myw

update on this gorgeous project?

miket000

Thank you myw.

I've been meaning to post a few updates. It is currently at 204,000 miles. I'll try to post some pictures of my recent work to the car tomorrow. Until then here is a pic from a few months ago. The last 12k miles are likely the hardest this car has seen lol.

miket000

Sorry for being long on the details. If these issues continue I'm hopeful someone more knowledgeable might have an idea on what to attempt next.

A month ago the engine developed an odd barely noticeable vibration while stopped at idle. Later that week, with the engine warmed up, a harsh hesitation between 500-1200 rpm developed. Initially the hesitation was so bad I thought the car might leave us stranded. It felt like the engine was going to die as I accelerated. Best I can describe it is like being in 2nd or 3rd gear while trying to accelerate from a stop in a stick shift car. This hesitation happened repeatedly on our short 10 mile drive home.

The next day I drove around our neighborhood, all was normal. However, I discovered if I shut the car off while it was warmed up then started it up an hour later it would hesitate again. As of a few days ago if the car sits for an hour it will hesitate during start. I don't need to be in drive. The engine starts to 500rpm normally. After 2 seconds the computer attempts to increase rpm to 1200 or so. During that ramp up of the rpms is when the hesitation happens. Being a hybrid the gas engine stops and starts 20 times on a normal 10 mile intown errand. The hesitation is currently only during the first start on a warm engine. If the computer shuts the engine off in under 10 seconds it will hesitate again on the second start. This is essentially where I stand right now.


There have been no miss fires logged within techstream.


I sometimes alternate between regular and premium gas. The harsh hesitation happened with 1/4 tank of gas. I don't recall if it was premium or regular. Assuming it could have been fuel related I topped the tank off with premium from Chevron the day following the hesitations. I'm on my second tank of premium. This tank I also added in 2 bottles of fuel injector cleaner.

So far I've tried
- Premium gas
- Fuel injector cleaner
- transmission fluid and filter change ( transmission starts the car)


- Cleaned Throttle body / maf sensor ( yesterday) This may have fixed the hesitation. It has only been a day but I haven't noticed any issues yet.
- Ordered new oem air filters ( not here yet)
- Oil has 4000 miles on it, not quite due yet.






Nice and clean now. It didn't feel stuck while moving it by hand but it did have some slight buildup on it. I'm pretty sure I cleaned the throttle body a year ago when I purchased the car.










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Striker223

I wouldn't ever move the TB by hand, turn it to "on" and set something on the gas to open it.

That hesitation could be a few things, you have already addressed some of the easy fixes so if it stops then you are fine. If not then you have a chance you are looking at chain stretch and will need to replace the timing system

miket000

Thanks. Unfortunately on the hybrid with the engine running if you push down the gas pedal nothing happens.

Striker223

Ah, well that's annoying. You have TS? Have it set the throttle motor open so you can clean it, my scan tools allows me to do so so I'm sure TS also will have that feature.

swfla

iTrader: (1)

Great job so far. It will take the CPU about 150 miles to learn that you cleaned things. It should run even better than it is now.

Anfanger

If you know how to reproduce hesitation, run a OBD2 scanner in logging mode and monitor oxygen sensors, MAF and throttle body positions sensors. It might give a clue, what is causing it.

miket000

Today we did a lot of driving with some hour long stops. I think cleaning the sensors and throttle body did the trick.

I also topped off the coolant reservoir a few days ago. After doing maintenance to the coolant system how do you top off the coolant? If you replace the radiator are you really supposed to fill the entire system using the coolant reservoir?

Is techstream capable of doing logging mode? I haven't dug that deep into techstream. The closest I've come was screen shots of live data.

Anfanger

I have used the reservoir to top off the coolant after water pump and radiator replacement. Once, the reservoir is full, loosen the plastic hex bleeding screw on the top of the radiator and start the car. Top off the coolant as needed, tighten the screw when you see no bubbles and you observe coolant coming out. It allows to bleed the cooling system. You might want to loosen the screw one or two times more to make sure that there is no air. Do not strip screw threads!

There is usually a record button in Techstream that allows data logging. You might be able to spot issues by looking at live data of the above mentioned sensors.

miket000

I changed the transmission fluid, filter, and pan gasket last week.

The fluid was surprisingly clean. It was red and clear with only a slight amount of debris in suspension. I suspect a previous owner did a drain and fill. Or maybe since there are no clutches in the hybrid cvt the fluid naturally stays clean? The pan magnets had typical amount of sludge for 200k miles. For those of you doing drain and fills this buildup on the magnets never gets removed ( see video).

I attached the procedure I tried to follow. I'm not sure if it matters but I didn't fully support the car on jack stands so I wasn't able to let the tires spin while adjusting the fluid level. I may have exceeded the recommended fluid temp too. Our overnight low is about 90f this time of year. The instructions mention 2 temperatures 86f and 104f. The instructions mention a number of times to verify line pressure is off before checking fluid level. Apparently simply draining the fluid and refilling it causes tranny faults. The day before servicing the transmission I verified I had no faults so I'm sure the faults registered during the tranny service. I cleared the faults, verified line pressure off, then flipped into all gears twice. Fluid temp was 108 when I finished and pulled the overflow plug.

Despite using a tarp I still managed to spill half a quart on the driveway lol. In all I exchanged about 7 quarts.



I drove the rear onto a few 2x6 boards to level the car.



Don't let the tarp fool you. Half of the spilled fluid is under it My creeper got stuck on that darn expansion joint over and over, argh.






This was one swipe from inside the pan ( didn't touch the magnets)



New parts.



Cleaned the magnets.



Ready to install.




Transmission oil temp and line pressure in yellow. Computer fault is only from turning the car off when I was finished.

Striker223

The Lexus E-CVTs are very good in terms of wear, you likely saw an unopened trans. When you service one of these it's best to command a valve body replacement data value reset and relearn.

Anfanger

I just let the transmission pump do the work. Each time I would remove around 1 gallon of fluid, shutdown the engine, fresh fluid, start the engine and go through all gears and repeat again. It took 16 quarts to observe a clean fluid coming out. Then bring the transmission to the required temp and set the level.

Do not get me started on spills of ATF. It seems, it does not matter how careful I am, I end up with ATF disaster on my driveway.

miket000

Funny about the fluid spills. This time my trans pan was stuck on tight. I forced it free caveman style with a screw driver and hammer, it launched about a foot lol.

In my 460 I exchanged the full 16 quarts too. I also let the pump do the work pumping the old fluid out the oil cooler line 4 quarts at a time. I tried to do the same on the 600.

The hybrids require the oil cooler line to be removed. It becomes the fill port for the transmission. Unfortunately, once the residual 1/2 quart of old fluid in the trans cooler pumped out the brand new fluid immediately started coming out. It must be plumbed differently than the 460.

This winter I may exchange the fluid again and hit the correct temp targets. I still have 7 quarts of new fluid.

It would be super helpful if someone actually had the temp range where the overfill plug is supposed to be removed on the 600h. I'm not sure why they don't list it in the pdf I uploaded a few posts above. They only list the obd jumper method in which the computer flashes the lights at the correct temp, whatever that may be.

miket000

She went under the knife again...

A few days ago it over heated a bit. The temp gauge went 2 clicks above normal. I was in park for 30 minutes on asphalt with the ac blasting when it happened. I pulled out of the parking lot and the temp gauge dropped to normal a few seconds after I started moving. This happened once last year, under similar conditions, when it was 118f outside . The real bummer is when this happens the computer sheds loads to reduce heat buildup. The first thing the computer turned off was the ac. Did I mention it was hot outside!

In an effort to improve the cooling efficiency I disassembled the front end a bit. All hoses and lines remained connected.


The radiator had a small graveyard of bugs.



There was a thick pile of body parts along the bottom. I cleaned the large parts out by blasting them with our hose.



I used Nu Brite coil cleaner. Watered it down 4-1. It contains lye. Even watered down the stuff is nasty on skin.



The front of the ac condenser and inverter radiator? had some buildup. That high pressure ac port is 1 of 2. The other high pressure port is near the drivers strut tower.



I used some rubbery yellow things to hold the radiator about 1" away. That 1" gap proved to be just enough to spray out the bugs and apply the nu bright.



A few minutes later the magic happens as the foam pushes the buildup out of the cooling fins.



I had an electric spray wand that was able to squeeze in there to coat the radiators thoroughly.



Bloody mess . I'm sure some of that is old oil. I sprayed the engine down after this picture was taken.



Another view.



This is after 1 cleaning.



I did the entire process twice of applying the coil cleaner, waiting 5 minutes, then used our garden hose to rinse it all off. I also let the car dry between treatments. The coil cleaner works best when it's applied to a dry surface.



The electric spray wand is from costco. It came with their 2 gallon box of spray on weed killer. The cap even screwed right onto the nu bright bottle.



This is how the car repays me! I guess the 114f air temp combined with the few drops of hose water were too much for the windshield.