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I have a 1995 Lexus SC400. I have owned it since 2006. I don't drive it much. It has pretty much sat around since my daughter was born five years ago. Getting a child in and out of a safety seat in the back seat of the car is no fun. The previous owner had swapped the stock four-speed automatic transmission to a five-speed manual unit from a Toyota Tacoma of some kind before I bought the car, but he apparently didn't like it and swapped it back to stock. I asked him about it months after the sale and he said that it was no fun because the gearing in the truck transmission wasn't a good match. The PO worked for Lexus of America and traveled all over the place to do service training. The car came with a Lexus OEM car cover, a physical set of factory service manuals (three huge books), a wiring diagram book, and a parts catalog. He also swapped in a black interior with perforated leather in place of the beige leather the car came with from the factory. There is a rip in the leather on the passenger seat that I caused by dropping something hard and heavy on the seat in the middle of winter. I "repaired" the leather by gluing a piece of black vinyl behind it. The repair is not perfect, but it has kept the rip from expanding for several years. The leather on the steering wheel is pulling away a little bit on two of the three spokes. The interior door trim panels on these cars are huge and pretty fragile, and mine are not in great shape. Some of the fasteners don't really engage with anything and there are some rattles. The car is definitely not fast in stock form. The gas mileage is atrocious for something that has no utility and not much speed. It looks good though. Or it did before the clear coat delaminated on the hood. Some day I will respray the hood myself. Mine has a set of homebrew "gixxerdrew" coilovers made from Bilstein Supra shocks, coilover sleeves, and some springs whose spring rates I do not recall. I have a set of Nissan 350Z 18" wheels on it but soon I will be putting on new tires on a set of Mazda RX-8 wheels. I had integrated the stock optional Nakamichi amplifier and speakers with an Alpine head unit long ago. The stock amp now produces crackly output and the rear speaker suspensions have crumbled with age. I need to replace that stuff. I replaced the front speakers a few years ago and the aftermarket replacement units are still fine. The electric mirrors and cruise control did not work when I bought the car. The cruise control still doesn't. I suspect it has something to do with either the manual swap or the interior changeover. The electric side mirrors also didn't work when I bought the car. At one point I wrangled a power mirror ECU or some such part out of a junkyard car and installed it alongside the original unit. The original mirror control box was buried too far in the dash for me to extract it. The power mirrors worked for maybe a year and then quit again. I suspect both of those mirror brain boxes have bad capacitors. Recently the door chime goes off all the time when the car is not running. I pulled a fuse that disables this, but it takes a lot of other functions with it, including the radio memory. This is apparently somewhat common and is caused by a broken (enormous in size 1-ohm) resistor in something called an integration relay. The IR is also buried in the dash. I still love the car. Some day I want to either manual (re-)swap the fun-sapping automatic box or swap in an LS and an automatic with a lot of gears. Fun fact: the four-speed autos in these cars start out in second gear by default unless the "sport" mode is enabled. A six- (or 8, or 10 maybe) transmission would probably help the fuel economy. In the interim I have my eyes open for an automatic SC 300 with 4.27 rear gears to liven things up a little. The V-8 cars like mine have 3.90 gears, but mine might not because of the previous owner's manual swap. Someday I should check that out.
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Apr 28, 2022 19:04
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 01:31 |
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ROFLBOT posted:Me running my dumbass mouth about second gear starts. ROFLBOT posted:That doesnt sound right? I know they will start in second if you put it in 2 with the button off but it shouldnt do that when in D...
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May 2, 2022 16:12
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A car fails inspection over a rip in the seat? Does it matter where the rip is located? Driver seat only or any seat? Can you put a seat cover over the rip and continue on your way? On some other vehicles withe fabric seats (fabric seats are superior in every way btw) I have managed to take a cover from a less-used passenger seat and press-gang it into service on the driver's side. It doesn't always work, and often results in an extra hole in the seat where some kind of adjuster knob or seat belt part comes through, but it beats the poo poo out of a torn up side bolster. Idea time: a seat cover exchange between LHD and RHD countries. People in RHD countries contribute left seat covers in good condition and folks in LHD locate right seat covers in good shape.
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May 4, 2022 14:34
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Jesus H. Christ, a special high-test bottle of windshield washer fluid. Can you provide a complete list of all the dumb electronics boxes inside the car? I know there is an engine controller, a transmission controller, an ABS controller, a power mirror controller, a cruise control controller, climate control controller, an "integration relay" that is like a small part of what other manufacturers would call a body control module. I'm sure yours has extra boxes for the hydro suspension. And of course every one of these boxes is filled with three decade old capacitors that leak. Fun addendum: the German term for windshield washer fluid is Scheibenwischerflüssigkeit. The word for contact lens solution is Kontaktlinsenlösung. What a great language.
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May 6, 2022 14:43
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I want one of those rear wipers for my SC 400.
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Aug 8, 2022 17:13
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