Paul1307

I bought this 2008 LS 460 a few months back, about 120,000 miles on it, but with an excellent service-by-Lexus record. Shortly thereafter, I had the maps updated. Unfortunately, the most recent maps are 2016, which was disappointing. About a month later, the NAV system suddenly stopped working, and it fell back to "inertial navigation" which showed me driving down a local river. I took it back to the dealer, and they started talking about troubleshooting (expensive), and so on, "the antenna has a few nicks in it, and that could be it," etc. After going back and forth they said they could "do a hard reset," which, if I understand it correctly, is disconnecting the negative terminal on the battery, leaving it disconnected for 30 minutes, reconnecting it, and then "checking things out." As far as I know, there is no "reset" for the NAV system like older computers had, and no way to force it to "reboot." Sheepishly, the mechanic found me in the waiting room and said "it all seems to be working fine now. Fine, until about a month later, the NAV quit while I was driving down the road, showed me in the middle of an open field, and so on. Curiously, some short time earlier I went over a bump in the road and the radio turned off. Hmm.
Back to the dealer I go, only this time they had to "run diagnostics first ($170)" to see if they could figure out the problem, did another "hard reset," only this time the NAV didn't come back. "What do you want us to do?" they asked. I said "I suspect a loose connector given the other strange things that have happened recently, which I outlined: a) one time, the volume-up button on the steering wheel caused the volume to go down; b) while driving down the road, the "Hold" light came on - coming to a stop for a light, the car was indeed in hold mode; thinking maybe (somehow) I pressed the button, I turned it off; within minutes, the hold light came back on. After arriving at my destination, and turning the car off, when I returned to it, the "Hold" light never came back on again; c) the temperature indicators in the center console didn't light up at night; likewise, the lights behind the NAV and other buttons immediately to either side of the NAV screen didn't light up; the dask and other lights, however did. They'd want another $190 to "pull the dash and NAV unit out," so I suggested they start by checking the cables that go to the UCU or ECM (sorry; my terminology here may be faulty). The mechanic comes back and says "When I took the cover off, this piece of wire fell out," handing me a three-inch piece of wire stripped at each end, color-coded as only an auto manufacturer would. But the NAV still wasn't working.
Using my trusty, recently purchased online service manual(s) I ran diagnostics on the NAV unit, the result being that it was seeing no satellites, explaining why it wasn't able to navigate. I disconnected the battery, leaving it disconnected overnight, reconnected it the next day, and still no NAV. P.S. I have a nice Garmin left over from my previous GS 400 (98) which now serves as primary navigation, something I hoped to be getting away from in a newer vehicle, but alas <sigh> it's still more reliable than the currently-dead dash NAV system, which, btw, couldn't even find my street with five-year old houses on it.
Using my online maintenance manual made it look like getting to the back of the NAV/Radio/Console to check connections and connectors (Satellite radio works fine, btw) would be a piece of cake, remove a couple of decorative side panels, pull a couple of bolts, and the whole unit slips right out. Only, apparently, the manual is for "another LS 460 2008" because once I pulled the decorative panels off it became obvious that the only way the radio was going to "slip right out" was if I first removed the entire center console, and at that point I decided that the humility of "not doing it" was far superior to having to take all the parts to the dealer for reassembly if I couldn't manage. So here I am, looking for some *expert advice* from the club.
Any advice would be appreciated as would any suggestions. I'd be willing to tackle the console and radio/NAV module again, but would definitely need some more info than the online manual provided. No, I don't have the dealer's fancy "alternative antenna" though I'm pretty sure that if I bought an indoor satellite radio antenna from Best Buy it would be a suitable substitute, able to find at least one satellite if not the whole group of them, and while I have technet sitting on my laptop I don't have the "special module" necessary for downloading new maps, either. I just can't see putting $Hundreds or even $thousands into this NAV system, as much as I like it displaying where I am, even if it can't find where I want to go ("Address not found" being the usual response to trying to look places up - wouldn't you think "Address not found but we can put you in the neighborhood no problem" would be far more useful <sigh>?) would be worth it. On the other hand, sitting there like a lump showing me that I'm in the middle of a national forest someplace in Colorado while I'm actually just outside of Phoenix makes the car look pretty dumb, and gives my friends but one more reason to kid me about owning a "luxury care like a Lexus when even the damned NAV system doesn't work." Thanks everyone for the help!