Engine dead

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At this point their conclusion is the ECU is bad. They have ordered a new ECU and it might take a few days for it to arrive. I've not had a chance to check out the car or the current ignition coils myself as I'm back in the bay area and the car is still in Vegas. So am in wait mode. We'll know more once the new ECU arrives and they hook it up.
 
Not sure if this model has an external ignitor that drives the coils, but hopefully they've checked that if it does.
 
No updates yet - dealer is still waiting fo the new ECU to come in.
 
No. They finally figured out the root cause was a short in some wire from the Camshaft sensor harness. Am going down to Las Vegas this Sat to pick up the car. I now doubt whether the ignition coils were at fault. They however already replaced and charged me for changing the ignition coils (6 of the 8). Am trying to decide whether it is worthwhile arguing that point with them.

Cheers
Rohitash
 
rohitash said:
No. They finally figured out the root cause was a short in some wire from the Camshaft sensor harness.
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OregonLC said:
Any chance cam sensor wires were left loose at the last 90k and got frayed by the belt?
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'Somewhere' or was it frayed by the belt? If the latter, who did your 90k?


rohitash said:
Am going down to Las Vegas this Sat to pick up the car. I now doubt whether the ignition coils were at fault. They however already replaced and charged me for changing the ignition coils (6 of the 8). Am trying to decide whether it is worthwhile arguing that point with them.
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Were the coils bad or where they incorrectly chasing the symptom rather than the cause. Once the cam circuit was repaired, can they put the old coils back in? If so, this was their risk not yours. This is why you pay a factory shop rather than throw parts at it yourself.
 
I did the timing belt myself - so if the harness got frayed by the belt, then I have only myself to blame:). However the service manager I spoke to did not have a lot of detail on what caused the wire to short. I will probably need to speak with the tech. Being 500 miles away does not help!

Just spoke the the service manager. He was not sure whether the techs specifically checked the ignition coils, he is going to ask them to. He did say 3 of them had a crack down their side and another 3 seemed like they were blackened / burnt with heat. I've not had a chance to see them myself.
 
Assume you picked it up last Saturday? What can we learn from the problems you had? What was fixed? Cost? For me personally how would you rate the dealer and the people you dealt with? Based on your engine dying on the road this thread can be a great learning experience for all 100 series owners. Thanks for the info.
 
This is probably going to be the dumbest reply on this thread, but your avatar shows your truck.....well.....swimming. Any chance this cause one or more of the issues?
 
SWUtah said:
Assume you picked it up last Saturday? What can we learn from the problems you had? What was fixed? Cost? For me personally how would you rate the dealer and the people you dealt with? Based on your engine dying on the road this thread can be a great learning experience for all 100 series owners. Thanks for the info.
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The cam sensor harness has to be unplugged or removed during the timing belt. The OP did the timing belt, which means the belt cutting through the cam sensor harness was not the dealerships fault, but his. All things considered, most dealerships will error on the internals or ECU, rather than a cam sensor harness.

The harness is tucked very far back in the scheme of things, and is commonly forgotten to be rerouted properly. Unless you remove the accessories on the belt, you almost cannot see it, which would lead me to assume they didn't think about it and just started ordering random parts to try and fix it. My cam sensor harness is in very bad shape, the belt almost cut through it last year. I zip tied it out of the way and all has been good. The oil pressure gauge also runs off that harness as well. So if your oil pressure gauge is broken, it's most likely due the the serpentine belt cutting through it.
 
I did pick up my rig last Sat - all is good with it now. Bottomline the issue was a short in the cam sensor harness. It was most likely my fault as I had done the timing belt myself and probably did not put the harness back properly and the belt ate away at it. The Lexus dealer in Henderson, NV, finally acknowledged that was the only problem and charged me about $550 in labor to fix the harness.

However (a little bit of venting here) I'm extremely unhappy with the way that dealership handled the situation.
1. First, they did not get to the car for two days till I yelled at them - despite knowing I was travelling through and did not mention to me that they were backed up when they took the car in.
2. They replaced all 8 ignition coils and spark plugs after telling me 6 coils were bad. Took 2 days to do this and when I was on my way to pick up the car they said it was still not fixed. So I ended up extending my rental car and doing a one way rental back to SFO.
3. They then insisted it was the ECU was bad - giving me some story of hooking it up to an oscilloscope and checking wave patterns. I had told them to check on the cam sensor and the crank sensor as according to the Service manual, these could affect engine starting. They assured me that the cam sensor as well as the crank sensor were good and they had checked at the harness plug as well as the ECU end of the harness. This should have caught the short. THE ECU had a 2 week lead time so they told me they were ordering it and to check back after 10 days. I asked them to put all the old parts (coils, spark plugs and the ECU) in the car and that I would check them. Finally when I did call them after a week to check on the ECU, they acknowledged finding the short and fixing it. They still wanted to keep all the new coils and spark plugs in. After I insisted they put the old ones back in and test the car - they finally did it and everything was still fine.

I feel they should have caught the short much earlier on since one of the codes being thrown was the cam sensor. It would have let me pick up the car while I was still there and saved me the rental and flight tickets and let me continue on my vacation. However Since I was spending the week with my daughter I put it down to the cost of the vacation and not think too much about it.

My faith in the Land Cruiser is restored! btw, my earlier 100 (the one in the avatar) has done some worse swimming than the one in the photo. I just had to dry it out, get the water out of the cylinders and it was good to go for another few years till we rolled it of a hill. These things are extremely reliable as long as we don't mess them up :).

Lesson learnt here - be extremely meticulous in working on the car!
 
Glad to see they did the right thing. I'd be frustrated too, but at least they didn't make you eat the cost of the parts they started throwing at it.

For others, this is the wiring we're talking about:

https://forum.ih8mud.com/100-series-cruisers/431177-timing-belt-dummies-writeup.html

attachment.php
 
Must have run wire around edge of cover instead of through hole, I suppose.
 
Thanks for the update. Since I live in Henderson and use this dealership looks like if I ever have any problems I will have to do the trouble shooting through MUD and walk the guys at the Lexus dealership through the repair. This is also why I drove from Vegas to Golden Colorado to have Slee do my OME conversion with his diff drop and had him do all fluids wheel repack and new T's and spark plugs. I'm glad that you are sharp enough to catch these mistakes by the Lexus dealership. If you would of been the regular customer how much more would they have charged you?.
 
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