Stereorob

Note the dead grass spot in the backround

Pictures lie. Trust me

Field fresh

Stereorob

After clean up

Replaced rim

Looks great far away

After clean

spuds

I have the max tow range AAA,worth its costs.

Stereorob

after spending alot of time with it this weekend, the transmission is slipping real real bad, and im finding other issues with it as i go. starting to think this one may be out of my league guys. may end up parting it but really really dont want to

Sin1UZFE

Man that is sexy, for $500 too.

But if ya parting out I need the bumper, right head light and right fender. I know itll cost a fortune to ship. Im in CA

Edit: does the tilt motor work?

Stereorob

still in limbo on what i want to do with it. honestly havent had time to touch it plus im starting to have new issues with my 95 and my 00 needs brakes so im mothballing it for now.

biggest thing that sketches me about it is the transmission as thats about as big and nasty of a repair as they get... just not sure yet

Stereorob

OKAY, so ive had the car a little while now, driven it enough to know its quirks and gremlins, and man does it have em..

however, it also has some interesting features that i havent seen on one of these before, and apparently is a grey market car. it has speed sensing auto locks, which is something ive never seen on an ls400 before, and isnt even a customization parameter option on cars here. plus DRLs that can be turned off, and the center stack is all in Celsius which is odd. really this car is more question marks and mysteries then anything else, which i think is actually kinda neat. problem is that its got some serious problems.

1. transmission is slipping terribly. will not go into reverse unless i really stand on the gas and it grabs. transmission is pretty much failing all the way around. when cold it acts erraticly and slips like hell but once warm it still shifts perfectly -dont know if its an easy fix but doubt it.

2. brake light switch needs replaced

3. sunroof is jammed shut

4. car doesnt shake when coming to a stop, but the ABS system pulsates when braking sometimes for no reason

5. weird electrical glitches. interior lights and cluster flicker almost like wanting to short out but dont sometimes. comes and goes

6. tilt away motor is just missing

7. no AC or heat. compressor is shot and heater core was bypassed.

8. its pissing just about every fluid it has. slow leaks but its enough to notice

9. only one key and not a master

10. no title. $275 to fix that

11. trac/vsc is toast.

12. idles horrendusly low and sometimes stalls. even on a cold start it only idles at like 200 rpm. one moving its fine but idle is awful

13. Tbelt/water pump is terminal. needs changed yesterday

14. car has no rust but it isnt in very good condition. paint is crap and it has its fair share of road rash. interior isnt horrible but isnt amazing either.

this car is pretty much ready for the glue factory. it was severley abused for years and years and is totally clapped out. sure its a rare color combo and has some interesting options, but is it worth trying to save? i can live without heat and AC. i hate electric heat and never use the ac really in any of my cars. -im the drive with the windows down all the time guy.

its biggest coffin nail is the transmission and the really low idle. i can live with the other bugs, as they are irrelivent and dont really bother me,

what should i do guys? i just went thru the tranny swap nightmare with my 95. it was very expensive and had to have someone else do it. really dont want to re-live that nightmare again.

save it or part out? thoughts?

Sin1UZFE

Looks so nice tho

If ya wanna part it out I need some stuff haha

Fit1too

Fixing everything would cost a lot, even if you did it yourself. The transmission is another story. If you have the time and space, you could part it out and/or use it for parts if you have another 98-00 vehicle. I had great luck selling on eBay and buyers love car parts. My wife and I made extra money selling on their site when we were in college. Over a 10 year period we sold over 17K worth of stuff. The car parts always moved quickly. Of course we priced it to move and always provided free shipping (buyers like that too). It was a great supplemental income. Back to the point, I would not fool with trying to fix it. You can get your money back and then some by parting it out.

Stereorob

thing is, the more I dig into this car the more questions its raising than answers!! yes its an absolute mess under the hood. half a million miles, tons of electrical gremlins, leaks just about everything, transmission slipping BAD but it is still drivable. -this car was severely neglected for almost a decade then dumped in a field for several years. honestly there is probably NO OTHER CAR that you could get away with abusing so badly and it still start right up and take you to the end of the world and back, and it is a true testament of just how insanely well these cars are made so yeah ill say it again, way to go lexus!!, heres the thing though. this car has also revealed some serious mysteries and apparently, it may not belong on this side of the pond. ive talked with a lot of people besides myself that know a lot about these old LSs but nothing professional. however, all signs point to it being a GRAY MARKET Ls400??!! possibly a euro spec or gulf spec car, but still not sure. we were thinking it may be Canadian cause it has some Canadian-style options but it cant be. heres why.



1. speed-sensing auto locks. -we never got this option. we got lock / unlock when shifting to P & D, but not speed sensing. however, Canada did.



2. DRLs that can be turned off -custom option in Canada but never here. this isn't even custom. its actually ON THE HEADLIGHT STALK!



3. power folding mirrors. again, we never got this on the Ls400. don't think Canada did either. I really wish I had the master key and fob so I could see this feature actually worked, as well as the auto-window UP from the key fob that we never got.



4. I traced the car back via TIS, LD, carfax, autocheck, I mean every single site that would reveal where its point of origin was. if you know how and where to look, you can pull a build sheet on these cars. it will tell you the date it was built, what plant it came from, what port it came in from, what its first date of service it was, where it was sold, how many miles, etc.



5. everything is in Celsius not Fahrenheit on the center stack display, and it has a RHD ashtray, however the cluster is in MPH not KPH



so this is where it gets REALLY weird..



the car has apparently been here in Florida its whole life. was originally sold at a dealership September 1999. it even still has the little sicker in the door jam from there when it was new. however, it was built February 1999. that's a 5 month gap. one would assume it sat on the lot for a little while but that cant add up, as it was sold as a NEW CAR with almost 1500 miles on it, with NO ORIGINAL DATE OF FIRST SERVICE. so im thinking okay, possible dealer demo car or loaner? no, that wouldn't make sense either as it would still have to be tagged and insured, maybe a corporate demo? maybe a corporate test\learning car from the facility that somehow managed to slip into normal service? some of this would show up in DMV records. the VIN is weird too. it is not listed as UCF20 in the body code, but UCF21, as an air suspension car, yet it has regular suspension nor any evidence of it ever having air suspension. I checked all the vin plates and they all match, so its not something stolen or cobbled together out of different cars. yes it was built in Tahara as they all were, yet there is no listed port of entry anywhere, or when it arrived in the states. so with no port of entry listed, and 1500 original miles unaccounted for, where did this car come from?! possibly someone bought it overseas in the military and had it shipped here? some think it might be Euro, some think Gulf, some say Canada, but its LHD so maybe from south Africa?? oh, the radio goes down to overseas frequencies that we don't have here.



I heard that there was a few cars that somehow slipped through the cracks from other places. for example, someone came here about a year ago with a 1998 Russian spec LS, to get parts from that was also kind of a freak car. could this be one of those?



sorry for the long winded post but this is kind of driving me crazy, and I love a great mystery. anyone here from corporate, that was with corporate in those days that might maybe shed some light on my very mysterious and oddball 1999 Ls400? ive had almost a dozen of these over the years but this is by far the first like this ive ever seen. I already have 3 other Ls400s in my driveway, 2 of which im trying to bring back so I don't need a 3rd project car, but thing is just too unique and cool NOT to own.

timmy0tool

iTrader: (7)

I'm leaning towards it being a Canada car with a swapped cluster and other parts. DRLs are standard there way back in the day and could be wired differently for US.
Radio could be from a different car altogether, and the switch stalk among other things like the RHD ashtray.

the car coming from our northern neighbors is more feasible than coming from the gulf countries, at least to me.

Stereorob

update you guys on this one..

over the weekend i replaced the brake lights so i can drive it without getting pulled over lol. weather has been warm and it drives okay in warmer temperatures. tranny still has to heat up to work but once its there, its there. the car is driving great. its a blast to drive and pulls like hell when stomped on. has no problem doing crazy burnouts and breaks the rear end loose when stomped on. shifts through all 5 gears no problem at all which leads me to believe the tranny isnt totally fried yet, cause as hard as ive driven it for the last few days, if it was gunna go, thats when it would have happened. its a pretty car in pics but not so much in real life. its real beat, has alot of problems, and will cost way more to fix up then its worth so why bother. probably going to use it as my drift/hoon car for a bit and see how it tolerates it. i will say this tho. the longer and harder i drive it, the better and better its feeling. may not be a parts car after all.

one thing about this one. it is noticeably faster then both my 95 and 00. dont know if its because its not US spec and doesn't have all the bull**** choking it up the cars have here, or if its something else.

the heater core is bypassed and the AC is shot. im thinking about removing those components since they are dead anyways, hoping a little bit of weight reduction will happen.

what all can i remove from this car to make it lighter, that wont make it look gutted? is it worth it? how much weight can it shed and will it make it quicker??

black_LS

Just chiming in. This seems to be a US spec car as evidenced by the UCF20L-AEAGKA model code.

If it were Canadian, your VIN sticker would have a maple leaf on it and show UCF20L-AEAGKK. You would also have headlight washers, heated seats, and a Nakamichi sound system (they all came spec'd this way).