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Showing content with the highest reputation on 07/21/2014 in all areas

  1. I would be worried about an 8 year old car that has only done 30k miles - means it's been sat around decomposing For a newer model to have a high mileage, that can only be caused by lots of motorway miles. Motorway miles are very good for a car - constant speed, no braking, no clutch wear, little gearbox wear etc. My last motorbike spent 80% of it's life on the motorway and I sold it in perfect running order with 96k miles on the clock in 7 years - that is a huge mileage for a bike. My 2007 RX had 103k miles on when I bought it a year ago and, touch wood, nothing has gone wrong. It was previously a company car, so did lots of motorway miles and had all it's services done. And I paid £9.5k for it (privately)
    2 points
  2. Rudy, PM your address again and I'll post you a known good original up for free :)
    1 point
  3. I have now fit my replacement mirror :) For anyone interesting in how I did it, here is a mini guide. Hope it helps someone, as the lack of information was quite bewildering. So if you need to replace the mirror of an IS220, (mine is 57 plated), here is how: First some information: Car mirrors come in 3 different shapes Flat - 1:1 ratio (real vision) Spherical/Convex - wide angle view mirror - shows smaller objects than in reality Aspherical/Wide angle - this is a combination of a convex mirror and a second part to the mirror at a slight angle (divided by a vertical line) - to eliminate blind spot. Aspherical mirrors are standard in UK cars. The heating element, is just a sticker attached to the back, with a heat circuit printed on it (like the rear window on cars) (The original was a sort of sticky-back plastic as opposed to a papery sticker and the construction felt more premium than the ebay part I ended up with, in any case, it looks cheap to produce and I can only imagine that at most it costs less than £5 to make in a factory), this has two metal contacts, which need to be attached to the mirror housing. Its just a small metal contact on the sticker, and the housing has wires with a plastic plug on the end, that you push on to the contact, so not complicated at all. (no soldering or anything needed). Sourcing the parts: After scouring gumtree, and preloved, and google, I found several salvage wing mirrors - none were selling just the glass itself, they contained the housing too. And the cheapest I could get was £75 for a dark blue coloured one delivered from London, from a private seller (who was asking for money transfer to his account prior to delivery). Lexus Birmingham, quote me £150 just for the glass, due to some gel or some other nuance within the glass. Right, then I turned to Amazon and ebay. There are a few sellers that sell just the glass on its own, thankfully, and with the heated element on them too. The first one that I ordered was this mirror on ebay. It was delivered really quickly, but to my dismay, I found that the mirror was a little too small for my car, and the heating sticker was tiny, covering 25% of the mirror. To the sellers credit, he offered a full refund immediately and I lost £1.55 on postage. I then ordered a second mirror, this was the correct size and the heating element was much larger, though I had to adjust it (peel back sticker and reapply) so that the contacts were at the right place for my mirror clip. The seller was really quick with the dispatch, and was helpful in suggesting to use the hairdryer tip. Taking the broken mirror out: (Try and do all of this on a driveway or off the road to avoid traffic while you are working). This is really simple, you have to get into the car, and adjust the mirror, using the automatic controls. Get the mirror to point as far up was you can, towards the sky - this exposes the under side of the mirror slightly. Next you need a large flathead or scraper, or a spatula, and slide it under the glass. (Since the glass is broken, you can get messy and break it out). I felt for the plastic clip, rested my scredriver on there, and pushed out gently. (be careful, you might damage the paintwork on the mirror housing, or get broken glass everywhere (wear gloves and protective eyewear, if the glass is broken in tiny fragments. In my case, the cracks were few and the clip came out with the glass, easily enough. Next I had to remove the shattered glass from the black clip, again this was relatively easy as the glass was broken and I didnt really care how it came out. (again, be careful, broken glass is dangerous), and unplug the wires from the heat sticker, they are not soldered, just unplug the plastic clip off the metal contact. Putting the new mirror on: (picture above: Not mine. Taken from google images. It shows the plastic clip for the mirror, the parts circled are the bits that need to attach to the housing, and on the top right, you can see the wires connected to the heating elements) I used my wife's hairdryer to heat the plastic clip around the edges to give it some flexibility (you can use a heatgun or another heat source), just don't melt the plastic or burn it. Then ease the new glass in, this should take a little pressure, but do not break the glass. Once that is done, take the mirror and clip to the car and attach the wired to the heat sticker, then place the clip back in, carefully. Easier said than done. This was the most time consuming part, and required a few restarts and some hair pulling. It might help, asking a friend to help, and using small screwdrivers to guide the plastic clips attachment back into place. But it is now fixed and works like new. Result.
    1 point
  4. Dealers can run a battery check, mine is a 2007 with nearly 100k and a couple of months back came back with a top health pass on the batteries. There are plenty of reports of Prius with over 250k miles on the original batteries, the hybrid system on my 450h is the least of your worries IMO. Check suspension and water pump as both are expensive to fix and far more likely to go wrong than the hybrid system.
    1 point
  5. Just thought I would share; Took both calipers off today to re grease the slider pins as it has been a year. One caliper was fit by Lexus Croydon and greased by them. I had re-greased the other calliper with ceratec myself. The caliper that was fit by Lexus was sticking and the grease was bone dry. It was difficult to remove what was left of the grease. I did not take the pads out. Just removed the top bolt and moved the caliper to a side to inspect. I used ceratec in moderation so that i could slide the caliper back on without having to recess the piston. Using excessive grease creates a vacuum inside the rubber seal. The caliper that had been greased with ceratec was free like it had been greased yesterday. I did remove it to regrease it but thinking about it now it probably wasn't necessary. So yeah as i found out, the caliper may not be a bad design after all. You just need to use the right grease. I also noticed that the new caliper had a slightly different design. The rubber seal that covers the slider pin was shorter than the other one but of much better quality. It was also 'loose' than the other one so could probably take a lot more grease than the other one.
    1 point
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