at times where you didn't see another vehicle coming when you turned a corner. Those times require the vehicle to respond quickly. For many ES3xx owners, that quick acceleration does not happen the majority of the time, if ever. When presented that situation, if the vehicle doesn't move fast enough, there can be a rear-end collision anywhere in the line of traffic behind you, for obvious reasons. Now, regarding your deameaning someone for not getting rid of the car due to the safety issue, some of us aren't blessed with the huge budgets to be able to take such a large loss. It's easier, and cheaper, to learn to live with it by completely avoiding the driving situations that the car does not operate properly. My first priorities relate to paying all my other bills, taking care of my family, keeping a roof over their heads. I'd like to squander the bank account for my own selfish needs, but I learned more about the value giving to my family first after my son was born. So, anyway, chill out with the attitude, be a little more patient with people who are terribly frustrated with their ES3xx series cars, they may not have much choice but to live with it. The only way to get a large corporation to improve on something is to keep the issue alive and let the free market encourage change.

"David Z" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net...

No attitude here.

Take another look at the post I responded to. It drips with arrogant condescension. I simply pointed out the obvious hypocrisy in his logic.

It's interesting that you saw that observation as MY attitude.

I don't diminish the jerky transmission at all.

I think you exaggerate it by calling it a safety issue.

I was aware of the jerky transmission problem before I bought the car. After considering my alternatives, I selected the ES330 with full knowledge of this issue.

I'm fully aware of this issue. From what I've read and from the various ES owners I know, most of them either don't see it as a problem or aren't even aware of the "problem." There's a guy with the same car who parks near me. When I asked him what he thought about the jerky transmission, he said "what are you talking about?"

enough,

The first time I experience the hesitation, it was disturbing. I soon learned that the harder I punched it, the more it hesitated. So, I learned to ease into the throttle until I feel the engine engage, and then push it. This technique reduces the hesitation tremendously.

Again, reread the post I responded to.

It's fascinating that you interpret this interaction as ME demeaning HIM. That speaks volumes about your ability to fairly assess a situation.

Again, I disagree with this assessment.

I suspect that you are overstating the problem in hopes that Lexus will do something about it.

priorities

So, you let your wife and newborn son ride in this "safety issue" car?

The point I'm making here is that, if the car had a REAL safety issue, like occasionally faulty breaks, you wouldn't drive it. And you certainly wouldn't let your family ride in it.

I wish you luck. But I won't spin the truth to help you achieve that goal.

Um, no, again you've made the wrong assumption. The answer is "no", they don't ride in this car. The child seat is permanently mounted in my wife's car. When we go out as a family, we all ride in her car, not the defective ES300.

There is no spin here. The transmission has 2 separate issues. First, it does jerk a bit, especially when driving in traffic. This extra jerkiness will shorten the life of the transmission. Second, the ECU has a programming design bug that involves not only the transmission, but the fuel system as well. This bug causes a hesitation on quick acceleration, most notably in the 0-20 mph range, but also in faster speeds. I would ask why in the world Lexus has wasted their time taking 3 or 4 stabs at getting the programming right in the past 4 years, especially if there was no significant problem with the car. Have you noticed how many more safety and performance related recalls Toyota has had in the past few years? My personal opinion is that this is a trend, and Toyota is having some quality issues in their engineering group. Lexus just recently added a new quality control position to their North American factories, because the defect list was getting voluminous on new design releases. They never needed to staff such a position because the quality was always impeccable. With the extra complication of the parts, and with globalized manufacturing, they have less control of the products that they need to slam out the door.

Ah, screw it, I'm sleepy and it's not worth explaining any further. Your opinion is that it's not a safety issue. Great. My opinion is that it is a safety issue. Great. My opinion is that president (GWB) is a moron. Great. 30% of America thinks he's wonderful. Great. As always, opinions are like a**holes. Everybody has one, and they all stink.

I made no such assumption. Reread my posting. My statement was hypothetical.

And what's with your use of the word "again?" "Again" means there was a prior incident. Perhaps, YOU need to park your attitude?

No need to go over all this again. As I said before, I understand the issues.

I agree that the transmission design (a) is flawed, (b) sucks, and (c) is way below what I would like to expect from Lexus/Toyota.

But my assessment, at the time I bought the car and today, is that, on the whole, the ES best meet my needs and desires for reliable transportation at the price I paid.

Perhaps if other car companies made better products, I would consider buying another brand. Until then, I'll just have to choose from the products available.

Your comments are irrelevent, the point is that your OPINION is the car's behavior is not a safety issue. There are others who disagree with your assessment. You can pound the fist and quibble over unrelated issues all you want to deflect the point, but your opinion is no better or worse than anyone else's who believes differently from you.

The bottom line is that if you really believe that it's a safety issue, you're a fool for keeping it. Your argument is that your safety is worth less than a few dollars. What does THAT say about your judgement?

In fact, you could probably trade your ES for a Camry (or equivalent) and come out ahead financially. Further evidence that you haven't thought through these issues.

I'll agree that I'm a fool, but not for the reason(s) you suggest. You have drawn conclusions about what I've thought about and what is within my ability to change, and all of this is from a few newsgroup postings. You must be the Second Coming if you're able to figure all that out. I'm pleased that you have a strong opinion, everybody should be as self-motivated to inflict on others what they think is right. I prefer to think that everybody is different, everybody has different issues and priorities, we all make decisions based on the facts as we are able to comprehend them. I'll certainly try to understand your perspective and see if any of it applies to my circumstances, although on the surface it doesn't seem like much of it applies.

You're in denial.

judgement?

equivalent)

You could hear a pin drop when the almighty "Rumple Stiltskin" addressed his adoring fans with these immortal words:

Soooo..instead of wasting so much bandwidth talking in circles, why don't you say why you can't just sell the Lexus and get another (safer) car?

Because he knows it's not a safety issue.

He's just trying to raise a stink about the problem because he thinks that if enough people do the same, Lexus will be forced to do something about it.

The thing that really frustrates him is that he wants his ES and he wants the tranny to work properly, too. Unfortunately, in this instance, he can't have his cake and eat it, too.

That's why buying a different car won't solve his problem.

As a frustrated ES owner, I can relate to what he's going through. Particularly since the transmission on my 1997 ES was smooth as silk and solid as a rock.

Davidz-- Only because your post dripped with stupidity. I'm not interested in a pissing match. You think the ES is a great car. I say the transmission is faulty and presents a safety problem. You don't respond directly to that assertion and instead infer what you think is the logical outcome of a determination that it is a safety problem, i.e. I should sell it. Since I still have the car, you deduce that I'm lying about the safety issue. Various reasons exist for not selling and that is beside the point and irrelevant to the safety issue. Your ad hominem attacks and other statements are typical schoolboy errors. Therefore I respond with one of my own and reply as follows: you're a moron. You think I'm a moron too, so let's call it a day.

Apparently, you define "stupidity" as logic you can't understand or, in this case, don't want to understand.

Really? You could have fooled me.

I never said that, nor do I think it.

Yes, I did. A few times, in fact.

Lying may be too strong a word here. Exaggerating is probably a better word.

Rationalizations?

Not it's not. It *IS* the point.

Don't use the word safety if that's not what you mean.

I have made no such attacks. You have made many. Take a good, long look in a mirror.

There you go again.

No, I don't. I never said that. Those are your words, not mine.

That's what we were all doing until you brought the topic up again.

arrogant

change.

Anyone who has such a desire to try to create logic-based arguments concerning others' opinions and personal perspectives and experiences has a talent that should be exploited and capitalized on. I strongly encourage you to seek a career path in the legal profession if you haven't already made that consideration. I can't say that I agree with many of your opinions, or any of them for that matter, but I'll give you credit for having the tenacity to keep hammering your beliefs into the ground. You definitely need to capitalize on that ability, it could be a gold mine.

You could hear a pin drop when the almighty "Rumple Stiltskin" addressed his adoring fans with these immortal words:

why the personal attacks? I personally *like* our ES. Granted, it's a 2000, a year that's not affected by the transmission issues but I've driven more than one late model ES (loaner cars when one of our two Lexuses are in the shop for sched maint), and have not experienced the transmission problems in *any* of the cars we've driven. And, I might add, I deliberately tried to duplicate the problems reported in this newsgroup. So, I don't think it's a common problem across all late model ES'es.

I'm still curious, (and I apologize if you've already answered this in a previous post), why you just don't trade the car in for something else if you feel it's so unsafe that you won't allow your own family to ride in it? It seems like a terrible waste of money to own a car you don't want.

Personally, if I owned a car that I truly hated to drive or felt it was unsafe, I would do everything I could to get rid of it. No matter how much negative equity I may have in it.