I've just had a call from the dealer saying the rear tie rods need replacing along with tires during the yearly inspection. It's looking to cost around 3100€, about 3100usd, plus the normal inspection, filters, and oil change costs. I'm not sure if that includes tires as I'm waiting for the quote and having to translate to English before I understand it.

I'm a bit blown away by this - I've only ever seen tie rods fail on old cars, and this price seems pretty crazy to me. Does anyone have any experience with this? My 1991 sc400(actually a soarer) has over 250,000km and the original tie rods are still perfectly good.

 

shoudlnt happen on a lexus. Did happen on my maserati 2 years into ownership, but its uhhh a maserati so ya know.

 

It's a piece of machinery with thousands of parts.

Sometimes parts fail.

It happens a lot LESS in Japanese cars.....but still.....just a car....made of parts....and no part is 100% failsafe.

Are you out of warranty? Lexus might do something for you and Goodwill the parts or labor.

I had something on my IS fail and it was like 2k miles out of the drivetrain warranty and they covered the part and I just paid for the labor.


​​​​​​https://www.clublexus.com/forums/is-...ml#post7986823

 

Thanks for the comments, I'm going to discuss with the dealership this week - I bought the car with a guarantee off them less than a year ago but they haven;t mentioned that at all, and they've done all the work on the car.

I'm still curious to see if anyone else has needed this work done so soon, tie rods aren't really a consumable item for day-to-day driving of a fairly new car.

 

why doesn't the 'guarantee' (warranty?) cover the repair?

sorry to hear about the problem and expense though, and no, i've never heard of any lexus needing that kind of repair.

maybe it was driven over a big drop or something by previous owner that damaged those parts.

 

So it looks like just the rear right tie rod has failed, and is bent. They're wanting ~$500 to replace it (and ~$2500 for four tires, Lol). The odd thing is none of the others are damaged apparently, and there is no other evidence of any damage to steering/control arms/wheels/tyres etc.

They're also now telling me they can do an extra "safety inspection" each year for ~$90 and then these kind of things will be covered under the warranty. Along with that, ~$28/L for oil which is about three times the price of the actual oil.

I'm really confused, and I don't think I trust these guys, even though they're a full Lexus dealer etc.

 

Full Lexus dealership does not mean anything, even the so called L/Certified sucks and lies. They are money making in the end of the day.

If not for the price point that LC500 is the best or I am willing to spend more fund (which I can but not wise to me now), I would pick something else.

I just want the car freshly new from Lexus quality factory in Japan and no other people has touched it. That’s it. I don’t want dealership liars fool with it. If I need to learn oil change, I will learn myself. As on the other topic, no “swill” goes to my car.

 

bent tie rod? Wow. It must have run over something. $500 is not too bad.

safety inspection sounds strange. Never heard of that.

 

Right Rear

Left rear


So there's the damage. No idea how this has happened, and no other damage evident. Still drives like a dream. Wheels and tyres completely fine.

 

A damaged tie rod will impact tire life/wear. Unclear if the tires are actually worn from the pics, but 1) "just cause it drive fine doesn't mean something is out of spec and 2) if they are original to the car then they might be close to needing replacement. Unclear what the "safety" inspection involves, but in the states, its a yearly items where things like this (tire wear/alignment and sometimes mechanical items like steering etc) are reviewed and determined "safe".

 

This is all true, however I was refering to the impact that caused this as there is no evidence from it in any of the other items (wheels/tyres/steering rack etc). I also don't remember any significant potholes or bumps to that corner. So I'm really not sure how this has happened and it makes me wonder if they are under built or prone to failure, or if it was this way when I bought it and was missed by the previous inspections. In Germany there is a yearly safety inspection required much like the UK MOT, and they would usually pick something like this up I would think.

Dealer won't cover it under warranty as it's a "wear componant". Pretty bull**** to say with this level of age and miles.

 

$500 not unreasonable, and $2500 for tires ont outrageous either... discount shop here still wants over $2000 for new tires.

nice recurring revenue for them... obviously up to you, but i'd say it's unlikely this will happen again.

is that just their price for oil, or including the oil change and filter? obviously there 3 or 4 choices:
dealer, trusted independent, quick change place, or you.

even if a lexus dealer is not perfect i will likely use them because if anything does go wrong, they will want to fix it so their survey scores aren't blemished.

i would say the latter is highly more likely. i've never heard of or read about anyone else having this unfortunate issue, but i'd say highly likely previous owner drove over a boulder or some other crazy and messed it up.

aren't you in new zealand?

i complete disagree. the product didn't fail, it was damaged. be reasonable. and doesn't matter if you had 5 miles on and and ran over a boulder and did that, the dealer still shouldn't have to cover it under warranty.

best of luck to you.

 

Was the car ever towed at some point? Wonder if they strapped it down, over, and bent the Tie rod?

 

Warning, long reply!

I picked her up about six weeks ago, as they couldn't replace the tie rod because they ordered the wrong one, and the RH one is out of stock currently.

I don't know if I've ever driven something I was so concerned about - it was completely different, shifting all over the road, squealing coming from the rear right, unbelievable tramlining. I had less than 2km to the parking garage where she lives, and it was scary. Small problems at first, like a bad alignment, then about halfway along the drive the car became unruly, shuffling, rear tire squeeling (it felt like the lug nuts were lose and the wheels were wobbling or something crazy). Kept my speed under 30.

I couldn't pull over due to road works, but thankfully made it to the parking garage safely. The shop has changed something and not replaced it correctly - and now they're ignoring my communications, I'm being polite as that usually works better but they're simply not replying and I'm not back for another month due to work.

Some replies to the comments:

Turns out this dealer actually sends the car off to get them done, as their tire machine is too small for the wheel. I've had an estimate from the tire shop down the road for a full set including fitment and balancing:

Conti SportContact 6 ~$1100
Hankook Ventus S1 Evo 3 ~$900
Bridgestone Potenza RFT LC500 ~$1300
Michelin Pilot Sport 4S ~$1600

Just oil! Manager basically told me that was the Munich price and to deal with it.

I agree with you in general. The reason I feel this way is that I purchased the car from them and until now have had no real issues - then to find this while the car has done 10,000km perfectly safely tells me it was like this when sold, and they now want me to pay to fix it. If this had happened under my ownership I would have noticed the issue while driving, but the car drove perfectly.

Very possibly, but the bend is up, so I don't know how that would happen when being tied down.

Either way I'm pretty pissed off with this place (Lexus Forum Munich), and would highly recommend not trusting them for any works or pricing.

 

yikes... shocked the dealer would not really try to stop you driving the car in that condition! did they ask you to take it away?

hard to imagine they ordered the wrong one but why not leave it there for them to get the right one installed?

yikes... i'd want to know what they did.

you're in germany? can't fathom charging that much for oil, but i don't know the laws there, such as fees they have to pay for disposing of the old oil, etc.

i can understand! they may not have known the tie rod was bent when you bought it from them, but they can't know what's happened to the car since (not saying anything happened while you've owned it) and they really aren't under any obligation to replace it, but it certainly would be nice. regardless, if it's $500 to get it fixed, i say just do it and move on. however, this 'cluster' of a failed repair and getting the wrong part though would really irritate me, and i'd demand to know how they're going to rectify the situation, with a letter from a lawyer to the general manager maybe to get their attention.