Thanks! I’m really happy/lucky, sounds weird I know. But in this economy/market I would have taken a huge bath selling it private party. With lemon law they have to take back the car, pay off my loan, and reimburse me for every payment and DMV fee, as well as my down. They take out an adjustment for mileage but only up to the very first time the problem for which it’s getting bought back was reported.
It was a '06 IS250
http://pittspeed.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33969&highlight=IS250
It had an idle issue, basically it’d hunt for idle a lot, in maybe a 200-300 rpm range. But every now and again it’d drop almost to a stall then surge back up hard/high enough to actually make the car buck. If you didn’t know it did that, and stay extra hard on the brakes at stops it would actually make the car jump forward. Clearly that’s a safety issue, which drops the requirement for lemon law in CA a lot. Regardless I think it would have qualified even for non-safety lemon law because it was in 5+ times for the issue, sometimes for a few days without resolution. It’s apparently a really common issue w/ '06-early '07 IS250s so Lexus really didn’t put up a fight. When I turned it in yesterday the service manager asked me what it was coming back for, I said “the idle issue” and he just said “yup, figured.”
I have a good friend who’s a master tech for Lexus. What he’s seen is that the direct injection on the IS250s means no fuel washed over the intake valves. In a regular setup that fuel actually cleans the valves, but this doesn’t happen on the 250 (IIRC the 350s are a combination of direct and conventional injection). Carbon builds up on the valves and actually causes them to not seal completely, which causes the idle issues etc. I actually noticed a significant loss in MPG too as the idle problem got worse. Definitely not good for a motor to be leaking compression back out the intake valves. Lexus has a bunch of band-aid type fixes (top end de-carbon, which was done on mine and only helped temporarily, new valve springs, new valves etc) but apparently nothing really fixes it on the '06-early '07s. I’m not sure what they changed for mid-'07+ and why they can’t just update the early cars with those parts, but honestly it works out much better for me that it’s gone this way.
Other than that the car had at least 4 recalls performed (fuel line issue, entire steering rack replaced, rear brake adjustment, and one other I forget) and about half a dozen TSBs (front brake pads twice, another rear brake thing, excessive white noise through stereo’s the auxiliary input, rear view mirror shake, and a few others).
Yup, imports are the best and a Toyota product will never break. Right.
I guess it’s doing just fine here.
-TJ