New to the forum since I have been looking at the 460's. Found a nice 2007 with about 30k miles but the carfax and dealership said they had to drop a new engine due to the valves? Don't think this is common but wanted to get your thoughts.

 

There was a Safety Recall for all of the 2007 LS460s to replace all the engine valve springs. The genesis of this recall was reports of valve springs breaking in an unusually high number of these cars. By "unusually high" I don't mean that there were a lot of events, really just a small percentage, but it was something that should not be happening and perhaps an indication that many more would fail as they aged.

A possible explanation for a "new engine" in the car you are looking at is that it might be one of the cars that suffered a broken valve spring and that event damaged the engine beyond repair.

 

What was the price?

 

26k. Not sure how much to negotiate.

 

Haven't seen many power train failures on the LS460s so this certainly is an eye opener... Don't think it is a big issue though since it has been rectified. I'd negotiate a decent price and go for it....btw For a little more $$ you could find a CPO 2009-2010 model..yes it would have higher mileage but 100k warranty is a peace of mind on those..

 

Yeah I think for something a bit newer I was looking at the 30k range which is a little more than I want to spend since this will be my second car.

Do they offer extended warranties for 2007? I would think I should also ask for some warranty on the new engine?

 

Assuming that with this low mileages the car must be in excellent codition, anything below $24k should be considered a great price. Did you run the vin through lexus to see what has been done to it? Regarding the warranty, it will be better to buy it from a lexus dealer to get a lexus warranty instead of an aftermarket one.

 

I would want to know exactly what was done to the car. If it is a whole new engine or if they just rebuilt the old one? There is a lot of questions. I agree with the 24k price.

 

I've never heard of an LS engine failing, but things do happen. And the real amazing thing is that I've never heard of this transmission failing, not yet anyway. Anyone ever hear of the tranny failing?

 

I have trolled relentlessly theough the transmission flush threads and have never had a LS460 owner mention anything about a tranny failure. I even asked my lexus dealer (who recommended not to do it) and lexus indy shop (who offered to do it for $265) and neither have seen a LS460 failure either....

 

A member named "jarm" has a 2007 with 97k miles managed to get a Platinum 36/36 on his vehicle so I would be sure you can get decent coverage on yours too... The 07 you have found has such a low mileage that any others would be hard to compare against. In my area a 2009 with 87k miles is $23k, a 2010 with 113k miles (dealer serviced its whole life) is $26k, and a lot of 07s with 90-130k miles between $16-$20k. That would be what is available for you to base your decision on...

 

I changed my tranny fluid at 70k...dropped the pan and changed the filter. My fluid was very dark so I felt like it was the right thing to do, I've put 20k miles on it since and it's doing good. But yeah there are people out there that don't change it, I guess it's just personal preference. I did a boat load of searching about the WS fluid and universally it is considered NOT a "lifetime fluid". Most everything I read said it's not even a synthetic fluid. I bought my car off a Lexus tech and he said he wouldn't consider letting the fluid go much further than 80k without a change/flush. And I wonder why Lexus is telling people not to change the fluid,when in Canada Lexus tells you to change it at 60k? When I called the dealer to ask if the filter was a metal mesh screen, they told me it was and it didn't need to be replaced. Well I pulled the pan off and it wasn't...makes me leary about the information we're getting on these trannies.

When you think about it, most people that own these cars don't really put a lot of miles on them, so I don't think we'll learn a lot about these transmissions until they start going 150k plus, miles.