PCW

milosk, I have an 01 LS430 and had the timing belt, water pump and serpentine belt all changed at 76730 miles in May of 2015. At that time the LS was 14 yrs old and I wanted piece of mind! Because, as I'm sure you know, if that TB breaks your engine is shot. I looked at the belt that was replaced and it looked in great shape. But you can't see that until it's removed. I still have the LS and it now has 86500 on it and it still rides and drives great!

Gronemus

You will not have any issues with the idler pulleys on the LS. Here is a picture of mine after disassembling them to see what kind of wear there was after running 125K miles. There was virtually none. These things could easily go 500K miles in my opinion. It seems like such a waste to have replaced them in retrospect...

milosk

Thanks guys for all the help and suggestions.

UPDATE: So I drove 3 hours to see this car that looked so good in the pics and it was terrible! Supposedly driven by the seller's 88 year old father-in-law but it had grime spots all over the seats and doors and lots of stuff didn't work etc.. Oh and I'd asked on the phone if he had service records and he said yes, but when I got there he didn't - just carfax records. He most likely bought it at auction. Anyway, needless to say I didn't buy it. I want a car that has been looked after and babied.(I notice in his ad, he's dropped the price twice now to $1500 less than his original ask.)

Instead just today I bought a 2001 LS430 with 118,000 miles that was in really really nice condition for just $600 more than that guy was currently asking (and less than his original ask).. I'm v happy with it. I'll pick it up Wed after the owner's finished detailing it.

So on this one, the timing belt got changed 5 years ago at 70,000 miles, so I've got 40,000 miles or 4 years left on this one. And I'm buying it from Sacramento! I would get it done there if it needed it. I'm actually in Lake County so Sac is only about an hour further from me than SR and better yet, there are no mountains to drive over! So great, thanks for the recommendation to your mechanic FatherTo1, I'm sure I can use him for all my LS 430 needs! [EDIT: Funny, I just checked and Folsom Japanese Auto Repair is just 3 miles from where I'm buying the car! I'd bet the owner got his work done there.]

Johnhav430

congrats! I once went to look at one at a Lexus dealer and same thing happened, car was scraped on the right side, overspray on left, couldn't start, and they had emailed me a repair order showing it had 4 new dunlop SPs, which it did not! Was really surprised, even asked the sales guy, this car has scrapes and has been hit on both sides, how come nothing on carfax? he told me carfax isn't necessarily accurate, esp. with cars this age.....I was ready to write a personal check...

Hope you have years of carefree motoring....I have 2 so far!

Johnhav430

That's a fair price--and the tasks are neatly organized. Very old school (even dealerships misspell things and one wonders if they really performed the work--on my wife's car they repaired a seat on the wrong side, under warranty--but paperwork indicated correct side--damage indicated otherwise).

FatherTo1

Congrats on your new LS, milosk! Loc, the owner of Folsom Japanese Auto Repair, is a stand-up person and honest mechanic if you ever need anything done in the future. It was smart for him to locate his shop centrally between Gold River and Folsom, two somewhat-affluent areas of Sacramento. The silver '06 LS 430 on his Yelp page is ours and I take all our cars to Loc. Our past Toyota/Lexus vehicles have been very reliable and don't see Loc that often, other than for wear-and-tear items, and so the least I can do is direct more potential business his way because of his integrity, honesty, and experience. He has added more bays and I hope his shop stays busy and successful for many, many years to come for the benefit of the Toyota/Lexus community. I know of another person that drives from the Bay Area to see Loc. Wishing you many trouble-free miles ahead, milosk!

Sorry you drove three hours (one-way?) to be disappointed by that first LS. It is a waste and shame to see LSes that have not been maintained well. My Dad now has our 06 LS and he keeps it in the garage, with a car cover, when it isn't driven...same habit he did with his first Lexus, a '95 ES 300 all those years ago. Dad absolutely babies that LS and keeps it immaculate.

bradland

That's very cool to see those dis assembled. I had somewhat different results though and I think forum members need to see it. I bought my 430 in April of '17 with 160,000 miles. The service history was pretty complete but the only hint of a timing belt change is on CarFax which reads "90k mile service" with no details whatsoever. The car is in such excellent condition, most service performed by a dealer, so I ASSUMED the previous owner ( 1 owner car) had done the due diligence. As there was no sticker under the hood and no other way to be sure I decided to go ahead and do what I thought was a second TB service on the car at 170k. I did the work a couple months ago in the middle of August. Much to my surprise I found the original belt and bearings! The belt looked fine structurally but it did look old, the bearings however were a different story. They weren't making any noise per se but as you can see from the pics the rubber seals were starting to deteriorate. Once I got them off the car it was evident they spun a little rough. Nothing too serious considering the age and mileage but I was very happy I didn't wait until 180k to do the work. So while the bearings (*****) and races, as Gronemus has shown, are very durable the rubber seals are a bit more vulnerable. Japanese bearings, NTN Koyo NSK etc., are considered the best in the world but once the rubber seals become compromised they won't have much life left.

I've installed the Aisin TB kit a few times on other cars and never had any problems but always felt the water pump was questionable so this time I used a Gates kit and a OE Toyota water pump. Very happy with the OE pump and the Gates kit came with Koyo bearings. I also used an NTN tensioner from Rockauto.

So for anyone driving on an old timing belt this hopefully provides a realistic perspective of what you might find when removing the timing covers. The engineers know the life expectancy of these parts and the 90k mile 9 year service intervals are, in my estimation, about 50% in order to protect the end user. Just my 1.5 cents YMMV...

911LE

My idler pulley was noisy/rough at 110k miles when I did the timing belt service. The tensioner pulley was fine.

milosk

Yes, 3 hours one way - the whole trip took 7-8 hours w a stop for food etc.! My new one's silver too - here's a pic:

leica

I've been under the impression the interval for timing belt change was every 70k, where did 90k come from? If I could get that confirmed it would actually be great because it would give me another year before i'd have to have it done.

FatherTo1

The Lexus Driver's site lists the following maintenance interval and is recommended to change the timing belt at 90K (or 9 years). Ninety-thousand miles is the number I've always had in my mind for Hondas and Toyotas.

FatherTo1

Nice find, milosk! Looks like you also scored a Sport model (by the badge on the fender).

leica

Well that's interesting. The service record for my car shows it was done at 69k miles, wonder why they did it then. At least i know now I have another year, which is good because i need tires too and both together would have took a nice chunk out of my wallet.

caverman

Might have been changed due to time not miles.

rkw77080

Depend on the model year of your LS430, the maintenance schedules are different...