ukrkoz

Anyone has it? Just stick your finger in, or wrap it in paper towel... Don't even remember why i did it - it's quite sooty at 33400 miles.

In a modern fuel injected engine though, black soot in the tailpipe could indicate a problem with injectors or fuel system metering maybe. Having the injectors checked initially would be a good plan.

How is yours? I use ONLY 92 petrol and oil was changed several thousand miles back. Car drives on FWY for 75% of the 33 mile trip, so everything is warmed up as it should.

toyoman29

Most Lexus and Toyotas run rich and all of mine are black...

ukrkoz

And that is good how?

Torii

my old is250awd ran to 120k with no issues and the black sooted tailpipes. dont think its a concern.

ukrkoz

I do not recall a sooted tailpipe unless I go really back in time in my cars... even my RAM with 170 000 miles has it nice and clean. Wife's RX same, I checked - clean. Just water condensate a little. My mowers exhaust is sooted, sure, but that's mowers...

ross7777

allwheels

Every car will be like that. Especially on a turbo engine where adding enough fuel to prevent a meltdown is a constant thing. There is no such thing as clean combustion on a gas engine. Only varying degrees of it.

Johnhav430

My 335i has always been like that, but not our other cars.

Johnhav430

Seriously, I wonder if this is what allowed the muffler shops of yesteryear to do so well (today not so much because many systems are semi stainless from the factory and would likely be 15+ yrs. before a replacement is needed). I said to my friend, I couldn't stand it when your dad would get a <the king muffler franchise> exhaust system on his Volvos. The pipes were crimped as opposed to mandrel bent, and the tailpipes cames straight back, as opposed to curving to the side like factory ones. Why not just pay the dealer to put the right stuff on? The price was the same?

It was the "lifetime" guarantee. But you are back at <the king muffler franchise> every 18 mos. replacing the parts, and only the muffler is free, not the labor, pipes, or resonator. Back then, the original likely lasted 6 or 7 years (New England).

jaybarbara

I'm going to show my age here, but soot in a tailpipe was always bad news with the cars of yesteryear. I owned a show 67 Mustang Fastback, among many others, and when i bought it the tailpipes were black as coal. It meant only one thing-- the valve stem seals were shot! Sure enough, I changed the seals, and you could eat off the tailpipes for the years I owned the car!
AFAIK, there are still valves, stems and seals on today's engines, so I would have to surmise the seals are not sealing properly. Maybe it's because the turbocharger is pumping up so much pressure that the seals just can't do their job.
You can probably run the car for many, many miles with bad seals, but It sure as hell is NOT right! A car engine should burn clean, PERIOD!! If it doesn't there's a problem.
Maybe Lexus would like to explain it.

Torii

https://www.caranddriver.com/feature...ect-injection/

ukrkoz

I join your age, as I worked on cars since 1990, starting with Russian Moskvitch. Soot in tailpipe is NOT good news or to be ignored. Matter of fact, old timers consider exhaust one of the critical signs of well - or ill - working engine. There should be none. If soot got all the way through to the tailpipe, you just imagine, how MUCH of it stayed in cat. Yes, in cat, what is short ofr catalytic converter, for those who are not inclined to know much about cars. Maybe that explains, why on well warmed engine, going uphill, my cat stinks like hell. What oldtimers will again qualify as telltale sign of cat actually going bad eventually.
But that's us, old timers. What do we know. MODERN cars are free of all those ailments, though, as rightfully noted, they still have valves, timing, pistons, bearings, cats etc, what pretty much does not make them any different from oldtimer cars.
"my car always had it" simply means one thing - your car has always been incompletely burning fuel. No one simply ever pointed this out as a problem. As who cares about sticking finger into tailpipe nowadays? I do. Or, check how much oil cap is dancing on its neck with engine running.

jaybarbara

I read with interest the article in Car and Driver. What a load of crap, written by paid hacks!!! It was full of fancy, schmancy words! These guys rocked and rolled for three paragraphs trying to explain why cars have soot, and finally come back to what we knew before we read a word----THERE"S SOMETHING WRONG with the car! PERIOD!!
Just re-read the second paragraph. The car is running rich! They admit it. It's not burning the fuel correctly! So, because they invent words like "Pool Fire, we are supposed to look at them with adoration and say "OOHHHH, That's why! Everything is all right with the world"!
All the excuses and all the explanations don't alter the fact that the gas isn't being burnt correctly. The fact that the basic fault is with the auto engineers that have designed the engines, the fact remains----the car is not burning the gas properly!
Why should I excuse poor engineering in a car that's over $40 THOUSAND dollars? And why should I pay any attention to people who are making a living touting how good the cars are, and yet have to try to weasel around words to try to make an "unfortunate problem"( in their words) something that is somehow acceptable when it's a basic design error that the buyers of the car have to put up with?
Well, Car and Driver isn't exactly a publication to put stock in!!

Torii

https://www.torquenews.com/1083/lexu...-you-need-know this isnt anything new...like I said earlier its happened on my previous lexus. just complain about it, lexus usually takes care of customers.

ukrkoz

No surprise, dealer told me it's normal. "that turbo is pushing so much air through"...