Here in Illinois, we say you have to fail your intellgence test to drive an SUV . . .
Saw a lime green pre-68 Microbus Sunday at Bristol Renaissance Faire, didn't get a chance to talk to the owner. I figure it was 66 or 67, didn't get to look at it well enough to tell.
Charles of Kankakee
Charles of Kankakee
the wallet after spending $52 to fill up the Lexus this past weekend. Now that we've got a break in this hot weather, I won't need the airconditioning and can drive the bug every day for awhile. There's too many hills around here for me to bicycle at my age. It would be fun to have a Lambretta like the one I had back in the sixties while in college but there's too many $#@^& SUV drivers with Kerry/Edwards stickers in back waiting to run me down.
************ Well lets face it this country has gone to hell. There are no patriots left at all, except for the poor that have no power. Lexus? Everything I own I either built (from a total) or at least bought needing major repair. ~ Paul aka "Tha Driver"I'm not a complete idiot, some parts are missing.
...........This car (Lexus LS400) is 14 years old and was sold to me at half of its book value by a friend who was the original owner and who kept complete service records for it. One of those things that just fall into your lap once in awhile. I always thought that they were just jazzed up Toyotas but after driving it for almost a year now, I have to say that the wealthy really do have the better things in life. At $60K when it was new, it would have been a ridiculous idea for me to imagine having one. But even now after all these years and about 140K miles, it's one of best cars that I've ever had and I'm hoping that it will last for several years to come. My biggest problem right now is that Haynes doesn't make a manual for it, the two Toyota dealers in my area don't want to work on it, the closest Lexus dealer is more than 100 miles away, the private shops don't see them very often and think that I must be a rich loser for owning it even though it's old and finally........after 140K miles it does need new shock struts front and back. The guy at the Lexus dealer service dept. told me over the telephone that the rear struts are very difficult and require a special tool that only exists at a Lexus dealer. So, I may have to bite the bullet and spend two weekends delivering and then picking it up from the dealer and paying a lot of money for a job that I'd normally do myself on almost any other car.
Are you a veteran?
On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 18:31:06 GMT, "Tim Rogers" scribbled this interesting note:
An you believed him???
Don't do it Timmy!
-- John Willis snipped-for-privacy@airmail.net (Remove the Primes before e-mailing me)
..............Well, actually, yes. I did some independent research both online and under the car myself and I think that it would be a big cluster-f**k if I tried to tear into the rear suspension of this particular car without a shop manual or the the right tools. The complexity of the rear suspension on this car is like nothing I've seen.
IT'S A 91 FOR GODS SAKE! Go to the dealership and request a consultation with a tech. OR go to the alt.toyota.camry group and see if you can get someone to help you with procedures and maybe the tool (or where to buy one/rent one). There are two or three guys over there that say they're techs too. (on toyota ) and you can catch my political rants there too.LOL
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MUADIB®
The Peacemaking Meeting scheduled for today has been cancelled due to a conflict.
Scott, are we both caught in a time warp? 1991 was like 14 years ago (actually, 15 in car-years). That's a long time for a vehicle.
..................The LS400 had no corresponding Toyota model sold in North America. You might be thinking of the smaller ES300 which is based on the Camry platform. I have been to both of the Toyota dealers here in my area and I've talked to one of the service managers at an out of town Lexus dealership. This custom tool isn't sold or rented. It's a proprietary device found only at Lexus dealers. The Toyota guys here are saying that they don't even have the computer codes for the ECU on a LS400. This car is considerably bigger than a Camry and has a 32 valve 4 liter V-8 that wasn't offered in any Toyota back in '91.
So,.................???? I was talking about getting some help. Not redisigining the car...............nevermind,.............I'll get my strut spring compressors out and be right there.............There's not a tool we can't buy or make Tim.........there's just not. LOL
Buck up and kicik it'sa$$............I just put all four motor mounts on an 85 Celebrity a few weeks back. I didn't have or use and engine hoist. mind over matter. when I use my mind, nothing else matters.
LOL
Good luck for real Tim. I just thought it's a car..........it can;t be that bad.
right after those damn cars hit the market, I was working at a ciruict city and a guy decided he'd put a power wire in for a subwoofer amp (mounting for free-air woofer already in vehicle, shure, weee kin duit) he drilled for just s few seconds, penetrated the first layer of firewall, then for the next ten minutes, the sand ran out like an hour glass. That guy was harder to get rid of than a stuttering Jahovas Witness!............everything he did was a F-up. Anyway, the rrepair was terribly expensive, as it had to go to Lexus for the proper refill of the firewall, after the hole was welded shut.
There was nothing normal about 'em from stereo installation point of view, I guess it could be just as bad in the suspension.
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MUADIB®
The Peacemaking Meeting scheduled for today has been cancelled due to a conflict.
Heyyy I know the LS400... my exes dad had one new. Nice car. Love the engine, sophisticated V8.
Jan
************* No; why? Do you think a person has to be a veteran to be a patriot? ~ Paul aka "Tha Driver"
If you can't take the heat, get out of the nuclear reactor.
city and a guy decided he'd put a power wire in for a subwoofer amp (mounting for free-air woofer already in vehicle, shure, weee kin duit) he drilled for just s few seconds, penetrated the first layer of firewall, then for the next ten minutes, the sand ran out like an hour glass. That guy was harder to get rid of than a stuttering Jahovas Witness!............everything he did was a F-up. Anyway, the rrepair was terribly expensive, as it had to go to Lexus for the proper refill of the firewall, after the hole was welded shut.
*************** The firewall is filled with sand??? WTF for??? That's a great way to insure rust-out! ~ Paul aka "Tha Driver"There is no problem that cannot be solved with the *right application* of high explosives.
..................Apparently it has a double-walled firewall that's filled with sand or maybe it's something that looks like sand and is intended to isolate the passenger area from sound & vibration. There's a lot of that kind of thing throughout the entire car. I can tell you this, when it's doing a hundred with the windows up, it's the quietest car that I've ever seen! As for rust, after spending 14 years in upstate NY, you'd think that there'd be a little somewhere but I can't find any and that includes underneath. Even the exhaust system looks rust free which is puzzling unless the whole system including the catalytic converter is stainless steel. I don't know as much as I'd like to know about this thing. Like I said in an earlier post, Haynes doesn't even publish a shop manual for it.
..........I gotta remember that one. But my mind isn't what it used to be.
...........That engine is still pulling real strong when it's redlining at
6000 rpm. If I was younger and more adventuresome, I bet the ECU could be rechipped for a lot more power and then I could............uh........nevermind.I know that the reverse isn't true - I'm a vet (Navy), but certainly wouldn't call myself a patriot. That would require pride in my country, right? Haven't found even a twinge of that since my slick-Willie left the scene... Even then, it was barely a tickle of patriotism. ~Vicki
On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 19:57:37 GMT, "Tim Rogers" scribbled this interesting note:
Tim, the operative word in Scott's sentence is "when."
-- John Willis snipped-for-privacy@airmail.net (Remove the Primes before e-mailing me)
On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 21:13:36 GMT, "Vicki O'" scribbled this interesting note:
There are many ways to be patriotic. One of them is to disagree. It is, perhaps, the most important...
-- John Willis snipped-for-privacy@airmail.net (Remove the Primes before e-mailing me)
Search online. :-) I found out how to richen the mixture on the fuel injection on my motorcycle by poking around online enough. Turned out to be pretty simple. Just had to ground one wire (#27) to the frame that normally goes to the ECU and do some playing around with the odometer display buttons. Takes less than 5 minutes from start to finish to adjust the mixture on both cylinders. Or I could have spent $299 for a "PC-III" to do basically the same thing. Oh yeah, and the PC-III thingie would take about 5 minutes to install. hahahaha!
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