I am a new Lexus owner (1 day) and new Club member. Our new 2009 GX 470 battery went dead after 1 day.(We had driven approx 50 miles yesterday from dealership to home). Car started ok today but was dead after short trip.
Dealer is picking it up tomorrow to check battery and for any current drain.
Has anyone else had this experience? What was fix? Is it a common GX 470 problem?

 

No problem like that with either my RX or GX

 

Uhhh nope, but welcome to the club

 

Mine was dead when I took delivery (brand new)- the delivery coordinator was not very happy! One of the prep guys left one of the doors open all night and the battery was dead. They took care of it by charging it and I kept it on the charger for 1 day afterward. They said if the battery causes me any more issues they would replace it but it never did.

 

welcome to the club. nope nothing to worry about, after all its a LEXUS.
enjoy

 

Thanks for your responses. Our 470 is back. Diagnosis was bad battery. They replaced no questions. Dealer is Herb Chambers Sharon, so far good experience. We live in RI. They gave door to door pick up service, left a 2009 RX 400h loaner. Thanks again.

 

Just so you know, the factory battery is a Panasonic model from Japan. I hope they didn't give you a Toyota Truestart battery from the USA. The Panasonic batteries have a much longer lifespan. The only problem is that battery size and standards between the US and Japan are different. Lexus/Toyota does not import them from Japan, so only US made replacement batteries are available at the dealer.

 

We have a 2009 that started doing that at 17,000 miles. We would drive it to a nearby town to shop and after an hour or so come out and tried to start the car and the battery was dead. We have had it at the dealer(100 miles away) about 12 times. The car has been dead probably 20 times. They could not duplicate the problem. The car leaves my wife stranded in parking lots so I had to purchase a jump box for our $60,000 car. (That looks good for Lexus)I am an electrician and it has to have a huge drain on the battery to drain it down that fast. Once the radio would not turn on after shutting the car off. I turned the key to acc, to ignition but the radio would not turn on until I started the car and turned it back off. The dealer has kept it as long as a month with no luck. Lexus wont take it back so we have hired an attorney to get it replaced under the Calif. lemon law. I will never purchase another Lexus if this goes to court.
Sad thing this is her second exact model and color as she liked her 2004 so well, it was a great car. Lexus is not very bright, they should have made it good with us. They are going to get a lot of bad publicity out of this when I get done with them.

 

Have you tried just replacing the battery?

 

You need to put an amp meter in series with the positive connection from the battery. See how much current is being drawn with everything in the car turned off (and doors closed). To drain the battery like you are experiencing, the current draw must be fairly high. I'm guessing several amps or more. Start pulling fuses to see which circuit is causing the excessive current draw. Second option: Take the car to an independent shop that claims to be "electrical systems specialists".

I have a friend that had a brand new BMW that had a similar problem. Battery would be dead every morning. Dealer said there was nothing wrong with the car. Dealer said he must be leaving the dome lights on at night ! My fiend sold the BMW.

 

It's funny how the dealers really don't dig into certain problems sometimes, and what sucks if you really aren't dealing with the Car company itself, but the franchised dealer mechanics instead.

I second what 470reasons said, find a well rated independent specialist and try them out too.

 

You often have to wait 15-20 minutes after closing the last door for the body computer to go into sleep state.

This may help:

http://randysrepairshop.net/testing-...ery-drain.html

Chip H.

 

Very good article. Not sure why he chose to use the negative terminal to test, but it really doesn't matter. Good point about using a jumper wire before changing meter scales. I was not aware that the computer would stay awake that long after shutting the doors!
Thanks for posting Chip!