My friend with the 97 SC400 has had a repeat performance with his Nak amp dying...his 95 SC400 he owned before this car had the same problem, due to water collecting underneath the amp in the trunk due to a drainage hose getting disconnected or blocked in the trunk....you'd think Lexus might have clued in to this problem over the 2 years of production between the two cars but anway....

Anyhow, the amp was removed today from his 97 and of course water actually flowed out of it...the repair shop is saying it's less than 50-50 odds it will be functional again, and a replacement is like $1200 CDN. Anyone got a line on a good cheap source for these Nak system amps someplace secondhand or anything??

 

If they engineered the car for every WHAT IF, it would take them 10 years to get the design done, and it'd cost 10x more.

Check on eBay for a replacement.

 

Already checked on ebay, just one Nak factory head unit listed and no amps that I could find.

If the drainage problem is a common issue from at least 1995 M.Y. or prior, I'd think it would have surfaced in product design reviews from earlier on in the production run, unless it's just a problem with the design in more recent model years. Just seems pretty "non-coincidental" to have the exact same problem happen to two different cars owned by the same person over the past three years. The dealer here admitted it's a "bit of a common complaint" for any of the later-model SC400's they've seen after they are a few years old or more.

 

Here's a pic of that area. This is the driver's side. The amp is on the passenger side, but the drain hose and the black "ventilation" box it passes through look the same on both sides. You can see the clear drain hose entering the lower right corner of the black box. Accessing that area just involves removing a few black plastic nuts and popping off the trim panel. It's hard to imagine that hose getting clogged with debris from above, so maybe the tire is kicking up mud from below (in which case you can fabricate a "shield" to protect it in the future).

 

Actually what has happened on BOTH cars is the hose is coming unclamped at the lower/bottom end somehow and just drains into the area where the amp is mounted. My friend rigged up some kind of a beefier clamp to secure the hose in place....seems really odd that this would keep happening on the two different SC's he's owned in the past four years...

 

Try to use a small heater hose clamp to secure it better. All auto parts stores sell them.