Originally Posted by TX_gs400

I have a 98 GS400 that has had off and on issues with the electronic throttle. Lately it happened to my wife in the middle of an intersection and scared her so bad she won't drive the car. I found out about the Toyota Economic Loss Settlement and towed my car into the Park Place Lexus dealership in Grapevine TX. Of course they knew nothing about the Customer Support Program. I handed the service adviser the FAQs I printed out from the website with the specific information highlighted. So far they have replaced the throttle body at their expense but it hasn't fixed the problem. They have their senior tech working on it and he cannot determine what the problem is. They want to charge me $99 for the initial diagnostic charge and now $100/hr for additional diagnostics. Has anyone else who had this issue and taken their cars to a dealer had to pay for any diagnostic charges? Has anyone else also had a dealer not know how to fix the issue?

Thanks for your responses.

Originally Posted by TonyPHL

Hi all, I wanted to add my story as a way to say thanks to the people on this thread for all the great info.

A few months ago I bought a 2000 300GS with a 180K miles on it. I wanted a reliable car for city driving. At first everything was fine, but after a couple of weeks of normal use... Check Engine light went on, followed within a day by the dreaded VSC lights and limp mode.

I thought "Oh great here comes the money pit." I took it to my local mechanic who's a great and reasonable guy who ran the codes which came up with O2 sensors and the Accelerator Position Sensor. I didn't much care about the O2 sensors, but the APS, I bought online from a Lexus dealer for $350.

The mechanic installed the APS and the car ran great for one day, then... warning lights and limp mode again.

This time I got on the web to do some research and came across this thread. After reading the whole thread I found the links to the Toyota Class Action Settlement website and figured what the heck, I'll give it a shot. So I printed out the relevant pages and made an appointment at my local Lexus dealer to get the car inspected.

They inspection cost me $62.50 (1/2 hour of labor) and came back with the same 1121 code for the APS plus the O2 sensors. At this point the service writer is trying to talk me into $1800 worth of repairs. I showed him the print out from the Class Action site and the guy looked at me like I was crazy. I stayed polite and told him to please check it out on his end, and that I would also contact Lexus and would be in touch. To this day I've never heard back from that guy.

On the way home the car dropped back into limp mode, so I stopped at the garage and asked my mechanic to check the Air Idle Control Valve that has been mentioned on this thread as the culprit part. He called me back within an hour saying that's the one. The connections had cone bad on the part, but he had gerry-rigged it back together just to see if that would do the trick. It did, for a while.

In the meantime I called Lexus corporate. The first person I got had no idea what I was talking about, but put me on hold and asked a superior who got on the line and assigned me a claim number. It took about 2 weeks of my being persistent, but finally last week they called me to say they were sending me a check for the Accelerator Position Sensor that I bought online (I had sent them copies of the receipt), and that they would authorize my taking the car to the dealership for another APS install. I told them thanks for the check, but I didn't see the need for another APS since the one I had in there was brand new. I was going for the full throttle body assembly.

At this point things got a little dicier. The Lexus corporate person started weaseling saying that they could only go by what the dealership was telling them, and according to the dealership, the problem was the APS, but since the car also had these bad O2 sensors, and those WEREN'T covered by the Class Action Settlement, and they really couldn't be sure what the problem was etc...

So I said: OK send me the refund check for the APS, and I'll get in touch with the dealership to make an appointment for the repairs. With the money from that I bought all 4 O2 sensors, and the Air Idle Control Valve and had everything installed by my mechanic. The car is running great. If the limp mode problem returns (which I seriously doubt) I can now take the car to the Lexus dealer and make it their problem using the case number I've been assigned, since the O2 sensors have now been replaced.

So bottom line:

1) Yes Lexus will repair your car if you have this problem.
2) Yes, the bad part is the Air Idle Control Valve, NOT the APS.

Thanks again to all who contributed to this thread.

Originally Posted by Bigwillie

Well the dealer has a list of items that 'disqualify' the vehicle from being repaired. the one that got me was "excessive carbon deposits" on the butterfly valve I guess. They just said sorry and pointed at the list given to them by 'corporate' and handed me back my keys.

How about that..