getf

Hi CL,
Thanks for clicking on my thread! And also thanks for this great site, which I've been reading for a while now, which helped me decide on getting a Celsior/LS400.

Car is a 1992 Celsior UCF11 with 4 new air struts that I had replaced before I had the car sent to me here in US. Car has 60k km on it (37k mi).





Color is Taupe Metallic or Grayish Rose Mica


Thanks for scrolling this far my issue is with the above photo, the little lights assigned to the status indicators of the climate control functions (AC/Heat/Fanspeed) etc... don't seem to be lighting up.
The LCD is fine, and has not leaked, which is what most my my searches on this forum have led me to.

Has anyone else come across this issue?
I'm interpreting this as a bad ground somewhere or perhaps a faulty fuse?

I'll take any advice I can get!

Moarpower

Mate that car is amazing!!! What was the import process? I have a 1990 Celsior with 90k kms

getf

Hey there, thanks!

Import process was pretty straightforward, I found the car for sale at this dealer and hired some folks to call the dealership on my behalf and ask about the car, since I can only speak english #🇺🇸 .
Car sounded good, so I wired money to a small company in Japan for them to purchase the car on my behalf and drive the car to the port of Yokohama, and put it on a boat headed for me at the port of Baltimore in the US.

Moarpower

If you dont mind me asking, What was the costs besides the vehicle and american taxes? I would really like to import a crown majesta this year to AUS

getf

Costs are reasonable for 100,000 JPY ($914.00 USD / $1139.00 AUD) per vehicle, I have access to a team of translators, negotiators, porters and delivery people who will buy the car for me, pick it up from wherever it was sold. There is a lot of bureaucratic legwork that needs to be done, including deregistering the vehicle and generating a certificate of export, which you will need in your country to register/title. Also included are tons of high resolution photos and videos detailing the condition of the car.

For having the car shipped to US - BAL, for RORO (Roll on Roll off shipping) it depends on the dimensions of the vehicle. Rates are charged by cubic meter of vehicle shipped, and rates fluctuate every few weeks due to fuel costs for the oceanliners. Last year the I had an R32 Skyline shipped to me at a size of 10.31 cubic meters at a cost of around 89,000 JPY ($914.00 USD / $1013.71 AUD). The Celsior, a much larger vehicle came in at 119,000 JPY ($1087.66 USD / $1355.41 AUD)

Moarpower

Still much cheaper and lower mileage (if genuine) than here in AUS. We can import almost any vehicle not sold in the country without too much hassle.

getf

Yes, Celsiors in Japan are relatively inexpensive when compared to US LS400/AUS markets. Among the other heavy taxes on car ownership in Japan, vehicles are also taxed more based on their displacement as well as the length of their wheelbase, which is why these cars are so cheap in Japan.

Moarpower

Sorry to pester, but if you were ever able to share how you went about setting this up or even the people you used it would be greatly appreciated. I have been wanting to import for quite a while but never found anyone I trusted enough.

getf

Sure - if you can trust a new member

I've had good experiences with the, but ymmv since you are are in another country. That being said, I recommend them to every person who has some hangups about transparency with importing a car from Japan to your country.
The company I've used is Pacific Coast Auto
I can really go on for hours about how their services work, but its all highlighted in video tutorials on their youtube page.

I'd recommend watching of tutorials for a little background of how the buying process works.

Their you tube page contains mostly video walk around of customer purchases.
Good luck - feel free to PM if you have any more questions about importing!

OneJay

iTrader: (14)

Great looking car! If you mean the little green LEDs, and ALL of them are not working, you're probably right about a wiring/grounding issue, rather than an issue with the bulbs. I'm not much help in this area, but if you haven't been to this site yet, they have a bunch of helpful tutorials for most common repairs on these cars. I was able to follow theirs to do the timing belt on mine a few weeks ago, and they have a couple involving the climate control as well.

http://www.lexls.com/tutorials/

creilly

Hey, I think I've been talking to you on Instagram! Otherwise the US is about to get quite a few more brown Celsiors. Either way I can't complain and neither should you! You're going to love it.

getf

Yep! that was me!

If anyone is interested in seeing a little more of the car in detail, here's the YouTube walk-around of the car and its overall condition at point of export.

spuds

Nice to meet you.Congrats on the great vehicle!!

CELSI0R

I've been waiting for someone to let Derek review a nice Celsior! The other one he filmed wasn't the best. Thanks for the link, and very nice car.

EDIT: If they haven't been already, are you going to have the original stereo and CD cartridge shipped to you as well? Those would be nice to have.

I also noticed your car has different horns than what the LS models were given. 1990 LS 400 models had a Denso disk horn and 1991-1994 models had Denso snail horns. Your car has some other Denso disk horn; they would be interesting to hear.

creilly

Mine's got those horns too! I'm not sure what the US horns sound like but I do like what mine has. I'll see if I can get a video of the sound from those.

getf, when you get the car you should check to see if you've got all the pieces of the trunk toolkit, and see if any previous owners left anything cool in there. CELSI0R pointed out a while ago that mine is missing a little pen light. Also, you've got a set of the optional floor mats- standard was all one color and that's what mine had. Here's yours, the middle option:


And of course the top level floor mat option was this floral pattern- I'm waiting for a set to come up on Yahoo Auctions Japan but they're very rare. Adjusted for inflation and currency conversion these cost about $1700, so I'm sure the take rate was not very high!