Expensive way to save money

   Saving money is good… everyone has some things they can do themselves and save a bit of money. When it comes to cars… the best way to save money is buy one you can work on yourself…. also having a model that does not have a ‘cachet-name’ with it helps…. one of the brands that is a good vehicle… but seems to have higher associated repair costs is Lexus…. We have one… which sounds really cool and affluent until we mention that it is 20 years old, and has about 235,000 miles on it …. and some 40,000 of those miles are on our dirt road.   A dirt road is not a place to take a ‘luxury car’…. and while I used to be a half-way capable ‘wrench’, these new cars with their computers, smog-control equipment, front-wheel-drive, and other exotic components mystify me. On the other hand, these cars don’t need all the maintenance that the older cars need. ‘Back-in-the-day’, I used to change my oil every three thousand miles…. I would pull my plugs out every-other oil change… and clean and regap the points…. and then I would have to reset the timing….. once you’ve done this a number of times on your vehicle… it’s not such a big deal. But with these newer cars the computer takes care of the ignition process…. and the new breeds of spark plugs with their exotic alloys typically last for years.  But gone are the days of me packing my own bearings….. or changing shocks…. I don’t really understand how all drive-train/suspension components operate… and the parts are VERY pricey.   We bought the Lexus because I ran our truck into a deer and totalled our truck out. The neighbors were selling their Lexus, and Vickie had driven it several times and liked it a lot.  They gave us a good price since cars are hard to sell here due to our remote location.  Oh yes, it’s a nice car… once you get onto the highway…. it cruises down the road very comfortably… luxuriantly even.  But a rutted dirt road is not a good environment for a luxury car… which our mechanic tells us often when we go in for routine suspension-component replacements.

 

 

   A few weeks ago we noticed the car had a tiny bit of a miss…. and the idle speed was ranging up and down. So I decided to take off a big hose that leads from the air-filter to the injection manifold. There is a little flap in there that controls the amount of airflow…. this little flap can gather bits of material on it which will impede the airflow, and cause problems with idle speed. As I took the hose off I noticed the hose itself, surely twenty years old, and being in a hot engine compartment for nearly a quarter million miles was hard and had cracked. This was allowing some air into the system after some of the smog-control equipment measures the airflow… this gives erroneous readings to the computer which fouls everything up. So it should be a simple task to replace an air-hose.

This is the old torn hose.  The right end is where it hooks to the engine…. the little connection-point in the middle is where air-flow/vacuum measurements are taken by the computer…. since the break was after that point it messed with the computer’s data… causing uneven idling.

   Here is the replacement hose… and this is where the story really starts….
   This is not one of those common hoses you can pick up at a discount Auto-Parts store…. no, this is specially molded for Lexus….  I told Vickie that a hose like this should be maybe $30 to $40…. but I was worried since it is a Lexus it would probably be $70… LOL.

   It was $135 after I paid the California State extortion-tax of over 7%. Yeah, $135 for a molded hose…. and that’s just the hose…. Installation would probably be another hundred or more dollars.

  

   This is the hose installed onto the engine…. it took maybe 15 minutes for us to replace the hose and clean the valve in the intake.

 

   While we had the hose off, it was easy to access the air filter. Air filters should be cleaned regularly, especially if you are on dirt roads….
   You can take a dirty air filter and bang it on a hard surface to knock off most of the dust…. make sure you knock the correct side off (the side where the air flows through)… and don’t allow dust onto the clean (engine) side.  Usually after a couple of cleanings, I replace the filter. This one is not too bad off, we knocked it off to show the dust that can accumulate, but I replaced it with an extra I had bought on sale last year… two-for-one. 

   The old data about a dirty air filter using more gas is not quite so accurate anymore… the computer systems on newer cars will detect a clogged filter and adjust the air/fuel mix accordingly… so you won’t be running rich like in the old days. But since you have less air/fuel mix going in, you’ll lose power, acceleration and response.  So it’s still worthwhile to keep your filters open and passing plenty of clean air for the engine.

   While we had the filter out we vacuumed the filter housing… there will be big things that dropped off the filter in there… might as well get rid of them. You can see how dusty the engine compartment is… dirt roads are not the place to drive luxury cars… trucks and Subaru’s are the best bet for our roads.

   At any rate… the hose replacement worked… after firing it up, the engine roamed up and down for a few moments… then the idle settled down to a stable speed and the miss is gone…. it really is a nice (if dusty) car out on the highway.