Finalized my purchase of this guy today. Excited to have (another) fun car to play with. He gets to be stablemates with my S2000, but this one will be much more of the daily-driver. Wife likes it, kids like it, everyone is thrilled (at least after wife got over the initial concern of buying a 230k mile car). Initial primary goal is to get this thing camping-ready by the time fall gets here and get it out in the woods, but other goals are a) having something we all fit in (there are 5 of us), b) eventually modifying for more intense offroad use, c) having something around that can be called on to tow something if need be, and d) just enjoying in general.
1999 LX470
230k miles, I'm the 4th owner. Third was a friend of mine (who's using the proceeds to work on his new-to-him 200 series) and the prior two were in Memphis and Nashville areas.
The good:
Photos of my new LX470
1999 LX470
230k miles, I'm the 4th owner. Third was a friend of mine (who's using the proceeds to work on his new-to-him 200 series) and the prior two were in Memphis and Nashville areas.
The good:
- All the crucial parts work well. The engine starts and runs smoothly, the transmission shifts smoothly and doesn't hunt or flare. The AHC actually does seem to work right, though it definitely needs a service. Fluid is super-low when the truck is in "high" position, and it's not a great color from what I can see. Planning on a total bleed of that system as a starting point/ reset, will definitely spend more time here poking around on how to go from there. All the other engine bay fluids are freaky-clean. No weird smells, no residues of mystery ancient failures, no concerns. Timing belt/ WP was done right at 200k miles by previous owner. Overall - this is a pretty great used car. It's been on the road the last 20 years, doing at least 10k miles each year, and so it's not new, it's not all that scary either.
- Has relatively new/ half or more tread left BFG K02s on, so there's one thing I won't have to mess with right away. Also, these were put on by my friend - I suspect before he had it it wasn't off road very much, if at all. He also pulled the old funky 90s-style running boards off, and I don't miss em either.
- Southern car, all its life, so rust isn't/ shouldn't be much of an issue
- The interior behind the driver/ passenger seats has honestly barely been sat in. It's freakin' nice back there; my kids (and dog) are spoiled already. Rear air? Cmon now.
- Friend had a Apple CarPlay-ready touchscreen headunit put in before selling- which is pretty doggone nice. I'll be adding a backup camera there to make wife happy, but having the music stream in, nav working, etc., and all controlled by that thing while your phone charges is just cool.
- Interior needs some love. Looks exactly like you'd expect for 230k miles - fortunately a couple front seat covers and a less-tattered shift knob are easy enough to find. I'll probably get to try my hand at lacing up a replacement steering wheel cover.
- Needs a windshield. Not an emergency, but has a crack that could run. Safelite to the rescue.
- Couple little electrical motor things - electric mirrors don't work to reposition them, but do work to fold. Tells me that the joystick switch needs replacing. HVAC controls are pretty spotty - each button works sometimes and sometimes not so much. I'll be looking for a new-to-me junkyard set and pulling those out to replace em.
- Despite the photos, paint on top surfaces is not great. Doesn't matter that much - you can't REALLY tell unless you're looking and the truck is so tall that the worst part (top surface) hardly ever gets seen at all, but I'll be doing something to either polish that out, or hitting the whole car with some plastidip to clean it up to "good enough for the woods" status.
- Driveline clunk. I'll be crawling under to check the driveshaft over for its grease status as well as looking over the diff fluids this weekend, so we'll see what happens here.
- Really? Not too much serious. You can see that the OEM roof rack feet have disintegrated in the sun, which isn't great, but I'm probably gonna pull that whole thing off anyway to work on the paint. It likely won't go back on, as it'll eventually get a simple flat rack thrown up there. We're east coast/ southeast people. Rack is nice, but we might not ever really REALLY need it. We'll burn that bridge when we get there.
- One big ding in front of passenger taillight, one set of weird creases over driver side front door. Neither is scary, and I can fix em- just more dent than I want to see every day.
- It came to me with 4 lug nuts per wheel, and on one wheel there's a broken stud in there I'll have to knock out and replace. Buddy I bought car from has been running them that way for the last several years - which makes me wonder whether the tires are truly a bit out of balance or the wheels are just wiggling as we go down the road, or... both.
- If the AHC proves to be truly sick - which it 100% could be - I'm not looking forward to the replacement/ service bill. Might just put a static lift in instead - though early troubleshooting tells me that a DIY service/ bleeding of the system might be all it needs. Cross your fingers for me on that one.
- Oh - the gas mileage. Coming from a Hyundai Sonata that routinely gets 27-28mpg with no regard whatsoever for trying to maintain fuel economy, this is... different.
Photos of my new LX470
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