S430 is not selling as much as S320, S500, and S600. i wonder why you choose S430.

anyway, i think most of the problem that you encountered were just minor and didn't cause any driveability problem.

 

The 430 was considerably less expensive than the 500 but was basically the same car as far as performance and features. But that is water under the bridge. It is a great car when things are working.

The dash issue was serious in that you have no clue what is going on. You do not know your speed, do not know if the turn signals are working, do not have any dash display at all, and I don't know how this works, but when the dash goes black any codes or data in the memory are gone. They don't even know the mileage and have to reprogram it with a bogus mileage.

The other stuff was a range of recalls, emissions equipment failures, a need for reprogramming some stuff, and other minor items I can't even remember. I know I will regret saying this, but it has been perfoming very well and trouble free for a while now and when it is all working it is a wonderful car.

 

the problem there is the dealer.

they still use the old defective batch of instrument cluster instead of the modified ones with higher temp switching transistor. they always think they can get away with it.

the mileage reading can still be extracted from the defective cluster since it only needs momentary reading (replace blown out fuse 30 for short time). they can also program to adapt the mileage from the EIS, for it keeps the mileage reading as well. some undertrained technician doesn't know some labyrinth way on the system yet.

sooner or later, one of the door control module will give up and also the EIS. defective diode cause this.

 

I can see I'm in for a learning experience as the car ages. For the last 16 years I have owned and maintained my own converted Prevost bus motorhome, something that seemed daunting initially, but now I advise others on how to maintain theirs. I hope I can achieve the same comfort level with the S430.

I dropped the vanity mirror/light housing and it turned out the buzzing noise was a broken nylon wire tie. I don't know how it got there, but thanks to your fine help I had the problem that had been nagging me solved in about 60 seconds.