The Lexus that Wanted to Have a Five Cylinder Engine

"Michael Woyahn" (michaelwoyahn)
03/02/2015 at 17:35 • Filed to: None

It has been an expensive past few weeks for the Grocery Grabber.

I finally took new pictures of the clean-ish Lexus!

It all started off with a trip to the Chicago Auto Show two weeks ago. My dad and I were heading down for the day and we're about five minutes into the trip. We're cruising along doing 60 mph when a Nissan Rogue decides to pull out in front of us, slowing us to 40 mph. Slightly annoying, but no big deal, right? Nope.

As my dad goes to accelerate the entire car starts shaking. It was shaking so badly, I honestly thought we were going over bumps, but the voice in the back of my head was suggesting otherwise. After three attempts at accelerating, I realize that something is really not right with the Grocery Grabber and the check engine light pops on and starts flashing at us. This is not good.

We decide to turn around and limp the car straight to our mechanic. My dad dropped me off at our house so I could take the trusty Rav-inator (a 2006 Rav4 with the superb 4 speed auto, 4 cylinder combination) and pick him up from the mechanic. We still made it to Chicago, but in a different car and 30 minutes later than we expected.

There's the beast.

The source of the problem was the ignition coil in the sixth cylinder. It decided that it didn't want to function anymore and wanted to run on five cylinders instead. That coil and a new spark plug cost about $290. This wasn't as bad as I was expecting, but there are also five more ignition coils in the engine that could decide they want to die at any second too. However, after two days of work, the Lexus was back on the road.

Fast forward to a week after that escapade and I bring the Grocery Grabber into my autos class. I was going to inspect the cooling system since that was what we were learning about, but I got side tracked. As it turns out, there was years of corrosion on the battery and its cables. My teacher said that he had never seen corrosion that bad before. Weirdly, the car started fine when it was cold. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

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So I clean it using the typical brush, water and baking soda. Well, the Lexus did not like that. It wouldn't start anymore unless we jump started it. I ended up having my autos teacher jump my car after school and I drove it straight to our mechanic, who loves us at this point.

The corrosion wasn't quite as bad as it is on this battery, but it was close.

The drive there was a bit interesting. I think the car went into "Holy shit, I'm not getting enough electricity from the battery" mode because it wouldn't creep forward when I took my foot off of the brake. I also stopped at a stop sign and the radio turned off by itself. By the time I got to the mechanic's shop, the car was idling at 600 rpms. Thank God it's less than a mile away from my school.

We replace the battery, which was five years old, and everything is good until this Friday. That's when the Lexus gets an oil change and we pick it up from our mechanic. After the five minute drive home, I go to pull into the garage and the car isn't creeping forward with my foot off of the brake anymore. I figured I was just paranoid so I didn't mention it. My dad and I were going to run errands in it anyway, so I was going to see if my dad noticed anything. Surprise surprise, it's idling at 600 rpms. We take it straight back to the mechanic and as I'm waiting to pull the car in the garage, it's idling at 300 rpms. I actually had to rev it to get it to sit at 900 rpms.

The mechanic didn't really know what was wrong with it, but he guessed that the computer had to relearn its idle speed. I honestly didn't believe it, even though our mechanic has helped us a lot throughout the years, because this was 5 days after the battery was replaced. I drove it twice a day (although it was only for about 10 minutes each way) since then and it was idling fine, but we followed his directions anyway. We go to leave and the second my dad puts the Lexus in reverse it dies. He's able to restart it and we're reluctantly on our way.

We decide to drive it around for a while to see if it will relearn how to idle while I scrounge through Lexus forums trying to look for possible causes. Basically the second I decide that we need to clean the throttle body, the Grocery Grabber chooses to idle normally again. We drove it around for another 30 minutes and it was fine. Like usual, our mechanic knows what he's talking about.

I think I jinxed the Lexus' reliability with my article saying it's the perfect first car. After I said we haven't had many problems with it, we discovered the power steering was leaking and then all of these incidents happened. Currently, the Grocery Grabber is at home, safe in the garage. Hopefully it decides it wants to work properly for a while.

DISCUSSION (12)

GeorgeyBoy > Michael Woyahn
03/02/2015 at 17:43

I'm so used to coil problems it's not funny.

Of course mine are only $60 and get marginal instead of outright failing. They also easily take the pcm and or cats out with them. Just my experience but on my car they need to be replaced all at the same time or it's a never ending game of changing out coils every month.

Should be an easy diy job, unless it's covered under the intake or something.

sellphones2493 > Michael Woyahn
03/02/2015 at 17:57

I got a friend with a 2004 RX330 that currently has nearly 400,000 miles on it (it had like 370,000 a year and a half ago).

E92M3 > Michael Woyahn
03/02/2015 at 18:10

What about Lexus reliablility?

On the plus side 15 years ago cars only had one coil. When it died you couldn't drive at all.

Michael Woyahn > GeorgeyBoy
03/02/2015 at 18:13

We'll see how the others hold up over the next few weeks. Hopefully they won't all need to be replaced... that wouldn't be too fun or cheap. Unfortunately the parts are so expensive because there aren't really any aftermarket parts, only Lexus official ones.

I would attempt to do it myself, but the problem I have is that I am really not handy and I would probably break something along the way. I'll definitely look into it though!

Michael Woyahn > sellphones2493
03/02/2015 at 18:16

Wow, that's insane! Mine is a 2004 too, but it only has 196,000 miles. They, or the previous owner, must have driven it a ton to get that many miles in 11 years! I'm impressed!

Michael Woyahn > E92M3
03/02/2015 at 18:23

Well I'm very happy that changed! We were at least able to get home.

I honestly think I jinxed it in my post when I said it was really reliable. After that, we had all of these problems. The Grocery Grabber is 11 years old and it has 196,000 miles so I like to think that a Mercedes or BMW of a similar age/mileage would have even more issues. The car has never left us stranded... yet. (Can't jinx it again!) Hopefully it'll get that Lexus reliability back soon...

sellphones2493 > Michael Woyahn
03/02/2015 at 20:48

I think the father of the kid who drove it was driving from somewhere near Providence, Rhode Island to Boston everyday - it's like 60 miles each way.

Still insane though - that's like NYC Taxi RX400H Miles!

Michael Woyahn > sellphones2493
03/02/2015 at 21:14

Oh wow! That would definitely add up! It really is like a taxi! I actually didn't know aRX400H Taxi was a thing and I had to google it, but it does exist. The more you know haha.

I can't imagine our Lexus making it another 200,000 miles... The transmission has been going out for the past 75,000 miles or so. It's not awful, it just occasionally clunks and doesn't shift quite so smoothly. Somehow it doesn't seem like it's gotten too much worse over the miles, but I haven't been driving it for most of those miles so I wouldn't really know. Hopefully it's got more life left in it though!

E92M3 > Michael Woyahn
03/02/2015 at 22:12

If you went that many miles on all the stock coils I'd consider that really lucky. Being closer to the engine puts in them in a much hotter environment, so they tend to fail at earlier mileage. I've heard of plenty of BMW's failing before the warranty period is up.

Takuro Spirit > Michael Woyahn
03/02/2015 at 22:24

I'm sorry but what kind of mechanic replaces a coil but says nothing of the sno cone on top of the battery terminals?

Michael Woyahn > E92M3
03/02/2015 at 23:08

Yeah, I have no idea if they were the stock coils. It makes sense that they would fail earlier, though. I'm surprised about the BMW's failing so soon. We've never had them fail on a car (at least that I remember, it's very possible I just don't remember them failing) and we have two Ford's with 70,000 miles on them. The Rav4 and the old Honda Odyssey we just traded in this summer have/had around 190,000 miles. I guess we just got really lucky so far!

Michael Woyahn > Takuro Spirit
03/02/2015 at 23:18

Yeah... It was really bad. I don't know how any of us missed it, honestly. My dad and I have been regularly checking the power steering fluid since it was leaking, but somehow we all just didn't see it. Our mechanic is great at diagnosing problems, so it is pretty surprising to me too that he didn't catch this. My family just got a new (used) Honda Odyssey over the summer and he was actually able to diagnose a noise that the Honda people couldn't figure out; it was the upper strut mount that creaked on turns.

I guess our focus was never on the battery since it seemed to function fine, but now I do know to regularly check up on things under the hood and not rely solely on my mechanic!