The night before, I think I overused the battery because I was sitting in the GS with the headlights on, listening to a classical piece for about 20 minutes...

The next day, when I started the car, it barely turned over, and I told myself, uh-oh, I used the battery a little too much. The car started so, I thought, I will try it again. Shut it down, restart, same thing, car barely turned over. I shrugged my shoulders and decided to just move on and see if the battery would recharge.

I put the car in reverse, everything fine so far, and then put it in manual e-shift mode and shift to 3. I gave it some gas and noticed the car would not move forward! I also noticed smoke coming from underneath. I thought to myself, uh-oh, the clutch plate is not engaging the transmission and it's just spinning. So I tried 5,4 and same problem. Immediately, I thought that my transmission was shot...so I tried to put the car in L gear and the car moved forward.

I decided to go back up my driveway and shut it down and get it ready to be towed to my mechanic to take a look. Just for kicks, I decided to restart the car. This time the car turned over immediately like normal...I told myself, hmmmm....let's try R and e-shift again. Surprise! This time everything was fine! I decided to drive it around town for a bit to run some errands. In that time I stopped the car 3 more times and no problems at all. Now I am really scratching my head....

My thought is that because the engine barely turned over those first two times, it might have screwed up the transmission ECU because it probably received insufficient power and so the ECU was corrupted and confused. Once I shut the car down and restarted the engine with the battery fully charged, it reset the tranny ECU and everything was fine.

Any other ideas or guesses as to what happened????

Brent

 

almost the EXACT same thing happened to me this morning!
Full story:
1998 GS400 with 120,000 miles:
For the last 2 days, I noticed my car's battery has been weak because when I fire it up in the morning and I planned on getting a new battery but this morning, when I went to start my car up, here's what happened:
I start the car (once again the weak battery barely cranked it over but the car did start).
I let it warm up for 30 seconds or less and when I put it in Drive and hit the gas..... nothing! The transmission was slipping and the car wasn't moving!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So I put it back in park, reverse was good, and then I tried Drive again and once again, SLIPPPPPPPING! The car barely moved an inch even when I revved it up to 2,000 rpms (while in DRIVE!).
I thought I was screwed big time BUT then, I try it one more time and to my surprise, everything was fine!
Drive worked with full power and not the least bit of hesitation or slippage.
I drove the car around for an hour and it ran perfect. The tranny has never showed ANY signs of slippage before and YES, I can tell. The car was always mantained, the fluid is Toyota t-IV and its level.
So the $2,000 + question is..............
Is all this because of my battery or is my transmission on its way out???

I'm hoping someone else can relate or remember a similar case, maybe VVT-I or another LExus tech can let us know whats going on.
Thanks!

 

This is very stange. 2 members having this problem is scary.

Can anyone chime in on this phenomenon?

 

My observation, one thing in common was they both had weak batteries. So try to get a new battery, that should fix all your problem for about $70-$80

 

And while you're at it, get a nice Optima Red Top. They cost a few more $$$, but they are VERY well worth it. Trust me!!

 

Same EXACT thing happened to me on several occasions over a year ago (sans smoke, you might want to check that one). I replaced the battery and the car has been absolutely perfect since. Get a new battery and rest assured.

 

this is so weird @_@

 

Well, the incidents are 5 weeks apart and given how many GS owners on CL it's not THAT surprising.