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The K seal lasted 7 months and 6000 miles. It's currently at 212k miles. The slight stumble is back with a hot engine. We now have a spare car so if this one dies on the operating table it's not a huge deal.
I replaced our LS460 starter a month ago. The exhaust manifold nuts were surprisingly easy to access. This got me thinking perhaps the exhaust manifold nuts on the 600 might be doable without a lift after all.
If someone has a 460 / 600 manual for head gasket replacement that would be helpful.
The K seal lasted 7 months and 6000 miles. It's currently at 212k miles. The slight stumble is back with a hot engine. We now have a spare car so if this one dies on the operating table it's not a huge deal.
I replaced our LS460 starter a month ago. The exhaust manifold nuts were surprisingly easy to access. This got me thinking perhaps the exhaust manifold nuts on the 600 might be doable without a lift after all.
If someone has a 460 / 600 manual for head gasket replacement that would be helpful.
Thank you both. Thanks to a number of folks I now have all the documentation I should need. I'm debating on if and when to tackle this. Removing the timing cover and exhaust manifold nuts look to be the hardest steps. There are a few youtube video's but of course the engine is out of the car.
It's tackleable without taking engine out. Very tedious and time consuming, but rewarding to no end if it fixes the problem. Timing cover work is not for squeamish, lots of parts needs to be replaced just because (o-rings etcetcetc), smart to replace all 4 tensioners and measure chains for stretching... I think I used latest updated head gaskets (-***21 and -***11 instead of *20 *10) when swapping my heads. Care needs to be taken when applying RTV sealer - and where.
Boykie aside from the form in place sealant is there anything preventing the head from coming off if I leave the timing cover on? I had the cams and sprockets off while doing the valve stem seals so I'm sure I can remove those and disconnect the chains. Like in this picture from 6 months ago.
Man, what a read!
I spent the last 2 hours going through this thread. I just bought a clean title 2008 LS460 about 3 days ago and this post is kind of making me have second thoughts about the purchase
Please update this thread as it's super interesting!
I don't know if this would be of great help but I learned how to change the valve stem seals on my BMW 4.8i E70 X5 by using M539 Restoration videos on youtube. If you need any help, make sure to check his video(s) as he goes into great depth to explain everything from timing to the replacement of the stem seals and his easy way of putting back the keepers. He uses long needle nose pliers if I recall properly. I followed everything in his videos to the T and everything went super smoothly.
REALLLLLLY hoping that my LS460 doesn't give me any issues as it only has 102k miles and this is my first Lexus.
Good luck with this project!
I typed this a few months ago but got too busy to finish... There isn't ( wasn't) much to update.
I've only been driving the gold 600h every couple weeks or so to keep the hybrid battery healthy. I'm waiting for cooler weather before deciding what to do with it.
I recently purchased this clean title silver LS600h ( purchased at end of July). I'm enjoying the silver exterior and gray interior . It has 168k miles. Despite always being serviced at the dealer it has many of the same issues I overcame with the gold car. For example, it definitely needs engine mounts replaced and new side mirror retract motors. Luckily I have a guide to follow now lol. The silver 600h is my current daily driver. I suspected before purchasing it the hybrid battery was failing. Lexus diagnosed it a few times in 2022 with a bad pack.
I'm still getting over the stress of purchasing the car. I purchased it sight unseen 2000 miles away. I just received it last week despite purchasing it 7 weeks ago. I purchased it from a used car dealer, transaction was smooth. The private individual I hired off uship to deliver the car was unreliable. He failed to pickup the car before his promised date and failed to deliver before our agreed upon date. It took him nearly a month to deliver the car.
I broke the radiator 5 minutes after taking delivery on my driveway.... Not off to a good start. I opened the hood to take a look around. I had set a few tools ( flashlight, wrench, ect) on top of the plastic cover over the radiator. I went inside for a minute. When I came back outside the hood was closed. The hood struts were only strong enough to hold the hood open for a few minutes. The hood wasn't damaged but the weak nipple on the radiator cracked. My first project for this car was replacing the radiator in 115 degree heat. I installed a new updated radiator and hose.
For the past few months I've been swapping parts between the 2 cars. I swapped hybrid batteries and rear air struts. I plan on swapping the fronts struts and starting on the engine mount replacement next week 10-23. I also plan on swapping the headlights.
On a side note the gold car now has a VGRS steering issue too lol. I don't plan on fixing anything else on the gold car.
EDIT: I was able to clear the vgrs code. Apparently you need to do more than simply clear the dtc. Simply clearing the codes within the main screen of techstream will clear the vgrs lights on the dash for a period of time but in my case the code never fully cleared it was still listed as present within techstream. There is a utility within techstream that must be used to fully clear codes. Within techstream use vgrs- utility - sensor check . Using the utility the vgrs system fully reset and all was normal, no codes or lights.
Dealer picture. Clearly mismatched tires.
It eventually arrived.
I put both my 600 spare tires on the car to drive it the first 1000 miles. It currently has all 4 chrome wheels on with new Michelin primacy tour a/s tires. I love the primacy tires the ride is silent.
Kind of... The gold one will still be a complete running car when I'm finished. I'm simply taking a few of the expensive parts I installed and swapping with parts on the silver car. Things like the engine mounts are too time consuming to swap. The engine mounts I installed will stay in the gold car. I purchased another set of new engine mounts for the silver car.
The shipper attempted to transports some items in my trunk. He jammed so much in the there it wouldn't open. Luckily I figured out within Techstream there is an option to release the trunk latch. I ended up throwing all this out, nothing of value unfortunately.
My first drive in the car I drove for 15 minutes to pass emissions. I didn't realize at the time the hood had cracked the radiator. On the way home the engine temp gauge went 2 clicks above normal. My stomach sunk as I thought this car possibly had the same issue as the gold one. Once I got home I was relieved to see the radiator was broken. The small amount of dried fluid seems to indicate it probably wasn't leaking before I took delivery of the car.
I blame myself / hood for busting this. However, it does kind of appear to have been glued before.
Radiator change back in August.
New vs old radiator. I don't recall which new radiator this was. I attempted to install one from autozone. It didn't fit. Instead I purchased one directly from Lexus. The lexus one turned out to be cheaper by $60 or so, go figure.
Oil filter housing o rings had been leaking a long time. I replaced them while doing the radiator.
Some pictures of the hybrid battery swap. I drove the silver car 400 miles with the weak hybrid battery. Initially the pack was so weak if you didn't shift from reverse to drive very quickly there would be a hybrid battery warning. The warning message would come on briefly while the shifter was in nuetral when shifting from R to D. After 400 miles I did get a dtc to replace the hybrid battery. Instead of simply swapping packs from one car to another I attempted to revive the pack a bit. I found a source in china for new modules ~$200 each. My plan was to recondition the modules and replace 1 or 2 if they were bad. It turns out too many modules were bad.
After reconditioning the 20 modules by deep discharging / charging it was obvious 10 of them were in poor shape. I think I cycled each module 4 times. There are a total of 20 battery modules. 5 modules were what I consider usable ( over 3500mah). 5 were below 3000mah. The other 10 modules were in the 7000mah range.
Discharging the weak modules down to 6v at a slow 100mah overnight seemed to be the most helpful at reviving individual modules.
Initially the pack was so weak if you didn't shift from reverse to drive very quickly there would be a hybrid battery warning. The warning message would come on briefly while the shifter was in nuetral when shifting from R to D.
The revived pack is now in the gold car. It's obviously not like new but there are no hybrid warning messages when shifting.
I slid the packs on cardboard to remove and install them. IMO removing the rear seats is the most difficult job to access the hybrid pack. These things are heavy!
Do you see what I see? This is the silver car.
The hybrid pack was last replaced in 2015 or so. I'm guessing the rear ac hadn't functioned correctly since 2015. The air damper actuator is disconnected. The rear ac is used to cool the hybrid pack. I wonder if this shortened the life of each pack in this car. In any case I popped the actuator back in place. The rear air vents now function correctly.
The weak modules got a 4th discharge down to 6v at 100mah.
These are the approximate charge capacities indicated by the cheap chargers. The modules that were good I didn't bother to revive.
Great post. I do believe the inoperable vent was a direct cause of premature battery failure. So many articles about hybrid battery failure due to poor ventilation/cooling. There should also be a filter element that should be checked.
06-16-23, 12:17 AM
. It has 168k miles. Despite always being serviced at the dealer it has many of the same issues I overcame with the gold car. For example, it definitely needs engine mounts replaced and new side mirror retract motors. Luckily I have a guide to follow now lol. The silver 600h is my current daily driver. I suspected before purchasing it the hybrid battery was failing. Lexus diagnosed it a few times in 2022 with a bad pack.
