I have a 95 LS400. 250K + miles.
A little back story on it:
Last year my wife drove it through a seriously flooded town (yes town). I live in the desert, and we apparently have no idea how to manage flood waters. she said it was up to the doors. Shortly thereafter the car stopped I let the car "dry out" and it would start intermittently. and ran fine. then it just gave out, it seemed the starter had given out. i replaced the starter, but that didn't seem to be the problem, because the car still wouldn't start. I tried jump starting it and that worked on occasion. that soon stopped,
I left the car alone for almost exactly a year.
Now, up to this week:
I saw the wiring to the starter relay, in the fuse box under the hood was toast, literally. It eventually stopped working. so i pulled off the Intake Manifold again and hardwired the starter back to the ignition switch to avoid mounting any ridiculous push button starter switches.
Once i put the car back together i noticed white smoke (steam/vapor/water) upon start up. i just figured it was condensation from sitting, then it got worse... considerably worse.
I moved the car, from one part of my driveway to the other. I noticed the brakes were extremely hard, and had to press them almost to the floor, as if there was no vacuum.
I got the car on ramps and let it run, and run, about 10 min. the more it ran the more white smoke (steam) came out, i revved to about 3k, and had my block looking like vector control was out spraying for skeeters. temp was ok. but the LS sputtered out and died.
i started it again and and noticed only a small amount of coolant was in the reservoir, so i added water, the more water i added the more my motor bogged down. till it died out. It wouldn't start back up. I pulled of the plastic intake and MAF, and opened up the throttle body with my finger, and had a ton of coolant come out!! i pulled off the TB, and Upper intake, and they were dripping with coolant.
I pulled off the manifold completely. let it dry up and clean off the Manifold put it back together again the next day. I also pulled off the rear coolant crossover, and replaced gaskets. I also pulled the plugs found coolant on them, and cleaned them off, and left them off so the chamber could dry out as well.
So yesterday i put everything back together, and had the same white smoke (vapor/steam) come out of the exhaust.
I checked the power steering thread for the" block off" mod, and my car has already had this done. so i know it's not coming from p/s fluid.
So what I'm thinking is i may have crossed a brake line vacuum hose with a coolant line.... Is that even possible?
If so where would that happen at? would it be by the fire wall?
Is there any other explanation?
Maybe a worst case scenario would be a head gasket, right?
Come on Lexus Gurus, Help me out here!!!

 

you flooded the car. Best thing to do at this point would be to go through and do a full tune-up. Full gaskets up top, all vacuum lines, solenoids, new plugs, wires, ignitors, rotors, and caps.

The steps you took were the worst you could have, needed to really check it out after it happened rather than let it all sit and corrode/rust. Now you need to get maint. all sorted before you can effectively start troubleshooting.

 

you probably realize this now but unfortunately you made a hasty diagnosis in the very beginning and ended up tearing your engine apart to replace the starter, when that wasn't the problem. Now you have a major coolant leak into the manifold, probably coming from a poor gasket seal that is also letting air in, so your vacuum is very low, which is why your power brakes don't work. Time to start over, with new gaskets and hoses, AFTER you bone up on how to do the whole process correctly. And why would you bypass the starter relay?? That's easy to replace.
And PD is right; don't ever let a wet car sit and corrode. Water up to the door probably didn't affect the engine much, other than splashing water everywhere. Letting it sit for weeks wet------that's a different story.

 

You sure talk about pulling the stater like it was nothing so this tells me that your more than capable of doing the work properly this time around like has been mentioned already. I know it's tiring and time consuming but at least you have a better ideal about how to go about fixing things. Make sure everything is clean and dry, plus get that relay sorted out. Probably a short circuit caused by water.

 

No first time around starter was shot. Had it tested when pulled out.
The WIRING, TO and FROM the relay were TOAST.
This car was a rental car prior to my owning it. There are already several "hacks" done to my car. I have chased and repaired several shorts already.
I found and fixed the issue already. As well as replaced the gaskets. And replaced plugs. Issue wasn't poorly tightened gaskets or IM. The LS400 has separate coolant crossovers. Not connected to the IM. So there would be no way for that to happen, nice try though "fixmiester".
As I said issue has been resolved.
Want to know what it was?????
I accidentally plugged the brake booster vacuum hose into the rear coolant bridge. And I plugged a coolant line from the TB to the rear of the IM where the booster vacuum line how's. Easy mistake. Only takes about 5min to remove upper and lower IM and TB. Took longer to let parts dry, and clean the parts and change out plugs. Than it took to dis/reassemble the car.
Small mistake= crazy problems.
You guys act like it takes a degree in mechanical engineering to pull out a simple starter. It shouldn't take over 2-3 hours tops.
Thank you guys anyway! much appreciated.

 

Here is where i went wrong. Since there is no coolant that directly goes into the Intake Manifold, it had to be from a Coolant line, then i went over a DIY vid, and noticed the differnce... sad part is, I made the DIY video! I did it right that time, i just got hurried this last time, and made a simple mistake.


Here is how they are supposed to look.

 

Thanks for the pics and explanation of what was really going on. You obviously have a mechanical background or a the very least worked on cars before and most ppl on the board don't have this experience, hence why it might take some ppl longer to do things.

 

Thank You Sha400.

Sorry guys, sometimes I post/reply in haste especially when I'm tired and/or hungry and come off kinda "Jerk-Like".

I appreciate the Input from all you guys, Pure drifter, Fixmeister, and Sha400. I apologize for responding in haste, and coming off like an A**Hole.

The starter relay itself was good, i tested that, it clicked. The Wiring however, appears as if someone tried to "Jump start" the car through the panel..... I know it can be done, because ive used this method in a DIRE EMERGENCY before to ANOTHER car... Only difference was that i didn't fry those wires, whoever did this to my car looks like they kept doing it.

While i had the IM off, i noticed another cluster of wires, out of that cluster, 3 of them were BARE WIRES!, the plastic had been COMPLETELY stripped off. Ridiculous-ness, who the heck does that?!

I'm going to have to do a thread with all the little things that were already wrong with the car when i got it. Like i said before, it was a rental car prior to my purchase. The "hacks" that have been done to my car would drive anybody crazy. Especially what was going on under the gauge cluster; it was a literal "cluster ******"! looked like a tiny ninja was let loose under there.

When I did the Alternator last year, it looked like someone used pliers to pull out the plug and hacked up all my wires.
Example:
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Yes the Alt was "deep fried" (lol) soaked in power steering fluid from bad ps hoses. the 400 stays charged now. But still had some problems with the connector so i had to E-tape the heck out of it.
Looks like someone couldn't "finesse" it out, so they hacked it out. :

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Do you see where my frustration comes from? Sometimes you just have to shake your head and laugh out loud.

Thank you again guys, sorry for being a Jerk.

 

I'll leave this thread up just in case some other knucklehead makes this same simple mistake, that wrecks their day.

 

No problem man I know how it is after running down a crazy issue. That connector was really jacked up! And please post the issues for future posters.

 

Thanks for smoothing things out; we've all had to eat a little humble pie at some point. I couldn't help but lol when you mentioned that you had made a video tutorial earlier, and done everything right that time. I can't tell you how many times I have worked on things for the very first time, and gotten everything right-----only to do it again months/years later and screw something up!! I firmly believe that, at least for me, I actually remember things much better if I made a painful mistake, and THEN figure out how to fix it. Those memories seem to last forever.
Good luck sorting out the rest of the gremlins.

 

Thanks guys! You all Rock!!

I'm gonna sort through some pics and see if i can make that thread happen. Maybe it will help out some poor old soul out there.