Is it ok to jumpstart other cars with our GS? I always worry about the risk of frying our electronics when jumpstarting.

 

When you disconnected the battery, your radio and other stuff might have thought it was stolen when there was no power. Try entering your radio code. But, I have changed many batteries in my LS's and never had a problem.

 

I won't jump start anyone's car, i keep a battery booster in the trunk in case someone or myself needs a jump. Only problem is you have to plug it in every few months to make sure its charged. I forgot to charge it for at least 6 months and when my battery died a few months ago it barley started the car.

 

Hello friend .... after reading this, I find that I have a bad feeling in my gut telling me that someone at Pepboys may have possibly crossed-up your battery cables for just a fraction of a second, thus causing some sparks to fly and also maybe causing a diode or a capacitor to get fried as a result someplace downstream in your cars electrical system .... thus the problems you suddenly are having out of nowhere after changing the car's battery. Another possibility, is that when they were changing the battery, their guy may have accidentally laid a screwdriver or a wrench on top of the positive post of the battery, while the other end of his hand tool may have made momentary contact with a metal part someplace close by where the battery is located ... thus some sparks went flying ... and consequently something bad happened elsewhere in your electrical system ..... it only takes a few nano seconds for this to happen .. .. ..

I have to admit I have made this mistake myself in years gone by and simply got lucky and nothing bad happened .... but one time I did blow-out a blower motor resistor with the above mentioned blunder. This is how we learn .... soooooo ... these days, if I do a simple battery change, I put a towel around the work area just in case ... so that I cannot make this mistake again.

One time I took a totally dead battery to Napa, cuz they will charge your dead battery for free ..... well ... simple enough, right? That day they had a brand new employee who did not take the time to check which battery post was positive and which one was negative. He hooked-up the battery charger backwards ... as in, he put the the positive to the negative and the negative to the positive. It was a disaster. Napa made it good for me since it was obviously their mistake. Stuff happens.

I hope you will be able to find a simple fix for your problems and that everything will get sorted quickly .. .. ..

 

I would never jumpstart someones car car with my Lexus. That's just me though.

 

I usually jump start other people's cars with my car because other people have done the same for me when I needed it. Only way I can see it causing damage to your car is if their alternator regulator is bad and causing high voltages to pass through the system, it could happen but pretty rare. It is also why it is recommended to remove the jumper cables right away once the other person's car is started. If you're trying to help someone out and afraid it may cause damage then just hook it up and let it charge their battery for like 10 mins and then unhook before they start the car. I can't see any possible cause of damage in that scenario. Even if you shorted out the cables worse case you damage your own battery but no electronics are going to be damaged from a short across your battery (you're just probably going to cause for your car to shut down due to the voltage drop from the short). Electronics usually aren't damaged due to undervoltage but rather overvoltage or reverse polarity.

 

Before You start replacing stuff , You need to get a diag run on Your car to verify if it has any faults stored or a unit is disabled, or units it cannot connect to
Sometime units gets disabled when throwing a fault and need to be reset/re enabled
if a unit is "dead" a diag will show this
This is a simple and fairly fast thing to do on a lexus/toyota car. Preferably Toyota Techstream tool , but others might also work just fine like Carly or similar
Normally when replacing the battery on the car ,just remove and replace is fine. Some stored customer settings in the head unit will be reset, and then need to be added by user
After You replaced the battery and turn on the ignition , The head unit will use a much longer time to get online than usual
I think this is because instead of being in "stand by" it has to do complete reboot/restart since its lost power.(I do not remember if it also do this if parked for a looong time)
So problem could be that part....I seen it happen a few times and the start order of things make problems for the restart loading.
Not uncommon when replacing a noisy cooling fan in the M/L unit...
I have even seen head units being replaced on warranty because it is "faulty" ,when it actually isn't
If electronic unit in the car breaks during a safe battery replacement , then that unit was just a problem waiting to happen
Worst case You could have some fault the head unit that causes it no not "restart" properly
I do not remember how the 2013 GS does it , how much it uses the hard drive for loading the head unit...

take a look at this thread, it might be relevant
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/is-...n-black-2.html

Also there could be a cause to why the battery went low , and that it was the head unit , just a speculation

/ola

 

When ur jump starting someone, ur engine needs to be running right? I think it's better to carry a battery booster instead.

 

Something I was taught and was drilled into my head when I was an apprentice was to always connect the power terminal first and ground last and when removing disconnect ground first and power last. I have never wanted to put this to the test. I was educated that when the power is connected last the power races through the electronics and can cause damage. And was educated that when power is connected first then the power is already inside the electronics and makes that very last small jump to ground without any surge through the system. Those entertainment electronics are so delicate that if that’s really true you wouldn’t have connect anything backwards to cause damage and could have been bad procedure. This could just be a wives tale just like “when you put a battery on the ground it goes dead”. Like I said I was told that and never wanted to test it cuz it seemed valid enough to connect and disconnect batteries or jumpers in this way. I was also told by a buddy who used to be a tech at Lexus that it’s best to not even try and jump them and that removing the battery and charging it then reinstalling it was the safest thing, another thing that I do now just to be safe. Like I already said these were things I was told and were easy enough to implement and care not to engage in a debate of their validity.

 

And its is safer using intelligent battery booster or similar that protect against mixing up plus and minus.
also the car giving the jumpstart , that car could have an too high voltages due to faults , or spikes or similar , never know
Some of the stories about jump starting a car and it got electrical /electronic issues after , it could also be the reason for the need of a jumpstart and not the jump start breaking things.

 

Yea I feel bad every time someone needs a jump and I couldn't do it (or don't want to rather) cause I don't want to fry my GS extra crispy.

 

Battery booster is probably your best bet. Having the car running should get your voltage up to ~14-14.5 Volts from about 12.6-12.9 due to the alternator charging the system, which will give a bit better of a jump start (the power-carrying capability of a wire of a certain size (measured in gauge) is measured in amps; by increasing voltage, you decrease amps at the same power level, allowing the wire to carry additional power at the same amperage), but is not entirely necessary. Depends on the size of the jumping/jumped battery (look at the CCA (cold cranking amp) ratings on each, if the one being jumped is bigger, probably best to have your engine running.

Also, like others have said already, best practice is to connect power (+) before ground (-) and to disconnect the ground (-) first. I was taught that it made shorting things out less likely (power flows out of the negative and into the positive, contrary to popular belief - ask a welder, this is fundamental to them since reversing the polarity of connections has a huge impact on heat input into the work piece (the side the spark jumps to is much hotter), so they need to understand this concept at a fundamental level). For this reason, connecting the ground first and then accidentally shorting the positive terminal to the chassis will result in a very low resistance power to ground connection being established (big sparks, lots of fun), whereas connecting the power first then accidentally shorting the ground to the chassis will only result in the battery being normally connected (i.e. not much amperage should want to flow through that connection, assuming all electronics are off). This is how it was explained to me at least, could certainly be off a bit, but almost all will agree on the order of the connections in any case.

 

Jump-starting another vehicle can indeed cause problems for either vehicle, in particular the vehicle used to jump-start the one with a dead battery. Once the disabled vehicle is jump-started it could cause an over-voltage condition fed back to the donor vehicle that was used for jump-starting. The donor vehicle's alternator's diodes could be damaged by the back-feeding voltage. Many roadside assistance service companies will use a dedicated portable stand-alone battery for jump-starting instead of using the service truck's under-the-hood battery when they jump start a vehicle with a dead battery.

 

Non eventful update. Pops is gonna take the car to the dealer tomorrow. One of the techs there says she's gonna try some diagnostic tests. We'll see what they say :I To add insult to injury, apparently that Lexus battery that was in there was still under warranty too X(. But that was never conveyed to us and I didn't even think of checking cause I figured that was magically the original Lexus battery.

 

I think that is a smart move rather than buying used equipment off eBay in hopes it fixes the problem. Lexus has the tools to diagnose the problem. Hopefully they can get it back working again with minimal costs.

Well hell, that's not good! If you had only known (or checked) that you had a Lexus battery that was still under warranty you could have taken it to your Lexus dealership and they would have replaced the battery at either no-charge or with a prorated warranty discount. And, more important to you right now - Lexus would not have bricked your Infotainment system! Damn shame!