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So, after all the maintenance I have done, it was with some trepidation I put Lex in for his MoT today. Fortunately it passed :) Now for the "but"! As much as I dislike the factory fit Bridgestone RE031 tyres, I was recently able to pick up 4 at £45 each (due to stock clear out) and I intended to have these put on at the garage prior to the MoT taking place. As I want to refurb my alloys, I asked they remove the rubber from my spare and give me the rim back to make life easier. Rather than wait the quoted 2 hrs for all this, I then went home and a few moments later got a call from the garage saying they advise me not to put new tyres on my rims as they found a lot of corrosion along the bead where the new tyres would fit and were worried my tyres would leak air a lot. Fortunately my old tyres still have at least 3mm of tread all round and now I'm home, I can confirm the rim is definitely corroded with bubbly aluminium oxide and will need sanding down and respraying & sealing before I can get the new rubber fitted :/ hey-ho! So, to date (when I bought the car in Feb 2015 for £4250), I have: Replaced Timing belt, tensioner, water pump and spark plugs (garage did this but I supplied Lex parts & fluids) Replaced ATF (still have transfer box and rear diff to do) Replaced Power Steering fluid Replaced Oil Cooler steel pipes Refurbed front brakes and pads Refurbed and fitted offside front air strut and nearside rear strut inc. new stabiliser links (cos I had to cut them off due to rust!) Drained excess rear diff gear oil (which cured a leak I had) Used steel "cable ties" to reattach and clamp the rattly heatshield on the pipe branch to the manifold Fixed the undertrays held on by cable ties back to using stainless steel bolts (that was the worst job, removing broken bolts!) Replaced the rusted away exhaust back box rear hanger with a steel "cable tie" Still got a few things to do yet (change all anti roll bar bushes, change the remaining stabiliser links, change brake fluid, diff & transfer oils, service rear brakes, refurb all alloy wheels and fix rear seat cup holder lid (one hinge is broken & rattles)) - but I feel the worst work has been done now! :) I will have spent around £1000 in total for all the above work, fluids and parts but will be good for several years on all the major items. I think LPG conversion is next for my Lex unless I can exchange it for an RX400h (but CVT rather than batteries puts me off!) It has certainly been a journey and a great learning experience - thank you for all the help you've provided along the way. Chris.

Hello, I just thought I'd document my experiences with seized front calipers on my 2006 GS450h. Apologies for the long post, but hopefully there will be some useful information in here. When I originally searched for information on seized front calipers, I didn't find too much information. Rear calipers seem to be more of a problem... I bought my car in Dec 2014 so didn't have it that long. (I originally typed this up in April but only getting round to posting now...) As these cars get older, I think this may become more and more of an issue, given how easily I think this can happen. Looking at some of the US sites, seized front calipers seem to be common enough for various Lexus cars in the US. I could go into the whole story and background to this, but I don't think it would add to the usefulness of the post and would reflect badly on me, as someone with an interest in his cars and who should have noticed this much much sooner... In summary... This process was prompted by a slight noise from the front left disk when turning left. What started out as a change of brake pads turned into new pads, new disks and two new calipers. The first indication of the issue was that the inner brake pad was actually seized in the caliper on the left hand side. This is first time I have ever encountered this on any car I've had. When I got the pad out (after much prising, cursing etc.) I found the pistons for the inner pad on the left hand side were also seized. The reason why this was not noticeable when driving was, unbelieveable to me, that the right hand side was in exactly the same state; the inner pad was seized in the caliper and the pistons were also seized! The biggest suprise was that I hadn't noticed any issue with the brakes until very recently when I began to think I had a warped disk. I'd driven several GS450hs before buying mine and the brakes seemed to be no different on mine. I believe the pads were seized before I bought my car. Both sides had a seized pad, hence the braking effort was similar. Perhaps this a case where the brake actuator etc. really does provide a totally artificial feel. The only symptom (in hindsight) was that at times, when the road was damp or slippy, I felt there was too much rear brake bias in the car. This I put down to excessive regeneration rather than brakes so never investigated further. Note: there is no electrical or electronic switch on the Lexus to warn of worn pads. There is a spring on one pad designed to be very noisy when it touches the disk. This spring is on the inner (and seized) pads so there was no warning of worn pads in my case. When I had looked at the service records for my car, the brakes were changed in a Toyota garage in 2013 so I had been confident the brakes were in good condition. I think this problem arose because the outer rubber seals were damaged when the pistons were being pushed back when the brakes were being changed. In the seals for the affected pistons I noticed a small nick in each seal of approximately 2-3mm in each. The pistons themselves appear to be mild steel with a chrome or hard coating on the piston walls. The pistons may just be highly polished with no other protective coating. In any case the pistons themselves, where exposed, seem to have rusted very heavily and very completely. I believe this car might have lived beside the sea before I bought it, leading to even greater and more severe rusting. This rust seems to have moved from the top of the piston, which is uncoated, down under the side coating. This has made the sliding surface rough and has also been sufficient to trap the piston in the aluminium caliper. I managed to extract one of the seized pistons and I've put a picture of it here. Given the condition of the piston, I would not be willing to risk reusing this piston and caliper on what is a heavy and quite fast car. If a piston is seized, I think it could be dangerous to push it back in without inspecting everything throroughly. As I was under a certain amount of time pressure, I decided to go ahead and purchase two brand new calipers from Lexus. These were expensive but at least I know what I have. I've had a chance to do some more searching since and I've seen rebuilt calipers for sale for $70 dollars or so each. Given the damage to the pistons on my caliper, including the pistons that haven't seized, I would only be comfortable if all pistons were renewed and all seals, inner and outer were changed.

Because even though the ls430 is a nice car and I own one too, the ls400 is the best car ever made. Well that's what I think anyway.

get a GS430 :D Those CL's looks well built they fast and sound nice on song i recon you wont go wrong if you pick a late(05)model or to keep tax down go for earlier and some warranty to go with it a private number plate and you laughing

wow - nice neat cheap fix - knowledge is key i have just this afternoon fixed my door speaker foam surround - will be fitting it back tomorrow - if it works will also do the drivers side. just for comparison lexus price for speaker is £100 - price for 2 foam surrounds is £18 if it doesn't work then i will be buying 2 new genuine speakers

Would be interested to know how many failures there have been of these engine oil cooler pipes in the UK. There is a major ongoing thread on this appalling piece of design on the USA Club Lexus site. From the numbers affected there I am surprised there is so little on our site. From the US it is apparent there was a recall to replace defective rubber pipes. When these also failed the design was changed to an all metal fitting and there is an excellent American Youtube video of a DIY change over. I am considering such a replacement for my '06 RX350 SE. Any thoughts?

My strongest memory of India from my recent first visit is how many smiles you see from people who have no material wealth whatsoever. But seeing the first truck coming towards us on our side of the dual carriageway is definitely up there too! Jon

Hi Ron, not sure why you had an immobiliser issues after the failed battery but it sounds like this is now resolved. The AA clearing the fault code shouldn't have made a difference - sometimes having the key in the ignition for several minutes will reactivate the key/immobiliser pairing so this may of happened and the clearing of fault codes was a coincidence. If you disconnect the battery then the radio presets will be lost. You should be able to manually tune to the desired station and add back the presets. There isn't a code to enter into the radio to activate it.

Vote with your feet and don't go back but I would send the info to VOSA, there are enough "rouge traders" out there, it sounds like they were trying it on!!!

You should think about reporting that first garage. Glad it is all resolved :)

well took the car to another garage to check along with a friend mechanic. Both could not find anything wrong with the car or any movement. They then took the car to an MOT station where they had the "stress" machine, where it would move the wheels around and see any movement there. And ... nope everything totally solid no slack or movement. The car has sailed through the MOT the next morning. It just makes you worried.... seeing that you cannot even trust the first opinion you get on one car even from MOT's

I have visited India a great deal, for work. over the last 10 years. I agree, adherence to whatever rules of the road they have, does seem to be purely optional. Experiences have included cars choosing to go down a dual carriageway on the wrong side, because it was obviously too far to go down the correct side to the next roundabout, and come back again. (the same goes to guys riding elephants - and they do this at night time, and elephants don't have lights). A taxi driver who hit heavy traffic, and because I was in a hurry, opted to drive down the pavement to get me to my destination on time. It was like in the original Italian Job film, when the minis drove down the pavements. Seeing a coach on the main Delhi/Chandigarh road with a man sitting on the roof with four goats, who ooked petrified as they tried to remain upright. Hooves on painted metal don't provide much grip, and the coach was doing 60mph. The traffic lights count down the seconds to when they go green, and the cars, motorbikes, scooters, trucks and tuktuks all rev their engines and it is like the start of a F1 race as they all hurtle off. Some 'jump the start', and then have to dodge the vehicles coming left to right across them, who came through on the red light. The sight of five people on a small motorbike, Father driving, with a young child lying over the petrol tank like a saddle bag (the father with one hand on the handle bar, the other pinning the child in place, behind the father was a second child wedged between the him and the mother, and the mother was breast feeding a third child. The law states that the rider of a motorbike, must wear a helmet, but the same law does not apply to any number of passengers on the bike. The law is also quite loose in its definition of a motorbike helmet. I have often seen a hard hat from a building site being used, which explains why you never see hard hats on construction sites. The best helmet I have ever seen was a large plastic bucket. On one of my earlier trips, a driver was taking me somewhere at night, but had no lights on. When I commented, he said there was no point in turning on his headlights at night, as it just wore out the bulbs. Lastly, I was being driven along a mountain road, with some sharp corners, and large drops off the side. My driver overtook a slow moving lorry, on a blind corner, with nowhere to go if another vehicle came towards us. After shouting at him about his poor driving, I calmed down a bit, and asked him if he was afraid of dying. His reply was "if it is my day to die, it is my day to die". When I asked about me, he replied "sir, in that case it will be your day to die too". India. You've just got to love it

Welcome to you both :)

The '95 might also still work with TIS Techstream. Steve, The link to the TCCS diagnostic is in Japanese, but I'm sure you'll manage to translate it :) You'll find it about halfway down the page. http://celsiorup.com/custom20/2099RadarCruise4.htm

That reminds me, I should clean my mass air flow sensor! Another thing for the list! If the cat is a marginal fail, I'd check/change the air filter and clean the mass air flow sensor to see if that helps (usually does). The next step would be to inspect EGR and maybe PCV valves and clean any gunge out. If you have access to an OBD tool, you can diagnose cat and O2 sensor problems by watching the readings live with the engine running, if all else fails, then new cat! Chris.

Not having these sensors, I don't know how they are fitted or the wiring is run. It is extremely (in my opinion) unlikely the ultrasonic sensors themselves are faulty - they either work or don't when made at the factory. If it were me, I'd spend the time to check all the obvious things first: 1) Unplug each sensor, by popping it out of the bumper - I imagine each one has a plastic connector/plug, and use di-electric grease on the plug after checking/cleaning any corrosion found. 2) silicon spray each sensor - this will keep moisture off and allow water to bead off them and not let water soak into them if that's at all possible, then re-install/push back into bumper. 3) Find the unit where the wires to the sensors runs back to, unplug them at this end and clean the plug/connector and apply di-electric grease. Whilst doing the above, you may find an obvious big problem (like the sensor control box full of water or damaged wiring) either way, ruling the basics out can't hurt and will save you cash if it has to go into the dealer as you can tell them what you've done and/or found. Remember, an hour of tech time is £100 or more! Also, one other idea, if you have one sensor playing up, why not swap it over with a working one? If the fault follows the sensor then bingo! If the fault doesn't follow the sensor then most likely wiring or sensor controller issue... Let us know how you get on & good luck! Chris

Aftermarket air suspension for me would be the way to go on a non-SEL RX 300...