mwbuck

Hi all,

I have a 2000 RX with 35,000 miles on it. Until today, I have not had one problem with the car. It drives like a dream and I treat it like gold. While I was driving to work today, about 3 minutes after pulling out of the driveway I heard something in the engine. It sounded like an object fell completely through the enigine bay. At first I though maybe it was a branch or something in the road but when I looked in the rearview there was nothing. As soon as I brought my eyes back on the road I noticed the check engine light came on. The car seemed to be functioning normally so I was not that worried. Then, 2 minutes later when I got on the highway, I noticed the car would not shift out of 3rd gear. Driving at 55mph the tach reads 4000 rpm (which is about higher then I've ever pushed it). I pulled the car over on the highway and turned it off, checked out the engine bay and didnt notice anything. I turned the car back on and the problem remained. Shifting is normal 1st through 3rd gear but it just will not shift out of 3rd. Anyone have any ideas as to what the problem could be??? I already have an appointment at the dealership for Thursday for an oil change but I'm not sure if I should take it in today and see if they can take a look at it. I drive 60 miles a day on the highway and I don't want to make the problem worse. What do you guys think I should do???

JRB

I would call the dealer immediately, advise them of the problem and have them set aside some extra time for you on Thursday, assuming they can't get you in before then. Hopefully they will not have to replace the entire transmission and hopefully you did not do any further damage while driving with the engine light on. I personally would have pulled over and had the vehicle towed into the dealer right away, at Lexus' expense, and have gotten a loaner.

mwbuck

Yeah I'm gonna bring it to the dealer. I drove the car into the city after this happened which is a total of 15 miles. I'm driving it to the dealer at lunch today which will be another 15 miles. The car is under warranty until July '04 so hopefully they'll be able to take the car right away and I hope they won't hassle me about wanting a loaner on such short notice.

ederny

mw,

Good move to have it looked after asap. The trouble code in the computer will tell where to start. I'm thinking it is something simpler than the tranny, but one never knows.

Do let us know what they find!

thanks

mwbuck

Well, here's the deal. The dealer called me this morning and said that apparently, a wireharness connected to the transmission had been chewed apart by an animal. He said most likely it was a squirrel looking for a warm place to spend the night. I am very intruiged by this explanation as it seems quite extrordinary that this problem is the result of a squirrel. Either way, I asked the guy to make sure the technician saves the chewed up harness so I can take a look at it. Labor is $99.50/hr for 2.5 hours so I'm looking at a $250 bill. Hopefully when I pick it up later today the car will resume working as it did before.

JRB

Might be a bit more than $250 including the cost of wire harness part, unless they can replace it in less than 2 1/2 hours. But I guess I would be "relieved" that it wasn't a complete transmission replacement. On the other hand, a new transmission would have been covered under warranty, correct?

I also wonder if damage from animals might be covered under your auto insurance comprehensive coverage? Your deductible would probably exceed the cost of the repair as it stands right now, but if the initial "chewing" were to lead to a more serious breakdown later on, you might be able to link the two and recover that way. If that were to happen, Lexus might deny the warranty claim if they were to say that it was originally caused by animals and therefore was not a defect.

Food for thought...

mwbuck

Well I went to pick the car. $248 for the labor. What happened was the wires leading to the wire harness were chewed up. So rather than replacing the entire harness, they just cut out the chewed part and spliced in a new wire. The car is working like before. I tried to get this repair covered under warranty, but since there was actual damage, they refused.

On a side note, they washed the car real good.