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The water inlet housing on 2001-2006 LS430 was improved over 1998-2000 LS400 to reduce obstructions and thus resistance to coolant flow with resulting benefits. The housing is drop-in except the LS430 housing does not posses the small hose fitting that connects to the overflow tank, but it does have a boss that accepted tapping for a brass fitting. Some images depicting both parts and a diagram of
They could have done that with the early LS400, why didn't they? I think there is a lot of monkey see monkey do in the automotive engineering world. Kind of like when the Russians got their hands on a B29 that crashed and copied it to perfection, it even had the same problems that the US ones had. I've seen a lot of that on early examples of Japanese copies of American stuff, not saying Lexus copied something US but it could have been something copied. They sure copied the lower ball joint system they used on Gen 1's.
Interesting, did you tap and install the 430 housing?
LS430 Water Inlet Housing installed in LS400
Stock LS400 hoses, fasteners, inlet neck o-ring and thermostat gasket are used.
Aluminum housing boss tapped on existing boss by machine shop to accommodate Marine grade brass hose fitting. The LS400 minor coolant hose fitting(pressed in place?) was immune to extraction without destroying the LS400 housing and uncertainty about exact hole diameter to drill (tapeted?) in LS430 housing favored a brass fitting.
Nice job! Funny that it fits right in. I find that one can get lucky a lot of times (e.g. putting 2nd gen brakes on 1st gen LS), but sometimes, they changed things every so slightly, that it boggles the mind (e.g. the brake rotor hub on 1990 and 1991 is 2mm narrower than an all later models, 1st and 2nd gen).
I know that most of the driveshaft on 1st gen was copied from a mercedes of that era, so much so, that it could almost fit right in except that LS' is a bit shorter. Also, I put a mercedes steering damper on my LS, rather than OEM - it was many times cheaper. Did it few years ago and it still holds like a champ. Same dimensions, same screws, same everything. Mercedes one had a longer screw hole, but it was just a metal pipe through which the mounting screw went, so I cut it off and then it was the same as OEM. I could've installed it without cutting anything, but didn't have a longer screw that that would require.
11-06-15, 01:15 AM
LS430 Water Inlet Housing in LS400
