Hey guys, I got my first Lexus last year, an IS 250C, and fell in love with the car immediately. But then as the weather started changing to the winter, all of a sudden it started having issues.
It would randomly die on me while I was stopped, but then it would turn again and I wouldn't have an issue for a few days. I thought it was the battery so I went to autozone to check it and they said it was fine. (I have taken video of this but can't upload it, but I will email it to you if it would help you diagnose the issue). Now it has gotten to the point that it will die at some point during the day if I'm driving it, and sometimes it will die while the car is in motion (again, I have video of this). When it does, it will then try to turn itself back on. If I shift into neutral while the car is moving and can get the engine to restart, I can usually shift back into drive and keep going. But then sometimes this trick won't work, or it will die on and off before the engine can fully turn, and I'll eventually roll to a stop and pull over, shift into park, and will eventually get it to turn again and then I just hope I can make it home without holding up traffic. Other times when I can't get it to turn at all, and I'm shifted into park and open the door, it will say "Shift to P to range".

My buddy is an amateur mechanic so we plugged it up to his diagnostic, but all the checks came up fine. The best answer I've found from googling is that it could be the crankshaft sensor. Can anyone confirm this or has experienced this same issue? And what did you do to solve it? I'm hesitant to take it into the dealership because I know they will rape me on the price of a new part that probably isn't even what the problem is.

I've also had a problem with the top opening and closing consistently, sometimes the button to trigger just won't respond at all. But that is a problem for another day. I love this car, just starting to get disappointed because I got a damn lemon.

 

sticking to the stalling problem, i agree, it sounds like crank sensor. They usually wont throw a code until they completely fail, but will show symptoms of what you describe. In addition, towards the end of their life, the car will take an extended period of time to turn over and it will crank for 5-7 seconds before actually firing up. I suggest getting OEM sensors, never had much luck with aftermarket, they usually crap out within a year.

 

I ordered a new crank position sensor last night, and today the weather was nice so I wanted to try to drive it up, and the car wouldn't even turn. So when this part arrives, is this something that I could figure out how install? Or am I gonna have to get this towed and the part installed by a local shop?

Thanks.

 

it's not hard to remove and reinstall, but it's under the car near the transmission which is challenging in itself for some. sorry for the delay, let us know how things turn out.

 

Update on the lemon:

After taking it to the dealership, 2 weeks, and $2k later, I finally got the car back and running. It was a major electrical problem. It had nothing to do with the crank sensor. So now that that problem is fixed, I still have the convertible top issue which is triggering this code:



This fault code only came up once and we can't reproduce it. Every other time, even if Op Suspended is showing and the sequence is frozen, the diagnostic will still read it as clear.

Looked around for this part, but it's not coming up and I'm not even exactly sure what it is. In another thread I found on this forum (which I posted a reply to as well) someone was talking about micro switches so I'm wondering if that's what it could be, but not even really sure where to start trying to get this fixed.
Once I get over the $2k I just spent, I guess I'll be taking it in to drop another probably $4k to get this top working.

 

What did they charge you $2K for? What did they fix/replace?

 

I bet they killed him on hours diagnosing the issue. I will admit electrical gremlins can take the most time to properly trace out.

Something to keep in mind. When you have a weird issue and its not the most obvious thing and electrical could be involved start looking at all your ground wires and their connections. Most all of the crazy gremlin stuff I have seen ends up being ground issues. With all the electronics these days multiple very good grounds are critical. Gets some bad or marginal ones and really weird stuff can start happening that looks all unrelated ad random. I would think this issue sounds like s ground or a bad connector somewhere is an exposed to environment wire harness connection. Moisture and salt making great conductors can get in there and do crazy things. 2K is harsh though. Then again an oil change is $100 so......

Another thing is to check every wire connector you can find especially ones that see movement or are exposed. Pull them apart properly and make sure they are clean and then load them up with dielectric grease and reconnect them.