Falling in love again: 2001 Lexus GS430

Some times it's hard to get excited about a car you've owned for a while. I liked my GS430 but it had a few little things that had added up to a general attitude of annoyance about the car. I decided to fix a few things about it, starting with the blown audio amplifier. I got a used part on eBay for a decent price and it turned out to be bad. I think that took the wind out of my sails and I decided to sell it and buy something newer. As part of getting it ready to sell, I got a significant exhaust leak repaired. Well that was either a mistake or a good thing as I immediately took to the car again. It felt faster, more refined, comfortable, and way less wearing to drive long distances. So, I've started to work my way through the list of things I'd like to sort out to make it a better daily driver.

Let's see where I was when I decided to sell:

Not a bad starting point. It had terrible tires on it so I decided to upgrade those and the wheels first. Let me tell you, a nice set of wheels can make a car look good but a good set of tires can transform your car.

That's more like it. I chose Michelin AS3+ tires in 245/45-18 from Discount Tire and a set of Konig Understeers that I scored on Craigslist for a great price. What a difference that made! The car rides quieter, smoother, and grips like nothing else - well, compared to a worn 6 year old set of Uniroyal Tigerpaws. Yes, I probably put 50% of the car's sale value into wheels and tires, but it made the car feel completely different.

Unfortunately it also highlighted some needs in the suspension department. There was a slight dive to the left under breaking and a bit of a shake on the freeway. Checking things over revealed worn tie rod ends and a worn upper ball joint. Most of the front end parts are original with 261k miles on them, so I decided a comprehensive front end refresh was in order. As discussed here, I've always preferred factory parts, but they're shockingly expensive on Lexus and Toyota vehicles for some reason. Where we are now is that I've place a $1000 order with Rock Auto for every front end wear part they have, including shocks, plus front brakes. I went with Moog parts and hope I don't regret it.

The parts are due next week. The house and baby conspire to keep me out of the garage, but I hope to make rapid progress on this project.

Moving to the inside, the factory navigation has never worked for me and the head unit had a disappointing damaged button and fascia. I scored a deal on a combo of DVD drive and head unit off of eBay and got to installing them last night. The new nav unit works and the factory navigation in a 2001 is hilariously bad. But the replacement head unit - while beautiful cosmetically - makes a quiet intermittent screeching noise that's indicative of a failing LCD back-light. I emailed the seller hoping to get a discount and if he's amenable I'll use the fascia from it to repair my factory head unit. I'm getting ready to send the factory amplifier off for a rebuild. I'll have a terrifying amount of money wrapped up in a used car stereo but at least it is a good sounding system. In the process of all this work I'll be adding a line in. I'll try to detail that; my idea involves a relay in line with the CD changer so you can select line-in or CD.

Last year I followed a similar pattern with the Mazda5. Got ready to sell so I started to fix all the things that needed doing, then wondered why I'd want to get rid of it now that it didn't annoy me.

Another thing that'll make you feel differently about the car is polishing the headlights.

Watching. I've got to do some front end work on my GS430 too so I'm interested to see how you like the parts. I've got lowering springs on mine which necessitated the custom upper control arms to allow for realistic camber adjustment. Schwing, no more excessive inside tire wear!

Right now I need the rear lower control arm bushings where they mount to the chassis. You can buy the whole arm but some have just pressed in new bearings with good luck.

Matt B wrote: Another thing that'll make you feel differently about the car is polishing the headlights.

Definitely! I did them once a few years ago and just need to refresh them. They were really bad when I bought it.

I'll be watching this as well. I have a 2001 LS430, or did before the wife took a liking to it. Basically the same powertrain in a different body. I was looking for either a GS or an LS and just bought the first good one in the right color/price/miles that came along.

I haven't really done much more than drive it, but will be replacing the timing belt fairly soon as we just came up on 160k.

The seller of the screeching head unit offered me a $50 credit which is fine with me.

However, I noticed something this morning: the audio no longer cuts in and out. So the problem with my audio output was not the commonly failed Mark Levinson amp but was instead the head unit! Good news is that saves me the $475 - $700 that it was going to cost to have the amp rebuilt, but bad news is that I can't just swap this faceplate onto my old head unit since that would leave the audio cutting in and out. I may have to swap the backlight inverter board from my old unit or potentially even the backlight tubes which would be a big project. I may end up wanting to get a different head unit and sell the screeching one on. But doing things in this order by luck saved me a lot of frustration and cost - if I had paid the big money to have my amp rebuilt and it didn't fix the problem I would have been pretty upset.

Sorry for no photos for a few posts; it's hard to take photos of sound waves.

You should take some pics of the front end work - i'll have to do that eventually on my 98 GS400. Good stuff so far - those wheels/tires look good!

Could you possibly dump the entire inverter system for an LED? I know guys do it on Soarers.

<- Cataloging all fellow GRM Lexus GS owners for future reference.

Glad you like those tires, I am about to put the same on mine!

Oh man you will love these tires. They are amazing.

Look what came!

I haven't even had time to open the boxes. It'll probably be a couple weeks until I have time to do the work; my mother in law is coming for a few weeks in August so maybe she can keep an eye on the little one while I work in the garage. I need garage time, mentally speaking.

@ssswitch: I will look into it. That would be a nice upgrade. Thanks for the tip!

Time flies .. Mother in Law is in town and the last parts should be here this week. I'm hoping to get started this weekend, but failing that it'll be next weekend. I'm looking forward to some garage time!

And the parts are all installed. Two solid days of work (with a few short breaks for playing with the kiddo and eating and sleeping) and I'm left with a sore body and a very nicely driving car. I just got the alignment done 45 minutes ago, and it drives like a new car; if I told you it had 62k miles on it you would probably believe it, but it's got 262k miles.

I'll write up something later, right now I should try to get some work done. I took some pics. Several challenges and some (slight) parts disappointment.