I'm not knocking the Lexus dealer-s, as I have found them to offer a pretty good deal for service as compared to the independents in this area.
The no start issue and making you pay for it is an incredible joke. Since they had that old starter in their hands at least 2 times doing the total engine replacement there is no excuse for the no start issue. And I feel for it to be just dead when you went to start it, could mean some connection was not tight and came loose during the last time the dealer started it to do what ever. And if the starter was bad where is the excuse? It should be standard Lexus service procedure to test and check that hard to get to critical component when ever the area where it is has been opened up for any reason. (I only know the older stuff so I'm guessing the starter is in the same place an older LS400 is)
You did not need a transmission flush, and any such service work should have been okayed by you first.
I agree with the last ones posting about Lexus. And for your next car just remember Lexus has the best reliability score than all the others.
As a side note problems like your valve springs breaking almost never happened on any of the older cars and trucks. Does anyone know why? And in this modern time with the top notch metallurgy it should be better.

 

There is not an epidemic of bad valve springs in the industry however whenever a new engine is manufactured there is always going to be recalls of one sort of another. The valve springs chosen probably worked great with their test engines and all of the simulations but once you go into production you have a much wider probability that if something could go wrong it will come to light. Toyota examine the issue and rectified it, problem solved. In-fact they continued to refine this car until 2011 where there was not one recall.

There are thousands of parts that need to work together in harmony but sometimes one part maybe stronger then it should be which might prove to be worse for the weakest part of the chain.
This is why beefed up aftermarket internals used by engine builders for a particular motor will have some of the worst long time reliability.

 

Without searching back and trying to find it, IIRC the fault was one malfunctioning robot that assembled the valves and springs.

 

The cause of the breaking valve springs seemed to be impurities in the valve spring material. This was apparently not a quality control issue, but a state-of-the-art issue. The solution was to increase the diameter of the valve springs from 3.3mm to 3.5mm. A more detailed explanation can be found in the formal documents on file at NHTSA.

This document seems to have the most information about the cause and solution: http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/acms/cs...0V309-8305.pdf

If you have some interest in examining all the relative documents, they are available on the safercar.gov site.

I think that Lexus did an exceptional job in getting all those engines repaired - 138,874 involved and 122,405 completed - in 18 months. My car was picked up, repaired and returned with a full tank of gas, in 2 days. I was offered a loaner but declined. I did not receive any other compensation.

 

I would first question the country of manufacture, kind of like the airbag fiasco.

 

Thank you, Dicer~
I know very little about cars and their mechanisms, but it seemed ridiculous to me, too. They assured me the starter had nothing to do with the recall, but if they had to move or disengage it to repair, then there lies the problem. I felt that flushing the transmission to remove any metal debris from the engine failure was certainly directly related to the cracked valves. But, I was unable to do anything else- to have the car towed back to my hometown to be repaired by a less expensive shop would cost as much in transport as the difference in the prices.

Now, I do believe they likely caused the problem I've experienced with the electrical, etc. I hope I can replace this car sooner than expected. I have learned a very valuable lesson and will be much wiser with my next vehicle.

As a very small issue, does anyone know how to open the coin compartment on the drivers side? Mine is jammed shut from too many coins and I can't seem to slide anything in there to clear it. It was something they were going to look at when doing my brake job and all the other work, but they didn't remember to look at it. I felt like there would be some clever little trick.

Appreciate it!