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The Lexus Lives!


This Labor Day weekend I finally put the finishing touches on my wife’s Lexus ES300. You see, about 5 weeks earlier I had started the seemingly simple task of removing the cylinder heads, and replacing them with a rebuilt pair I had practically stolen from a seller on eBay.

The goal of course, was to fix the valve stem seal leak(s) and what I thought was a valve cover leak “once and for all”. Suffice to say there were some complications and unanticipated distractions during the several weekends it took to get it done.

The result? I’ve replaced the two broken motor mounts I found, got the pretty new heads installed, replaced the timing belt, installed new spark plugs, and replaced the master and slave cylinders for the hydraulic clutch. The car is running much better, and no longer billows a big blue cloud of smoke when being started up.

However, the passenger side axle still has a broken CV boot which I have a replacement for, but may not get to for another couple weekends and…. The oil leak I had assumed was the valve cover gaskets turns out to have been something else. At the moment I’m suspecting the oil pan gasket, I’m hoping to fully diagnose it and possibly tackle the replacement next weekend. I’m going to take this weekend to relax!

This entry was posted on September 6, 2008, 3:20 pm and is filed under 92 ES300, Worklogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Mike

    I have the same car and was told my oil pan gasket needs to be replaced as well.What needs to be done in order to do this?can i do it myself?If not,do you know roughly how much it would cost?thank you.

  • http://www.nslms.com RyanG

    Hey Mike,

    It’s pretty trivial to replace this yourself. You’d just remove the “Y” pipe that combines the exhaust from the two manifolds and feeds it into the catalytic converter. Then it’s just a matter of draining the oil and removing the oil pan, and replacing the gasket.

    I actually haven’t done it yet, nor have I gotten an estimate but I can’t imagine that a shop with a lift would take longer than 1.5 hours of labor for this plus the cost of the gasket.

    I’m actually some what encouraged to hear that you have the same car, and have actually had this problem diagnosed. I’ll probably tackle this job in the next few weeks so look for a follow-up blog post.