how to disable auto tilt steering wheel lx470 (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter odoyle
- Start date
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Why do you want to disable auto tilt function. Do you have some malfunction of that feature, or just bother you? I ask because sometimes auto tilt don't want to raise steering wheel in upper position when I removed key, and then repair themself next time. This bug make me nervous, but I don't find any solution yet.
reason is that this is a well-known problem area of the 100, with the danged thing breaking down quite often, so the idea is that by disconnecting the auto lift you'd avoid wearing the parts down too fast..
- Thread starter
- #5
thanks for the welcome. i noticed you are on the central coast. i'm near santa cruz. our lx is my wifes daily driver/ kid/dog hauler. it's all stock. the only thing i've done so far is add a hitch and still have to wire a brake controler and lights. we got it a little less than a year ago from the original owner with about 60k miles. you are correct as to why i want to disable the tilt. the original owner already had to repair it once when it failed. it was under warranty for him i won't be so lucky. i don't want to know how much the tilt motor would be from the dealer. i have enjoyed this forum. this is how i got in touch with cruiser dan for some great deals on maintenance parts. thanks again for the help.
ryanjl
SILVER Star
Not sure how to do it, but the Lexus dealer round here did it for us when we bought it.
The 50% solution for auto tilt away...
I have a 99 LX470. Tonight I was under my dash looking for that elusive alarm ecu to disable the passive auto arming feature. I hate that. Anyways, I noticed the little motor on the steering column shaft with an orange plug. I unplugged it just to see what happens and the steering column only retracts up and no longer inwards. I notice the worse culprit and noisiest seems to be the retraction inwards so this is not bad.
Now Its almost completely silent when it retracts upwards only. I was going to take it in to the dealer to disable it altogether. I might still do that but in the mean time this seems to be a good compromise and I might just try this for awhile. The joystick will only adjust the steering colum up or down now since I have disconnected the motor but you can just plug it back in 5 seconds to get it going again. I am not a fan of the tilt away since I keep thinking those motors will go anytime.
I have a 99 LX470. Tonight I was under my dash looking for that elusive alarm ecu to disable the passive auto arming feature. I hate that. Anyways, I noticed the little motor on the steering column shaft with an orange plug. I unplugged it just to see what happens and the steering column only retracts up and no longer inwards. I notice the worse culprit and noisiest seems to be the retraction inwards so this is not bad.
Now Its almost completely silent when it retracts upwards only. I was going to take it in to the dealer to disable it altogether. I might still do that but in the mean time this seems to be a good compromise and I might just try this for awhile. The joystick will only adjust the steering colum up or down now since I have disconnected the motor but you can just plug it back in 5 seconds to get it going again. I am not a fan of the tilt away since I keep thinking those motors will go anytime.
- Thread starter
- #12
well i took ryans advice and asked the dealer about disabling it. after ordering some touch up paint i had them transfer me to service. the service guy said they could do it but it would probably cost an hour of labor. he made it sound like they could reprogram it to disable the auto function but leave the manual working. when i went to pick up the paint i went and talked to service. he had no idea and had to go ask someone else. when he returned he said they couldn't do it. i then walked into the shop and asked the tech. he had never heard of being able to reprogram it to stop the auto function. his sugestion was to just unplug the motors. he did give me some special toyota synthetic grease to lube the steering colum. he said that was the main cause of noise and vibration when it retracts. he also gave me some good tips on replacing and bleeding the ahc hydraulic system. he thought flushing the system would be good preventive maintenance. from what i've read here i don't want anything in that pricey system to fail. getting back to the tilt what i thought of after talking with him was to wire a kill switch to the motors. just leave it in the off position all the time so no auto function and then if i have to adjust the wheel flip the switch, adjust, then turn it off. i haven't had time to try it yet but i'll give it a shot.
I have been running around now for a few days in my LX since I unplugged the orange harness that controls the motor for retraction and its much better. Like I said the tilt upwards is dead silent so I think I will just leave it this way for now. The joystick still controls tilt up and down and it takes a minute to plug the wire back in for retraction.
odoyle said:
Can you please describe procedure of maintenance of AHC. What kind of fluid, how much of this fluid , how to bleeding the system etc.
I've never touch AHC since day one, and after 160k miles everything work fine, but I think about some kind of maintenance of AHC.
any body figure out how to MANUALLY tilt the steering wheel after motor dies....previous owner did it for me but I cant figure it out to fine tune to save my life.
here's the answer, I went to the dealer, the service advisor hookded up a toyota / panasonic laptop under the steering wheel to a port, then he fired up the computer and up came up menus with options.
one of the option was to turn off the auto tilt feature. he clicked on off and that's all that had to be done. it took a total of two minutes.
though the service dept claims that they will charge half hour for that. !
one of the option was to turn off the auto tilt feature. he clicked on off and that's all that had to be done. it took a total of two minutes.
though the service dept claims that they will charge half hour for that. !
There is a small gear made out of plastic inside your steering housing I think it was one or two nuts to undo to access the gear housing it looks like a piece of rigatoni anyway this gets misaligned because the plastic bushing behind it wears out.You need to pull the rigatoni peice out with two hooked peices of fine strong wire it pops out and you put a plastic shim in pop the rigatoni peice back in and test before buttoning up everything. I did this on the 90 ls 400 same thing on every toyota product that has the moving wheel. Funny thing was when I told the Lex tech what I did he said they just replace them at a for a grand. The old Lexus wheel is still working but 90 was the year you could still turn it off yourself. So 5 cents or 1000 is a hard choice. Not
Get your self the mini-VCI and then you can do it your self.
Same software as the dealer has, but they will charge you for it.
Same software as the dealer has, but they will charge you for it.
