wallvestor

I've got a pristine 98 ls 400. It has 192K miles, of which I put on 150K of those miles. The oil is the color of honey as it's been changed regularly. I never changed the timing belt though and it recently had error code P0420 which may be the cats. With that being said, would you change the timing belt and cats for about what $3,000? And just keep driving it? Or sell it? Could the timing belt break and the car just stop? If that happened, would it ruin the engine?

dicer

T belt gone will mess it up. Find a cheapy place to fix it if you can't diy it. Should be more like $1700 for all that.

jaaa

The P0420 is a bank 1 cat inefficiency code. It is more likely that it is merely a leak in the rear flange of the first cat on the drivers side. If you put the car up on jacks, you should be able to feel/hear the leaks. Patch material is around $10 and can be done by you. An aftermarket timing belt kit is in the order of $160 or so which includes everything you need to change out. Either do it yourself, or find a friend willing to work cheap. 192k isn't all that many miles on these cars.

Banshee365

Where in FL are you?

Stroock639

if you like the car i say keep it. cars this good most likely won't ever be made again. keep this one well taken care of and it'll last an incredibly long time, even don't care for it and it'll last a long time. i've driven many cars including the S-Class and i've still yet to find ANYTHING as good as the LS. toyota sure as hell doesn't make anything now that i'd want to give up my LS for, and i work for them!!

Stereorob

hese right. you can abuse these cars drive them like you stole it and are running from the cops everyday, not doing even basic stuff like change the oil for 50k miles, and it will STILL go forever. I remember several years ago there was a woman in my neighborhood that had a 91 Ls400 that she just used as a junk and dog hauler. she had it since new, it had outlived 5 other cars, and she decided to just let it go completely and let nature take its course 5 years previous yet it just kept chugging along. last time I drove by her house, it was really rough looking, but still in her driveway, with the windows down. -guess the ac finally went.

they will last forever, however..
the one thing that is certain death is a T-belt snapping on a ucf20. the ucf10 was unaffected by it and you could just put another one on and call it a day. if it snaps on a second gen.. -instant car death.

lextout

your on borrowed time my friend,just put a timing belt on it at the toyota dealer for around 400$ and your set, then keep driving or keep it around.

wallvestor

BTW, is the timing belt supposed to be replaced every 70k miles?

I'm in SW Florida....Punta Gorda

wallvestor

On another note, does the '98 ls 400 have the ucf20 or the ucf10 engine?

billydpowe

iTrader: (1)

ucf20.... my 99 is ghoing to last forever too... it just turned over 207k and got a new belt/pump and a load of other stuff... I would not sell it and have to do without it.

Scraape

timing belt/wp is 90k mile maintenance

Banshee365

I am in Ocala. Too bad you're not closer as we could work something out for your timing belt job. Regardless I vote to have the service done and keep driving it.

Like the rest of te car, the cats are over built and rarely fail. As mentioned you probably have a small leak between the up and downstream O2 sensors.

Scraape

I had P0420 & P0430 codes at 255k, thought my cats were possibly bad. I changed my downstream o2 sensors and cleaned out my air mix path thoroughly and both of the codes went away and haven't come back since, now I'm at 263k

dicer

O2's can fail I've had to replace ones that barely respond. And they should be checked that will rule out the leak deal everyone talks about. And if its OBD2 that is so easy to do.



AGAIN WHATS UP WITH THIS SITE? I have to some times dump it and go back in just to edit.

UNCNOR

iTrader: (1)

Wilde Lexus of Sarasota charges $499.95 for a timing belt on a V-8.Water pump NOT included.Good Luck.