KenRusso

My 2001 RX300 had the Trac Off and VSC dash board lights go on last week. I tried clicking the Trac Off switch On and Off but it did nothing. Made an appointment to bring my vehicle in for repair.

This morning, after driving for a half hour and shutting off the engine, when I went to re-start the engine, there was a series of musical chimes coming from the dash board. I looked at the instrument display, and the Trac Off and VSC lights were now off. I clicked the Trac Off switch several times and it worked fine.

Any suggestions on what happened over the past week?

TIA

Lexmex

Probably just a temporary condition, I got that once or twice with an ABS light (other than the crazy emissions test procedure that I once mentioned to the forum), and then the thing just went off later, kind of like with some CELs.

KenRusso

Thanks for the reply. The vehicle is in for an oil change. The independent garage is checking the computer readout to see why the Trac Off and VSC lights had been on for a week, then went off on the way to the garage. He suspects the chimes were a freak condition but suggested he read the computer output to see if it showed any code as to why the Trac Off and VSC lights had been on.

This RX is my wife's auto. By a weird coincidence on my RX, the VSC and Check Engine lights came on a couple of weeks ago. Turns out it was a split in one of the hoses to the emissions control system.

In my opinion, the lamp message system that Lexus utilizes is poor as each lamp appears to have several condition possibilities. Then, you don't know whether it is a serious, do not drive this vehicle, type of condition, or just something that needs to be fixed in the near future. Lastly, the Lexus Owner's Manual is a piece of crap. We have owned three RXs since 1999. The manual is still horrible - uninformative and difficult to locate what information is included.

Thanks again.

Lexmex

I'd be curious in the code also, as I meant to ask about the check engine light. The P0171 error code that I described in one of my Saturday modification threads is one of those that can come and go. The manual is bad. The big 2 volume 1999 service manual is also not as good as the one that came out for later RX300s.

The CELs used to come on for me when I first moved down here and I would go over to my local Toyota to get the code read. I finally just plunked down about $80 and got an Actron OBDII code reader so that I could track down what was wrong. It's been a godsend and paid for itself many times over.