gittert

iTrader: (1)

So a couple weeks ago while driving up to MN for work the car all of a sudden developed a serious miss. When I first felt it, it was immediately after getting gas. I feared that I had gotten a bad tank. So I got some Heat in case of moisture, that didn't help. So I was on the road just hoping to limp it home the 300 something miles, hoping it was bad gas that I'd burn up and hopefully dillute out with fresh gas.

When I got home I pulled the engine cover, air intake and throttle body off and saw this right away with what looked like a fuzz ball in the background from a mouse



So, I wrapped it the best I could with some electrical tape, put everything back together, and still not fixed. It would have to wait till the weekend when I had more time.

Weekend came and I decided to take it all apart and while I was in there check the plugs and clean everything since it's been 75k miles since I installed new plugs and wires, and even though it'd only been 2 years, it was dirty in there.

When I closer examined the wiring, I quickly determined it wasn't a mouse, it was just that because of all the heat in that area the insulation on the wiring had become extremely brittle, I was touching and pulling wiring out of the way and it kept cracking apart.





I pulled the coils and wires and removed the plugs. Found the plugs to be in terrible shape, just covered in carbon buildup



These were the NGK's, not the Denso long llfe so they needed replacing anyway. Examining the buildup I can only assume the injectors have nowhere near a nice mist but more of a gooped spray pattern, hell they have over 300k miles on them..

So regardless, I cleaned it all up, nicely wrapped all the wiring completely so there's no chance of insulation to come off again, and if it does it won't short out, completely cleaned all the plug boots and examined them carefully, they were in excellent condition. Measured the coil resistance values per the Lexus spec, some points were close to the tolerance limit but still within tolerance. Put it all back together, and the car literally purrrrs. I always thought it purred nice but it's amazing what I didn't know I was missing, instantly jumped 3-5 mpg, (over 6 on my next MN trip).

So I decided that it was time to address the injectors, based on the garbage i found on the plugs. I reached out to Aliga on here and he got me a set of injectors with 80k miles on them for a good price.

I got them, the packaging was poor, thankfully none of them were damaged. They're dirty. No matter, as I told Aliga I'm going to send them out for flow testing and cleaning to a company in Iowa for $20/piece. I haven't sent them out yet but will update when I do and get them back.




FYI, the car has almost exactly 330k miles on it as of now

gittert

iTrader: (1)

Some young female hit me last week. Flashing RED/Yellow intersection, I was in the flashing yellow crossing through the intersection, she approached the flashing red, stopped and proceeded right into me. Hit me in the rear, spun around a basically perfect 180 degrees, I mean perfect 180. She broke the control arm as you can see from the pictures, blew my tire, damaged the body under the door. Door still opens and closes. I'm told it's probably totalled. I have yet to get word from insurance. Here are some carnage photos my wife took on Saturday morning.