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There was a Lexus TSB a little while back that could help you. Evidently they flash the car's programming to stop it from "talking" so much. They did it to my 02 LS430 and it seems to have reduced the chatter so to speak. I can feel your pain, listening to the "Lexus Link is Active" 10 times a day is VERY irritating. What possessed them to do that in the first place? Lonely Lexus Engineer? LOL
SV
By the way did you get the car at Lexus of Smithtown or over at Glen Cove. I know LI very well and I know the owner of Rally Lexus, MB etc. I have many family members and friends out there but I'm in central Jersey.
yes i bought my car from rallye lexus in glen cove. I live right in that Brookville area. You are correct it would almost be impossible to reach that speed on the GCP or even in Nassau. This was in suffolk, not where the bathrooms are but a few miles before, although it could be done there also, but the traffic merges in right after. There is this one long straightway stretch with trees on both sides and it is almost always empty after 10am b/c nobody goes east. I forget what exit though. You are correct, to reach 140mph i did have to floor it. Most or like 90% of cars would not be able to reach 140 on that stretch, but we know how the LS V8 pulls. Haha i did see some lag from 135-140. It took a few seconds but I'll let it go.
How's your car doing and what are you going to do at lease end?
My car is due off lease in October. I'm not sure what I'll do yet. I promised my wife the next car and she wants an RX so I'm definately picking up one of those up. We own her Blazer outright, and I might just keep it until the next LS comes out, or I might just buy this one and wait. My commute is 3 miles each way, and I only put 10K per year on the LS using it as our primary car. so I can put up with the Blazer to go to work for a while and use her RX as the family car. It just makes so much economic sense to stay with an RX/Blazer combo. I'm changing my mind about twice weekly, and still have 7 mos to go.
This feature is what separates cars like Lexus, MB, BMW from much cheaper cars that also have Xenon lights, but no leveling function.
Another way to tell if a car has a auto-leveling feature is to catch one coming from the opposite direction, if the headlights appear to be flickering then they're being adjusted in real time for every movement of the car's body. This will be especially noticeable on stiffer riding cars like BMW M3s and such. The leveling system has more work to do with a stiffer riding car.
M
"Leveling" or aiming with respect to what? Gravity? Why does an adjustment need to be done at each startup? I doubt that the system has the ability to look and see where the beam is being projected to. Or is it just compensating for loading of the vehicle by measuring suspension heights front and rear?
Your LS has two sensors which work with the HID lights. The first sensor is located in the front end(I think maybe in the HID light fixtures themselves) and the second sensor for the HID system is located right on top of the rear axle.
You forget something, auto-leveling on HID lights also change due to other factors during driving, such as changes in road surface, braking, acceleration, etc.
If you are climbing a 5% grade, do the headlights point horizontally into the pavement, or straight ahead at whatever is on the road ahead?
Why is it important with Xenon lamps and not with others?
Yes, something like that.
rennybosch,
The lights would point straight ahead, not into the road.
Auto-leveling is important with HID/Xenon lights because of their brightness. If caught at the wrong angle, you could really blind a oncoming driver
I've been scouring the net for information on how they work but so far haven't come up with anything. I'll let you guys know if I find something.
HID is simply a "contained" welder's arc.
The ballast generates a "spark plug" level voltage, ~30KV, to initially "strike" the arc and then maintains it at about 70 volts via current flow regulation.
s
1. The car does a static (parked) measurement of the deflection of the rear (and front?) suspensions to deduce how much the body and the headlight aim is out of parallel with the ground.
2. The headlight aiming mechanism adjusts the headlight beam relative to the car body so as to aim the beam properly relative to the ground.
3. The system MAY make periodic updates while a trip is in progress, based on average suspension deflection, but does not compensate in real time for transient effects like road contours, braking, or acceleration.
4. The system does not sense the direction of earth's gravity to determine horizontal (as a common bubble level does).
Agree or disagree?
My father in law has a LS400 with HIDs that I drive often and I have noticed many times while driving that it makes corrections, such as when braking or accelerating.
I have seen HID vertical movement on oncoming cars so some vehicles must react to even small pertubations in the roadway. As I said, the system in my 01 RX will only re-level when stopped or below ~15MPH.
The GX is still hard to come by up here and sells near sticker. My dealer is a big volume guy and he had all of 4 GX 470's available in his two dealerships. Only one was available in the dealership here. I've come to really enjoy that SUV - it rides great, handles very well and just feels great to drive. But there is nothing like an LS430. By the way I rode in my neighbors Range Rover up to NYC last weekend for dinner and a Broadway show. I had also test drove one in the fall. It's an excellent SUV but the GX is smoother on the road and has the better ride.
Are you getting pounded with snow down there?
So anyway, the last update was in the fall which added a few million POI's. I heard the next DVD would include a significant update in street addresses. Does anyone know when this is due?
Many thanks...
I have not test driven the 04 GS or the 04 LS yet, but plan to take a drive when we thaw out. I would really like to do a 24 hour test with each, but I don't know if Lexus allows that? BMW is pretty good about overnight test drives with a demo.
I would still like to see them incorporate XM radio in these vehicles as part of the NAV-Levinson system. I think XM is a real winner.
Any thoughts on where the LS is going in 2-3 years?
I've had the Lexus LX470 all weekend in the past. I wanted to make sure it would fit in my garage properly before I leased it and the dealer told me to keep it for the weekend. It's not Lexus but your local dealer who calls the shots on that. I had the GX for about a day a few months ago but they wouldn't let me hold that overnight because they had so few on hand for people to test drive. I took it on a dead day and brought it back in late afternoon.
I love the 2004 LS. Smoother than ever with some nice new features. The camera is great and blue tooth is a nice addition as is the 6 speed tranny. I only wish my samsung phone was bluetooth enabled as its the best cell phone I've ever had. I haven't looked into satellite radio but I thought it was preset for that. I have more CD's than I can keep track of (one of the businesses my former company owned served the music industry so the labels sent over new cd's each week. I must have 50 cd's I haven't even opened yet) so I am so amply supplied that I prefer my CD collection. I have made about 25 of my own compilations and I tend to keep them in the car.
Are you looking at the GS or the GX470?
I think Lexus will do a totally new LS in 2007 model year and it may come out in spring 2006. I think they will move to that new styling theme and probably offer a mix of engines and have a long wheel base option ala BMW and Audi. It's inevitable that they will also bring out a v12 version of both the LS and the SC models (and possibly the LX and GX) unless the hybrids are so powerful that they render the V12 useless. Natutrally they will stay on the conservative side of the styling for the LS but I'm sure it will have every new techno gadget imaginable. I just hope they keep away from the dreaded BMW i-drive. If they do go there they will do it in a far better way than BMW though. The LS is so user friendly inside though that I can't imagine any better simplification other than voice commands for everything.
Now on to another subject. Among the many marvels of the LS430 is the fact that it is pre-wired for for the so called "bluetooth technology". About 2 weeks ago, I went ahead and purchased the Nokia 3650 phone with T-Mobile. After some trial and error, I figured out how to download all the contacts to the car's screen/navigation system. By the way, I was not able to download the entire phonebook contents all at once. I had to do it one at a time. The dealer has not been of much help so far since this is new to them as well. The annoying problem I have is this: Once I start the engine, a message comes up on the Nav. screen that says something like "Bluetooth cannot make connection". I look on the cell phone itself & it asks a question, "do you wish to access hands free operation"? If "yes" is touched then on the Nav. screen, it instantly says, "Bluetooth connection successful". Fine. However, several minutes later, I see that the same question comes up on the phone again. I touch "yes" again. Well, this process keeps repeating itself about every 5-8 minutes. The problem is that unless I keep touching the "yes" button, I cannot access the phone through the Navigation System. My question to any of you in the know is this: Why is this happening? I talked to tech support of T-Mobile folks & they seem to think that it is the Car's bluetooth system that sends a signal to the phone and that is why I keep getting this question. I am waiting to hear from my Lexus dealer the next few days to see if they have an answer. They are suppose to check with one of their field managers that was testing this same phone on the LS430. It seems to me that I should have an option of disabling the system to not ask me this question again and again. Any insight by all of you high tech folks would be greatly appreciated. By the way, I really like the features on the Nokia phone (Camara, video recorder, etc.).
http://www.lexus.com/home/contact_lexus.html
It is true that the 1995 LS400 had relatively low
headroom ( my 2001 LS430 is definitely improved).
I bought my 2001 because I previously bought a 1991 LS400 with 104K miles and drove it 3.5 years to 140K miles with no expense other than oil, coolant, trans and power steering fluid changes.
Sold it for 6 grand less than I paid, so I got
to drive a Lexus for less than 2 grand per year.
I still miss that car. In some ways it is still
superior to the LS430, though on balance the benchmark to beat is absolutely the LS430.
After a few minutes i would find myself leaning to the right then putting my elbow on the armrest
simulating a gangster lean.
Not my style, so the car went away.
I sat in a 2004 and after powering the seat all the way down I could sit upright without my head hiting.
So maybe there will be a 430 in my future but I am more drawn to the kind of cars Cadillac is building now. The are more sporting than a Lexus
and I enjoy a good handling car.
Sprint is another idea, thanks.