GX470 All electrical dead - intermittent

[sbman]

New to the 120 forum, been over in the 80 section...

Searched for issues like this here in this forum, but did not find any references. Honestly not sure what search term to use. I tried something simple like 'dead' 'electrical' but no real hits on anything similar. Is there a FAQ for the 120?

Anyhow.

The problem is, Wife driving the GX down in mexico. Stops for gas. Goes to start vehicle and everything is dead, no lights, no noise, no nothing. She calls and I have her open the hood. Stuff starts working suddenly. Drives home OK.

Next morning, car in driveway works fine. drive 5 minutes, shut off at daycare and then same thing, completely dead no nothing. She left the car there and it's waiting for me to diagnose.

I know how to diagnose electrical problems, but was wondering if there is anything common for these trucks. On my 80 I'd be looking at fusible links, but I searched here and no hits at all on fusible links.

Is there an EWD available free for this truck somewhere? -- wish there was a sticky faq here on the forum!

 

[nasafan]

Ok. I own 3 lexus vehicles including a GX 470. Now. I haven't had it long enough to really know all its little gremlins. But I can say with confidence that a bad battery has caused all kinds of weird stuff in my other 2. That is the first thing I think to check when I have crazy stuff start happening. Especially with my SC430. Something as simple as the small rear window not going up when the convertible top is used was caused by a bad battery. For whatever reason sometimes these cars just act stupid when the battery is marginal. I learned this in the club lexus forums. Not saying this is the issue, but it's a good place to start.


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[sbman]

The battery has been replaced by Lexus three times in 2 years. The current one has 5K miles and is only a year old. This was prior to my ownership of it, it's all documented in the Lexus service history.

 

[nasafan]

Also should add that even after the battery was tested at Autozone and said to "OK" but at 65% charge, when the alternator is fine, I just replaced the battery anyway and all problems solved.


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[nasafan]

Sorry just saw ur second post. Yeah. Now scratching my head. Always hoping it's a simple fix [emoji848]


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[nasafan]

But wait, 3 batteries in 2 years?? Hmmm


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[GXO]

Short


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[sbman]

Well, turns out the problem was immediately obvious. We've only had this car for a month and a half. The battery was installed by Lexus dealership just before it was traded in and we bought it.

It's been that way for a while too, a bunch of arcing marks at the top of the post where it's been barely making contact probably since it was 'installed'.

I was thinking maybe I'd keep this one serviced at the dealer for a while but it's obviously not worth it taking it back to the dealer for additional services. How hard is it to install a battery? If you want something done right....

 

[sbman]

Also, now the power windows won't work from the drivers door. The drivers window works, but not the rest. All the other windows work OK at each of their own doors, it's just the remote controls on the drivers door that won't work. Wonder if something got fried?

I really don't understand why it's so hard to get good service. I recently had an oil filter come loose on another vehicle, all the oil took out the serpentine belt, just barely got it stopped in time to save the engine from oil starvation. An $80 synthetic oil change ended up costing another $60 serpentine belt plust a bunch of time and a redo of the original oil change. I kind of thought that Lexus would have a higher caliber of service, but doesn't look like it.

 

[sbman]

OK, so that's really funny. I searched the forum for 'power windows' and found a thread that had a link to an entry in the owner's manual of late model Toyotas:

How to initialize Power Windows - GX after battery Replacement or Reset - Club Lexus Forums

So you have to go around to each door and run the window through it's full travel before it works from the drivers door. That's cheesy. Does Toyota need some better firmware engineers?

I can just think how that discussion went down at the design meeting... Uhh sir, we have a problem.... I don't know how to code the window control processor so that it works unless someone runs around the car and presses buttons. I just can't find a way. Sorry. Tell the editing department to put it in the owners manual. Thanks. I'm going to go get started on the accelerator pedal code now.

 

[mattm94]

Nope. Windows have to be reset. It's in the owners manual