GS - 2nd Gen (1998-2005) Discussion about the second generation GS300, GS400 and GS430 (1998 - 2005)

MPG problems....

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Old 10-02-01, 04:41 PM
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mdw131
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Red face MPG problems....

Alright on pure highway driving i can get like 22-24 depending on if i push the petal down or not. I.E. If i stay at 75-80 i get like 24 but if i go like 85-90 it drops to 22-23. So on average ill get like 365-375 miles per tank on pure highway.

The weird thing is on town driving i get like 225 miles per tank or an average of like 12 miles or so per gallon. Thats like a fricken suv or something....What could be the cause of this. Now i know the car hasnt been treated too well becuase i bought the lease out from my dad when it had like 23K miles on it. He never did any maintance to the car. I forced him into letting me take it to the dealer for a 10,000 mile service. They said the oil baked into the engine and they had to high pressure it out. This happened again at 20,000 miles but only the oil and filter were changed because it was at a local oil place. At like 24,000 mile i took the car in for the 25,000 mile maintance and they did it.

Anyway what could it be???The lexus ads say it should get like 18 miles per gallon
Old 10-02-01, 07:05 PM
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bitkahuna
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How much stop and go do you do in town?

If you're STOPPED a lot of time (lights, traffic, etc.), of course your mpg will be even worse.

If you KNEW the car was abused as bad as you say, (by your father no less!) why did you buy it?

Your example though is THE reason I will never buy a used car. That abused car could have been sold as certified pre-owned by any Lexus dealer.
Old 10-02-01, 07:14 PM
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mdw131
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Yeah i am doing a lot of stop and go driving...Like i go around the college campus and stop a lot here and there.

I dont know, my dad has this thing with doing maintance on cars that arent his. He doesnt see the point in dropping money down on a car that he doesnt own. For instance we once had an explorer, we drove it 36000 miles without doing anything to it. No oil change, no rotation of tires, NOTHING. What did the dealer say????Nothing. Now if the dealer provides the maintance for free, as Jaguar does on his XK8, he will drop it off. Well actually he will have someone else do it because he refuses to do that or get his own gas. He is "too busy" to do it...

Lexus pre-owned cars are pretty good. My mom bought a used 94 LS400 in 96 and it was a pretty good condition car. Nothing broke or anything. The only problem we had was that we found a used joint in the back ash tray....
Old 10-02-01, 07:51 PM
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Originally posted by mdw131

I dont know, my dad has this thing with doing maintance on cars that arent his. He doesnt see the point in dropping money down on a car that he doesnt own. For instance we once had an explorer, we drove it 36000 miles without doing anything to it. No oil change, no rotation of tires, NOTHING. What did the dealer say????Nothing. Now if the dealer provides the maintance for free, as Jaguar does on his XK8, he will drop it off. Well actually he will have someone else do it because he refuses to do that or get his own gas. He is "too busy" to do it...
Hope your dad will never have to buy a used car........ what goes around, comes around.

Once he leases the vehicle he OWNs the vehicle. He's responsible to keep it running right and maintained correctly. Just some common sense to show care to everyone.

Not doing service on a car is like not doing the required maintainance around the house. You don't change the A/C filter, don't take out the trash, don't sweep the floor, etc. etc.

Just hope ur car doesn't die while driving or doesn't cause any harm. It's very dangerous to drive a badly-maintained car. Toyota/Lexus engines are great but not THAT durable. :eek:
Old 10-02-01, 08:07 PM
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clivej
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Hi guys'
Do you have NAV in the car,If you do it will tell you exactly what your mpg is.any where from 10 - 16 mpg round- town is normal.shocked me the first time i discovered this, but this is what it is!.
Old 10-02-01, 08:10 PM
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I don't know how you guys separate freeway consumption and street consumption..

I just get 1 reading. I usually have between 18~19mpg, about 35% street and 65% freeway.
Old 10-02-01, 08:25 PM
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mdw131
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Talking

Actually my dad has bought used cars before....2 out of 3 time he, or really my sister and I, got screwed.

For my sister he once bought her a 6? SuperBeetle from my mom's cousin. The car was pretty trashed. It would shoot fire out of its tail pipes sometimes and that wasnt planned....
He could have fixed the car up nicely for like a total of 4 grand. The car would have been perfect. Instead he had to do it slowly and it cost him like 8000 and it never came out well. One time my sister was about to cross a 6 lane(3 each way) main road. Right as she stopped at the light, her tire fell off and rolled right across the street. Her starter kept burning out so eventually they had to put a starter button in the car. My dad bought the car for like 2000 put like the 8000 into it and sold it for like 4-5000....

He bought a 1984 Bronco from a friend of his for me. He bought it for like 2000 put a 1000 into it and was only able to sell it for 1500. Before the friend owned it, the car was pretty nice because the former owner use to work for my dad. Well when I got the car it was pretty shot. The tranny needed to be serviced, the car needed some rod so the axle could be realigned, the back tailgate window was permanetly stuck down, the ignition was messed up as u could start the car without a key, the car would stall if you turned the steering wheel too far, their were constant smells of gas and fumes in the interior, etc. The only thing really fixed was the the trans and alignment. I had to live through the rest of that **** for like 6 months before my grandma decided to sell her 94 taurus and i got that....


Luckily my sister and i both got full paid scholarships to college so he treated us to cars. My sister got a used 99 RX300, it use to be my dads, which now got returned and she has a 2001 Silversport RX. I got the used 1999 Gs300..... A nice ste up for both of us....
Old 10-02-01, 08:52 PM
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mdw131
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I seperate the two because normally i drive around town....But when i came to college i noticed the pure highway mileage. Or when i went to visit some friends at another college i noticed my tank went from full to 1/4 of tank.....Thats how i have calculated it....
Old 10-02-01, 10:25 PM
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gsexploits
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I have a 430 with NAV and the interesting thing is that I average between 15-20 MPG. The key thing that I notice is the Average speed reading on the trip information screen of the NAV. This is the telltale sign to support poor gas mileage. Whenever I get 15, I am averaging about 37 MPH on that tank of gas. Whenever it is higher, then the MPH average is higher. I use this as a baseline to help me know if my milesage is suffering for some other reason. If the MPH does jibe with the MPG, then I know something else is going on.

The reality is, no matter how much you TRY to drive this thing in a tame fashion, I have yet to go a full tank of gas where I haven't decided to stomp it "because I can"!!!
Old 10-03-01, 03:55 AM
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mooretorque
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Mdw131, what you have is a damaged engine. Your valvetrain is likely worn badly and I'd be willing to bet that all 6 cylinders will be down on compression. BTW, your emissions are also through the roof so if you are in a state that requires periodic testing, sooner or later you're going to get either a new engine or a new car.

The bad news is that since this is due to inadequate maintainence, Lexus will almost certainly not replace the engine under warranty, nor should they. The (possible) good news is that when that happens, the individual responsible (Dad) may feel that he should buy you a new car.

It would have been interesting to hear what Lexus would have said when your Dad returned the car. Since the leasee is responsible for damages, it's possible they might have stuck him for a replacement motor. (You may want to use this line of reasoning with him when YOU have to cough up ~ $7k for a new motor.)

Good luck........
Old 10-03-01, 04:51 AM
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///MDex
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Default Re: MPG problems....

Originally posted by mdw131
So on average ill get like 365-375 miles per tank on pure highway.
Just for comparison, I get 400 with mixed city(40) and hwy(60) driving....

Good luck with whatever you decide to do
Old 10-03-01, 05:27 AM
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TMitchell
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Default Re: MPG problems....

The weird thing is on town driving i get like 225 miles per tank or an average of like 12 miles or so per gallon. Thats like a fricken suv or something....What could be the cause of this. Now i know the car hasnt been treated too well becuase i bought the lease out from my dad when it had like 23K miles on it. He never did any maintance to the car. I forced him into letting me take it to the dealer for a 10,000 mile service. They said the oil baked into the engine and they had to high pressure it out. This happened again at 20,000 miles but only the oil and filter were changed because it was at a local oil place. At like 24,000 mile i took the car in for the 25,000 mile maintance and they did it.


Did your dad put some type of additive in the oil?
I never heard of oil baking in the engine at 10,000 miles. My old 540i didn't need a oil change but every 10,000 miles and that was per the car computer, that tells you when to change oil. Most car fanatics change their oil too often. The only way to check mileage is highway driving at a constant speed, even than it is going to vary due to altitude, temperature, wind speed etc. I could probably drive your car in what I consider city driving in Kansas and get a lot better mileage. If you happen to drive in Manhatten and it takes an hour to go 10 miles do you really expect to get 18 mpg?
Old 10-03-01, 07:25 AM
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mdw131
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gsexploits
I agree. I should try to keep it at 75-80 but i cant!!!! It is so fun driving it fast and you cant tell how fast you are going either. Just two weeks ago i was on the highway going 85 so i left some room between the me and the car in front of me. This ES300 kept trying to pass me on the right and i assume try to nudge himself into the hole. I kept an eye on him with my rear view mirror and everytime i saw the bastard move right and start speeding up i would just punch it to 95-100 and after a minute running parallel to me the guy would drop back. After doing this four times, i stopped and moved over to let him pass.... It was funny though


mooretorque
Its okay, the lease is up in a year....Ill just pick up a new GS. The next owner will get screwed. My state eliminated emissions for some reason so no problem there. When i took it into lexus for service they didnt say anything about my engine or anything....

Dexter

How fast are you going on the highway? What about in city. I told i do a lot of stop and go driving and a lot of 2-3 mile trips around. Start the car, drive 5 minutes, shut it offf, then do it again 30 minute later

TMitchell

If you never heard of it then i guess lexus service guys lie. My favorite story was my sister's Rx300 engine was so messed up and it took lexus 6 months to fix. It would rev up by itself in traffic and misshift and do random ****. They kept replacing this carbon something another filter. Which never worked. It got so bad we were in the process of filling out Lemon Law papers because the car was 2 years old. They even supposedly brought the head Lexus tech in the country in and he couldnt figure it out. Eventually someone figured out it was a cold tube of something that needed to be fixed. I dont know the specifics because the details are secondhand from my sister who knows jack about cars.

im driving in Miami and Florida, whose altitude is next to nothing. The highest point in Florida is 330 ft. I would think that driving at sea level is better then at higher altitude because you can get better fuel to air ratio here....The temperature is like 80-85 when i drove up and around. Now its down to 70-75. Wind speed i have no clue but around town its little to none....
Old 10-03-01, 08:04 AM
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///MDex
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Originally posted by mdw131
gsexploits
Dexter

How fast are you going on the highway? What about in city. I told i do a lot of stop and go driving and a lot of 2-3 mile trips around. Start the car, drive 5 minutes, shut it offf, then do it again 30 minute later

Commuting (30min): 70-80
Longer trips (3hr) : 80-90

For your trips / driving charateristics though, I'd recommend the more severe service interval items - they're listed in your Owner's Manual - more frequest oil changes, more 'inspections' etc.

Later
Old 10-03-01, 03:07 PM
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Originally posted by mdw131
[BMy favorite story was my sister's Rx300 engine was so messed up and it took lexus 6 months to fix. It would rev up by itself in traffic and misshift and do random ****. They kept replacing this carbon something another filter. Which never worked. It got so bad we were in the process of filling out Lemon Law papers because the car was 2 years old. They even supposedly brought the head Lexus tech in the country in and he couldnt figure it out. Eventually someone figured out it was a cold tube of something that needed to be fixed. I dont know the specifics because the details are secondhand from my sister who knows jack about cars.[/B]
Er, it was your Dad's before your sister got it. End of story.


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