As you may recall, the Lexus LX450 - what should be the most reliable project in my fleet - has been sitting at Lexus of Warwick after an intermittent loss of heat and temperature gauge spike occurred one early winter night. The heat would cut in and out and then just stopped, and the only way to get the temperature gauge down was to open the vents up to full-blast mode.
This was maddening, as the cooling system has been completely gone through. My mind jumped to a heater core job (miserable and expensive on this era of Land Cruiser) or worse, a failed head gasket.
I left it alone for several weeks, getting through Christmas without so much as texting Joe Manzi, my mechanic. I finally broke down and asked him to give me the news, which turned out to be better than expected. Joe couldn't find any leaks and even tested the cooling system to make sure it was free of any exhaust gases. The only culprit he found was a radiator that had lost a gallon-and-a-half of coolant. Now, this is good news because more than likely we are dealing with a faulty radiator as Joe noticed dried coolant around the base of the radiator and the previous owner swapped in a Chinese-made replacement not long before I bought the truck.
It could be a case of it being too good to be true and to be honest, I haven't heard from Joe since last week (guessing he's moved on to other things after babysitting my truck for a month and potentially finding a root cause.) I would be ecstatic if this mysterious heating/cooling issue turned out to be a case of a faulty radiator.