Car is 98 Lexus ls400, when purchased the car have the green coolant and I just have timing belt done yesterday and bought the Toyota red coolant but was told its not good to mix the green with red etc so the 2 gallons of the red coolant was not use in which I wanted to go with the red one instead. Now do I need to do a complete coolant flush first then switch over to the red or can it be drain then fill with the red, if doing drain and refill with the red will it cause any problems?

 

I would drain it completely, (make sure you open the two engine drain ports as well as radiator drain) and then refill with pure distilled water, and then drive for 15 minutes with heater on max, come back home and drain from those 3 places again and then refill with 50/50 mix of Toyota red coolant and distilled water and you are good to go!

make suke sure you refill at the large bolt on top of the thermostat housing and don't forget the reservoir!

have that large "fill" bolt off when you are draining as well

it is normal for some air to make its way out the first couple of heat up and cool down cycles, so be prepared to add additional red mix to the coolant reservoir to bring the level up to max after it falls over the next day or two!

PS - this is a great time to replace the thermostat and gasket with the correct real Toyota part, it is a 2 minute job while the coolant is out of the car!

 

why did you not change the waterpump ? just curious

 

needs to be flushed otherwise you're mixing them.

hope you changed the water pump when you did the timing belt, previous owner of our IS did a TB/Pulleys but never did the WP, guess what's groaning out for death 35k miles later .

 

Yeah that's what I was told that its not good to mix them :/ and yes I sure did change the water pump as well sorry forgot to mention that, i bought the aisin tkt021 kit everything drives fine don't see no leak or anything. I just got done changing spark plugs on them, replace then with Ngk iradium. When was changing them I came to find out that previous own pretty broke all the clip to the igniter I mean it still plug in and all but don't snap in cause its missing the clip/tab. Anything I can do about this? Also after changing the spark plugs my idle seem to be a bit low when driving, well when coming to a stop idle will drop to like 200 rpm but if just sit there car on park or neutral or even in drive but not going anywhere it will idle about normal at 600 rpm. Is this normal?

 

check for air leaks, loose vacuum lines and the like.

 

Ill take a look as well as clean the maf sensor anything about the tabs/clip?

 

the COP ignitors? shouldnt be a huge issue, if you start getting misfires check to make sure they didnt come loose?

 

Not sure what they are call exactly but yeah if i do start to get that problem ill check all of then see which came loose etc, just thought maybe there something someone who may have a way to fix/make it clip back on rather than replacing the whole harness connector

 

I would always change the water pump. The water pump seized on my Avalon I used to have and it shredded the timing belt. Luckily the Avalon was a non interference engine but on a 98 Lexus the valves would have been toast

 

So last night I started to hear a squeaking noise when driving even when in park I rev it up it squeaks or get a little louder when higher rpm, what could be the cause of this? Before the timing belt and water pump change it was fine and yes I have replace all parts that came with the kit. Could it be maybe some left over coolant that got on the belt? Tensioner?

 

Remove the serpentine belt and spin the top idler pulley. Check for any runout/play.

 

Okay so I spin that one and I do hear a little grinding etc

 

Problem fix! Turn out to be that idler anyone know what seals do I need to replace to get rid of some oil leaking into the spark plug hole?

 

spark plug tube seals, bit of a pain but there's a link to a valve cover gasket/spark plug seal tutorial in the UCF2x faq iirc.

edit: LexLS link