2006 IS220D over 130k mileage

[Victor_L]

Hello Everyone!

Last year I've invested in this car, and apart a few issues (mentioned below) I can't really complain about it, since it served us pretty well so far. The main question is:
Does anyone owns the same model with more than 130k miles in it, and does he/she faced any major problems which turned the car into a money pit?

The issue (summarised in bold)
EGR and DPF (Check VSS with limp mode). I know that every diesel engines faces the same issue with it. After 2 months of headache I decided to remap the ECU by a professional and block it off. £300 well spent. 300 miles later the Check VSC came up again, so I decided to buy an ODB2 reader to see what's up. It said "serious fuel leakage". After a decent research, I checked everywhere (around, under, inside) if there's any leakage. Not a single drop (and it doesn't consumes more fuel than usual) so I just cancelled it to see if it comes up. Another 300 miles have passed, and no fault came up so far. The car seem to be healthy (no smoke, oil is fine, no odd noise, no leakage, etc), the only thing that worries me, is that the mpg display doesn't go over 33 mpg (perhaps because it's winter) and I drive the exact same route where I used to be able to get 45 mpg on the screen, and it seems to be weaker than it used to be.

Perhaps I'm just being paranoiac, however I killed my MX5 because of my lack of knowledge, and I don't want the same destiny for the Lexus.

Thanks in advance!
Victor

[Malc]

12 minutes ago, Victor_L said:

Does anyone owns the same model with more than 130k miles in it, and does he/she faced any major problems which turned the car into a money pit?

I don't have one at all BUT I do remember reading quite some extensive stuff on these Forums about the issues with Toyota / Lexus diesel cars

good hunting .......

Malc

[Shahpor]

Welcome Victor,

My old IS220d (which now belongs to a friend) has just broken 150k miles and is still going strong.

First things first; are you checking the actual fuel consumption at each fill up?  If not, then give it a go to get an accurate mpg measurement.

Second, how computer literate are you?  The reason I ask is that if you get a copy of the TechStream software from eBay then you will be able to check and see exactly what the injectors are doing to determine if there is a leak.

Lastly, are you sure there isn't any smoke coming out of the back, especially black smoke?

[Victor_L]

37 minutes ago, Shahpor said:

Welcome Victor,

My old IS220d (which now belongs to a friend) has just broken 150k miles and is still going strong.

First things first; are you checking the actual fuel consumption at each fill up?  If not, then give it a go to get an accurate mpg measurement.

Second, how computer literate are you?  The reason I ask is that if you get a copy of the TechStream software from Ebay then you will be able to check and see exactly what the injectors are doing to determine if there is a leak.

Lastly, are you sure there isn't any smoke coming out of the back, especially black smoke?

Hello!

Thank you very much, that's a relief!
I did a calculation now. on a 60 mile trip it consumes 1/8 of the tank which is roughly 8 litres, which is 35 mpg (surprised a bit, so there is a problem somewhere).
I don't know how to program in any languages aside from visual basic in MS excel, but aside from that, I consider myself an expert in Windows user. 
There is a slight white smoke coming out in heavy acceleration when I do a DPF burnout every 50 miles, but aside from that, nothing. The oil colour and level is normal, and the coolant as well.

[johnatg]

Possibly the problem is a leaking injector. You should be getting more mpg - an external fuel leak wouldn't necessarily trigger an OBDII fault code, but an internal leak into a cylinder would. It wouldn't necessarily produce any significant symptoms when driving but there's a possibility of diesel finding its way into the sump. That causes the oil level to apparently rise (any sign of that?) and ultimately to diesel runaway (when the engine runs on uncontrollably on its own oil - until it self destructs.

[johnnyroper]

“A dpf burnout every 50 miles” are you saying the car is doing a regen every 50 miles or are you giving it a thrashing to get temp up?

 

if it’s regenerating every 50 miles then that is far too much 

[Shahpor]

6 hours ago, Victor_L said:

Hello!

Thank you very much, that's a relief!
I did a calculation now. on a 60 mile trip it consumes 1/8 of the tank which is roughly 8 litres, which is 35 mpg (surprised a bit, so there is a problem somewhere).
I don't know how to program in any languages aside from visual basic in MS excel, but aside from that, I consider myself an expert in Windows user. 
There is a slight white smoke coming out in heavy acceleration when I do a DPF burnout every 50 miles, but aside from that, nothing. The oil colour and level is normal, and the coolant as well.

Well, it sounds you know your way around a computer, so I recommend you get yourself a copy of TechStream since it is very useful.  If you get a copy you should be able to figure out exactly where the fuel is going.

Incidentally, what kind of driving was this 60 mile trip?  When I had mine it would do roughly 32-33mpg in town, going up to 37-38mpg when mixed with some motorway journeys.

[Victor_L]

6 hours ago, johnatg said:

Possibly the problem is a leaking injector. You should be getting more mpg - an external fuel leak wouldn't necessarily trigger an OBDII fault code, but an internal leak into a cylinder would. It wouldn't necessarily produce any significant symptoms when driving but there's a possibility of diesel finding its way into the sump. That causes the oil level to apparently rise (any sign of that?) and ultimately to diesel runaway (when the engine runs on uncontrollably on its own oil - until it self destructs.

Just checked the oil level again. It doesn't have caramelised color, and doesn't seem to rise, in fact it is about to reach the minimum level (9k miles since the last oil change). So there's a chance that the 5th injector is faulty (just red it on other forums, that the most common fault is the 5th injector)

 

4 hours ago, johnnyroper said:

“A dpf burnout every 50 miles” are you saying the car is doing a regen every 50 miles or are you giving it a thrashing to get temp up?

 

if it’s regenerating every 50 miles then that is far too much 

I don't know how often it needs to regen, just my mechanic advised to give a bit of RPM every 50 miles, so the combustion's temperature (or intensivity) reaches a point where it burns the microbits to ashes and cleans the DPF out.

3 hours ago, Shahpor said:

Well, it sounds you know your way around a computer, so I recommend you get yourself a copy of TechStream since it is very useful.  If you get a copy you should be able to figure out exactly where the fuel is going.

Incidentally, what kind of driving was this 60 mile trip?  When I had mine it would do roughly 32-33mpg in town, going up to 37-38mpg when mixed with some motorway journeys.

Just ordered it from eBay. Thank you once again. 
The daily trip is consists 40 miles of motorway 15 miles of single-carriageway, and 5 miles of urban travel

[Linas.P]

On 2/12/2019 at 1:12 PM, Victor_L said:

I did a calculation now. on a 60 mile trip it consumes 1/8 of the tank which is roughly 8 litres, which is 35 mpg (surprised a bit, so there is a problem somewhere).

That is not the way to do it. My car is at 1/2 tank now and I have done 230 miles - does it make it 35MPG?! No... it is around 23 actually. I know that with remaining "half" of tank I will be able to do 70 miles. What I found with IS (250 at least). First half of tank is ~75%, 3rd quarter is another 20% and last quarter is remaining 5% up until it says 0 miles range left. From there you can still make 30miles on reserve.

What you need to do is to do it brim to brim, not necessary to do full tank, but it needs to be full to begin with. Fill it until it clicks, check the mileage or reset the trip, drive until you feel like refuelling, fill again until it clicks and see how much fuel you put in. That is going to 99.9% correct to what you used. Then check how many miles you did and that gives your actual accurate MPG.

In terms of expensive fixes for IS220d they are well known and I would not associate them with mileage of the car. Actually, if the car has higher mileage because it spent most life on motorway you might be better off. The problem with IS220d and most of diesels is short journeys in the cities... If you find 12 years old IS220d with 50k miles - that is going to be money pit. Turbos, gaskets, ERGs, DPFs, Injectors, 5th Injector, Clutch and flywheel.... not only it could go wrong, there are plenty of thread of it going wrong. However, as said before it is not really a mileage thing, it is the way car was used - city and short journeys = dead. 

Looking into you travel I am not surprised you are fine (same was the case for @Shahpor) - doing 60 miles in a day and most of it on motorway gets your engine etc. up to temp and you should not get into most of the IS220d related issues. Although 32mpg is rather low for the journey which is mostly on motorway - even I in IS250 could achieve that (or at least I could before), I woudl expect your MPG to be higher. Well that is unless last 5 miles in the city are very very congested. 

[joelfigueira]

Mine has 113500 miles and it’s running well touch wood. Not sure if it makes a difference but since I have had my 2008 IS220d SE Multimedia i have always used shell vpower. 

[Victor_L]

On 2/13/2019 at 7:29 PM, Linas.P said:

That is not the way to do it. My car is at 1/2 tank now and I have done 230 miles - does it make it 35MPG?! No... it is around 23 actually. I know that with remaining "half" of tank I will be able to do 70 miles. What I found with IS (250 at least). First half of tank is ~75%, 3rd quarter is another 20% and last quarter is remaining 5% up until it says 0 miles range left. From there you can still make 30miles on reserve.

What you need to do is to do it brim to brim, not necessary to do full tank, but it needs to be full to begin with. Fill it until it clicks, check the mileage or reset the trip, drive until you feel like refuelling, fill again until it clicks and see how much fuel you put in. That is going to 99.9% correct to what you used. Then check how many miles you did and that gives your actual accurate MPG.

In terms of expensive fixes for IS220d they are well known and I would not associate them with mileage of the car. Actually, if the car has higher mileage because it spent most life on motorway you might be better off. The problem with IS220d and most of diesels is short journeys in the cities... If you find 12 years old IS220d with 50k miles - that is going to be money pit. Turbos, gaskets, ERGs, DPFs, Injectors, 5th Injector, Clutch and flywheel.... not only it could go wrong, there are plenty of thread of it going wrong. However, as said before it is not really a mileage thing, it is the way car was used - city and short journeys = dead. 

Looking into you travel I am not surprised you are fine (same was the case for @Shahpor) - doing 60 miles in a day and most of it on motorway gets your engine etc. up to temp and you should not get into most of the IS220d related issues. Although 32mpg is rather low for the journey which is mostly on motorway - even I in IS250 could achieve that (or at least I could before), I woudl expect your MPG to be higher. Well that is unless last 5 miles in the city are very very congested. 

Thanks for sharing that, I'll do it my next refill :)

UPDATE
Hello Everyone!

Took me some sweet time, but I finally managed to do proper MPG measurement:
- 44 litres within 363 miles (Around 200 miles of motorway, 120 miles of single carriageway and the rest of it was within city with small-medium traffic) so around 36.5 mpg

I don't know if it's normal for this model, or should I be worried, but I'm happy with the result.

Thank you all for your help once again :)