Drive up to Ft Belvoir one of these days, I will let you drive mine on and off road. You will get a feel one out properly.
Is it worth it? the LC 100
- Thread starter Well Water
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The 4.7L is fairly bulletproof so you’ll love the 100 series for its high mileage potential. The engines Achilles heel is the heater tees which begin crumbling somewhere around 150k miles but they are simple and cheap to replace.
AHC came on all LX and was an option on ‘06-‘07 LCs. It’s a great system when it works, but many on here have gone through the pain and cost of replacing it when it fails. Only other issue I recall on the ‘06-‘07 is a secondary air injection pump can fail and that’s costly to repair.
Steering rack was the most expensive repair in mine something like $1500 from the dealer so have that looked at good when you get a PPI.
Otherwise it’s my favorite vehicle of all time and I DD mine with no worries about reliability. I plan to keep mine forever or at least until the government decides we all need to be in electric appliances and pushes gas to $8/gal to get us all to switch.
AHC came on all LX and was an option on ‘06-‘07 LCs. It’s a great system when it works, but many on here have gone through the pain and cost of replacing it when it fails. Only other issue I recall on the ‘06-‘07 is a secondary air injection pump can fail and that’s costly to repair.
Steering rack was the most expensive repair in mine something like $1500 from the dealer so have that looked at good when you get a PPI.
Otherwise it’s my favorite vehicle of all time and I DD mine with no worries about reliability. I plan to keep mine forever or at least until the government decides we all need to be in electric appliances and pushes gas to $8/gal to get us all to switch.
LX470 is definitely not LC and vice versa. Only way to explain this is drive both of the same or very close vintage. I did and chose a 05 LX470 with 144k for $14k full service miles 2 years ago. Good luck on your search
- Thread starter
- #24
All great posts--thanks yall. Valuable info. Thankfully OTRAMM is a close-by resource as well. Has a great LC 100 pre-purchase 'check list' vid.
I'm getting more excited. Fingers crossed. Hopefully it works the same way my 97 7.3 does--only breaks when ignored, which reminds me.
I'm getting more excited. Fingers crossed. Hopefully it works the same way my 97 7.3 does--only breaks when ignored, which reminds me.
All good info mentioned so far. My usual advice is ignore miles. Don't even include it in your search. Condition trumps miles every time. You'll find 200k LC/LXs in better shape than one's with 130k. None of these cars are "young" so it's all about how they've been kept.
This isn't true about the 98's and 99 being better for hardcore wheeling. We're short a low gear, our front diff is a 2 pinion which isn't remotely as strong as the newer trucks 4 pinions, and we have no traction control - so no a-trac.
If you put $2k into a front locker and install they will do really well, but a newer model can put an ARB in the rear for the same price, or even better, buy a used 98 or 99 axle with a locker when one of us hits a deer. To each their own and there are quite a few threads on this; but these LC's are very well matched off-road regardless of year. If you're hitting it hard you can swap in a 4 pinion or lock the front end on a 98/99 and you've got a strong vehicle that's triple locked, BUT, again, you have no on-road traction control and no off-road active traction which can be just as advantageous on slick rock or loose scree as a locked front end.
How confident are you in wrenching and doing your own work? I over maintain, and you're welcome to check my post history or my most recent thread. These are old vehicles and you've got to expect to break out a thousand bucks every time something fails OR get really comfortable breaking open your tool set and getting to work. They aren't hard to work on necessarily, but they aren't set up like 4Runner or Tacoma - expect to have to learn different ways of doing things on them.
@Well Water I will say, you may not want to post rigs you find here directly, they have a way of vanishing before you know it. The USA is a small place [ in regards to folks looking for these types of trucks ] and people often have no issue buying one way tickets, at a moments notice, to get the good specimens.
- Thread starter
- #28
Not going to lie @blatant isn't wrong, I did something similar to get my lx470.
Found one at a local dealership, amazing records, stayed in my state (which doesn't have rust), two owners just high mileage (mine is a 2006 LX470 and had approx 230k miles on it at time of purchase)
Called and talked with the dealer, he said someone has already put a hold on it, the only thing against the guy was he was in Chicago and wasn't going to be down to see it until another week or two. I basically told him I'll buy that truck that night if he finds a way around the hold the other guy had.
Well, a sale is a sale, and a sale with someone local in the shop (with a trade in) is more valuable than a sale out of state. So I ended up with the keys to my truck that night.
Love my LX, mine has some cool features I haven't seen much on other rigs, for example, I have a night vision button that uses a front facing night vision camera and puts a live feed on my windshield to illuminate people/animals when it gets dark, also, I have DVD players in my head rests not a flip down screen like I've seen in other 100 series.
Overall, I absolutely love it and plan on keeping it forever, and when the engine blows up, I'll buy another 4.7 or drop a diesel in it and keep on wheeling it.
Found one at a local dealership, amazing records, stayed in my state (which doesn't have rust), two owners just high mileage (mine is a 2006 LX470 and had approx 230k miles on it at time of purchase)
Called and talked with the dealer, he said someone has already put a hold on it, the only thing against the guy was he was in Chicago and wasn't going to be down to see it until another week or two. I basically told him I'll buy that truck that night if he finds a way around the hold the other guy had.
Well, a sale is a sale, and a sale with someone local in the shop (with a trade in) is more valuable than a sale out of state. So I ended up with the keys to my truck that night.
Love my LX, mine has some cool features I haven't seen much on other rigs, for example, I have a night vision button that uses a front facing night vision camera and puts a live feed on my windshield to illuminate people/animals when it gets dark, also, I have DVD players in my head rests not a flip down screen like I've seen in other 100 series.
Overall, I absolutely love it and plan on keeping it forever, and when the engine blows up, I'll buy another 4.7 or drop a diesel in it and keep on wheeling it.
If you can get good pictures you can buy most of these without seeing it in person. There are few surprises because these are built very well inside and out. If it's not obviously broken you can generally count on it being solid.
I bought my 99 with a one way plane ticket, drove it 8 hours home.
Bought my 06 with a quick test drive, but it didn't reveal anything helpful.
I put a $500 deposit on my LX that was in CA 1300 miles away and bought a plane ticket on Wednesday and had it home by Sunday.
Bought mine sight unseen too, generally if you check at the service history you can kinda gauge what kind of owner the car had. Mine took her car to the dealership for every single maintenance you can think of, even little stuff like turn signal light bulbs showed up in the service history. Never declined anything that was recommended to her, bought a last minute ticket to ATL 700 miles away from home and drove it back, no regrets and truck was better than expected.
I bought my 07 LX from a member here. It sort of happened by chance as I was in the initial stages of looking for a 100 locally (SoCal) without a ton of luck. I saw a post from the PO saying that he would be listing his rig for sale soon and I immediately sent him a message. A week or two later, I flew out to SLC, bought it and drove it home.
The 100 is the best car I’ve ever owned. It’s super comfortable, capable, and just looks good. I get more thumbs up than any other car I’ve owned. It has been quite reliable, but it isn’t cheap to maintain. Also, MPG is laughable. Know what you’re getting yourself into, but for me, there isn’t another vehicle I’d rather own.
.02
The 100 is the best car I’ve ever owned. It’s super comfortable, capable, and just looks good. I get more thumbs up than any other car I’ve owned. It has been quite reliable, but it isn’t cheap to maintain. Also, MPG is laughable. Know what you’re getting yourself into, but for me, there isn’t another vehicle I’d rather own.
.02
Bought mine sight unseen too, generally if you check at the service history you can kinda gauge what kind of owner the car had. Mine took her car to the dealership for every single maintenance you can think of, even little stuff like turn signal light bulbs showed up in the service history. Never declined anything that was recommended to her, bought a last minute ticket to ATL 700 miles away from home and drove it back, no regrets and truck was better than expected.
Like my LX the owner brought it in twice cause of an issue fitment of the floor mats......I love it.
Bought mine sight unseen too, generally if you check at the service history you can kinda gauge what kind of owner the car had. Mine took her car to the dealership for every single maintenance you can think of, even little stuff like turn signal light bulbs showed up in the service history. Never declined anything that was recommended to her, bought a last minute ticket to ATL 700 miles away from home and drove it back, no regrets and truck was better than expected.
i made the same research on my cali 1 owner lx on the owners website, taken to lexus every 5k and did all required maintenance and recommendations, any noise they would bring it in which resulted in extra service such as pulleys, idlers, and new cv axles. small leaks resulted in brand new radioator, Would go for tire changes, and even to purchase accessories such as bike racks. researched car fax and owner's site and next day made an impulse buy as i had found the one loooking for a year.
These LX 100s had owners who babied them.
Yep add mine to the list of babied mall crawlers. Mine had the driver's seat recovered and had the timing belt replaced twice. Beat that! I still take it to the Lexus dealer for oil changes partly to keep that service record alive but also for the donuts.
Yes, yes it is worth it.
- Thread starter
- #39
Yes I find myself wandering into a similar situation.
CloudCity
LuxCruisers
Similar for me, instead of traveling for a rig I was patient in my search for reasonable local ones, and ended up with a 1-owner with meticulous records and even got a chart for future service needs complete with dates/mileages from the guy. Picked it up 10-minutes from my house, but the kicker was seeing the tech notes for services and reading lots of notes about a creak here or a squeak there, and then noticing tons of added sound attenuating materials added by the dealer on everything from seatbelt cables to latches. This thing is dead quiet inside except for the occasional pirate ship creak on hard corners that Toyota seats are famous for.
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