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My 2003 LS430 is currently in the shop right now due to my AC blowing warm air when in idle.. the AC blows cool when driving though so it really hasn’t been that much of a pain but I’d rather resolve this issue sooner than later.
The shop told me that the issue is that my fan motor is bad so my car is overheating when in idle.
The indy shop quoted me $1100 for the repair, and I just called a Lexus dealership and they quoted me roughly around $1300.
I’d prefer to replace the fan motors myself so that I can save myself hundreds of dollars.
Does anyone have experience replacing their own fan motors for their LS430? And if so, how hard is it to do so?
The motors are around $200 ea. if you buy them online. The fan assembly is easy to remove but I doubt it even needs to come out to swap the motors. Each motor is held on with 3 bolts.
If you are going to actually do this ez repair yourself, expect to remove the fans as a unit as you would do to remove the radiator. There are 2 seperate part numbers as the mitors are different. Only buy factory toyota boxed parts for this part. Its an important part and quality matters. Replace both motors they both have a billion miles of rpm's behind them.
if you have the original radiator still consider replacing it with a new Koyo brand radiator which has a better reputation of the denso branded unts available online. These denso units are not the same quality denso supplied lexus when your car was made. Koyo also has the thicker 1 inch core or the smaller 5/8ths core... i believe they are priced the same. You should be able to find pricing yourself but start at koyorad.com.
report back post repairs about your 600 to 800 saved.
You probably already solved your issue, so this is for anyone who sees this thread in the future. This ended up being one of my most satisfying repairs. I had the same issue and was able to visually verify that it was the driver side radiator fan motor that went bad. Didn't feel like spending $1,000+ to replace the whole assembly or $200 on a motor. So I took apart the whole assembly and broke open the actual fan motor. (See
video). What I found was that one of the brushes was totally worn out so the fan was not getting power. Luckily I had a broken cordless drill laying around so I busted that open and salvaged the brushes from that. I can't remember the exact size of the brushes but you can take your best guess from the YouTube video. Here's an ebay listing to help you get an idea of what you're looking for. If you like saving money and have time on your hands, crack open the fan motor and i'll bet the brushes are gone. This CAN be fixed for less than $10!
Similar to the video above - an 05 LS430 that I recently purchased had 256,000 miles on it. The driver's side electric fan motor was not working, despite being tested and seeing +12VDC on the wire leads. Upon inspection of both motor internals, the passenger side motor brushes were near death, and there was no longer continuity on the driver's side motor - light was visible between the brushes and the inner motor shaft / contacts.
On http://www.carbonbrush.com/backshunted.htm , I ordered 4 L6-7H side-shunted brushes for $7.11 USD a piece. They are 6x7x13mm, made of metal graphite, automotive rated, and have heavy gauge wire leads / shunts. They are just ever so slightly undersized, but after hours of web searching, this is as close as I could find. About 1cm of the leads/shunts had to be shortened, and the original leads/shunts were snipped. With some solder flux applied to the original termination spot, the new brushes were soldered in. They've now been working great ever since. I went from ~$600 for two new motors down to $30.
2003 LS430 Fan Motor Replacement Question
