Officially a member now! (long)
 

Hi guys, just wanted to introduce myself since I officially became a member last saturday. Been lurking around doing alot of pre-purchase research these last several weeks and finally took the plunge.

Was originally torn between a used 2005 Subaru Legacy GT Limted and the V8 GS's (99-01s). I am attending my senior year at BYU here in Provo, UT (close to where the 02 winter olympics was held) so the all wheel drive was attractive. However, after 8 more months I plan on moving back to Phoenix, AZ where my family lives and in AZ, all wheel drive is a waste. Plus since I am 6'3", the legacy was a tight fit inside, not nearly as comfortable ride/noise level wise, and will be promptly massacred in resale value compared to Lexus.

Thus, ending up buying a fair to good (closer to good, will explain later) condition 2001 GS430 blk/tan (I prefer blk leather but not too practical in the AZ summers.) with chrome 17s, Nav (weirdly, didn't come with the ML sound, I thought all 01+ 430s had the ML bundled with the Nav when they were new), spoiler, and the wood steering wheel (thats a big highlight of the car for me! :D ) for $17,000! After all taxes, doc/registration/plates I'll call it $19k.

Do you all think this is a good deal considering how car has clean car fax, is AZ car (no worries about constant road salt corroding body), service records, and is pretty loaded with factory options? However, keep in mind the problems I have discovered about the car I will go on to list.

The car has 88k miles but upon further investigation the car's history checked out well. The car was leased from Superstition Lexus in Phx and the car was serviced at the dealer there also. Clean carfax, passed the pre-purchase-inspection I paid $50 for at supersition lexus.

Car is beautiful, just got done driving it 650mi from Phoenix where I bought it back to Provo, UT and could not believe how excellent a cruiser that car was!
Car drove very well, awesome ride, very good power even on regular gas (dealer was trying to be nice and gave me a free tank of gas but mistakenly put regular instead of premium in there! (feels comparable to the other 3 GS400s and 2 GS430s I've test driven the last couple months), power should improve even more once the ECU gets the regular gas outa its system).

The nigglies I have with the car are minor/cosmetic, mainly being:

-lots of rocks chips on the front due to the high miles,
-headlight plastic not perfectly clear anymore (plastic slightly milky, any ways short of replacing the headlights to clear the plastic back up?),
-the stock wood/leather shift knob having been replaced with a all leather knob (I am a huge fan of the high quality orange colored wood lexus put in this car. Not too much but really increases the ambience.)
-navigation data slightly outdated, likely due to nav still using the stock 2001 DVD data. (I can not figure out how to eject the nav DVD to examine the version the nav is at. I found the Nav DVD ECU at the right side of the trunk under the mats but it seems a trunk floor steel strut is completely blocking the opening of the Nav ECU plus I can not figure out how to get the NAV to eject the DVD.
-alignment slightly off, could feel it pulling ever so slightly to the left when I was cruising back home, will go get the alignment checked out soon.
-The front driver and passanger door lock actuators seem to be going out. About half the time the front door locks (each malfunctioning independently) the locks will not lock/unlock until the 2nd, third, or sometimes even fourth push of my remote fob (I am guessing actuators because both back doors locks respond instantly to first push, plus using the lock/unlock buttons on the inside doors also cause same thing of front locks not responding on first try while back locks lock/unlock with first push.

However, other than the funky door locks, everything else is very minor and I am impressed by how much I seem to be nitpicking.

So for my first post here I was wondering if any of you guys had any experience with starting to fail door locks and how (if you did) remedy the situation.

Also, can I buy a cheap update to the nav (once I figure out how to eject and load the dvd of course) like say a 2004 or 2005 edition? I am not irritated enough with the occasionaly outdated nav data to shell out $280-350 for a new 06 DVD update from a lexus dealer. I checked ebay and the only 3rd gen nav DVDs I saw were 2001 or 2002 versions and they were still going for $100-150! :uh:

and last thing, is there any place I can repurchase the matching wood/leather shift knob to replace my current all leather shift knob? I looked on lexus-parts.com and they were not there and the couple on ebay all do not have the same color leather/wood combo that my car has.

Anyways, thanks guys!

Update: I just realized while I was admiring my new used car that the front of my car has HR rated all season tires while the rear two tires on my car are ZR summer rated ultra-high perf tires. All four are 235/45R17 (the ZR tires say 235/45ZR17s) and all four appear to have 2/3+ tread left. I noticed no significant handling problems since I have driven the car fairly hard several times the last several days. However, I hard many tire shops strongly urge making sure all 4 tires on a car are of same wear level (they appear to be), same model (nope, fronts are Kumonos, back Hexen), same PSI (they are now, all at 35PSI compared to OEM recommended 33PSI), and same speed ratings (obviously, not same speed ratings).

When I first bought the car I had assumed (after looking at the two front tires since you could turn the steering and thus examine the tread more easily) that all four were all season tires so this winter if I get caught on the road when it snows I will be able to stay on the road. Obviously with the rears being summer tires, there is no way my car with its current setup will be drivable once winter arrives in a month or so. What should I do? Replace rear summer tires with 2 new similar all season kumono tires or should I take the plunge and just buy a complete set of 4 new all season tires and just try to ebay my existing four tires?

Anyways, thanks guys, despite all the seemingly endless list of faults my GS430 has (I knew what I was getting myself into when i bought the car, I figured the reason the car was being priced 3-4k under dealer retail was because it needed some work done.) I am super excited about my newly aqquried lexus and it has been a blast driving it the last several days!

Anyways, look forward to hearing your comments or suggestions!

WoW , thats a long introduction. excuse me for not reading it all,im very tired :)

Welcome to CL :woot:

Welcome to CL and congrats on the purchase, sounds like a nice GS. As for your questions, everyone of those have been addressed in some detail in the recent past. Do search for Door Locks, Snow Tires, etc. I haven't experienced any door actuator problems, so I can't comment. As for snow tires, here in Alaska I run 4 studded tires and have no problems. I even made the statement here that I think the GS is the best winter rear wheel drive vehicle I have ever owned. I have gone up icy hills that even front wheel drives couldn't get up. Driving style, quality of tires and knowing how to drive in severe winter conditions are the key to success.

Intro(Wow)!
 

Welcome to CL!:thumbup: ;) From what I read ,that seems to be a good deal with nice mods already included! :thumbup: Some of us are more visual than readers?;)

welcome to CL and may i say.....being a lurker myself, make the "search" button your friend! It's helped me a great deal!

BTW, nice ride. I'm going to get a 430 to replace my 300 in a few years. As soon as a nice one comes in to the dealership. I'm IN! I had a 12second Mustang, so I really miss the V-8. There's no replacement for displacement!

Homer

Welcome to the club you can clean the headlight assembly with this product called PlastX It keeps mine crystal clear

awsome buy! welcome! i learn better visually rather than reading...=) You have pictures?

haha, sorry about that huge intro guys. Let my enthusiasm for the car pour out into huge amounts of text.

I just realized now that I am registered and logged in, I can finally search. Before when I was lurking, I was not registered so could not search. Looks like its time for me to do more research!

Also, just washed, polished, and waxed the car this morning, will post up pics soon.

P.S., also, driving at night, I realized that one of the parking lights in the front (the little aux light bulb located in the same inner headlight cluster as the highbeams) has burned out. I was reading through the manual and can't figure out how to get to it and replace it. Seems I gotta run back to the lex dealership. Anyone know roughly how much cost wise I am looking at?

Thanks!

oh, here is a quick pic... impromptu shot of one of my friends poising first night I got the car after a party in phoenix. Doesn't show the car that well but I figure the pretty lady makes up for that :p !

Haha, just to add, girls really love the lexus, the wood interior + nav really upholds the lexus reputation for luxury!

Quite a few peeps that I thought were not that impressed by brand names (quite a few of my friends were exposed to lots of money having grown up in Scottsdale or the nicer parts of the SE valley) were suitably impressed by the cars outside, interior, and smooth smooth power.

Also attached another pic of one of the girls poising, she never showed a big interest in cars until when I showed her my new G! (known her for 4+ years)

:thumbup: welcome to cl and congrats!!

Looks very very nice.....oh, and the GS does too.....:D

sweet ride man and congrats on the purchase. ladies look cute too... where are the hot asian women in AZ?? I've lived here my entire life and I haven't found any...

anyway- about your headlights, go to the local checker auto and pick up meguirs plastx - i know i screwed up the spelling but you get the idea. rub that stuff into the headlights and they'll be super clear.

about the nav update, i think AZDesertGS is selling one since he purchased one when he thought he lost his original one.

when you come back - make sure you let us AZ guys know! :)

sweet deal, thanks cliffud. I'll check out that headlight clearing stuff, headlights look pretty good now that the car is polished and waxed. Maybe before there was a bit of moisture stuck in there.

How can I go about contacting AZDesertGS to inquire about buying his old nav DVD? However, right now I can't even figure out how to eject the current dvd since it seems the openig for the Nav ecu is blocked by the trunk strut.

P.S., I know its hard finding hotties in Phoenix, its kinda funny cause I am chinese and I am pretty much the lone asian guy at most of the parties in Gilbert, AZ and esp here in mormonville Utah.

In Phx, it helped that one of the girls (whitie) made it to the ASU dance team (they perform during halftime and serve somewhat as cheerleaders to all the ASU games) and she moved into a house with 6 other dance team members as her roomies. ASU definitely has lots of hotties if you are into the whole frat/soriety scene.

P.S., the girl in the pic is 1/2filipino, half white, half bloods are the way to go bro! They are so ridiculously hot!

Too much to read, lol. Make sure you do the 90K mile service if it wasnt done yet, timing belt and water pump. Will probably run you a little over a $1K at the dealer.