i have a 2004 gs300 with about 220k.its always treated me well and i think its a solid car.anyway about a week ago some young kid pumping my gas at the gas station managed to fill my withcar with 87 instead of 93 after i told him to use 93 and a whole bunch of lights came on my dash. (check engine, VCS ON VSC OFF OIL LIGHT) i was pissed and went into the mechanic who was right there to ask him what he thought. he said it wasn't really a big deal and to put octane booster in it and all the lights would go off after it burned trough the fuel. i did this and it did nothing. and so tonight when backing out of a friends driveway to go home the car starts pretty roughly which was odd bc it wasn't running rough even with all the lights on for the past week. so now i go to back out of the driveway and my reverse is working but as soon as i went to put it into gear it stalled out immediately, the car died but it started making this loud winding sound that almost sounded like the starter was cranking constantly. this noise would not stop until i was able to get the neg battery terminal disconnected which was a few minutes later. after reconnecting the battery we started the car again and reverse worked again but died the second it went into neutral. needless to say its on the side of his street.

im puzzled. did my tranny crap out? am i having some kind of torque converter lock up? is this possibly related to the bad gas and all the lights that are on?

 

Did you pull the codes to see what was coming up?

 

no not yet. it happened at a friends house and i didnt have any tools on me i had to borrow his just to undo the battery

 

Maybe it was bad gas too, i doubt 87 octane would do all that alone. Maybe it could also be a coincidence with another issue ... good luck!

 

maybe starter is sticking and staying in contact with the flywheel. check throttle plate to see if any carb build up.

 

Rebuild or replace your starter...you should be good to go after that.
You may have damaged the ring gear or pinion gear on the starter when putting it in reverse.

Good luck...