Phantom410

I've noticed that alot of 90's Lexus vehicles have issues with leaking capacitors on the ECU and a refurbish of them is strongly recommended (IE my 1995 LS400)

Does the RX300 need such a recommendation as well?

Has anyone had it done that has had weird transmission issues or other strange bugs that a ECU refurb has fixed?

Thanks

salimshah

The bad cap problems were figured out by mid 90's. [There may have been a few escapes]. In any case '99 being the first year for RX, I (if you allow me to use --we) have not seen any problems. Do keep in mind, there still might be a few here and there but ECU have been pretty robust.

Salim

maxSteel

He might be referring to the capacitor plague. "The capacitor plague was a problem related to a higher-than-expected failure rate of non-solid aluminum electrolytic capacitors, between 1999 and 2007, especially those from some Taiwanese manufacturers,[1][2] due to faulty electrolyte composition that caused corrosion accompanied by gas generation, often rupturing the case of the capacitor from the build-up of pressure."

I got hit with this when my refrigerator control board failed and the manufacturer had discontinued the part.
Luckily someone had posted a repair procedure. $15 in capacitors and relays and I was back in business.

salimshah

Lexus got hit by these caps but they were phased out by '95. There were kits being sold to fix the ECU for LS and SC. [Back then there were fewer Lexus models]. The problem was identified by a CL member from Japan .. name escapes me. The strange thing was that one could not use any generic electrolytic cap of the same mFD value. That also sprung up a mini home based business of repairing ECUs. Long story short, I have not heard of caps going bad in RX first gen.

Salim

Phantom410

Salim, that member would be Yamae 😁 helped alot with the ecu plague of the early LS400s. I was referring to that era of Lexus specifically because the LS, SC, and GS lineups had some sort of issue pertaining to leaking capacitors on the ecu.