Excellent website, that's what I was looking for. Thank you very much. Amazing how many searches I've done and this site never came up. I see there's some engines there that are Carfax certified as to mileage. One of those might give her some confidence in the motor even though I'm the car guy not her, I'm well aware there still could be problems.

Yeah wish you were local. So far I'm amazed there hasn't been someone like you popping up here who's local to me. I mean this is LA. 14 million people within 20 miles. There's gazillions of Lexus' running around here and there's a Toyota shop on every corner it seems but not specific Lexus shops. Only a few of those.

A year ago I was having some problems with my 560SEC, I put the word out on the Benz forum and in a day and a half several guys popped up local to me with advice and offering to help, I drove over to one guys house, he has a garage full of parts, I bought him lunch and a few beers and we worked on the car. I can wrench a little but not a full engine swap. I could assist someone I suppose but I'm not about to do that on her car. If it goes backwards I'd never hear the end of it, knowhatimean?

Here, I'm basically doing it again like trolling for a friend, ya know? Just got a call from Jiffy, they're still thinking about it so there's time.

Bob

 

Hope everything goes well man... On a lighter note if youre a benz guy then a lexus should be cake for you to work on those germans do some back assward stuff on their cars lol not bashing a benz or nothing but I need like 5 tools for a lexus/toyota you need like flux capacitors and defibrillator valves for a benz haha, I agree their are so many people in Cali im surprised no one is there to help you. If you lived here I would have had that motor out already and back on the road lol

 

A final update to wrap this up. I was out of town for 10 days and forgot to post back here. A used engine with 56K miles is in the car and everything is done. Runs great. Lexology pointed out she was way behind with all the routine maintenance like the brake fluid was almost black, there was a coolant leak around the rad, the A/C was low, minor stuff like that. She agreed to have all that done. One thing was the clutch plate. The mechanic saved it for me. Someone had installed it backwards! It was paper thin anyway and needed replacing in any event but backwards? The inner disc had a nice shiny groove worn in it from the bolts on the flywheel. Amazing. She bought the car from the local Lexus dealer about 6 years ago with 20K on it. Hard to believe the dealer did that with the clutch but who knows, eh? Funny thing was she never heard any noise at all and neither did I when I rode with her a few times.

Oh yeah, the old engine? Completely toast. The mechanic had the engine sitting on the ground out back. He lifted it up so it was sitting vertical, took off the oil pan and we looked inside. The bearings were completely shot, he was shining his light inside and he popped off another bearing further in and it was totally turned and burned too.

I appreciate everybody's posts and unless something else goes bad, this will probably be my last post here, back to the Benz forum.

Bob