Yotarip

Car - 93 ls400
Long story...

This past father's day weekend, my family treated our father to a 3 day fishing trip in Cape Charles Virginia. For those who dont know, it's a small Mayberry like town about 25 mile of the Virginia Beach coast. Only way to get there from the south is crossing the 12-15 mile long Chesapeak Bay Tunnel/Bridge. I make it there fine friday evening in my ls. Saturday evening I went to a Grocerystore to pick up a few things. As I walked away from my car I looked back at her a few times (as I always do because the LS is so sexy) and all was fine. I was in the store for about 10 minutes. As I was walking back to the car I noticed ALOT of smoke comes out around the front passenger side wheels. CRAP!!!! I ran to the car to pop the hood and the smoke smelled like and electrical fire. DAMN!!! My car is going to burn up in the middle of nowhere VA. I popped the hood but the smoking had stopped. The smell was definately an electrical fire. I started the car and my battery light came on. I drove the car back to the house we were renting for the weekend.

I hopped on the internet to find the closet autoparts store. The closest store was an Auto Zone 30 miles back across the Chesapeak bay. My sister drove me to the store to pick the alternator up (beat closing time by only 8 minutes) along with a 39 piece ratchet set and seperate 14mm, 15mm and 17mm sockets for for a 3/8 drive. I thought all was good. We make it back to the house and I pull my lex into their huge empty garage. I open my tool set only to find out that the tool set was 1/4" !!!! The only thing that it was able to do was remove the splash cover under the car. NOW I'm pissed..I just got drunk and went to sleep.

The next morning we had to check out and I decide that I will just drive the lex as far as I can toward VA Beach. Well, she made it all the way into VA beach (35+ miles) on a completely dead alternator. I was able to first stop at an advance auto when we got into VA Beach. The verify that the alternator was bad. I bought the tools I needed from them. Then we continued on another 10 miles to my sister's house where I changed out the alt in exactly 1 hour and five minutes. The haness and alternator plug were soaked in fluid.

I learned three things....ALWAYS keep my tool box with me, need to replace my leaking powersteering pump asap and the genuine Lexus battery in my LS is a great battery.

mark98ls40

Great story! Surprised the battery made it that far. Did you turn off electrical accessories? My P.S. pump leaks also but doesn't appear to be dripping on alternator.

trukn1

Funny,, I recently had a similar story happen to me with my 92. My pump and rack had been changed out in April of this year, however I never changed the alternator(which I am SURE was full of fluid). I was driving along and my dash lights came on and I took the car home. By the time I got home, I checked my voltage reading and it was reading only 10.5 volts. Next day went and got alternator, climbed under my car (in an apartment parking lot) and changed them out. Went almost a whole week, thinking everything was fine, and dash lights came on again. OK, this is strange,,alternator is new, no power steering leak, all connections were tight, but battery was down to 10.3 volts this time. Once again climbed under the car, checked all the connections(everything was in place), and took a voltage reading on the battery. Called the store I got alternator from, thinking I had just gotten a bad one since it was a reman. part, and told them I was coming in to exchange. Something told me to stop at an Autozone on the way down to bench test the alt. so I would not be wrong in telling them it was bad, and wanted to have the test results to prove it. Test turned out that alt was good. Now I AM confused. Went back home, re-installed, and made sure to triple check all of my connections once again. I had a few wires which were exposed when I took the old alt. out(plastic coating came off while I was trying to maneuver the alt around the front sway bar (MAJOR PITA!!!) Retaped those exposed wires, made sure everything was good, and secured the car. Turned the car on and took volt reading. This time only 11 volts, WTF!! Something told me, "Idiot, bench check the battery to make sure it is fully charged". Pulled my battery and hooked it up to my portable charger. Sure enough, display came up that the battery was only 48% charged. Stuck it on charge for 3 hours and has been fine ever since. Truthfully, I know for a fact that the battery was the ONLY thing running the car. Best $200 I have ever spent on an Optima Yellow top battery since they take ALOT of effort to kill. LOL!

Lexozz

WOW....I had the same experience this past father's day weekend on my way to NY. Got stuck in Petersburg VA, with guess what???? At 3AM in the middle of nowhere listening to my beautiful Nakamichi it went completely dead,my heart started pounding real fast, I got nervous. Pitch black on I85 as you could imagine got off the exit hoping the batt cable was corroded or something, did the test by taking off the neg side, LS shuts right off. Got a boost wishing for a miracle cable off again to test no luck. AAA towed us to Pep Boys waited till they opened, new alt installed in about 30 minutes. I had no tools to do the install and it was too damn hot, so I spent about $300+ bucks to get the job done ASAP.