Junkyard Report: 2007 Lexus GS450h - OEM Transmission Crossmember

[Gregski]

so want to share my experience with finding a transmission crossmember in good nick, since it took me four cars to finally find one

in the post I will raise some questions and hope to answer some as well regarding sourcing and using the part

I will provide some measurements and specs for those interested in adopting the OEM crossmembers to their vehicles

[Gregski]

I believe this was my first attempt at sourcing the crossmember, I drove 3 hours to find this car in a junkyard that allows you to pull your own parts, and at first I thought I damaged the rubber bushings on this transmission crossmember during the uninstallation process, but as you will find out in later posts these happen to be common failure points for this part

[Gregski]

just a place holder in case I find the pics of the other cars with busted crossmembers to prove how difficult it is to find one in good condition

[Gregski]

so first just a general observation all of the GS450h's I have seen in the yard as of this writing have been the first year 2007 models, well at least it's good to see them finally hitting the yards so we can harvest them for parts

here is the 4th one I came across that finally had a good crossmember

sorry, it is rather difficult to take pics whilst crawled under the belly of the beast

[Gregski]

so she's held on to the gearbox with quite a few 14mm bolts, and you'll notice on the left hand side here I had to first remove this 2 pound weight in order to expose two of them

which brings us to the first question: She we be running this bracket with the stock weights? I am not doing so in my truck as I am of the mindset that it is the engine that's responsible for majority of the vibrations and now that we eliminated that violent component in our EV conversions I do not see a reason for keeping the extra weight. What say you?

so lets Science:

this part as you will see later is more than just a ballast it is hallow underneath and accepts yet another rubbarized peg like piece which is then attached to the crossmember

[Gregski]

so with that dude out of the way we press on, and yes you will find out this contraption is made up of half a dozen separate pieces, doodads, and thingmajigs

[Gregski]

and here it is liberated

[Gregski]

I plan to give it a proper bath and then post more pics of each of the individual brackets as well as specs/measurements