New to the club, just bought this LX470. (1 Viewer)

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Joined
May 12, 2020
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297
Location
Birmingham, AL
Finalized my purchase of this guy today. Excited to have (another) fun car to play with. He gets to be stablemates with my S2000, but this one will be much more of the daily-driver. Wife likes it, kids like it, everyone is thrilled (at least after wife got over the initial concern of buying a 230k mile car). Initial primary goal is to get this thing camping-ready by the time fall gets here and get it out in the woods, but other goals are a) having something we all fit in (there are 5 of us), b) eventually modifying for more intense offroad use, c) having something around that can be called on to tow something if need be, and d) just enjoying in general.

1999 LX470
230k miles, I'm the 4th owner. Third was a friend of mine (who's using the proceeds to work on his new-to-him 200 series) and the prior two were in Memphis and Nashville areas.

The good:
  • All the crucial parts work well. The engine starts and runs smoothly, the transmission shifts smoothly and doesn't hunt or flare. The AHC actually does seem to work right, though it definitely needs a service. Fluid is super-low when the truck is in "high" position, and it's not a great color from what I can see. Planning on a total bleed of that system as a starting point/ reset, will definitely spend more time here poking around on how to go from there. All the other engine bay fluids are freaky-clean. No weird smells, no residues of mystery ancient failures, no concerns. Timing belt/ WP was done right at 200k miles by previous owner. Overall - this is a pretty great used car. It's been on the road the last 20 years, doing at least 10k miles each year, and so it's not new, it's not all that scary either.
  • Has relatively new/ half or more tread left BFG K02s on, so there's one thing I won't have to mess with right away. Also, these were put on by my friend - I suspect before he had it it wasn't off road very much, if at all. He also pulled the old funky 90s-style running boards off, and I don't miss em either.
  • Southern car, all its life, so rust isn't/ shouldn't be much of an issue
  • The interior behind the driver/ passenger seats has honestly barely been sat in. It's freakin' nice back there; my kids (and dog) are spoiled already. Rear air? Cmon now.
  • Friend had a Apple CarPlay-ready touchscreen headunit put in before selling- which is pretty doggone nice. I'll be adding a backup camera there to make wife happy, but having the music stream in, nav working, etc., and all controlled by that thing while your phone charges is just cool.
The bad:
  • Interior needs some love. Looks exactly like you'd expect for 230k miles - fortunately a couple front seat covers and a less-tattered shift knob are easy enough to find. I'll probably get to try my hand at lacing up a replacement steering wheel cover.
  • Needs a windshield. Not an emergency, but has a crack that could run. Safelite to the rescue.
  • Couple little electrical motor things - electric mirrors don't work to reposition them, but do work to fold. Tells me that the joystick switch needs replacing. HVAC controls are pretty spotty - each button works sometimes and sometimes not so much. I'll be looking for a new-to-me junkyard set and pulling those out to replace em.
  • Despite the photos, paint on top surfaces is not great. Doesn't matter that much - you can't REALLY tell unless you're looking and the truck is so tall that the worst part (top surface) hardly ever gets seen at all, but I'll be doing something to either polish that out, or hitting the whole car with some plastidip to clean it up to "good enough for the woods" status.
  • Driveline clunk. I'll be crawling under to check the driveshaft over for its grease status as well as looking over the diff fluids this weekend, so we'll see what happens here.
The ugly:
  • Really? Not too much serious. You can see that the OEM roof rack feet have disintegrated in the sun, which isn't great, but I'm probably gonna pull that whole thing off anyway to work on the paint. It likely won't go back on, as it'll eventually get a simple flat rack thrown up there. We're east coast/ southeast people. Rack is nice, but we might not ever really REALLY need it. We'll burn that bridge when we get there.
  • One big ding in front of passenger taillight, one set of weird creases over driver side front door. Neither is scary, and I can fix em- just more dent than I want to see every day.
  • It came to me with 4 lug nuts per wheel, and on one wheel there's a broken stud in there I'll have to knock out and replace. Buddy I bought car from has been running them that way for the last several years - which makes me wonder whether the tires are truly a bit out of balance or the wheels are just wiggling as we go down the road, or... both.
  • If the AHC proves to be truly sick - which it 100% could be - I'm not looking forward to the replacement/ service bill. Might just put a static lift in instead - though early troubleshooting tells me that a DIY service/ bleeding of the system might be all it needs. Cross your fingers for me on that one.
  • Oh - the gas mileage. Coming from a Hyundai Sonata that routinely gets 27-28mpg with no regard whatsoever for trying to maintain fuel economy, this is... different. :D
Thanks for sticking with me as I ramble- here are some photos of the new landbruiser. I linked an album as well as attached one shot because I wasn't sure how this forum prefers. I'll need to get with the lingo and preferences here.


Photos of my new LX470

LX470ds.jpg


LX470.jpg


LX470int.jpg
 
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Welcome, and nice truck!

I 'replaced' an S2000 with my LX. Would love to have another some day - I suspect they make close to the perfect automotive pair.
 
Welcome, and nice truck!

I 'replaced' an S2000 with my LX. Would love to have another some day - I suspect they make close to the perfect automotive pair.

Entirely, completely different animals, that's for sure. Parking issues aside (my wife's not thrilled with that piece), I always prefer to keep a couple old cars instead of one $$$$$ new one, and it helps quite a bit when they scratch different gearhead itches like this. The S2000 is happiest just ripping around at 100mph, and I plan on putting a couple of track days on it in the next year or two, but it's frankly kind of a pain as a car (plus I always wonder when I'm gonna get a stupidity citation from some lurking Trooper). I might feel a little different if I was 5'9" and 160# instead of 6'2" and 250#. The LX is way better at that everyday stuff... and I fit great AND there's no danger of tickets. Probably.

Plus it was getting to be time to move on from my miles-piling-up sedan as a daily and get something else for me, and this came along. Leaves the paid off, reliable, good on gas, safe sedan with hopefully several good years left in it as a good teenager hand-me-down car. Plus, with this thing at a third or quarter the buy-in cost of a fairly pedestrian new car, that's a whole lot of maintenance, break/fix, and other (mods) bucks I can use as we go. I'm sure there'll be something, potentially a few things - but that's completely OK with me.
 
Awesome truck!! Looks just like the one I just bought, like you said. Freaky how your passenger tail light dent is in almost the same place as mine but... mine's bigger :rofl: .... for now!

My ac controls are also kinda shotty but I think I'm just gonna live with it for now.. got an uncle with a huge junk yard in Killan, AL if you need some parts. Not sure if he'd have any LC/LX stuff cause he still hasn't gotten back to me about some parts that I need but will update you as time goes. Your seats are in much much better condition than mine, my driver's seat is ROUGH but like yours, my back seats are flawless and super comfy. There's an Amish group up near the TN/AL line (near me) that will reupholster your leather seats, center console and steering wheel for about $500+/- so we might be paying them a little visit. Funny part is, they contact you through the mail to let you know when it's finished.

Overall in pretty much the same condition as yours which is crazy awesome! What's the part number for your head-unit? I'll try to keep in touch with you as I do mods and fixes on mine.
 
Nice rig, welcome! Larry sounds like a solid ride.

AHC doesn't sound like it's in trouble if it goes up and down OK. Get yourself setup with techstream and check neutral pressures. Flush fluid and then do the gradation check once you've got pressures in spec (by adjusting torsion bars for a first pass check). If it goes up and down as is, it's unlikely to need any expensive repair. If it's rust-free, there's really nothing expensive that commonly fails. The entire system is expensive. The common failure points are not - they're very similar to traditional suspension. Techstream is your friend. :)
 
Awesome truck!! Looks just like the one I just bought, like you said. Freaky how your passenger tail light dent is in almost the same place as mine but... mine's bigger :rofl: .... for now!

My ac controls are also kinda shotty but I think I'm just gonna live with it for now.. got an uncle with a huge junk yard in Killan, AL if you need some parts. Not sure if he'd have any LC/LX stuff cause he still hasn't gotten back to me about some parts that I need but will update you as time goes. Your seats are in much much better condition than mine, my driver's seat is ROUGH but like yours, my back seats are flawless and super comfy. There's an Amish group up near the TN/AL line (near me) that will reupholster your leather seats, center console and steering wheel for about $500+/- so we might be paying them a little visit. Funny part is, they contact you through the mail to let you know when it's finished.

Overall in pretty much the same condition as yours which is crazy awesome! What's the part number for your head-unit? I'll try to keep in touch with you as I do mods and fixes on mine.

Ha- maybe it's like the camry dent that plagues all mid-90s to mid-00s Camrys, just the LC/LX version. I'd like to hear more about the amish upholstery people - that's wild. I was just gonna buy some new leather seatcovers and install - or maybe not. Seems like I saw some somewhere for $350 or so.

AC I can live with too, but I'll be looking for a part there one of these days. For now it works and the knob to adjust temp at least is 100% functional, and the blower speed sometimes does. I tend to look for old-car used parts stuff on car-part.com - yeah it's a little of a roll of the dice on what quality you're gonna get, but the yards that have been at this a minute usually put up a decent picture, and often you can see the mileage on the donor vehicle. So if you are buying an AC panel from a totaled LX470 that died at 40k miles - often in decent shape. Looks like the going rate is about $150, which I can live with at some point.

The headunit is apparently a Sony XAV-AX1000. I had to go look - no model# on the unit front, but it identifies itself when you go to pair up bluetooth. It's a pretty big update to the inside of what's otherwise pretty much just an old 90s truck. Bonus for me on this car, and I haven't lived with it that long-but so far I'd recommend as a decent upgrade for someone interested.


Nice rig, welcome! Larry sounds like a solid ride.

AHC doesn't sound like it's in trouble if it goes up and down OK. Get yourself setup with techstream and check neutral pressures. Flush fluid and then do the gradation check once you've got pressures in spec (by adjusting torsion bars for a first pass check). If it goes up and down as is, it's unlikely to need any expensive repair. If it's rust-free, there's really nothing expensive that commonly fails. The entire system is expensive. The common failure points are not - they're very similar to traditional suspension. Techstream is your friend. :)

AHC seems to work- maybe a little slow, maybe not- i'm not completely sure. Previous owner had had the Slee Offroad AHC lockout installed, and I think THAT may be buggy, but the AHC itself seems to work OK so long as I leave that switch turned off (its supposedly inert when not switched on). I'd rather all the stuff on the car work the way it should to start with - we can modify from there a lot easier.

I have seen the techstream thing mentioned. I've got an old OBDII scanner so I'm at least marginally conversant in some of that kind of thing - but I haven't figured out what all I'd need to get started there specifically. Special cable, software I pirate (ahem) I mean "acquire" somewhere, what?
 
Ha- maybe it's like the camry dent that plagues all mid-90s to mid-00s Camrys, just the LC/LX version. I'd like to hear more about the amish upholstery people - that's wild. I was just gonna buy some new leather seatcovers and install - or maybe not. Seems like I saw some somewhere for $350 or so.

AC I can live with too, but I'll be looking for a part there one of these days. For now it works and the knob to adjust temp at least is 100% functional, and the blower speed sometimes does. I tend to look for old-car used parts stuff on car-part.com - yeah it's a little of a roll of the dice on what quality you're gonna get, but the yards that have been at this a minute usually put up a decent picture, and often you can see the mileage on the donor vehicle. So if you are buying an AC panel from a totaled LX470 that died at 40k miles - often in decent shape. Looks like the going rate is about $150, which I can live with at some point.

The headunit is apparently a Sony XAV-AX1000. I had to go look - no model# on the unit front, but it identifies itself when you go to pair up bluetooth. It's a pretty big update to the inside of what's otherwise pretty much just an old 90s truck. Bonus for me on this car, and I haven't lived with it that long-but so far I'd recommend as a decent upgrade for someone interested.




AHC seems to work- maybe a little slow, maybe not- i'm not completely sure. Previous owner had had the Slee Offroad AHC lockout installed, and I think THAT may be buggy, but the AHC itself seems to work OK so long as I leave that switch turned off (its supposedly inert when not switched on). I'd rather all the stuff on the car work the way it should to start with - we can modify from there a lot easier.

I have seen the techstream thing mentioned. I've got an old OBDII scanner so I'm at least marginally conversant in some of that kind of thing - but I haven't figured out what all I'd need to get started there specifically. Special cable, software I pirate (ahem) I mean "acquire" somewhere, what?

There's a thread on here called "Techstream in 5 minutes". Read that and follow post #1. If you have trouble, you can read other comments, but generally you can read post #1, follow the instructions (including completely pack and play virtual machine and Techstream software) and be connected in literally 5 minutes once you have it downloaded and installed (and assuming you have a cable).
 
We sound remarkably similar. I currently have 5 spaces to play with so the formula is truck + sports car + LX + 2 boring cars. It works well for us.

My S was comfy enough for me, but the LX is a much better form of daily transportation. Plus, it is a wonderful way to load up dogs/family and get out into nature. Maybe its just me, but it seems that the S/100 do have similar DNA in that they were a focused, quality offering made by folks who knew what they were doing (Takanezawa, Araco). Great values in today's market too - I'd gladly take either over a new car 'worth' twice as much.

Wrenching on them is part of the experience for me, and having the odometer as a measure of joy experienced rather than life remaining is a good feeling. This is a good forum too, which helps the experience IMO.
 
We sound remarkably similar. I currently have 5 spaces to play with so the formula is truck + sports car + LX + 2 boring cars. It works well for us.

My S was comfy enough for me, but the LX is a much better form of daily transportation. Plus, it is a wonderful way to load up dogs/family and get out into nature. Maybe its just me, but it seems that the S/100 do have similar DNA in that they were a focused, quality offering made by folks who knew what they were doing (Takanezawa, Araco). Great values in today's market too - I'd gladly take either over a new car 'worth' twice as much.

Wrenching on them is part of the experience for me, and having the odometer as a measure of joy experienced rather than life remaining is a good feeling. This is a good forum too, which helps the experience IMO.

Yep- we're 5/2 on cars/licensed drivers here, which is a little high for my tastes, so our little old truck is for sale. Now that we're not remodeling a whole house, its use case isn't as cut and dried for us. Maintenance gets to be hard, too, making sure everything gets driven periodically, all the little things that pop up get addressed... it turns into real work. 3/2 is my preferred- two everyday ones and a hobby- and in our case the 4th is an appliance kid car. The new to us LX straddles that driver/hobby line a bit. By the dollars it's a heck of a nice "project car," but a mega cheap daily driver- so we'll just adapt as we go.

We just moved to a new house- I seriously considered getting a 4-post lift to be able to stack the S2000 on top of something else, but I think our garage is about 6-12" too short to make that really realistic unless I only drive super-low/short cars- which of course the LX is decidedly NOT, so that is probably done for now. Still might one day, but it'd be real close, and I don't want to risk totaling my car squishing the windshield into the ceiling one day. Wish I had real space for a barn here.
 
Yep- we're 5/2 on cars/licensed drivers here, which is a little high for my tastes, so our little old truck is for sale. Now that we're not remodeling a whole house, its use case isn't as cut and dried for us. Maintenance gets to be hard, too, making sure everything gets driven periodically, all the little things that pop up get addressed... it turns into real work. 3/2 is my preferred- two everyday ones and a hobby- and in our case the 4th is an appliance kid car. The new to us LX straddles that driver/hobby line a bit. By the dollars it's a heck of a nice "project car," but a mega cheap daily driver- so we'll just adapt as we go.

We just moved to a new house- I seriously considered getting a 4-post lift to be able to stack the S2000 on top of something else, but I think our garage is about 6-12" too short to make that really realistic unless I only drive super-low/short cars- which of course the LX is decidedly NOT, so that is probably done for now. Still might one day, but it'd be real close, and I don't want to risk totaling my car squishing the windshield into the ceiling one day. Wish I had real space for a barn here.
Is this the one from birmingham or mobile area? I ran the carfax and it had a very intersting history...
 
Is this the one from birmingham or mobile area? I ran the carfax and it had a very intersting history...

This one wasn't ever listed anywhere, officially. Bought from a friend- its carfax is pretty straightforward and clean, plus full of dealer maintenance records for the first couple owners' time with it (about the first 200k miles). Its life so far has been all Memphis, Nashville, Birmingham.
 
This one wasn't ever listed anywhere, officially. Bought from a friend- its carfax is pretty straightforward and clean, plus full of dealer maintenance records for the first couple owners' time with it (about the first 200k miles). Its life so far has been all Memphis, Nashville, Birmingham.
Odd, i saw almost the exact same one for sale on facebook over there. If you can figure out techstrream let me know haha
 
Odd, i saw almost the exact same one for sale on facebook over there. If you can figure out techstrream let me know haha
There's another user on here that bought one here in the Ham almost the same day as me, LXJake93. We're probably gonna have to meet each other sooner or later since we have nearly the same truck (age, color, mileage) and the same name. He's a bit further north in AL than I am, up near the state line, but that's where all the good public lands are. If he looks anything like me it'll get weird fast. :D
 
@wrigh003 if your avatar photo is an accurate description of you, then you will be happy to know we don't look that much alike. I live within 10 minutes from the Tennessee state line in Limestone County and it's GREAT being out in the country. Yes, I purchased an LX that looks identical (dents and all) to Mr. @wrigh003's and it was listed only on Facebook market.. yeah the Carfax were a little odd with service/mileage recordings be stopped around 125k or something so who knows where those last two owners took the darn thing to get serviced but they kept it titled and driving! I inspected it hard core and even had a Firestone just give it a once over plus it was super cheap I love working on cars.. no rust, no accidents, not super modded out, brand new mickey's, etc. etc.. it was a good deal and it got me through the heavy rain and flooded highways this morning so it's great for now.

@gamecock2009 interesting story?
 
Welcome! I feel better now that I see people out there with similar car: person ratios, 4:2 soon to become 5:3 over here. Its really is nice having the variety. Agree with you on a few old cars instead a brand new one! 370z DD and LX are night and day (black and white, literally). Makes me appreciate each one so much every time I get behind the wheel... 3300lb rwd, manual transmission and a 5500lb 4x4 lol.
 

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