Hello, which would you choose and why? I am familiar with the belt on the 430 as I have an SC430. How concerned should I be about valley coolant leaks? The GSF is too expensive and I don't care for the interior. Any thoughts on 1ur vs 3uz concerning mods or reliability would be appreciated.

 

Car Care Nut on YouTube has a good video about this. He recommends the 430 over the 460, from an overall reliability standpoint.

 

Thanks. I value everything that Ahmed says about these cars. But I'm not sure what to think about valley leaks. When discussing the LS460 he seems to indicate it's a serious concern, but then he will describe the GSF 5.0 as one of the best, and a masterpiece.

 

You're asking about 3 very different cars that will have different problems at some point in time and will share some, the gsf will be the most expensive to buy and if you like mods then it will be wayyyy more expensive to own overall. You know what you want

 

The valley plate is not a common issue. I just scrolled through the GS460 owners group and could only find one post about a valley plate leak in the past year and the guy was fixing it in his own garage( its not a difficult job).

I own 2 GS460s. One with almost 90k miles and 400+hp, no issues at all. I have another one, stock with almost 140k that has started to develop a small valley plate leak but still runs fine. The only issue is coolant doesn't go to full anymore, it is just below the "full" line. The AC still runs cold and the car has never overheated even on longer trips.

The biggest issue with the 460s is the oem headunit sucking, amps and speakers going out, and the fact that there are never any for sale. If you scroll the GS460 group that's the biggest issue lol

I would chose the 460 every day of the week over a 430. Better engine and better transmission by a mile.

 

Daily driver, I would go with GS350! The 350 is faster then the 430, you can find parts easily for it. You dont have to deal with the brake master cylinder issues and the high cost to replace them. For power wise the 350 is no slouch! A 460 is not too far off! especially if the 350 was awd, the 460 will win for sure, but not by much.

350 engines are solid, aslong as you replace the water pump and change the oil more frequent.

 

This is what I finally decided after months of debating, shopping for 430s, etc. The 350 awd is a fine ride, great power and power curves, nice sound (and I’m a V8 fan), highly capable. Now that I am about done refurbishing it thoroughly and driving it daily, I’m exceedingly satisfied. The awd capability + impressiveness of the 2GR make me not regret the choice vs. the V8 at all.

 

If you know how to properly launch an awd, and load up the convertor it will beat the 460 on the launch. Stop light racing the awd would win. But you really have to rag on the torgue convertor to get those hard launches to where all 4 wheels spin.

Only down side to the awd imo, is the transmission shakes at idle, and the front ends sit a tad higher. I actually lowered my front end to match rwd with rca

 

Where and when did you come up with this theory? Remember Lexus has done real testing on acceleration (that's how they got their numbers) and no AWD Lexus is ever listed as being faster than the RWD version let alone a 460. Don't you think they would have tried a hard launch?

If there was some real world data, (like dragy) that shows the AWDs actually being faster I would be inclined to believe you but there isn't. NONE. not a single AWD Lexus is beating it's RWD counterparts.

Is it possible that an AWD 350 could get a better launch in subpar conditions over a 460 with crappy tires? sure, anything is possible. But if the 460 has good tires and gets a good launch as well, it's going to win. it quite literally has a faster tested acceleration time across all metrics, 0-60, 1/4 mile, and 60-130.

 

While it may or may not have been tried, it’s not implausible. And it might not be true, but the theory is sound. I wouldn’t dismiss something so quickly if you aren’t expert in the driving dynamics and differences. I was friends with the late Bruno Kreibich a while, the rallye racer and tuner. He set-up Michelle Mouton’s famous Quattro racer (and owned it later) that changed racing. He taught me a bit and tuned my V8 Quattro back in the day. I now what @ibidu1 is talking about and it’s not implausible.

The quoted times are so close to begin with, if someone wanted to load the converter to maximum stall in the awd, it’s going to be difficult to predict.

 

"Not implausible" and "If you launch properly you WILL beat a 460" are two totally different statements.

I'm not going to get into the mechanics of RWD vs AWD, and this isn't rocket science. I don't need to be an expert in anything to see that the GS350 AWD has never been proven to be faster than its RWD counterpart. You should check out Dragy, I think its the largest real world, accurate data dump and there are hundreds of Lexus owners that have posted GPS verified times.

We are talking about the 3GS 350 AWD here, not an audi quattro, nissan GTR, evo, or any other number of sporty AWD cars with different methods and goals of AWD.

The times are pretty close, but about the converters, don't forget that the RWD lexus have them too. The same method of launching can be done by both AWD and RWD. These are sub 300whp cars, so even a rwd can load up the converter and launch with minimal wheel spin.

I think we should get back to the 430 vs 460 topic.

 

You should also know, @ibidu1 is an extremely experienced, VERY long-time industry professional. He’s not a basement keyboard warrior. I’d not argue with him without bringing the same level of experience and understanding to the table.

I’ll let him defend his statement further, but attacking him without understanding the physics, testing, and driving methods isn’t productive.

 

I don't think anyone is attacking anyone.

 

I actually had a topic on this same issue, I forgot who the members were. It was about the awd vs 460, I showed youtube videos of both runs, at the same race track so same sea elevation. The awd went faster, the only mod the awd had was a deleted cat. Actually just found a short video of that same awd, running a 13.5 you can tell he was hard on the convertor because he spun/chirped all 4 of his tires. It takes a lot of ragging loading up rpms on the convertor of the awd to be able to spin all 4 tires on a sticky track. Ive launched my awd that hard, I hold the brakes, mash the throttle wide open wait for the rpms to rise and quickly release the brakes. If you launch that hard on a 460 or even rwd 350 you will spin the tires or kick on traction control limiting the power.

In a roll race the 460 will beat the awd 350, no doubt! But stop light to stop light the awd is faster, maybe even lighter then the 460. Theres a saying "If you aint hooking, you aint bookin!"

 

Just found the other video of the GS460, at the same race track running a 13.65 1/4