Just wanted to introduce myself. I've been lurking for a long time, soaking up information and decided to actually register today. My name is Rick (obviously) and I have a 92 ES300 that I bought in January 06 with 108k for 4 grand. This is my 4th Toyota product, my first was a 90 Corolla that would not die, second was a 5spd turbo Supra, third was a 98 Avalon that I bought many years ago then traded in towards a supercharged/lifted 01 F-150 since my wife decided the Avalon was an old person's car. Biggest car mistake of my life. Never let a woman, err nevermind... Fast forward a few years to 06 when I bought the ES for my wife to commute in since her car was nearing 300k miles. Figured it was a fancy Camry with way nicer standard options and I couldn't lose since it was cheap/reliable and I didn't want a car payment. Unfortunately, as much as I like most of the comforts of the car it has been the bane of my existence since I bought it. Place I bought it from put liquid glass in it to seal the headgasket long enough for a sucker with a preconceived notion (me) to buy, that lasted about 3200 miles. Oddly enough the warranty they gave me expired at 3000, haha. Put another engine in, wife drove it about 6 months before a hydraulic fan line ruptured on her way home one night and she overheated it again! Nooooo!!! Guess what? yep, blown headgasket! I then bit the bullet and bought my wife a brand new car w/ 100k warranty as much as I hated to. I decided I'd make the ES my own car since it is much nicer to drive than my loud, rattletrap, fox body Mustang. Contrary to everything my father always told me about doing things the right way first, I put liquid glass in it. Only so I could drive it as long as I could before having to do another engine swap. That was almost a year ago and 8k miles but I am not laboring under any illusion that it will hold up for much longer. As ghetto of a repair as liquid glass is, I figured what the heck? At worst, I'll probably have to have my radiator gone through before I swap a JDM engine in it and I'll feel like I got more use out of the existing 850 dollar engine. Luckily, my buddy owns a radiator shop so the radiator job will be very cheap. Anyways, that's where the car is at, still running with liquid glass waiting to blow, so I will be motivated enough to swap the engine again. Oh yeah, could the cooling fan system be anymore complicated on these cars? Geez, give me a relay or two and a fan or two anyday! Probably a long shot, but has anyone ditched that system and installed a conventional electric fan setup? I doubt most people have had the headaches I've had with this far over-engineered cooling fan system.

Sorry for the novel, this will be the longest, mostly non-tech post I ever make, I swear This forum has been a great source of information and I hope to contribute as much as I can. I've been working on cars since I was a little kid, have owned a huge variety of vehicles most of which I did a great deal of work to at one time or another. I do a little bit of body work and custom paint on the side when I'm not at my day job. Besides the ES I also have an SVO Mustang (93 cobra drivetrain swap), crotch rocket, rockcrawler and a couple 69 Plymouth muscle cars as well. I like a little bit of everything, but as I get older the more I want Luxury first then performance secondary. (never thought I'd say that) Well, the ES has luxury and should hold me over until I have saved enough for an older M5 provided I can prevent the ES from overheating in the meantime!


My buddy and I cleaned up our cars so I could snap some shots earlier today, click the link to view the whole gallery:

http://www.roadrunnersauto.com/rick/...andinfiti.html



Put my old 16" ROH wheels from the Mustang on the ES. The chrome was peeling off the sc wheels reminiscent to that of a 90's domestic car's factory paint job. I hated those ROH's on the Mustang but they actually look much better than I ever imagined on the ES





Here's some pics from earlier this year or late last year with SC wheels and before I took off the license plate dealy:

 

Welcome to CL Rick, enjoy your stay!

Clean looking ES BTW. Great pics too

 

hey i got a question, I also have head gasket leak and wouldn't mind using liquid glass to seal it up for a while (sick and tired of burning smoke). Where do you buy liquid glass and do you just dump it in the motor oil??? any side effects??
oh yeah welcome to the club

Enda

 

back in the day the only place you could get it was a pharmacy but now major parts stores carry it. It is typically in the same section as fuel injection cleaner and the other radiator stop leak products. Look for a 6-12 oz bottle that says it will seal blown head gaskets and make sure it has sodium silicate in the list of ingredients. I can't remember the brand name off the top of my head. Side effects are the crap seriously plugs everything up if used more than once. You'll notice a bunch of white build up under your radiator cap indicative of what it is doing to your cooling system. It is nasty stuff and I don't recommend using it unless you absolutely have to and don't expect to be able to use it more than once. Use too much and kiss your waterpump, thermostat, etc... good bye. Plan on getting the radiator rodded too. If you do decide to use it follow the instructions closely and make sure there is no antifreeze in the car when you pour it in. I've been lucky so far, the head gasket leak was so bad the oil looked like milkshake and water steadily dripped out of the exhaust. Car ran very rough, too. Stuff made it run better immediately and has not overheated yet *knock on wood*

nice gixxer, I have an 03 600. I ran an 11.3 @ 121 back in 03, the first and only time I took it to the drag strip. Amazing how far they have come with a little over half a liter

 

Welcome to CL looks like you should have done the JDM swap in the first place.

 

from a cost savings standpoint I could have saved 150 dollars, possibly. But I don't think the JDM engine would have survived under those circumstances either. I wish the guy renting my dad's shop didn't chuck my original engine when he moved in. It was in good shape besides the head gasket(s). Would have been a much easier fix with the engine already out.

 

What I don't get is when the car overheated why didn't she stop lol.

 

That car looks brand new.

 

haha, it has something to do with chromosomes I think She totaled my favorite/fastest/best looking mustang out of the 6 I've owned. http://www.azmustangs.com/AZimages/m...ickmustang.jpg Wrecked our Avalon on day 6 of ownership, wrecked our F-150 the very first day she drove it to work, etc... so on and so forth. I don't let her drive my vehicles any more, she can destroy hers all she wants

 

Welcome to CL broo

 

(Some)Women+Driving=repair costs.

 

I'm not touching that conversation!!!
Edit just seen the (some) nice save choas...

 

Well I couldn't say all women i.e. my mother is just under 5' tall and drives a school bus but some women i.e. Ricks wife and my sister lol have no business near anything that moves lol.

 

Welcome to ClubLexus!

Nice to have another car nut in our midst.


And sympathies on your wife-beating-the-cars woes. But we keep letting them behind the wheel don't we? Especially when they hypnotize us with...um...things...


What's really cool about this site is that we have a couple of gals who don't ding the rides and who know more than the average fella about them.

 

Point well made and I'm not even that old (21) and I yell at movies and say I had that car and it had.......