Hello all,

I had been looking for a few months for an LS400 to play around with. I'm an SC guy, but I like the extra room in the LS for hauling friends around. After a few craigslist busts I thought maybe it wasn't gonna happen, until I came across a peculiar ad. It was a base 1997 LS400 in moonstone pearl (love the Japanese) with a tan interior. It had 199k on the clock, recent T-belt maintenance, a clean exterior, and a fairly nice interior (some driver seat wear). This guy had it posted at $500... I knew this was the car I had been looking for.

There was a catch... or many. It had some issues.. and it wasn't running. These issues were described as the power steering pulley spline had been worn off so the serpentine belt could not be installed, it had a #5 cylinder misfire, and some wiring issues. As a master in the art of craigslist, I knew this guy was lying about the pulley and that I might be walking into another lemon. Never the less, I started texting this guy to get an idea of what was actually going on with the car and he let me know that the car had been sitting for about a year in his ownership and that the pulley had come off while he was driving to work one day, which I still am not sold on.

Here's where the story gets really good. I set up a time to meet this guy to buy this car... Its a $500 LS400 with less than 200k miles, I knew I was going to buy it. After a day or so of making the arrangements I get a text from him telling me his landlords being a butt to him and wants the car gone ASAP. He tells me if I bring $100 I can have it that same day... Uh, yeah I'll be there. After a trip to U-haul and an awkward conversation with a weird dude, I'm now the proud owner of a $100 1997 Lexus LS400.

I'm gonna keep this post updated as I go through the car. As of right now the only thing I've done to the car is opened the hood, stared at the 1UZ, and applied a leather restorer and protector so it can soak while it waits for a PS pump, NGK SP wires, VC gaskets, and Toyota T4 transmission fluid. I don't know whether to keep the car on a $500 budget and sell it when it's fixed (I know gremlins will come up, but that's the game), or to drive it as a daily and sell my 1995 SC400, as I don't need two vehicles right now. Here's some photos of picking up the car and where she sits right now.

 

Fantastic. Maybe the cheapest LS400 ever bought? Looks great for $100. Keep them both.!!

 

Alright, I'm gonna give this thread an update. I like reading through detailed threads so this is going to be a detailed (aka long) post. The list on this car so far has been the following items... Power steering pump and fluid, serpentine belt, brake flush, coolant flush, transmission flush, replacing all the vacuum lines, interior and exterior detail, new passenger side door weatherstripping, plugs and wires, oil/filter change, valve cover gaskets, clean the wiring up, and re-clearing the hood/roof/lower portion of the car.

First things first, while I was waiting on the parts to come in I used Griots 3 in 1 leather cleaner, conditioner and protector on all the leather in the interior. This includes both the front/rear seats and all the door panels. I even drenched them in the conditioner and let it sit for a couple of days, after doing this they feel factory fresh and smell like real leather instead of 22 years of a** cheek. I also removed the wipers/cowl to clean out the pine needles that generally collect in the same spot on all cars. The cowl was fairly sun faded, as this was a California car. I've found this past a great plastic restorer is Mother's Protectant, which is intended for interior cleaning but it works great to reverse the affect the

I wanted to actually hear the car run for more than 30 seconds so the first thing on the list was replacing the power steering pump and flushing the system. The problem that I ran into was the pulley, which I had previously mentioned was missing. So I went to a local wrecking yard and found they had a 1998 LS400 for scrap, pulled the pulley and a couple other items the car was missing. When trying to install the pulley on the new pump to verify fitment, I found that the pulley did not fit... After searching row52.com and craigslist for a donor car. I found the correct one and returned the incorrect pulley for credit. While doing the power steering pump, I also did the valve cover gaskets and checked the clearances between the valve lobes and the shims in the buckets. Everything checked out. I charged the battery and started it up. It runs awesome, no cooling issues or blue/white/black smoke out of the exhaust and the valve covers and PS pump doesn't leak a drop.

Next I decided that it was time to replace all of the vacuum hoses. I used blue silicone hoses because of the side wall thickness and the fact that it gives the engine bay a modern look IMO. The sizes in the engine bay vary from 4mm, to 20mm. An exact list of measurements would be 4mm, 6mm, 8mm, 9mm, 10mm, and 20mm (this is the line that connects the IACV to the intake tubing). I decided I could get away with just using 4mm, 8mm and 3/4" (I couldn't find a 20mm standard silicone hose in this size so I settled on a blue silicone heater hose). I'd estimate I used about 8ft of 4mm line, about 10ft of 8mm line, and about 10 inches of the 19mm silicone line. I bought about twice as much as I needed to also do this on my SC400.

The oil didn't need to be changed by the maintenance sticker on the windshield, but it's been sitting for a year and I wanted to be absolutely sure it was okay to drive. I used a factory D3 filter and Delo 400 15w-40 for this oil change. I chose Delo 400 15w-40 (its a diesel oil) because the oil has detergents in it and it's cost effective. I also cut it with some Valvoline max life transmission fluid, again for cleaning and for viscosity. Ill change the oil in 500-1000 miles of running it to a standard 5w-30 oil because I don't want to clean the rings too much. I then drained the coolant in the block and the radiator. While I'm writing this I'm filling the cooling system and heating the engine up.

A few things I've taken note of and that will need to be addressed. No speedometer or tachometer readings, yet I still have engine temp and fuel read outs (I haven't really looked into it yet). The bottom of the engine is very oily, Which may have been the leaky valve covers, today I'm thoroughly cleaning the heads and block then running it for awhile to see if there is any other leaks. The up/down adjustment for the power controlled steering column is inop. I've fixed quite a few of these so unless the gear itself is broken it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to fix. Lastly, I noticed toe-in wear on the tires, so after everything is finished I will get an alignment.

That's it for right now, I'll update this post again once I've changed the transmission fluid and fixed the issues listed above. I'm using this thread as to keep anyone who is interested on this project updated but also to keep track of the things I've fixed for myself as well. Anyway, here are some pictures of the process so far...

 

Here's a second update to anybody who's following along. After cleaning the engine with warm water and degreaser I noticed that the PS pump was in fact leaking very slowly from the HP side hose (100% because I didn't replaced the banjo bolt seal). So I fixed that using two copper washers that were snug but fit. I also remembered that I replaced the alternator while I was doing the power steering pump, as it only cost me less than $10 from my closest junk yard (the alternator was a brand new 130 amp unit too, the yard was having a sale that day and I had a credit from a returned part).

Next I decided to do the transmission flush. I used 12 quarts of factory T4 fluid and I also wrote a how to thread on this forum. I have still yet to drive it so performing a transmission flush was a risk on my end. The fluid that came out wasn't clean but it wasn't full of metal or clutch material so I'm not worried about it as of right now.

After the transmission flush I decided to fix the power tilt steering column. The fix is very easy and straight forward as I had already done a few of these before. I found that the gear that reacts to the motors shaft had been worn in one specific spot, so I flipped it and placed a thick washer behind it to keep the gear towards the center. It works great now.

Next, I noticed that the guy who was working on this car previously had decided to strip all of the wiring in the engine bay to check for short circuit or high resistance somewhere to find a misfire? Now that he had done this and also lost all of the pieces that route the wiring through the engine bay, I had to find any inconsistencies and re-wrap all of this wiring with electrical tape. I notices two thing while doing this, the first being every connectors clip was broken... every single one. Maybe it was a vendetta against squeezing and pulling. The second being that the guy didn't just lose the plastic pieces in the engine bay but he broke any of the remaining pieces that were there. Luckily it looks much better now with the black tape.

For assurance that this car is going to run well (when I do finally drive it) I decided to order new capacitors for the ecu. I'm sure that whatever misfire was in this car most likely had to do with leaky/failed capacitors. There's a thread on here that goes through detailing the phenomenon. I also ordered the correct capacitors for my SC too off of digikey.com.

The car is very close to being done. I'm going to replace the capacitors in the ECU, give the car an alignment (hopefully my old shop can let me use their alignment rack), look into the tachometer and speedometer ( they share a ground point in the cluster), check brakes/control arm bushings/ball joints on all four corners, and re-clear the hood/roof and sides of the car. Ill give this thread an update once those things have been done.

 

love the progress! great buy.

just something to note since you are draining and filling the coolant. make sure you fully bleed out all the air in the system which takes much longer than you think or read on here.
it helps to prop up the front end to get all the air to the highest spot in the system which is the fill bolt at the top where the upper rad hose meets the head.

you know you have air in the system by random overheating or lack of a heater until you rev the engine up some.

 

Great advise. I had the car on jack stands while performing the flush, but it still took about an hour to get heat out of the heater core in the car.

I remember my old Audi actually had a specific bleeding port in the upper heater hose out of the firewall as it was the highest point in the cooling system.

I appreciate the support too!

 

Awesome buy for a $100 and great progress so far.. Wished mine was that cheap. These cars aren't too bad to work on, TBH. Just finding used parts at the local salvage yard is about the only catch.

 

Great progress!

 

Great looking car and great thread. Love the detail. Keep 'em coming.

 

A couple of things that I fixed in my off time were the grounding points in the cluster, I just re-tightened the grounds (which actually fixed my tach and my speedo), and I finished cleaning up the wiring. I had to solder a new coolant temp sensor connector and pig tail in as the old wiring literal just fell off when I touched it. After doing this, I started the car and left it running for a good hour or so. I found that one of the cushions that the throttle sits on (I forget the actually name of the item), was rock solid and as the engine warmed up the idle slowly rose any time I revved the engine due to screw that contacts the valve. To fix this I just backed off the screw that pushed against the cushion essentially removing that function completely. Now it purrs at 600 rpm fully warmed up.

After a couple of weeks of getting everything together and making sure the suspension, brakes, and all other functions of the car were safe and in good shape I decided it was time to actually drive it. It's hard to find the time to actually work on the car being as I'm full time school (electrical engineering) and I'm coming up on my finals. Anyway... The only concern I had about the car were the rotors, which had accumulated a large amount of rust while it had been sitting for a year. Rather than remove each rotor and have them resurfaced at a local Napa or Auto Zone for $15 each, I came to the conclusion I can't wait any longer to drive a car that I had't put a single mile on and so much work into (So I just sent it basically). So I took it out on the back roads near my house and to my surprise it drove great. It drives even better than my SC400, which is awesome to drive too. It's a heavy car but can get up and go whenever you want it to. When I got back I checked all the fluids and the rotors, and found it didn't consume any oil or coolant and the rotors looked fresh as a daisy.

A couple of thing I noticed on the roads... It pulls slightly to the right, the power/normal ECT button does not function, and the AC is going to need a recharge. That's it. I'm amazed at this cars reliability even after sitting for a year. Next is the ECU, the clear coat, alignment, and figure out the ECT button, I'll let someone else deal with the AC... Then sell it. I was debating on prices for this car and can't seem to come to a conclusion, but I'm gonna try for $3500 OBO. Here are some attached images of the cars exterior, with some dew on the exterior it looks mint