The large central gold coloured bolt in the centre of the thermostat housing is a bleed bolt for when you are refilling the system. The top of the radiator has a bleed valve on the left side top , which is only exposed with the removal of the plastic front panel that you removed with the push pins, which gives access to the air intake nozzle securing bolts. These two bleeds help to burp the system. Also as the battery will have been off the car for over an hour, your idle will need to relearn, the car may falter when restarting for the first time with rpm as low as 250! You can let it relearn it’s base idle by turning off all power options like the A/C , place the car in drive while holding it on its foot brake and with the parking/emergency brake set on. After a few minutes the revs will rise to a more normal 650/750 base idle rpm. The ecu will have reset its base operating idle and you can then load the accessories like A/C again, you’ll notice the revs rise higher to compensate for the compressor running. Great video.
That's great info! Wish I knew this before spending $100 on cleaning the injectors thinking that was the cause of the low RPM. Glad you liked the video
Thanks! Followed your instruction and fixed my stuck open thermostat! Just to add: I refilled the coolant without opening the radiator cap, and my car overheated. After I cleared the air out of the system, everything worked! Really nice video!
Chris Thanks man, this was just what I needed. I'm not mechanically inclined but got through the change. Would recommend that anyone doing this disconnect the front hose first and take out the bracket holding in the air filter compartment. Thanks again.
You also have to relearn the sunroof the same as the doors after you remove/disconnect the battery. Press button to put sunroof in vent position, HOLD it in that position till it goes UP, keep holding, and then it will go down, then back to full open, then go back to closed. Once done, then release. It now will auto open/auto close like the door windows.
Thanks for the video Chris. I changed the thermostat on my 2001 RX300 with your help. I did find it easier by accidentally separating the hose/tube part from the thermostat housing. It just slides right off when you pull the hose. Also, may be a little less messy if your drain the radiator at the petcock with a small hose into a gallon jug . Just a thought. Thanks again.
Here's the thing about the petcock, if it breaks, you'll have to wait to drive your car until you get it in the mail several days later because no one stocks those parts. Better to do what you did because everything you touched in in stock locally. Glad to help!
Thanks for the video and tips from battery removal. I'm doing this tomorrow and am so glad you mentioned burping the system...I would have flipped out. haha
Great Video man, seriously. I have an Under-cooling problem. It has occurred after I replaced the alternator and belt for the alt and A/c. That was fun! not.. LOL but I am getting that code and the VCS and Track popped on today. something else also. I see quotes for the thermostat @ over 500.00 LOL I haven't ever went in for service on any car I have ever had or have had brought to me in my entire life though so that is not happening. weird thing is the car has run fine for a little over a week now and now this. right when my hands were starting to heal up from the alternator job ( I have big hands and that is a small space over there. UUUG. yeah though. I hate to go doing that thermo stat if I don't have to. Plus, it's not nice out, still cold as can be up here for driveway crap. Funny thing about the switch trick you showed at the end. I didn't have instructions for that, the Lot my wife got the car from had zero clue when we bought the car, The mirrors didn't work either. I just happened to notice the little green lights on the buttons back there and on the passenger front door blink . I told the guy at the lot that I was not paying full price for the car with electrical problems and we ended up coming to an agreement of 750.00 off because he called a dealership for the problem cost and that's the quote they gave him. LOL No joke. The dealership was trying to burn the lot owner and he thought they woudl never do that. I didn't feel bad for him though when I found out everything though because HE was trying to burn me on the battery, which he said was NEW and it he knew it was not new, He had pulled it from a wreck on his lot and it was bad, I had it tested just as he said he did and it was horribly bad, no way he woudl not have known so I knew it was a deliberate lie - the codes on the battery he thought were unreadable were only unreadable on top because they had scraped them but when I actually pulled the battery at the autozone I could see on the side that the battery was 8 years old. LOL anyway. super funny I thought. also the reason I don't go to get stuff done. People say it's rare to get burnt at dealership mechs or shops but it's not, I have a 100% record for finding them doing this and it is highly unlikely for it to be a coincident over this long of period of time ( 40 years ) LOL I think before I start this thermostat job I will go get a list of any codes, check all that wiring I had to undo for alt job and clean the connections. and if it;s still doing it I will get the thermostat and the temperature sensor and just replace both of them. also, even though it;s a pain in the butt, I will probably drain the cooling system and collect the fluid - it;s clean as a whistle so I should be able to reuse it, my driveway is slanted and what I spill runs out behind the car, I;d hate to bump off some cats or dogs. Wooooooooooo Hoooooooooooooooo! here we go again!
Very thankful for your video and all explanation clarifying everything. Thank so much. I’m just an enthusiast of doing mechanic stuff my self and at the same time saving some cash.
Great Video! However, it makes sense, to at least me in my situation, to drain the coolant, and fill it back up with pink Lexus coolant, after replacing my Thermostat with a Lexus thermostat - I went to the Lexus dealer, and bought the coolant, and the thermostat...
Thanks for acknowledging how much of a pain in the ass it is to get to those bolts on this 3MZ lol. Just did this job today on my ES330. Reaction on my channel. If you don't have a magnetic socket, put a little dab of some sticky RTV on the nuts before you take them off. One dropped nut and it'll ruin your day. My thermostat popped out with a flathead screwdriver... more like peeled out than popped. Then I had to peel out the gasket, then scrape some gasket bits out and then scotchbrite the snot out of everything. The only way this could be worse is if the engine were mounted longitudinally.
Quick question. On my 06 rx330 today i noticed a slight coolant leak on that side.. inwas anle to see coolants sitting on the ridges of the transmission. I haven’t yaken anything off yet to dig in to see where its coming from. Donyou have any idea where its coming from? As far as what i see there in yours, the coolant that was sitting on the ridges on top of the transmission where mine was. Not sure how many hoses ang pipes are there for it to leak. Oh another thing does your needle in the dash temperature usually sit just a hair above the middle line? And does your fan turn on and off every 10 seconds while at idle while the a/c is running?
@tengzturiagaiii3185 it's hard to say but it sounds like you need to change the thermostat as well. A few years later I ended up doing a ton of other repairs as well such as a new radiator, fan, water pump alternator timing belt, etc. Just things that wore out. The thing that kept leaking was the plastic tank that is attached to the fan body. Under heat, it cracks and pours out the radiator fluids. Unfortunately they don't just sell that part so you have to buy the whole fan assembly. But I'll say this, don't screw around d with the thermostat, once it freezes and water can't get to the engine, an air bubble in traffic can blow your engine and its curtains for you lexus. The repair is fairly straightforward as long as you are willing swear and kick your way through it. I hate working on cars but ironically because of a thermostat blowing a head gasket on Christmas day funny enough, the shop I took it to ripped me off so badly I didn't recover from the debt of the repair for 10 years. This is reason I fix my own cars. Don't want to, but don't trust mechanics.
@@chromaticmusic yeah. Ever since i started driving 30yrs ago. I learned how to fixed my cars. I don’t trust shops.. besides were a family of mechanics. I have an idea where the leak is coming from.. i took the airbox and battery out. And looked in the thermostat pipe/. And i auspect its leaking from the first two bolts that is holding the thermostat housing. Which is the one sits in the valley under the fuel rail and exhaust manifold. I found out they don’t have have or use gasket. They used rtv gaskets maker type.
Hi, Chris, thanks a lot for this video. As you said, not much information available for replacement the thermostat on this particular model. Your video has all the information I need to start my work on my 04 RX330. The only hesitation I have is I am still not 100% sure the thermostat is bad. My car has 150K miles on it and gives me Engine light and VSC. I used error reader to check the error code. It is P0128 - Coolant Thermostat issue. But I don't have any over-heating issue. Engine heat is always at low. Heater and AC work fine in winter and summer. After I clear the error code, Engine light and VSC will go away but come back after maybe a hundred miles driving. I did this a few times and things repeat. I am wondering what is the original error code you have that made you suspect the coolant thermostat. The steps of thermostat replacement are quite clear per your video, but there are still a lot of work. If I can be a bit sure thermostat is the issue, I would feel better.
Replacing the thermostat is really a smart idea either way. If it stops working the engine can blow so a $10 part is worth the time for peace of mind. What was actually the issue with my car was the A/C fan stopped blowing so I had to deal with that. Not sure what the codes are doing on your end. Keep at it and let me know what you come up with
Thank you for posting this video. I was also confused why the other you tube videos showed removal of the serpentine belt and pulley? Perhaps it was for the newer models. I am having the temp gauge rising only at idle with ac on.. When driving it stays just a hair over mid line.. Fans turn on just fine Could my thermostat be bad? thanks again for this video
Just so you know, I still had the over heating issue after i replaced the thermostat. All that did was at least give me peace of mind that my car won’t go critical one day. What I found that fixed both my AC not blowing cold air at idle and the over heating in traffic was actually the fan unit in front of the radiator. I bought the unit off ebay for about $80 and fixed both. I did film that as well. Hope this helps
@@chromaticmusic Hi, I do have same issue since about 3 years. The guage needle goes 2 points where it used to be 1 point. I had to keep on changing Axle boots frequently coz of the heating. The mechanic suggested to replace the radiator with new one, resulted nothing. Then he removed the Thermostat Valve itself ( Non Functioning). Still no change I see. So does the fan replacement helped out your issue? Also tell me what's your normal reading in the temperature guage?
Hi, I bought one of these for my daughter and we can't figure out how to get the heater working. I can raise the temp in the car on the digital readout, but there's no heat button anywhere and it's blowing cold. The ac works super good and the car is getting up to temp, so the t-stat would be good No instructions in the manual either. Any help is appreciated.
There's no heat button but you have to press the temperature button up several times until it gets to max Hi. There are two of them, if the duel button is on, then the right and left side will be adjusted separately. See if that works and let me know
@@chromaticmusic My daughter's not here at the moment, but I'm able bump the temp up to 85 or whatever and it goes up and down on the display as far as the numbers goes, but it doesn't get warm. It shouldn't have to be on max Hi to get warm should it? I did have the duel button engaged when I went to 85° but didn't have heat out of any vents, left, or right. Thanks!
@@da324 You may have air in the system. It happened to me as well. You'll need to burp all the air out of the system and make sure it's filled up on both the radiator and the over flow on the fans. Hope that helps!
Chris, I also saw other videos that were not for my car (the 1999 Lexus RX300) but what you saw was a video for a different YEAR of your car, which does have the thermostat on the other side by the belts.
It wasn't leaking at all. My car was overheating in traffic but not at high speeds. It turned out that the fan for the A/C and radiator was bad. Found a replacement for that on ebay for $80 and fixed the overheating issue. Check to see if the fans are working before going into this repair.
Awesome bro. Same exact thing for me. It started about a week ago. I got the code yesterday and will take it to my mechanic today. I personally don't have the time to do it myself or else I would. I always research before I have any work performed on my cars.
The large central gold coloured bolt in the centre of the thermostat housing is a bleed bolt for when you are refilling the system. The top of the radiator has a bleed valve on the left side top , which is only exposed with the removal of the plastic front panel that you removed with the push pins, which gives access to the air intake nozzle securing bolts. These two bleeds help to burp the system. Also as the battery will have been off the car for over an hour, your idle will need to relearn, the car may falter when restarting for the first time with rpm as low as 250! You can let it relearn it’s base idle by turning off all power options like the A/C , place the car in drive while holding it on its foot brake and with the parking/emergency brake set on. After a few minutes the revs will rise to a more normal 650/750 base idle rpm. The ecu will have reset its base operating idle and you can then load the accessories like A/C again, you’ll notice the revs rise higher to compensate for the compressor running. Great video.
That's great info! Wish I knew this before spending $100 on cleaning the injectors thinking that was the cause of the low RPM. Glad you liked the video
came here for the thermostat, and learned why my rear window wasn't working thank you!
DUDE! You fixed my windows! I thought it was a fuse problem... You are the MAN!
Glad to hear it! Please help me by subscribing if you can.
Thanks! Followed your instruction and fixed my stuck open thermostat! Just to add: I refilled the coolant without opening the radiator cap, and my car overheated. After I cleared the air out of the system, everything worked! Really nice video!
Chris Thanks man, this was just what I needed. I'm not mechanically inclined but got through the change. Would recommend that anyone doing this disconnect the front hose first and take out the bracket holding in the air filter compartment. Thanks again.
You also have to relearn the sunroof the same as the doors after you remove/disconnect the battery. Press button to put sunroof in vent position, HOLD it in that position till it goes UP, keep holding, and then it will go down, then back to full open, then go back to closed. Once done, then release. It now will auto open/auto close like the door windows.
Nice tip! Now we can fix our RX330 sunroof with your info. Thanks very much!
Thank you for the great tip on resetting the sun roof!
Thanks for the video Chris. I changed the thermostat on my 2001 RX300 with your help. I did find it easier by accidentally separating the hose/tube part from the thermostat housing. It just slides right off when you pull the hose. Also, may be a little less messy if your drain the radiator at the petcock with a small hose into a gallon jug . Just a thought. Thanks again.
Here's the thing about the petcock, if it breaks, you'll have to wait to drive your car until you get it in the mail several days later because no one stocks those parts. Better to do what you did because everything you touched in in stock locally. Glad to help!
I have a 2006 RX 330 and the process seems similar. Great Video and thanks for sharing!
excellent instructions just did my car today. housing torque rating is 71 inch pounds if you need the specs. I was getting the 128 CEL code.
Good video. Thank you. The window switch trick helped me.
I'm doing the same repair again today all these years later so it's great that I already did a video for reference lol
Good video, straight forward and informative. thks
Thanks for the video and tips from battery removal. I'm doing this tomorrow and am so glad you mentioned burping the system...I would have flipped out. haha
Hey Chris thanks a million for this vid and the window part was great I have a 3 series BMW and have replaced every window regulator on it
You very welcome! Please subscribe
Great Video man, seriously. I have an Under-cooling problem. It has occurred after I replaced the alternator and belt for the alt and A/c. That was fun! not.. LOL but I am getting that code and the VCS and Track popped on today. something else also. I see quotes for the thermostat @ over 500.00 LOL I haven't ever went in for service on any car I have ever had or have had brought to me in my entire life though so that is not happening. weird thing is the car has run fine for a little over a week now and now this. right when my hands were starting to heal up from the alternator job ( I have big hands and that is a small space over there. UUUG. yeah though. I hate to go doing that thermo stat if I don't have to. Plus, it's not nice out, still cold as can be up here for driveway crap.
Funny thing about the switch trick you showed at the end. I didn't have instructions for that, the Lot my wife got the car from had zero clue when we bought the car, The mirrors didn't work either. I just happened to notice the little green lights on the buttons back there and on the passenger front door blink . I told the guy at the lot that I was not paying full price for the car with electrical problems and we ended up coming to an agreement of 750.00 off because he called a dealership for the problem cost and that's the quote they gave him. LOL No joke. The dealership was trying to burn the lot owner and he thought they woudl never do that. I didn't feel bad for him though when I found out everything though because HE was trying to burn me on the battery, which he said was NEW and it he knew it was not new, He had pulled it from a wreck on his lot and it was bad, I had it tested just as he said he did and it was horribly bad, no way he woudl not have known so I knew it was a deliberate lie - the codes on the battery he thought were unreadable were only unreadable on top because they had scraped them but when I actually pulled the battery at the autozone I could see on the side that the battery was 8 years old. LOL anyway. super funny I thought. also the reason I don't go to get stuff done. People say it's rare to get burnt at dealership mechs or shops but it's not, I have a 100% record for finding them doing this and it is highly unlikely for it to be a coincident over this long of period of time ( 40 years ) LOL
I think before I start this thermostat job I will go get a list of any codes, check all that wiring I had to undo for alt job and clean the connections. and if it;s still doing it I will get the thermostat and the temperature sensor and just replace both of them.
also, even though it;s a pain in the butt, I will probably drain the cooling system and collect the fluid - it;s clean as a whistle so I should be able to reuse it, my driveway is slanted and what I spill runs out behind the car, I;d hate to bump off some cats or dogs.
Wooooooooooo Hoooooooooooooooo! here we go again!
I had the same codes for the trac dash light and it turned out to be both the O2 sensors. I did a video on how to fix those as well
Thank you!! Pretty similar for 2004 Solara I'm assuming.
Very thankful for your video and all explanation clarifying everything. Thank so much. I’m just an enthusiast of doing mechanic stuff my self and at the same time saving some cash.
Great Video! However, it makes sense, to at least me in my situation, to drain the coolant, and fill it back up with pink Lexus coolant, after replacing my Thermostat with a Lexus thermostat - I went to the Lexus dealer, and bought the coolant, and the thermostat...
Nice! Please subscribe if I helped
I ordered a “Repair Manual” from Amazon. However, it’s not here yet, and you did help; so, you got it (“Subscribed”)! - 👍🏼
Awesome man, thanks!
Thanks for acknowledging how much of a pain in the ass it is to get to those bolts on this 3MZ lol. Just did this job today on my ES330. Reaction on my channel. If you don't have a magnetic socket, put a little dab of some sticky RTV on the nuts before you take them off. One dropped nut and it'll ruin your day. My thermostat popped out with a flathead screwdriver... more like peeled out than popped. Then I had to peel out the gasket, then scrape some gasket bits out and then scotchbrite the snot out of everything. The only way this could be worse is if the engine were mounted longitudinally.
Liked and subbed. Great video
Thanks for the tip.
kemjean Please subscribe!
Quick question. On my 06 rx330 today i noticed a slight coolant leak on that side.. inwas anle to see coolants sitting on the ridges of the transmission. I haven’t yaken anything off yet to dig in to see where its coming from. Donyou have any idea where its coming from? As far as what i see there in yours, the coolant that was sitting on the ridges on top of the transmission where mine was. Not sure how many hoses ang pipes are there for it to leak. Oh another thing does your needle in the dash temperature usually sit just a hair above the middle line? And does your fan turn on and off every 10 seconds while at idle while the a/c is running?
@tengzturiagaiii3185 it's hard to say but it sounds like you need to change the thermostat as well. A few years later I ended up doing a ton of other repairs as well such as a new radiator, fan, water pump alternator timing belt, etc. Just things that wore out. The thing that kept leaking was the plastic tank that is attached to the fan body. Under heat, it cracks and pours out the radiator fluids. Unfortunately they don't just sell that part so you have to buy the whole fan assembly. But I'll say this, don't screw around d with the thermostat, once it freezes and water can't get to the engine, an air bubble in traffic can blow your engine and its curtains for you lexus. The repair is fairly straightforward as long as you are willing swear and kick your way through it. I hate working on cars but ironically because of a thermostat blowing a head gasket on Christmas day funny enough, the shop I took it to ripped me off so badly I didn't recover from the debt of the repair for 10 years. This is reason I fix my own cars. Don't want to, but don't trust mechanics.
@@chromaticmusic yeah. Ever since i started driving 30yrs ago. I learned how to fixed my cars. I don’t trust shops.. besides were a family of mechanics. I have an idea where the leak is coming from.. i took the airbox and battery out. And looked in the thermostat pipe/. And i auspect its leaking from the first two bolts that is holding the thermostat housing. Which is the one sits in the valley under the fuel rail and exhaust manifold. I found out they don’t have have or use gasket. They used rtv gaskets maker type.
Hi, Chris, thanks a lot for this video. As you said, not much information available for replacement the thermostat on this particular model. Your video has all the information I need to start my work on my 04 RX330. The only hesitation I have is I am still not 100% sure the thermostat is bad. My car has 150K miles on it and gives me Engine light and VSC. I used error reader to check the error code. It is P0128 - Coolant Thermostat issue. But I don't have any over-heating issue. Engine heat is always at low. Heater and AC work fine in winter and summer. After I clear the error code, Engine light and VSC will go away but come back after maybe a hundred miles driving. I did this a few times and things repeat. I am wondering what is the original error code you have that made you suspect the coolant thermostat. The steps of thermostat replacement are quite clear per your video, but there are still a lot of work. If I can be a bit sure thermostat is the issue, I would feel better.
Replacing the thermostat is really a smart idea either way. If it stops working the engine can blow so a $10 part is worth the time for peace of mind. What was actually the issue with my car was the A/C fan stopped blowing so I had to deal with that. Not sure what the codes are doing on your end. Keep at it and let me know what you come up with
Awesome! Thank you!
I too hate transverse sixes. Glory days were a 6 cyl inline rear drive.
thank you very much
Thank you for posting this video. I was also confused why the other you tube videos showed removal of the serpentine belt and pulley? Perhaps it was for the newer models.
I am having the temp gauge rising only at idle with ac on.. When driving it stays just a hair over mid line.. Fans turn on just fine
Could my thermostat be bad?
thanks again for this video
Does the thermostat just pop out with a needle nose pliers? and then I just slip it back in place?
Just so you know, I still had the over heating issue after i replaced the thermostat. All that did was at least give me peace of mind that my car won’t go critical one day. What I found that fixed both my AC not blowing cold air at idle and the over heating in traffic was actually the fan unit in front of the radiator. I bought the unit off ebay for about $80 and fixed both. I did film that as well. Hope this helps
Debo Debo Could be the thermostat but my issue was the fan. It’s always the thermostat/radiator when you’re over heating while at highway speeds
@@chromaticmusic Hi, I do have same issue since about 3 years. The guage needle goes 2 points where it used to be 1 point. I had to keep on changing Axle boots frequently coz of the heating.
The mechanic suggested to replace the radiator with new one, resulted nothing. Then he removed the Thermostat Valve itself ( Non Functioning).
Still no change I see. So does the fan replacement helped out your issue?
Also tell me what's your normal reading in the temperature guage?
Hi,
I bought one of these for my daughter and we can't figure out how to get the heater working. I can raise the temp in the car on the digital readout, but there's no heat button anywhere and it's blowing cold. The ac works super good and the car is getting up to temp, so the t-stat would be good No instructions in the manual either. Any help is appreciated.
There's no heat button but you have to press the temperature button up several times until it gets to max Hi. There are two of them, if the duel button is on, then the right and left side will be adjusted separately. See if that works and let me know
@@chromaticmusic My daughter's not here at the moment, but I'm able bump the temp up to 85 or whatever and it goes up and down on the display as far as the numbers goes, but it doesn't get warm. It shouldn't have to be on max Hi to get warm should it? I did have the duel button engaged when I went to 85° but didn't have heat out of any vents, left, or right. Thanks!
@@da324 You may have air in the system. It happened to me as well. You'll need to burp all the air out of the system and make sure it's filled up on both the radiator and the over flow on the fans. Hope that helps!
@@chromaticmusic I'll try that, thanks!
Слева на радиаторе есть клапан для выхода воздуха! Зачем это приспособление для доливки антифриза?
Dod you have to bleed it?
Afterwards yes. But that's a different thing all together.
Does the diagram work for rx330 2003 ?
long vu id assume so, but don’t know for sure
Привет из России. Спасибо за видео.
Chris, I also saw other videos that were not for my car (the 1999 Lexus RX300) but what you saw was a video for a different YEAR of your car, which does have the thermostat on the other side by the belts.
Greg Baugher the issue was that they said that it was the process for the 2004 rx330
How did you know it was leaking? Did you get a code?
It wasn't leaking at all. My car was overheating in traffic but not at high speeds. It turned out that the fan for the A/C and radiator was bad. Found a replacement for that on ebay for $80 and fixed the overheating issue. Check to see if the fans are working before going into this repair.
Right, thanks for your advice.
Awesome bro. Same exact thing for me. It started about a week ago. I got the code yesterday and will take it to my mechanic today. I personally don't have the time to do it myself or else I would. I always research before I have any work performed on my cars.
TF is all that green sheit homie? Betta getcha colors right! Aluminum core and head, pink only!
Emmm, okay
Damn it my Lexus RX330 thermostat went today 😡 !
Sorry to hear that man, most expensive repair for the cheapest part. Hope it works out for you
toyota and lexus are crap cars.....who woke up one day and said they are good?
Your name speaks for itself
@@chromaticmusic Enjoy your trash cars.