rj4510

All,

I just discovered an oil leak on both sides of the engine of our 99 GS400. it appears to be the full length of the cover, but the front is also wet. However, the cam covers at least at the lower portion are dry. I'm guessing the cam seals are not bad, but I can't be a 100%. The car has 160K on it at this point and just recently things have began to go wrong. Paint suddenly faded this year, shocks started squeaking, etc, so I'm at that point, where if I'm keeping it, I'll have to put some coins into it.

What I can't figure out, is if it's worth fixing the valve cover leak, or go full on and do the cam seals too. Seems this is the mileage were most of the leaks have been reported. My other concern is the starter. Already had one go out at 60K and that thing is a beast to get to. If I'm going that far into the engine, it may be worth having it changed to, but without a doubt, that's going to be a big hit. If I don't do it, it may be wasted dollars, if either of the remaining two go out.

I'll likely have to do shocks in short order as well, and that hasn't been a cheap quote either.

I like the car, but at a crossroads with value and definite trust issues with regards to the long term outlook. My wife still loves the car, but keeping it has come at a price of roughly $2500 to $3000 a year the past few years. We're looking at that amount right off the bat in January, so I'm almost at a payment for another quality used car.

What do you guys think? What has been the consciences with regards to other leaks, parts, repairs at this mileage? I'll likely have to put in around $5K to at least get it back to where it needs to be to go a few more years.....just don't know....at this point, we're far from basking in the sun of Lexus reliability, so the field is open.

Anyone been at this point lately to chime in?

Tuske427

Our '98 GS400 has 226k miles on it, and we recently had the valve cover gaskets repaired. I thought it was an oil pan leak, as everything was wet around the bottom of the engine. and since I didn't have the tools to reach the two bolts buried near the crossmember I had my neighbor mechanic take a look, and he diagnosed the valve cover gaskets. Now it's good again.

He had good logic- work top down (since gravity pulls the oil down ha ha) so maybe replace those valve cover gaskets first, clean the loose oil off the engine as best you can and see if the leaks continue.

Our car is still riding on the original shocks. I'm thinking they should be long shot by now, but the car still rebounds and stops with one push down on the car.

The starter has been the Achilles heel for our car. We've gone through a few of them now. And we use Denso parts. Historically, they seem to have lasted about two years each. Doing it myself is much cheaper than paying someone else.

The only other issue is our radio- the face plate is burnt out so we can't read the radio anymore.

Hope this helps.

kevin3344

My '99 GS has 215,000 on it and I plan on keeping it for a while. Like yours my valve cover gaskets needed replacing around 180,000 miles but other than that the car has pretty much been problem free. I recently did the motor mounts to the tune of $850 at the dealer and the car rides much better.

There's always the question of when how long do I keep it? My car has never left me stranded so I do take that into account. As long as it's not giving me monthly problems I plan on hanging on to it.

A friend recently traded in his LX470 with 306,000 miles and if I get that many miles out of my car I would be ecstatic! So we'll see. I am looking at a low mileage SC 430 but plan on keeping the GS as a second car.

rj4510

We discovered a few additional things when we were digging into the car trying to decide what to do. Motor mounts, breaks, tires, one seemed to have picked up a pretty deep gash n the sidewall and the other three with 40% tread remaining. Two bad door lock actuators I knew about and two HVAC servos I knew about already. Paint was raging on horizontal surfaces from the AZ sun, even though garaged when not in use. At this point I was still planning on keeping it and fixing it, when we found two tears in the floor board parallel to the frame on the passenger side. Neither of us remember hitting anything ever and it wasn't there two years ago when I put a new deck, speakers and amp in. The repair was a minimum of $1700, so the grand total for everything to make the car run into 200k was $7000 minimum. Our car left us on the side of the road in the middle of summer twice the last two years, so if we were going to keep it, I was going to make it right.

Too much came too fast and my 03 GX was falling apart even faster. At this point. I'm working from home and didn't really drive the GX that much. Last year, I had 3K in repairs with another round awaiting this year. We had the GX 12 years and the GX 10. Up to two years ago, they were both solid, but we were paying as much in repairs as we would be for a new to us used car. Given the circumstances, we decided we would be better off financially to dump both and take on a payment again. . It was not an easy choice, but in this case it was the right one. I could have sold the GX for around 9k and fixed the GS, but that would have killed any down payment option and we'd be spending 7K + on a car with a blue book value of 2500. As much as we liked the GS, it didn't make any sense and we felt we were prolonging the inevitable. We already lost almost 6k in trade value, between what we were appraised last year, when they were running flawlessly and thus year. That was an expensive year, considering how much we paid out in repairs too. We didn't want to do that again.

Sad, but we decided to bite the bullet on a 2013 RX. We won't be any worse off financially, but will likely not stress being left on the side of the road again. Since we don't need the second car, we will work on paying off the RX, so we can be in a good position for a second car when we need it.

Thanks for your input it's sad to have had to say good bye to a good friend. The GS is one of the cars we'll miss for sure. If I can ever actually get to a low miles GS in time to buy it before someone else, I'll definitely do so. Missed out on a couple of sweet deals already. The most recent was an 03 with 40k miles for 12k. We watched it drive off when we pulled up.