Ogaje

Hello. Over the past month I have been chasing issues down on my Ls400 after having it in storage for a few months. Upon taking it out to drive for the first time it seemed to be misfiring. The gauge cluster had also stopped working. The engine would shake and shudder in low rpms. I ended up finding condensation built up on the spark plug terminal. I replaced plugs and wires. This seemed to help the issue.

Upon driving it further from this point I noticed not everything had been resolved. At the time, the car had a code for a right bank o2 so I replaced this. This also seemed to help the idle slightly. The car still seemed to be misfiring and now there was a rattle in the exhaust. I removed the front cats to find them clogged. I replaced both these units with a cheap replacement. After running the car on the lift I noticed the cats were still glowing. I took off the y pipe to find the center cat clogged as well. I knocked out the cat from inside the y pipe to see if this would solve the issue.

This leads me to where I am now. The car idles and runs smooth, it does not seem to misfire like it did prior but has no power/ acceleration and smells gassy. The car is obviously running very rich and the driver side cat still glows red hot. The gauge cluster being unresponsive makes me think this might be an ecu issue. The replacement cats may be trash/ clogged again from overheating. From my research it seems like these or another fuel issue could be my problem. Any thoughts/ help is greatly appreciated.

paulo57509

What year LS and milage?

How was the car running before it sat for those "few" months? How fresh is the fuel that's in the tank? Was some kind of fuel stabilizer added to the fuel in the tank? I just ask because what feels like a few months can actually be a lot longer.

Red hot catalytic converters is a typical sign of a rich mixture which you suspect. When this condition is present the CEL should illuminate with DTC's set. I would get hold of a scan tool and see if there are any trouble codes; hopefully the tool can communicate with the ECU. If there's no communication, you may have a bad ECU (see the ECU capacitor sticky).

Ogaje

Car is a 1991 with 170k. Car ran perfectly when it was parked. Car was started weekly to idle but issue was never noticed. It was only parked for January and part of February. Filled up in December. Car is OBD1 so I haven't been able to get much information out of the car.

LeX2K

Leaky fuel injector or bad ECU are prime suspects. Try this:
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/ls-...ml#post8148780

Let the car sit for a bit key ON engine off and see if you get a strong smell of fuel. Would be better to have a fuel pressure gauge hooked up but not 100% necessary.

deanshark

This will help you get any codes.
http://www.lexls.com/tutorials/intro/codereading.html

If you can't pull any codes (even the "all good" code) then...........
The ECU is always a possibility and the cause of many problems with these cars.
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/ls-...capacitor.html