Hi Guys,
This is my first post on this forum. I wanted to make everyone aware of a possible problem with our engines. Mine may be a fluke but just in case this happens to more people I wanted to share.

The car is a 2010 with 65,000 miles on it

When I purchase a used car I make a habit of changing all the fluids and doing a tune up regardless of its service history.

While doing the spark plugs I found that one of the spark plug wells had about 3 inches of oil inside of it. The spark plug tube gasket had failed. I was surprised that the car was not misfiring yet.

Luckily it is just still in warranty and the dealer is fixing it at no cost to me.

However most everyone will find this problem when it is too late as the service manual says not to change the spark plugs until 120,000 miles!

 

I pick the car up tomorrow, I'll ask them what it would cost out of warranty.

It won't be cheap as you have to at a minimum take off the valve cover and everything covering it, which is a lot.

 

Sorry bigphil001, I deleted my post because I was going to rewrite it. I wanted to confirm that you do actually have a Lexus GX 460? Your post doesn't state so.

(My original post that I deleted)

Welcome to CL
Nice timely catch, thanks for the FYI.

I wonder what the cost would be out of warranty?

 

2010 gx460 with 64000 miles

 

Thanks, and again thank you for the FYI. Please let us know what the cost would be out of warranty.

Good luck and I hope the dealer takes good care of you.

 

Here are the parts and their costs to do this job:
90430-a0001 $1.28
111590S010 $4.09
11159-0P010 $1.78
11193-70010 $2.98
11213-0S010 $16.52

Labor 4 hours @ $160/hour 640

Total if the car wasn't in warranty would've been about $660 before tax

 

That seems reasonable and using a specialist other than the dealer would cut 20 to 30% off of that.

Did the dealer give any indication that this is a common or rare problem?

 

They did say this was the first one they have seen.
However the maintenance interval on the plugs is 120000 miles and you wouldn't find this problem until you changed the plugs.

So I doubt there are a lot if these cars past 120k miles right now.

 

Thanks for the feedback. Hopefully this is a fluke

 

Just stumbled across this post searching to see if anyone has had issues with oil in the spark plug tubes. I recently bought a 2010 GX with 95K. I decided to change the plugs instead of waiting for the 120k service. I found that three plugs in the left valve cover were covered in oil. Only about one inch of oil (see pic below). You can also see that the oil burned a ring in white part of the plug showing that it has been leaking for some time...

I figure the car needs new valve cover gaskets and spark plug tube gaskets to fix this. I was wondering if anyone else has had this issue before the 120k service? My guess is that most people expect the plugs to last 120k but don't realize that the tube gaskets may go bad before the plugs.

Either way, the car was running great before I decided to change the plugs, no misfires or signs of a bad plug from the oil collection. Hope to have this fixed soon and get the GX back up and running!

 

This should be brought up to Lexus attention. They should have a TSB (or LSB) to fix this issue.

 

Seems this isn't an isolated incident.

Problem is most people wont find it until 120,000 miles.

Glad I did my plugs when I bought the car

 

Thanks for posting this.

$660 per side for a $17 valve cover gasket = I will check mine before the 72mo/70k powertrain warranty is up.

 

Any one else have this issue? Doing my 70k service early at 67k miles in a few months.

 

Bump... Anyone else have any issues with the spark plugs? I am at about 63k miles on my 2012 GX460. It seems as my car doesn't have the same acceleration as it did a couple weeks ago and my mpg now is around 16.5 vs around 17.5-18 (granted it could just be me being paranoid and driving differently). I did call my Lexus specialist shop and spoke to my service advisor who is pretty honest. He said some people change these out at around this mileage and some dealers include it in their 60k mile service costs. I believe that as my BMW spark plugs lasted until around 70k miles before I had them replaced though they were supposed to last until 100k. That said, I know a couple people here mentioned that this might be included as a part of the extended power train warranty. My service advisor said it would likely not be the case as it is a maintenance item. He said the cost to clean the throttle body and change the spark plugs would be right around $500. I figure I would ask here before I fork over the cash to do this at my next service interval in the next 4k miles.