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Showing content with the highest reputation on 10/11/2019 in all areas

  1. It’s been 3 months since we picked up our GSF in which we have covered just under 2000 miles averaging around 19 mpg. Here are my some of my initial thoughts. The positives. The sound of the V8. My car is completely standard and I know it’s a little mute for some, but I love every minute of the sound from when it starts up cold to when it comes on cam. I don’t think I will ever get bored of it, and whilst I used to love listening to my music in the car, the stereo is rarely turned on nowadays. The responsiveness, performance and handling. Whilst I acknowledge that it’s not the fastest super saloon out there and these new hot / hyper hatches will arguably be faster off the line, it has more performance than I will ever need and I clearly will run out of talent before it will. I love how it also feels like a smaller car than it is. I definitely don’t think it feels any larger than my previous IS250 on the road. MPG I’m not worried about the MPG as I wouldn’t have bought a GSF if I was, but I’m very happy with it considering the car is barely warmed up by the time I arrive at work and I do little motorway mileage. As a comparison, my previous IS250 averaged around 23mpg over the same journeys. Subtleness and rare factor. I’ve only ever seen one other GSF on the road about two years ago. I love how the average passer by wouldn’t even give it a second look and I’ve had a few people who are in to their cars claim that they have never even heard of it, which makes me smile. Mark Levinson. I know that this doesn’t get the best views but I think it’s a great system ( on the rare occasion that it is on lol) for the music that I listen too. Practicality. Loads of room for my family of 4 and the car seats. Space was a struggle in the IS. Insurance. Unbelievably no more expensive than my IS250 and about £200 cheaper a year than our RX450. Likely to be due to there being only 63 ish registered and probably non of them being involved in a large claim. Paintwork. Seems to always have a deep shine even when it’s dirty. This could be due to the ceramic coating but I also liked how the acid etch damaged from seagull poo seemed to fix itself over a weekend in the heat. I’m not sure if this is due to the self-healing paint (does this work through the ceramic coating?) or the coating itself but something worked either way 😊. Looks. I know this is subjective but I think it looks fantastic. It’s split personality. I love how it feels just like how a normal Lexus should below 3.5k RPM. Smooth and quiet but then it turns in to a real super salon after this point. Amazing. A pleasure to drive around town but massively capable at speed when pushed. Blind spot monitoring. Absolutely brilliant, I now wish our RX had it! Carbon Fibre rear spoiler. Looks amazing in the sun but still relatively subtle IMO. The negatives Just nit picking here really as nothing is a major deal. Brake dust. Widely covered on here, I love the wheels and the orange callipers but they are such a pain in the butt to clean and I love cleaning cars! Mine have been coated in Poor Boys sealant which has helped massively but cleaning them still takes some time and the front callipers are a pain to get to. I will be looking in to the options other owners have mentioned on here when replacements are required. Rattle. I had a really intermittent rattle coming from behind the sav screen. This has seemed to have disappeared, touch wood, but was very frustrating for a couple of weeks. Powered boot lid. I love how the boot lid is powered but I wish that you could also close the lid via the remote and the button on the dash like our RX, instead of just the button on the lid itself. I expect that this is a dealer configurable option so I will look in to this before my next service. Sat Nav menu on start up. I wish the menu didn’t load up every time you started the car. A simple press of return solves this issues but as I very rarely use the sat nav, there is no need for it to load up every time. Speed sign recognition. I can’t really rely on this as it often picks up random speed limits, such as ones on the back of continental lorries, or not at all Carbon Fibre in front bumper. Chips are already present and more are enviable. I really don’t know how you would fix this. That’s it really. Both my wife and myself are well and truly smitten by it and we will be keeping it for as long as we can, before everything goes down the EV route. F.A.
    4 points
  2. I'm not sure if it's the same on the RX400, but on my RX300 the oil level warning and oil pressure warning are two entirely different warnings, supplied by two different sensors. The oil pressure switch measures the oil pressure in the oil gallery after the oil pump and lights the red oil can if the pressure is low on my RX. The light is red for a reason: the engine shouldn't be run with low oil pressure. The oil level is measured by a float switch in the sump. The oil level warning light is an amber oil can on my RX300. ON the RX400 I assume the warning is in the information display. Being amber (or the information display) it means the warning is not as critical as oil pressure. You can check the level using the dipstick and if the level is okay, then get the sensor changed. Regarding the Original Posters comments, they've got an oil level warning, but changed the parts that sense oil pressure. They changed the oil pressure switch and the oil filter, but not the oil level switch, which is completely different. No wonder the fault is still there. The oil level float switch in the bottom of the block needs changing.
    4 points
  3. As I believe I mentioned somewhere previously, I couldn't hear the turn indicators on my RX with the audio on even at moderate levels and with the benefit of hearing aids, Also with the seat and steering wheel in my preferred position, I cannot clearly see that the indicators have self cancelled as they sometimes fail to do depending on the lock applied. and in any event I prefer not to have to look down as I have Head up Display. (I read on another model forum of the club that this was a problem for a member too), Somebody suggested I adjust the seat /steering wheel configuration but why try to make the foot fit the shoe rather than the shoe fit the foot? The answer was to boost the sound emitted by the Lexus (relay?). Not wishing to do this myself, I got my local auto electrical firm to wire in two sound emitters, one to each flasher circuit. These emitters are very small, about the size of the tip of your finger but produce a a good and unmistakable higher pitched sound in tandem with the Lexus ones and serve as a reminder that my turn signal has not cancelled. These did not have to be coded and you don't see them. So if anybody else has my problem this is a good solution. It's possible that any subsequent owner would find this a little too loud but it would be easy to disconnect and in any case I don't plan on selling the car any time soon. Whilst the tecky had one of the small panels out he tidied away the hard wire cable that powers my TomTom and connected it to a new dedicated socket which is not visible, so you only see the couple or so inches of cable as it comes out from between the A piller and end of dash to the TomTom base. I am very pleased with the result.
    3 points
  4. Well, today I've ripped out the centre stack for about the 3rd or 4th time since I got this car. I'm a pro at this now 😂 If anybody is thinking of buying the XCarLink adapter to save a bit of dosh, DON'T. It was so bad I just ended up not using it. I mean the thing worked, but there would be constant noise/hiss in the background. Using it with my iPhone (which required a big ugly adapter because the cable supplied used the iPod 30 pin connector and the other end was propriatary so you couldn't just use a lightning cable) would introduce terrible interferance that seemed to be based on what was on the screen (more white seemed to cause more noise weirdly enough). Using it with my iPod classic, I could hear the hard drive spin up through my speakers! XCarLink support claimed this was normal! And it didn't support song text/title support while not important, is nice. So I did what I should have done in the first place and got the GROM USB3 adapter. Let me tell you this thing is great and perfect for my needs. I wanted a setup that allowed me to use my iPod classic (which I still use because it allows me to store thousands of songs which I rip from my CDs in ALAC (Like FLAC - lossless CD quality audio)), my iPhone (which I mainly use for Podcasts, Spotify, Internet Radio and as a sat nav) without the need to keep switching cables. And I still maintain the full use of the CD changer which I still use. When you first select the CD2 input, you have a couple of seconds to use the track skip buttons to change the input. The voice of a rather nice sounding lady will call out "USB, iPod, AUX" etc over the speakers. But you can customise this how you want as there's a few add-ons available such as a bluetooth module (for steaming and calls) and a DAB radio tuner. Sound quality wise it's amazing. Somehow it seems to sound better then the CD player. I don't know if it's a different EQ or something but I had to turn the bass down because it was booming. Still crystal clear though. So this is the current setup. The top mount is where my phone goes (it's not there as I had to use it to take the photo). The holders I use are fantastic. You clip the cable into them so you simply dock your device in, no faffing with cables. If anybody is interested in these mounts, they're called Brodit ProClip. Essentially they comes in two parts, a mount for the car and a holder for your device. You look up your make and model and you'll be presented with different mounts designed specifically for your car. Then you look for a holder for your particular device, be it a phone, iPod, sat nav etc. You attach them together and you have the best mount money can buy. I realise I must sound like a sales rep for GROM and Brodit, but I just really like these products. However, one issue with the Brodit mounts and the LS430 is that they offer only one mount (the one my iPod is on). Generally they offer several solutions for each car but not this one. It's not a good location for a phone which I use as a sat nav as it's far too low down and would require you to take your eyes off the road. It's fine for the iPod though. I searched everywhere for another solution but all the other mounts I could find were for LHD cars such as the Panavise mount and this wouldn't have worked properly in a RHD car. After a long time spent on Google I did managed to find a possible solution from some obscure company called Dashmout. This is the Dashmount 71521 and appears to be compatible with the LS430, GS300 and GS350. I had no idea if it would be compatible with my iPhone holder but at only £15 I decided to take the gamble and I'm so glad I did. It lined up perfectly with my Brodit iPhone holder. The mount itself simply slips between the gap between the dash and the centre stack. It's just held in place by friction but does include a strip of double sided sticky foam also. It's very sturdy and doesn't flex or move at all which I'm very pleased about. Not much else has changed as of yet. I did swap out the number plate lights for these ones from Amazon. Don't be fooled by the photo. They're nowhere near this bright and obnoxious in person it's just a bad photo. The brightness is just right and makes the rear end look a bit more modern. I also took a gamble on a full set of interior LED lights. They come from China as a kit and so are cheaper then buying the bulbs individually. Kit for cars with rear vanity mirrors Kit for cars without vanity mirrors I'd like brighter interior lights, but sometimes these LED bulbs can be incredibly white and cold so I may end up not using them. But they were cheap enough to take a gamble. I've also been getting some quotes for a new stainless steel exhaust system as the current one is shot and leaking. Luckily my MOT guy let it slide as it wasn't dangerous and he knew I'd get it fixed. No way I'm paying Lexus money so custom it is. I'm going to go for something a little more sporty as long as it's not too loud. I don't want to ruin the car by making it really loud but at the end of the day I have a V8 and at the moment I can't hear it! I'm also waiting on deliveries for some components I'll be using to make some minor modifcations to the headlights and fog lights. I'm hoping it turns out nicely but I'll keep that as a suprise until it's done. P.S. - Does anybody happen to know what kind of bulbs these switches use? I noticed the power / snow button stopped lighting up the other day. The bottom row of buttons has never illuminated since I got the car and I only just found out today that they're supposed to! Anyway, thanks for reading and have a good weekend. 😊
    3 points
  5. Hi again every one , This is an update. I'll start with Thanking everyone that took the time to respond to my call for HELP with the problem of BLISTERING WHEELS. As you all know I took it to the dealer , who then contacted the warrantee people at LEXUS , and the reply was NO ! . And then going by the advice of some of the long time members , I contacted customer relations at LEXUS , who then spoke to the man dealing with my complaint at Steven Eagell , Rayleigh weir , Essex . I was then asked by Lexus to go back to the dealer so that they could take more in-depth pictures of the corrosion on each wheel . After a few days customer relations came back and said they would replace 3 wheels under warrantee ( GREAT FANTASTIC ) , So then I go back onto customer relation again and spoke to the same man ( who by the way was so helpful and very under standing about my complaint ) . I said I was very please with their decision , but my concerns were having 3 new wheels on the car and then the remaining wheel would starts to corrode like the others did within a short time after, and then having to go through all the warrantee procedure again . He said he was thinking the same thing, so he got back onto warrantees again , then called me back the next day saying they would replace the 4 wheel at no charge to me as a gesture of goodwill . I am so please with the way customer relation at LEXUS and the service contact person at steven eagell dealt with this matter and the help and advice I got from this site . Thanks again EVERYONE
    3 points
  6. Dear Gents, I tough this post would be of interest to all F sports fans: Yesterday, I visited Lexus Edgware Road to have my GS450H inspected with Hybrid due to a minor collision (my posting is in the GS 450 forum) and I met one of the sales Executives (whom I bought my car from) who said that they have a GSF car year 2019 that was built in Japan (only 2 of them were built as GSF) on special request from the General Manager at Lexus Edgware Road with high specifications (exterior and interior is absolutely stunning). Lexus in Japan said yes to build 2 x uniques cars (despite its production ended in 2016 I think) - carbon fibre inside. The General Manager had it for a few months and drove 6k miles and it is now on for sales for £62.5k - very tempting but out of my budget... I thought you might be interested in knowing this. Feel free to view the pics (and I am not working for Lexus nor trying to push a sale here). https://edgwareroad.usedcars.lexus.co.uk/en/used-lexus/Lexus/Gs-F-Saloon/50-4dr-Auto-Mark-Levinson-jjb5zgp
    2 points
  7. There doesn't appear to be any mention of an oil level float in the sump, as you can see from the 'On car inspection' instructions in the workshop manual - only thing for measuring oil is the dipstick as far as I can tell: EDIT: Well there you go, every day is a school day as the saying goes. I had a look at the workshop manual for the meter/gauge system - lo and behold, that does indeed give instructions for inspection of the low oil level warning display - Step No. 5 below: Just got to nip out but when I get back I'll find the procedure for replacing the float and post it up for you. WEll done Mark for pointing that out.
    2 points
  8. no.... nothing happened to the car i like to change my car after about 2 years of owning one. i bought my CT in october 2013,px ex'd in august 2015 for my 1st IS and in April 2018 i px'ed for my current IS300h F Sport. to be honest i cant imagine driving any other brand of car as the lexus is so reliable.
    2 points
  9. Hi Guys & Gals Just wanted to make a post on here to let people see how bad the rust with the sills can be. I have 2 at the moment that I will be welding up, so 4 sills in total I have just cut up one at the moment and have some pictures to show. Im not much of a welder so using a good old cheap flux core mig welder that should do the job 😄 I have some pictures of what its like and what my plans are, the area's are a bit tight to get the grinder into to grind away the rust … so just going to cut it all away! Let me know what you guys think, if you have any photos of your rusty sills/boot etc Have the cold but should be doing this within the week or so 😄 Looking forward to it !! So plan is to cut out all the rust, replace it with new metal, primer it where I cant reach after welding, plug weld ovr existing good metal then seam along the sill etc, also though I might as well do the rear arch while I am there.
    1 point
  10. In view of response, on Monday when they reopen, I will contact the firm who did this work for me. I explained my problem to them about a week or so previously while I was in Barnstaple and they didn't have any of the sounders left at the time so ordered in for me. When these arrived they temporarily hooked them up to a power supply in their workshop to see whether I found them suitable, before fitting to my car. I didn't ask what they were referenced and it was not specified on their invoice. It's probably better if I ask how these are described and where available and post what I find out so they don't have to potentially give the same information to several people who will not be buying or having work done by them anyway. Because everything is hidden behind panels, there is nothing to see. I will try to do a short video recording the sound and also showing the connection to the Tomtom mount which has has been neatly done.
    1 point
  11. Got home and decided to fit the spoiler, so glad I bought this now, I love the look of it totally changes the rear Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    1 point
  12. Any further details for these Barry - make, model, where to buy etc., etc? I don't need them for the same purpose as you but I could use something like that on another project.
    1 point
  13. Hmm, curioser and curiouser as Alice would say. I've scoured the workshop manual but absolutely no mention whatsoever of an oil level switch other than how to inspect it (as in Step 5 of that last picture above). No mention of where it's located or how to get to it, no mention of electrical resistances or anything. The only clue as to its location was found in the following illustration from 7zap.
    1 point
  14. Rather late now but as a checking point for sticking caliper, after a run check whether the spokes of one wheel is warmer than the others. If you have a temperature probe and can use this to contact the alloy spokes or better still the rotor there is a good chance that the markedly hotter wheel with have at least a partially seized caliper. DON'T touch the rotor with an unprotected hand - they get very hot!
    1 point
  15. Just a little over 3 months ownership of mine and I too am smitten with my beastie. Done nearly 3000 miles in mine. Mixed driving. Getting between 23 and 25 mpg. Longest journey I've done is a little over 400 mile round trip to Milton Keynes. Got about 31 mpg on that run (would've been more if the motorway hadn't been empty on the way home!!!😁😇) You can't change the boot closer function. It's the way it is. You open the boot to put stuff in or take it out, so pressing a button before walking away is logical. Cleaning the wheels and calipers is generally a pain because of their design. I get my son to do it 🤣. The old 3 inch roll forward (or backward) helps. I've just bought some Bilt Hamber autowheel and wheel woolies to lessen his burden 😁. Tried to see what mine looked like in white ... didn't like it!😁 I've also added some F ghost shadow lights. I think they look quite cool.
    1 point
  16. You could ask a hundred questions but you need to test drive both to get your true answer. Mines on 101K and has been faultless since new(2011). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    1 point
  17. You're right Mark, it does seem obvious and I think it was my fault in latching onto the word "pressure" in the OP's opening line and diverting the conversation: I really must learn to read things properly first before replying
    1 point
  18. Lexus Swindon has an orange RCF Plus pack coming into stock soon! £43,250 GV18CFZ 2018 (18) 4,668 miles
    1 point
  19. According to the 2014 GS (the OP's model year) handbook the car does have an EV mode switch (page 260) which works in the same way as the mode in the 2019 RC..
    1 point
  20. It's nice that 18 months after I posted it, this thread is still helping people. Must be the most helpful thread I've posted anywhere. :-)
    1 point
  21. Interesting even though I don't like the GSF but this one looks decent. I guess we both go to the same dealers in London 😉👍
    1 point
  22. Welcome to Europe's Leading Lexus Club! Please Enjoy!
    1 point
  23. Thank you. I’m very impressed with the stance of your car Dan. I think the GSF will be kept stock but maybe I will try some air on another car. I do like the GSF in white I just couldn’t find one with a black interior. As you mentioned, it’s just personal preference 👍🏾
    1 point
  24. I’d ditch the satnav. I can count on no fingers how many times I used my Lexus Nav.... lol. A decent modern double din unit could mirror your smart phone display and use your mobile satnav apps (or an android head unit can have satnav installed). If it helps, I have a standard ac control unit that I used when I removed my factory sat Nav unit (which obviously has the heater controls built in). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
    1 point
  25. I'd strongly recommend ditching the factory navigation and going for a touchscreen double din. Mine is a Kenwood android auto unit, so I hook my phone up to a usb outlet in the centre armrest cubby, and the car then had spotify, google maps, handsfree etc. If you look earlier in my thread, you'll see what I did - if you plan on upgrading the sound system, you'll be pulling the door panels to get to your factory speakers - at which point access to the tweeters should be self explanatory. Sent from my SM-N960F using Tapatalk
    1 point
  26. I know the review is a very positive one for both the RCF and GSF but I think his conclusion is spot on. He too drives it in manual mode most of the time as I have found I prefer it . The other review by Chris Harris on the RCF is pretty good too, I don't think the RCF is a track fiends vehicle either but I do agree with his final statement about the car growing on you over a longer period of time.
    1 point
  27. Two of the speakers are double cones i.e. two speakers in one unit. Each end of the dashboard..
    1 point
  28. Thanks; those look like a great price. I'll come back to you when I need them
    1 point
  29. Only the IS-F (2010+) has an LSD in this platform. All other 2IS and 3GS models use an open diff, despite some brochures claiming otherwise. Torsen in a 450h has been done, but... it's a bit of a rabbit hole. Aftermarket torsens/clutch packs are available, of course - drexler (likely OEM torsens for toyota), sard, cusco, os giken, ats, so on.
    1 point
  30. Hi Andy, yes you're right there is a time out setting using the hotspot function on an Android phone. I've now set my phone to never time out when hot spot is used. Maybe iphones have similar. Thanks for the help Steve
    1 point
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