Well I moved to Australia and just bought my 2nd 100 Series, a black 2003 Lexus LX470. 166k kilometres and service records for every 10k. I’ve been following this forum for a long time because in the US, I’ve owned a ’98 Landcruiser for about 10 years. It has 170k miles and almost nothing has ever gone wrong with it. Just kept up the maintenance and it keeps on going. I stored it in NYC and used it to move the family back and forth to our weekend house in Maryland. Over time, I moved virtually our entire apartment’s worth of furniture back and forth between NYC and Maryland in the Landcruiser. Used it for the beach, for camping, anything to get out of NYC. I couldn’t bring myself to sell it when I moved to Oz, so it’s sitting with my brother!
And now I’ve been on a shopping spree for the new LX:
• New cargo area carpets from all-car-carpets. The original was nasty (see pic), owners kept a dog back there. I bought the new carpet from all-car-carpet in Melbourne. Delivered within 1 week - $159. Good quality and fit was almost perfect, very little trimming. It looks great compared to the old carpet although the color fit isn't great. I might do the rest of the car although the carpets are in much better shape.
• New roof rails from killaconcepts. For some reason, here in Australia the LX470’s don’t appear to come with the roof rails. But now I realize the LX will just fit in my garage without the rails. I'm not sure they're going on!
• New antenna. The old one was broken. Unfortunately, when I removed the old one, there was no plastic thread which probably means it's stuck in the motor. The new one goes down about 75% and I'm not looking forward to getting the motor out to fix. Maybe I'll leave it as is for now. MY US Landcruiser has the same problem!
• New floor mats. This was more difficult than I thought. All the reproduction ones looked fairly low quality. Finding original beige RHD floor mats proved to be impossible, so I went with grey, against the wife’s better judgement. But I’d rather have a color mismatch than poor quality mats.
• Rear back-up sensors. The wife demanded it if she was going to drive it.
Although the car has full service records and the oil looks clean, I'm going to change the oil and filter. I never changed them in the States because it was only about $60 to have it done. I haven't check here in Australia, but I assume it's $200, minimum. Time to figure out how remove the skid plate accesses panels!
Next week - our first camping trip!
And now I’ve been on a shopping spree for the new LX:
• New cargo area carpets from all-car-carpets. The original was nasty (see pic), owners kept a dog back there. I bought the new carpet from all-car-carpet in Melbourne. Delivered within 1 week - $159. Good quality and fit was almost perfect, very little trimming. It looks great compared to the old carpet although the color fit isn't great. I might do the rest of the car although the carpets are in much better shape.
• New roof rails from killaconcepts. For some reason, here in Australia the LX470’s don’t appear to come with the roof rails. But now I realize the LX will just fit in my garage without the rails. I'm not sure they're going on!
• New antenna. The old one was broken. Unfortunately, when I removed the old one, there was no plastic thread which probably means it's stuck in the motor. The new one goes down about 75% and I'm not looking forward to getting the motor out to fix. Maybe I'll leave it as is for now. MY US Landcruiser has the same problem!
• New floor mats. This was more difficult than I thought. All the reproduction ones looked fairly low quality. Finding original beige RHD floor mats proved to be impossible, so I went with grey, against the wife’s better judgement. But I’d rather have a color mismatch than poor quality mats.
• Rear back-up sensors. The wife demanded it if she was going to drive it.
Although the car has full service records and the oil looks clean, I'm going to change the oil and filter. I never changed them in the States because it was only about $60 to have it done. I haven't check here in Australia, but I assume it's $200, minimum. Time to figure out how remove the skid plate accesses panels!
Next week - our first camping trip!
