soarer93

any chance its really bad gas?

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

Possible, but unlikely. It was on empty when I bought it last week and I half-filed it with premium ("Supreme") at Chevron, which supposedly has the highest quality gas in the area.

(Although, come to think of it, the dealer put so little gas in it that it was on empty after the mechanic's pre-purchase inspection, so they had to come over with a gas can to put enough in it to get it back to the lot. I wonder if they put regular in, not premium? If so, I could be seeing the tail end of that, rather than the subsequent fill-up. Would that run its way through the system in short order?)

But, if they're right that it's definitely not an engine problem, I suppose I'm safe driving it gently for a bit and seeing if the problem goes away on the next refill. I'm not sure what triggered it in the first place, as I was turning slowly onto my street when it happened, but it requires revving to 5000 rpm to set it off, which I had probably never hit prior to the CEL coming on.

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

After three days of varied driving, the knock sensor issue hasn't resurfaced, so fingers firmly crossed that it was indeed just a bad gas coincidence. If so, then soarer93, saved me from a fairly expensive and needless headache! I ran some Lucas fuel treatment through the system and will add more at the next fill-up.

Oh, and I discovered a flaw in Lexus' model naming convention today: Apparently, the Spanish speaking crowd that dominates the wrecking yard scene understands numbers but not letters... I had called the local U-Pull yard and was told they have several SC300's and 400's in stock, so I headed over and couldn't find anything. I checked at the front desk and the very much bilingual guy prints out a sheet showing they have a bunch of them. As I'm walking out, I notice they're all ES300's. It took repeating myself about a dozen times, even saying "SC as in Sports Coupe," and he still couldn't figure it out, pointing to IS, LS, and ES models on the screen until I showed him the right line. Not to be culturally insensitive, but c'mon!

So, to make a long story short, Lexus only makes 300's and 400's. At least their partner yard (closed today) shows some SC300's in inventory, so I'll check on that this week. The only thing I found of interest today was an ES300 driver's seat in decent shape, but I'm guessing that cover won't fit over the SC400 seat?

Tx210SC400

Man dude sounds like its been an adventure for you... I too just purchased an SC400, I thought I was in a rough spot lol mines a 1992 with 82k original miles, I bought it for $2200 still all original but needing work. Radio was out, Passenger window doesnt work, passenger door handle broken, torn up rear seats, speedo doesnt work, i have an Air Bag light on and check engine light on that i havent looked into but a quick trip to the pick n pull here in town i found the window motor, a radio in surprisingly good condition, a passenger door handle and rear seats... so i was fortunate for the most part, now time to knock out the check engine light and airbag light lol... Havent had this much fun working on a car in a while...

I wish you the best of luck in your project!

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

Wow, that's amazingly low mileage. And amazingly poorly maintained for such low mileage. :/ And a great price for such low mileage. Having a fairly "mechanical" car that you can work on sure is satisfying, isn't it? I'm envious of you being able to find parts so easily... I called the other wrecking yard in town today that supposedly has 3+ SCs in inventory, and it turns out the guy at the first place couldn't read that part of the computer system, either. They're at another of the partner yards 90 minutes away.

I've got all my initial fix-up parts on order: rack & pinion, spark plugs & wires, fuel filter, and K&N air filter (just because). I think I'll try the fuel filter and plugs/wires myself, but the rest will go to the mechanic. Along with replacing the oil pan gasket and maybe servicing the transmission (not sure it's needed, but they marked it down on the inspection), that should check off all the initial concerns!

I got spare keys cut today, hopefully fixed the persistent tire leak, got an estimate on paint work for the rear end, and got a couple leads on upholstery places to see about patching the two tears in the driver's seat. It's ironic that it's by far the most plush interior of any car I've ever owned, and all the seats are in great shape except for the one I actually sit in. Yes, I've sat in the back seats a couple times just to enjoy that lovely leather.

I also started digging into the stereo setup to see what I'm dealing with. The head unit is actually much better than I expected, being a pretty nice JVC (KD-LH810) with in-dash CD, CD changer controls, Sirius, gold plated RCA outs and a respectable amount of on-board power, Burr-Brown processors, etc. It just required [much] closer inspection to make sense of the minuscule controls and how to turn off the ridiculous animated, color changing displays. Once I downloaded an owner's manual, I decided it's worth trying to get that running instead of putting in a double DIN in-dash CD changer (lying around) like I had planned.

I haven't pulled the center console out yet to check if my dead driver's door speaker is in fact a dead speaker (or disconnected wiring) or the head unit's output. I found that the lack of sound to the rear speakers is because their terminals have been cut off! It looks like the factory connections were soldered on? I have no idea what the previous owner had in mind in cutting them out instead of just clipping the wires to allow splicing back in later. So, I'll need to replace those with OEMs or something more robust.

The sub is still wired, at least, with a newer looking wire. There is amp wiring down the left side of the car into the trunk, so I'm guessing the p.o. used that to power the factory sub. The factory sub amp is still there in the parcel shelf, but feeling around the bottom of it, I can't detect anything resembling a port or terminals. How was that think powered and connected? I was thinking I might just be able to use that temporarily while looking for some rear speakers. (Which of course will be easier once I have a month of seniority here to post a WTB ad in the classifieds!)

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

I added some GS430 wheels today, having settled on them as my favorite of all the OEM looks. They've got a very Ferrari-like vibe, and I wasn't crazy about the chrome bling that came with my car. As expected, going back to the stock +50mm offset from whatever the aftermarket wheels were (+38, maybe) has them recessed into the wheel well, so I'll probably want to add spacers. How exactly do you measure a wheel's relative offset, other than using a plumb line to see how far out of the wheel well it extends?

I had the OEM lug nuts in the trunk, but two were rusted and I'm one short, so I'm on the lookout for three of them... I re-used the narrow, tapered lug nuts from the aftermarket wheels for now; one per wheel.

Both sets of tires are 225/50-17, so I'll be able to swap over the nearly new ones on the aftermarket wheels when the <50% ones on the GS430s wear out.

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

Why the starter? Or were you being sarcastic?

1JZPWRD

iTrader: (59)

I think he meant sensor, not starter.

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

That would be redundant to the part he quoted...

So, I decided to replace the fuel filter on my own today, figuring that would be a fairly easy DIY project while I'm waiting for the rest of the parts to come in for the mechanic to work on. It turned into quite the nightmare.

The front 14mm nut was nearly impossible to get off fully, but I finally managed to with a bit of rounding. I had run the tank down close to empty and opened the filler gap to release pressure, but gas never stopped flowing... At least 2 gallons came out. And far worse, I'm completely unable to get that front 14mm nut back on. It's seized up in both directions, so it looks like I'm going to have to get the car towed to the mechanic so they can run a new fuel line.

Shoulda just paid them for an hour of shop time to do it in the first place...

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

I'd rather not replace everything down there that might require maintenance at some point.

I found a mobile mechanic yesterday who comes highly recommended. He came over to take a look at the situation and couldn't free up the seized up coupling nut, either. So, he's coming back this morning with tools and parts to hopefully cut it out of there and attach a new flange. Beats having to get it towed to the nearby mechanic at a rate of $100+ per mile.

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

It took a couple days, but the fuel filter mess is resolved via a new [partial] fuel line patched in to replace the mucked up OEM line forward to the engine. The rearward line is a tight fit and may get replaced down the road, but hopefully will be workable enough.

I mentioned in another thread about learning that you can use the Lexus website to set up an account and view the car's dealer service history. I was pleasantly surprised to see that mine was meticulously maintained from '93 to '01 before falling off the map (non-dealer mechanics) until '09 where it first turned up in Oregon, having been a Texas car. (What does SFI.MFI represent as a repair item? That was the last entry in '09.)

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

Well, I seem to have done something peculiar. I picked up a spare gauge cluster from a '93 SC300 5-spd (along with a few other parts that a guy nearby was clearing out) and tried swapping its speedo/tach needles over to my '94 SC400 AT's cluster, but they didn't seem to fit quite right. A) they sit higher up from the back panel than mine, B) they have a much different looking back side to the needles, and C) they didn't illuminate (not sure if their LEDs are dead, too, or if it was a connection issue).

Edit: I was hoping that even if the new needle's LEDs don't work, I could at least use them in burnt out mode temporarily while sending mine in for repair. I got a spare HVAC control unit with the bundle for the same purpose.

So, I scrapped that and put mine back in. Then I figured I would try one more thing... I don't think my low fuel light works, so I swapped over the one from the SC300 cluster.

I didn't test in between doing those two things, so it could be one or the other (or something else totally coincidental), but now my gauge/hvac/shift indicator lights are all reversed! They're on when the headlights are off and off when the headlights are on. I've read that some of the newer clusters have reversed polarity, but that doesn't seem applicable in this case. And I went back to the original fuel bulb and the same thing still happens.

Is there something else I might have disturbed while doing that? The whole cluster setup is pretty finicky, I must say. My back lights all worked fine initially, but one of them went out while putting it back in. It's only the temp gauge / lower tach one, so not very essential. (I still can't get the telescoping wheel out far enough to pull the whole cluster out.)

Edit: Oh geez, good thing I figured this out before someone chimed in... The dimmer **** got disturbed in the process of removal and was turned all the way down!

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

Another thing I picked up yesterday is spare door window trim pieces. The passenger one has a crack along the bottom but hadn't torn through the vinyl yet, so I'm working on gluing that one up to replace my currently cracked one. The driver's one is no better off than mine, with both having a clean break in the same place.

Looking at the back side of the trim pieces, it seems to me that the major design flaw is a lack of bracing. They have a few thin plastic support tabs, and not surprisingly, the breaks are all in between the supports. So, my thinking is to fill in that entire section with expanding foam, then shape it a bit to fit over the door frame properly. Has anyone tried that?

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

Fair enough, but I'm not in the business of replacing parts just in case.

I went ahead and foamed the back side of the window trim pieces today. Worked great! They feel way more solid now with some actual support to spread the load. A bit of trimming with a razor blade and the foam shapes nicely to sit snug against the metal frame and window's rubber guide. I need to go back and tweak the driver's side tomorrow (too much foam still), but the passenger's side came out perfect.

As has been the case throughout this "restoration" project, I was greeted by another surprise today when taking off the passenger door panel for the first time. The window/lock controls were hot glued down from the bottom! Someone must have disliked that it didn't stay put (probably a broken clip at the front) and had the brilliant idea to use glue instead of two-sided tape or something. That was fun to remove, but I eventually got it free and swapped everything over to the nicer replacement panel.

And I determined that my non-working driver's door speaker is the wiring, not the speaker itself. That narrows things down a bit. That door also has issues with the lock not recognizing the key (unlocks but sets off the alarm) and the seat memory controls not working, so there may be a common wiring issue there to solve.

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

Yeah, that's my guess. Something in the wiring isn't quite right, and if I can find that, it should solve several problems at once. I'm going to try checking continuity tomorrow, but I suck at figuring out electrical stuff.

I think I mentioned a few posts back, in removing the cruddy pin striping, I discovered that the driver door and front fender had likely been replaced at some point, as they didn't have the matching pin striping underneath that the rest of the panels had. (The cruddy stuff was presumably added at that point to make it match.) There's no VIN sticker on the door, also. And the Lexus dealer service records shows damage to the door being repaired at 25,000 miles, along with pin striping being added then.

But, those are dealer repairs in '96, so surely the door wiring hasn't been dysfunctional all this time! There's still a piece of the puzzle missing.