drdarell

I've got about 96K miles on my '02 LS430 UL, it's been perfect. I installed a new timing belt, idler pulleys and water pump. I started late and couldn't finish in one day. I had to jack up the rear end to push it in the garage a bit so I could close the door. I noticed the rear end was a bit low but thought nothing of it. I finished up today, I started the car up while the front end was still on the jack stands so I could check for leaks. All was good so I let it run 15 min. to get good and hot, no leaks, everything was great. I jacked the front end up to take it off the jack stands and when I let it down the front end came down completely and rested on my floor jack! I really had to bend a bit of plastic to get it jacked up again. I double checked to see if I had everything plugged in and the only thing I found were the two fan plugs that I unplugged, before I realised I didn't need to, the pulgs were on but not seated. Of course this didn't solve anything.

I was sure I left something unplugged but once I got it back on the jack stands I lookd close at everything and couldn't find anything wrong. I tried the height adjust switch to high but no help.

Could having the battery disconnected for two days and then running the thing on the jack stands have screwed up the auto adjustment?? Maybe it thought the front end was a whole lot lighter??? I think I'll try and disconnect the battery again with it on the floor jack this time, maybe it will figure out it's screwed up...

Any help would be appreciated. I can't believe that the system would just die like that... Oh, I also checked the fuse...

Thanks!

airtime

Have you check the air suspension compressor? That would be my prime suspect as you were messing with the front end. Maybe a cable got disconnected or something got pinched?

junjdm

wow that is crazy, I have no idea what could have went wrong there....maybe something w/ the ecu for the air suspension?

drdarell

I got it running again and as near as I can tell my earlier suspicions were correct.
I think after the battery has been disconnected for some time, (not sure how long) the suspension recalibrates itself once the car is started. I believe that running the car on the jack stands made the car believe that the front end was too high and it lowered the shocks to the minimum. So, when the car was lowered off the stands it sat right down on my floor jack.

Here's what I did: I removed the jack stands once again and lowered the front end until I had just enough room to move the handle of the floor-jack to get the car up again. I started the car and waited for it to adjust the shocks. I didn't think anything happened, but it actually did put some air into them and I was just able to pull the floor jack out from under the car. However, it still looked like a low-rider. I measured from the floor to the top of the silver strip on my front bumper and it was 17 inches. This was as high as it would go, so I disconnected the battery and went to bed.

In the morning, I reconnected the battery and started the car. You could tell it was going through some diagnostic checks and resetting things, the front defrost light was lit for a while... The air pump kicked on and the front end started to rise! I went for a short ride to let it settle in and when I got back the ground to the top of the silver strip on the front bumper was now about 21.5 inches.

Side note: Trans fluid and PS flush.
I decided to flush my trans fluid but was not anxious to run the car on jack stands any more, so I went for a short ride and put the suspension on High. This gave me enough room to crawl under the car and disconnect the hose.

The LS430 is designed to keep the trans fluid forever... so they put a real tiny dipstick opening on it so you can just barely get a funnel in it. Then you can't pour the fluid in faster than a very slow drip or it over flows. This really sucks! It would take a month of Sundays to put 8 quarts of ATF in this thing.

What I did was this: You take the hose coming out of the drives side of the radiator, put a Vinyl 3/4 hose over it and run it into the catch container, a gallon milk jug works well. Then you put a section of 3/8 hose, 3-4 ft. onto the metal pipe that's going back to the transmission. On the other end use a small piece of 3/4 vinyl hose to connect it to a funnel, hold it up high (about chest height) and use this to fill the tranny with clean fluid. You let gravity do the work, it's a little slow, but it sure beats trying to get any ATF down the dip-stick pipe. The full flush took about 1.5 hours.

I used a similar set up to do the PS fluid, but you can fill that right in the top. The bad part here is you need to remove the air cleaner and then just start the engine and let it die twice and refill the fluid. It took about 3 quarts to flush it clean and it was REALLY Cruddy looking. I'm really glad that I read about this in one of the posts, I wouldn't have thought about it.

That's about it. If you have any questions let me know.

blacksc400

iTrader: (4)

I talked to my mechanic friend last night about your car, he told me there was a similar situation.
They were changing the front brakes for the UL LS430, after placing the brake pads, while the car is on the lift, one guy jumped in, started the car, and start trying to bleed the brake fluid,
all of a sudden, the brake went out, I mean completely no brake at all.
They can't figure out why, and finally have to call a Lexus technician to come in and reset the ECU, and the tech told them the computer got confused and decided to seize the brakes!