Amskeptic

My original Lexus, pictured in the top two photographs had the bells and whistles.
This new (older) Lexus does NOT have the bells and whistles.
I let my paranoia blossom when I am on the road. I drive 25,000 miles around the country every summer in an old Volkswagen bus (that is my career going on fifteen years this spring) , and any contact with any other vehicle spells certain death, so you bet I am alert to the distractions of others:

2KHarrier

Nice find. The LS looks fantastic. That car will last long time!

Amskeptic

....update! Now at 65,400 miles. This poor car has been so trashed and thrashed I can't even believe it. Here's a rest stop on Interstate 85 on my way to Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and back to Pensacola Florida:



Sixty eight miles from the Canada border on I-87 N, visiting my parents:




I saw CV grease getting thrown onto the rear suspension arms, so I wrestled off the metal clamps and snugged up these plastic ties:


(left)



(right)



Lost not a bit of any fluids in this 2,808 mile banzai run:



Not one hundred miles from home, a dump truck doing 80 threw a sharp quarry rock into the windshield after a nice little skate up that immaculate hood:




The glass shop said, "$1,800.00" for a Lexus/Toyota windshield." I said, "Really? ha ha haaa."
I repaired it with a sun-cured resin primarily to prevent propagation of any cracks.
Called the Lexus dealer in Montgomery AL.
"Got any wheel arch mouldings, you know, the black plastic extrusions with five holes in them?"




Lexus/Toyota parts guy said, "that is $144.00 for each wheel arch moulding."
I said, "quit punishing US for your lousy corporate management. That is robbery, and you know it."
"I know, that's pretty rough, isn't it?. We can only get three. $432.00 plus tax."
"Really? ha ha haaa, NO."

Instead, I went to a Pick A Part in Mobile AL. Picked up:
a) four wheel arch mouldings
b) a filthy-but-washable trunk mat
c) a power steering ECU
d) new floor mat hooks for the '92 Lexus in Atlanta, and very very carefully removed "Lexus Anti-Theft Deterrent" stickers from the junkyard 1991 Lexus
e) miscellaneous parts pictured below plus a Lexus "Premium" receiver/cassette, two tweeters, four 4" Pioneer speakers with intact suspensions.
How much for all the parts? $93.25 .. .. .. take THAT Lexus.


a)


b) shampoo'd here


bb) installed here


bbb) little purple stain ain't coming out:



c)


d)



dd) couldn't find the Lexus flashlight anywhere in that wrecking yard. . . :


e)






Photographed is the horn I took OFF the car. I stuck on a Camry "bleep-bleep" horn alongside the original because the sound is so much much more beautifully dissonant sour now.

Then, I painted the subwoofer grill with some old Mercedes brown leather dye from 2001. How do you like THAT?







Took out my stereo. There isn't even any dust in the vents or under the console:






Tore apart the new Lexus/Pioneer receiver/cassette unit ($14.95 from Pick A Part) as a test mule to see how to replace the belt:




The belt had turned into goooooey goop. What on Earth could make a rubber belt turn into black sealant? Did someone spray a solvent in there?










Will update when I get my new belt and somehow put this mess back together.
​​​​​​​Colin

wnyjazz

Great update.

IRomprey

Wow that 57k original miles Lexy looks gorgeous. Quite jealous of you

Amskeptic

It has 65,000 miles now, and I am doing another Pensacola FL run to Rochester NY tomorrow, That'll be another 2,500 miles by the time I get back on November 26th.

And if you could hear this hideous mewling emanating from the cassette deck, you sure as heck wouldn't be jealous of the stereo. The stupid motor speed screw would either be chipmunk fast or slurring slow. Right now, it was slightly chipmunk at assembly and mysteriously slowed as I installed the ashtray.

Well, I tried.
Colin.

Legender

Nice work on keeping that car in such nice condition. Safe travels on your trip and remember to avoid dump/gravel trucks at all times

2KHarrier

Those cassette drive belts are made with some sort of compound to assist in their resiliency and they tend to emulsify after a few decades. I've rebuilt a few Pioneer and Teac cassette decks for home systems and those belts are exactly as you described... a gooey mess....
I usually clean up the drive Capstans with WD40 and then some alcohol and they are ready to accept another belt.

Thanks for the great update on a great car!

Amskeptic

Stayed up until 1:00AM, attempting to install a belt (one of 35 in a bag) purchased on EBay for $10.01 in the mule test-surgery stereo. Nobody told me this stuff was coming straight from China. The belts are barely square, plenty of irregularities . . .
After reassembly, I plugged it in and stuck in my No Doubt Tragic Kingdom cassette cued to The Climb. Lots of wow and flutter.




Went straight to the car's unit and disassembled it with much more facility. Replaced its intact-but-distorted belt. Stuck it in and played my 1980's compendium tape, David Bowie, The Eurythmics, Prince, **** Chung, Tears For Fears, etc. Lots of flutter and slow playback.




Decided to play No Doubt Tragic Kingdom on the laptop and synchronize the No Doubt Tragic Kingdom tape to the laptop:







Sounded pretty cool sometimes, like I was in a vast arena with sound delay. Alas, the damn motor speed was skating all over the place, and the adjustment screw was not only very sensitive, but prone to shifting slightly well after I had released the screwdriver from it. I played No Doubt throughout the reassembly to help the belt break in.

Went to the PullAPart and scored a beeyootiful combination meter with a perfect "glass" cover and hopefully a good odometer motor, the surround with all the little lights + rheostat, and the cup holder assembly for my brother Lexus (we need the little door/coffee cup floor), all for $45.00. Sadly, this car is being butchered by maniacs just like the '94 sitting two rows over. Geeze, people just break stuff apart when they can't figure out where the screws are.

Now in Georgia, and I played cassettes over the past 300 miles. Flutter is actually diminishing, but the tape speed has gotten a little too frisky all by itself. I love these cars and their modestly proportioned but spacious in aural ambience sound systems.
Elegant simplicity:

Legender

Do you think an IPOD fed into a tape adapter would give you the same flutter/speed issues? After thinking about it... I'm thinking it probably would. Nice looking car, still.

Amskeptic

No, it would not. An iPod feeding into the tape head would dispense with the unit's own motor and capstans, etc. We would be listening to the iPod's music speed control at time of recording.

I did listen to a flash drive running through a tape adapter on the '92, and the quality was perfectly acceptable while driving. But, I gots me a pretty comprehensive cassette collection, so I gots to fix the cassette drive.

It drives me mad that the Nakamichi on my old '92 plays cassettes perfectly still. Shouldn't have given that car away!
Colin

RXGS

iTrader: (2)

Love this thread, the car is immaculate. I drive the i90 every other weekend from Albany to Buffalo and the 87 at least once a month from Albany to New York. Hopefully I get lucky enough to see this thing driving past me.

Amskeptic

Took out my original combination meter. The speedometer needle has "fallen off" the stop again and is dangling downwards, unresponsive.

Took the Pull-A-Part combination meter to the car and removed the smoked glass cover to "calibrate" the tachometer and speedometer needles. In the installed position, the tachometer needle needs to be just barely over the "0" hash mark. This one was below the "0" by a half an inch. The speedometer needle needs to have the "0" hash fully visible when at the installed position. Apparently, there is a lot of slop room in the needle positions that you yes you will have to figure out if you like perfection. A fully warm no-load engine idle is looking a lot like 700 rpm, dipping down to 650 in drive. The speedometer needle calibration needs merely to tick off a mile every sixty seconds at 60 mph. Most of the mile markers here on Interstate 10 in Pensacola FL are casual at best, so I have a ways to go before I know precisely which way and how far I want to move the speedometer needle when parked. Currently, the two interact as 2,500 rpm yields 70 mph. I think 2,500 rpm is supposed to yield closer to 73 or something

1400 rpm (locked torque converter) . . . 40 mph
1600 rpm (locked torque converter) . . . 50 mph
2030 rpm (locked torque converter) . . . 60 mph
2400 rpm (locked torque converter) . . . 70 mph
2780 rpm (locked torque converter) . . . 80 mph

Alas, the Pull-A-Part combination meter has a ticking sound that corresponds exactly with vehicle speed. Pulled the combination meter out.

Removed the power supply screws to access the odometer motor plug and the odometer illumination plug:




Pulled the odometer assembly out of the combination meter:




My myopic camera tried to show you that the driven gear here is cracked lengthwise:




Popped the circlip off the shaft and negotiated the shaft, two bushings, one thrust washer, out of the odometer clockworks. Washed the shaft and cracked gear with Dawn and hot water:




Super-glued the cracked gear right over the splines on the shaft and held it tightly together through an entire segment of NPR discussing Roy Moore. Reassembled the whole damn mess including a crazed search for the little itty bitty e-clip that launched between the driver's seat and the transmission tunnel under the seatbelt latch. That was fun, but a clean carpet makes it easier to finally feel/find the e-clip.

Drove a victory lap to the gas station. Odometer advanced exactly one mile and stopped.

Superglue does NOT bond to greasy polystyrene plastic gears that have been steeping in grease for 26 years.
SO WHERE DO I GET A NEW GEAR??
Colin

edit: gear not available . . .

Amskeptic

All online purveyors of anything odometer-related have come up empty. Took apart the "mule" combination meter to see how the odometer failed again. Well . . . the gear glue job is actually holding up, so its failure is incumbent upon something else.

Ripped the fresh 65,000 mile odometer apart and lubricated it with silicone grease at the worm drive. Note that nice blue condom on the odometer illumination bulb:




This picture is ostensibly to have photo-documentation of the worm gear when one of you decides to go on a CNC tear <(hint)




Disassembly is simple and obvious, with the understanding that you must be deliberate and "delicate" when dealing with the soft plastic here in its 26th year of deterioration:




The whole reason I am even dealing with this is because my speedometer needle has "fallen off the stop" one time too many, just sickeningly dips to vertical south. I had driven it down the road THIS MORNING with the "smoked plastic" cover off, and watched the needle drop down at 30 mph, stuck it back ON at the stop light, and it FELL OFF within a block, and that was all she wrote, back to the garage and here we are. I have read many posts about these finicky things, and q-tipping the stops of excessive lubricant and bashing the top of the dashboard to free the needles (don't do that, you have no idea how delicate these parts are), and my problem was simply that the needle was no longer grabbing on to the motor spindle. You will see a dead-ahead reflection at the center point in the photograph, and a reflection that is slightly offset to your right. The dead-ahead reflection is the motor shaft. The offset reflection just above, is the black plastic "hub" that fits over the shaft. I pulled the needle assembly up ever so gently about a millimeter:




Then I offered my small screwdriver (that looks like a shovel in these confines) with a load of Gorilla Glue and delicately contacted the underside of the "hub" and rotated the needle about 180* to smear the glue crap on the hub and spindle. Removed screwdriver carefully, lowered the needle down 1/2mm and located its pre-ordained park position (a sliver of the gauge plate hash mark visible under the needle when viewing dead-on):




Pretend you are performing brain surgery on your beloved little child, that'll help you settle down and focus. Then I used a pushpin to delicately lay a little speck 'o Gorilla Glue between the black conductive backing and the fluorescent tube and squeezed the conductive coating onto the tube and held it:




Well, I glued the kids brain to my fat finger after all, good-bye piano lessons! and had to bisect finger from tube/backing with a razor blade without moving more than let's say .003256mm.

Cleaned everything, de-dusted, de-linted, de-dusted, de-linted de-dusted, de-linted cover glass, gauge face, odometer lens, ad infinitum, stuck the mess in the car, warned it that I don't need any of this crap, and went for a calibration test drive past the roadside speed limit nanny near the church. When it said "36/35/36/35/36/35" my speedometer said "35".
I said, "good enough".

Then I replaced the original Toyota rear brake pads and the replacement front brake pads, not that they needed replacement, but it was just such a relief to bash around with wrenches not worrying about delicate stupid fussy little fluorescent indicator needles.

Do you all use all the hardware? Are you sure?




I spy:
2 coppery spreader wires that engage in holes in the pads themselves
2 outer brake pad shims in a sporty polished stainless steel
2 inner brake pad shims in a discrete black matte finish
2 what-are-they springy clamps that grab the bottoms of the pads and appear to serve no purpose up front but a definite purpose on the rear pads. On the rear, they act like shock absorbers so the pads don't clonk in their grooves when you apply the brakes.


You can see these little things on the bottom of the assembled front pads. I thought maybe they were designed to screech against the disks when the pads get worn down, but where what how?




Don't forget to syringe some brake fluid out of the reservoir if you topped it off between pad changes.
Colin

Stereorob

man this thread is awesome!

taking really long drives in a 26 year old car. doubt you could get away with that in ANY OTHER VEHICLE that old and it not have a meltdown. even though its immaculate i STILL wouldnt trust it just because of how old it is.

this is a BEAUTIFUL original unmolested example. so few of these left like this. and i love that you are restoring this car to original, even down to the cassette deck. that is awesome!!!! bravo!!!