This is a resuscitation thread for a 1998 LX 470. The truck was offered for sale by @cwilli20 as needing a head gasket. Has a salvage title. Some homeless people lit a fire next to the truck and the fire melted the side marker light and the mirror a bit. This is apparently enough to total the truck in California. Other than that, it looked like a normal LX470 that is 23 years old. Interior in good shape. AC blows cold (very important in South Mississippi). Absolutely zero rust. California car, then Arizona, then Mississippi.
Here is the for sale ad:
forum.ih8mud.com
@CarterB341 and I agree to look at it and split the expenses 50/50. We broke rule #1 of buying a used car and went to look at it at night. We kept poor Chris out in the cold for 2 hours going over the car. (Sorry about that bud....)
The car runs and drives. Sounds like it has skipped time. No evidence of a head gasket, no white under the oil fill cap, no milky motor oil. OBD2 codes are misfire on cylinder 1,3,5, and 7. We once owned a 2004 Sequoia that had the exact same symptoms. That ended up being 2 bad coil packs and a timing belt that has skipped time. Since the LX 470 has 284,600 miles, we guessed (incorrectly) that the timing belt tensioner had not been replaced and it skipped time. We were right, and we were wrong.... We thought, heck, all it needs is a timing belt and we'll be laughing. We knew there was a chance the engine was bad, but since we are pros are swapping 2UZs (see below), we figured we could do that if we needed to.
2UZ rebuild thread from Carter's Sequoia:
forum.ih8mud.com
Here she is on the trailer the night we bought it.
We get her home, timing covers off, and sure enough, she is 2 teeth out of time. "See, I knew it" we thought. So we ordered a Aisin timing belt kit, Aisin fan belt pulley bracket, side marker lights, valve cover gaskets (it has a mean passenger side valve cover gasket leak), a new mirror, and some other bits and bobs. Fun fact, some parts are Lexus specific and need to be ordered from parts.lexus.com, not parts.toyota.com. Like the parts don't exist in the Toyota parts database or something. At this point, the truck is officially in "Awaiting parts" status.
Here is the for sale ad:
Hattiesburg area Cruisers/Toyota/Lexus
Hotel indigo lot is pretty full, I’m parked behind fuzzy’s. There’s plenty of room over here.
forum.ih8mud.com
@CarterB341 and I agree to look at it and split the expenses 50/50. We broke rule #1 of buying a used car and went to look at it at night. We kept poor Chris out in the cold for 2 hours going over the car. (Sorry about that bud....)
The car runs and drives. Sounds like it has skipped time. No evidence of a head gasket, no white under the oil fill cap, no milky motor oil. OBD2 codes are misfire on cylinder 1,3,5, and 7. We once owned a 2004 Sequoia that had the exact same symptoms. That ended up being 2 bad coil packs and a timing belt that has skipped time. Since the LX 470 has 284,600 miles, we guessed (incorrectly) that the timing belt tensioner had not been replaced and it skipped time. We were right, and we were wrong.... We thought, heck, all it needs is a timing belt and we'll be laughing. We knew there was a chance the engine was bad, but since we are pros are swapping 2UZs (see below), we figured we could do that if we needed to.
2UZ rebuild thread from Carter's Sequoia:
2UZ-FE with VVTi engine rebuild in 2007 Sequoia
This will be an engine rebuild thread for a 2UZ-FE engine with VVTi in a 2007 Sequoia, aka the 4.7 liter V8. We found very little information on the web regarding people who have actual experience rebuilding this engine. We found one person (@errryday_outdoor on Instagram) who had a few high...
forum.ih8mud.com
Here she is on the trailer the night we bought it.
We get her home, timing covers off, and sure enough, she is 2 teeth out of time. "See, I knew it" we thought. So we ordered a Aisin timing belt kit, Aisin fan belt pulley bracket, side marker lights, valve cover gaskets (it has a mean passenger side valve cover gasket leak), a new mirror, and some other bits and bobs. Fun fact, some parts are Lexus specific and need to be ordered from parts.lexus.com, not parts.toyota.com. Like the parts don't exist in the Toyota parts database or something. At this point, the truck is officially in "Awaiting parts" status.
Last edited:
and had too many miles anyway. The other one had real bad oil varnishing and had something loose in the engine. So we passed. 
He goes off to the auto parts store and we get to removing the intake manifold. 90 minutes later (right about when the rain starts coming down), the starter is in and the truck starts right up. Great oil pressure, sounds very smooth, compression is all above 200 psi and within 15 psi of each other. We have a winner. since it was raining, the guy let us use his carport to pull the engine. 6 hours later, the engine is out. 
