dmatlock

I own a 08 IS350 which has had 6 recalls on it. Driving back from spring break on a busy freeway my quits running at 65mph and I fight it to a stop in the #2 lane. Car will not start and my gas gauge show a 1/4 of a tank. Luckily a wrecker is seconds behind me and keeps traffic from running us over. After a $176 wrecker bill I learn that both fuel send gauge assembly's in the gas tank went out. Service advisor who has been at Lexus for over 10 years said he had never seen that or heard of it. As the car is only four years old he said that it should not be having that problem. I only have a power train warranty so $700 later out the door I go. Of course I called Lexus Customer service who said they were very sorry etc.. However I was given a $300 credit toward a future breakdown for my inconvenience.
Has anyone else had this problem with their IS350 or IS250? I would think that with the quality/workmanship of a Lexus that this should not be occurring. It seems that 2008 was a bad year for the IS models.

KillaIS250

iTrader: (1)

Looks like you just got unlucky unfortunately. I haven't heard of this problem here on CL yet. There's always a failure rate for any car part no matter what car you drive, sometimes it's just misfortune that the part actually ends up failing even tho the failure rate is low.

Glad to see that Lexus gave you a $300 credit toward future service though.

calvin2376

iTrader: (2)

So was it the fuel sending units that failed? I've never heard of that on the IS. I had that happen on my E55 (one of the main failures I experienced), and each sending unit was $1015 for parts only.

How many miles on the car? I would agree that those parts shouldn't fail on an '08 - particularly since I've never heard of it happened before on this model. Did they give any reasons why they thought this might have happened?

As far as 2008 being a bad year, I don't think there's any evidence of that being the case. All the problems that afflict the 2IS generally affect all or multiple model years. I haven't heard of any problems that were isolated to the 2008. The nav screen failure, cam gear and carbon build-up TSIBs occur with MY 2006-2008 at least.

Kurtz

iTrader: (1)

That's odd, I have a 2008 IS350 and it hasn't had anywhere near that many recalls on it.

Only 1 actual mechanical recall in fact (valve springs)... plus the BS gas pedal one that's entirely unneeded.

What are the other 4 recalls you say you've had? Fuel pressure sensor, which impacted only some 08s is the only other that comes to mind.

FWIW, in 4.5 years of ownership I've had exactly $0.00 in repair costs and the car has never failed to start, drive, and run flawlessly.

Also FWIW-
http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com...Lexus_IS/2008/
IS Reliability - 9.0 (Excellent)
The 2008 Lexus IS reliability score shown is the Predicted Reliability rating provided by J.D. Power and Associates.

It's kind of strange you'd find him saying that in 10 years he's never seen this problem to be indicative of poor reliability... when it's quite the opposite... if he'd said "Oh, yeah, I see this ALL the time...." THAT would suggest reliability is poor.


The fuel pump is also covered under the powertrain warranty... so kinda odd the sender isn't... but it's only an $80 part (or $160 for both of em) and I can't imagine it was 5 hours labor to swap that.

here's a diagram of it-

http://is.sewellparts.com/oem-catalo...S350-2009.html

(08 looks like same part, just the 08 diagram only shows 1 of em)
http://is.sewellparts.com/oem-catalo...S350-2008.html

dmatlock

Not sure on the amount of hours but both fuel send assemblies were out and they could not tell me why. Mechanic had allegedly never changed them out before so that might have been why the extra hours. I use the same advisor on all my visits and he told me the amount of recalls on my car. With no one else having this problem I guess I just have bad luck. But I have owned cars for 26 years and have never had so many visits to a dealership. Again perhaps I just got the bad apple in the bunch. But either way being stranded in the middle of a crazy freeway leaves me with little faith on what will go wrong next.

Kurtz

iTrader: (1)

Well, I think your service advisor was mistaken about the # of recalls, because the 2008 350 hasn't had that many (you can check this on any number of websites- you can even go to Lexus.com and see the work that has ever been done at a lexus dealer on your specific car)

I'd be curious if you called some other random dealership and just asked em how many hours of labor to swap those parts, because they certainly shouldn't charge you for extra hours because the mechanic is learning on the job.... and that seems a crazy high amount for that work.

(then again I still think it's weird it's not covered if the fuel pump is... but if it's just the sending units I suppose you could've just put some gas in the car and not fixed it at all, that would've been free, and just refill every 300 miles and ignore the gas gauge).

If you get a chance, post a copy of the invoice from the repair, that'll show exactly what they did including the cost breakdown for parts and labor.

calvin2376

iTrader: (2)

So how many visits to the dealership have you had? Obviously one for the fuel sending units, but what else? The car definitely hasn't been to the dealership 6 more times for 6 recalls, because as Kurtz said the car simply hasn't had that many recalls. And you said the mechanic told you the number of recalls on your car - does that mean you haven't actually been in for 6, he just told you there had been 6 on that model before?

Like Kurtz said above, you should never be charged based on the expertise of a particular tech. If that tech's never done one before, that doesn't mean they get to charge you more. The labor hours should be based on the standard for that job. Obviously you were in a tough spot given you couldn't exactly drive your car to another dealership, but I'd call some other dealerships in the area and find out how many labor hours they'd charge for the same job. If it's consistently lower, complain to your dealership.

Finally, I did check Lexus' website and it's clear that while the fuel pumps are covered by the powertrain warranty, the fuel sending units are not. So they didn't screw you there. It's very odd Lexus would draw the line between those two closely interrelated parts, but I guess that's the way it is.