Hey guys,
New to the forum but I just bought a 2010 IS F and brought it in to the dealer to give it a once over. They ended up doing the ELF recall on it as well as the radiator fan screws. And they did find coolant leaking on mine as well. They said it will be about $855 dollars since they are already in the area for doing the ELF recall fix. I am going to try and talk to the manager at the dealer first and see what he can do. If that doesn't work I will call lexus corporate. Wish I did a little more digging and found this out before purchasing. Mine has 73,000 on it. I just want to be sure that when they fix it its fixing the root of the problem. Don't want this to happen again in another 50,000 miles. They said they would give me a 1 year warranty on the fix. I'm tempted to have them open it back up before my year is up and take another look or at least see if they will scope it at least.

 

That sounds like a pretty good deal to me

 

...appointment has been set to have my F looked over for this infamous leak.

 

That was my out of pocket expense with the $500 credit from Lexus corporate. I would say that's a good deal if they offered that price since it will already by opened up.

 

Great question. Odds are Lexus isn't using this sealant even though the FSM says it's required. They will use the black stuff because it's 20% of the cost. Why Threebond developed it is a mystery, why dealerships don't stock it is simple, it's expensive and it doesn't sell. If you do some poking around the web you'll see Toyota techs saying they never use it unless it's a factory warranty job and corporate is picking up the tab. So, odds are, you could use something else and it will work. The only real question is, will it work for a long time which goes back to the question about why did Threebond develop this formulation in the first place. It's tacky for 3 minutes, so you need to work fast with it. Maybe it sets up faster than the black stuff so when they put it on at the factory they can fill with coolant sooner than they could with the black stuff. Just guessing here, I really have no clue, but it would be interesting to find out why it was developed.

 

Wait they made this a recall item now after all that work I did a few years ago. Spent like 2k to do it myself because of the broken injectors. was so angry....

I'm guessing you guys saw this?

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/is-...-slightly.html

 

There's no recall from what i have read. Is it stated somewhere that there is a recall?

 

Well talked to the Service Manager today and he is going to batt for me with lexus corporate. And just got a call back from the dealer and they are going to cover the cost of fixing the issue. Which would have cost me about $855. So the more of us that complain about the issue the more it will come to there attention. They said they are going to be using a toyota sealant like a sipage sealant or something like that. The tech felt pretty confident about it. He said its a much better sealant than what was used from the factory.

 

Has anyone's coolant level gone beneath the low line? Mine has been at the low level for a few months but it hasn't gone beneath it. My car is an '08 and I had the water pump done about 8-9 months ago......

 

im waiting till after the holiday, i bought my car at carmax with a third party warranty. Longo lexus honors my warranty but with deductible, ill might try to call the corporate to cover that deductible if its possible...

 

Did they make this change for production or only service, and if so when? I have one of the last ~100 ISFs off the assembly line and am wondering if I am at risk. If I am at risk I would like to ensure that I catch it while still under powertrain warranty (still have 55k miles and ~3.5 years to go). Do the high temps of track days exasperate the failure mode into appearing quicker? If so just one more excuse to get out to the track.

 

I can't find anything to support any change in sealant at any time the 2UR-GSE has been in production. This particular sealant goes back quite a while before the 2IS, and seemed to coincide with the advent of SLLC. If track use impacted the service life of this sealant, I would have had this problem a long time ago. I have nearly 140k on mine now, and did not have any indication of a problem when Lexus did the ELF recall on mine.

AFA "at risk" - there is no evidence anyone can claim providing insight into which units are more at risk than any others. Lexus would be the most likely source of accurate information and they're not going to say a word publicly about the frequency of this failure. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence here on CL, but data samples like a web forum are often very poor resources for making decisions about what may or may not be a long term issue with this platform.

 

So here is a new one... I sent my car down to the dealer today to have this fixed. They called me and told me they can not touch the vehicle because it was "highly modified".. The car had a N20 kit installed, that had been removed all but 1 wire coming off the throttle body. So because of 1 wire, they wouldn't work on the car because it isn't stock.... Keep in mind, my car is an 08 with 94k on it.. Not like its a warranty claim at all..

 

Maybe try another dealer? Are there signs of the nitrous kit besides the wire?

 

I had this happen to a 99 civic si that was supercharged, Car was put back to stock but we never removed the supercharger sticker and honda didn't want to work on the car cause it WAS "highly modified" lol