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Ok, so I promised that I would give my feedback on what I thought of my new IS300h 2017 Executive It is fair to say that I am enjoying her immensely. First pull off from the dealer I forgot to release the brake! Never did that again! One embarrassed new Lexus owner - a bit of a clunk! It took a few miles to become accustomed to the automatic; I've not driven an automatic for many year but once I settled in I forgot all about the gears. She performed smoothly and quietly on the trip home of about 60 miles. I took it really steady and focused on becoming familiar with all the dials and controls. I have had her about 8 weeks now and covered about 1500 miles. She is beautifully smooth, quiet and comfortable. I find the steering very smooth and positive, no hint of under-steer or over-steer that I had in my Volvo S60. Point her to where you want to go and she goes there. Power is sufficient and in sport mode and foot planted it moves more than quick enough for me. If I wanted a '**** off of a shovel' car I'd have considered something else entirely. I read and saw many reviews saying the car is noisy when accelerated hard. I can't agree; or at least I've been lucky because I heard nothing more than an acceleration compatible with flooring any motor and it is about the only time I do hear the engine. She is definitely responsive and quick enough for me. The added button for simulated digital engine noise is switched off all the time. If I wanted to hear the engine I would not have chosen a Lexus. The rear camera is surprisingly useful despite many reviews I have heard to the contrary. It has helped in and out of one or two tight spaces already and although my driving experience would have still gotten me in and out safely, this addition assists and helps lower anxiety and fear of scratching my little baby. 🙂 Fuel economy is coming in at an average 55 mpg. Disappointing that I can't actually see this number in the info panel so I am having to 'guestimate' an average from the row of bars that I can see. I am still trying to become familiar with all the info available so it might be there somewhere. Generally I find the controls easy to operate and conveniently places once the initial space shuttle feeling wore off. Added extras like Lane assist might be useful on those long tiring journeys but the vibration through the steering wheel is so gentle I doubt it would alert anyone who is less than fully coherent. Adaptive cruise control is handy though. It responds very well to slower traffic ahead and even when the odd 2@ cuts in front. My only criticism with this system is that I think the acceleration phase once traffic has cleared could be a little gentler. It rather feels like I am flooring it and would not be doing that if I were in control of the accelerator. Road sign recognition system is a useful tool, although sometimes miss-reads ... it once told me that the speed limit was 120 mph. As far as I can tell though, it only reads speed limits! The radio, six speaker standard, is more than adequate for my needs. I tend to listen mostly to Radio 4 and music is supplied by CD's - Yes I am an old git still using CD's. I remember my Dad using 8-Track and cassettes so I have progressed a bit! DAB doesn't seem to want to tune though. It wouldn't at the dealers, he said there may be too much interference, and it won't outside my house either. Not a major problem but there you go. I've had a Ghost Immobiliser fitted since, for added piece of mind, and although nothing to do with Lexus, a quick getaway is not possible anymore. It takes between 20 - 30 seconds to start now as the code has to be entered quite slowly or it doesn't register. And, the fitter strongly recommended that I did not change the code he set! Almost insisted! Of course, 5 seconds after he left it was changed and I've made it as complicated as possible - which probably causes the inability to make a quick getaway! lol - I wonder why he didn't want me to change the code? All in all a magnificent car. If you want a lovely smooth, comfortable ride with some class, it's the car to get. If you want a bit more poke, power and sporty drive, maybe the IS Sport? Or maybe Porsche or similar! (Insert your own alternative here - other manufacturers available ... lol)

May I throw this thought into the ring, please? The final para of the quoted post is very similar to me unfortunately driving 9 hours round-trip to Southwest Lexus, near Bristol. PLEASE EVERYONE AVOID THIS PLACE LIKE COVID 19. The black LS is still advertised (location Yate) on other sites. In reality, despite the proprietors encouraging words in the advert and having spoken to him on the phone, I found this car to actually have 1) a damaged lower N/S/R door 2) an alloy that needed robust remedial work 3) a cracked windscreen 4) a piece missing from top of the central console missing and 5) the car noticeably pulled to the left on the test drive. He said that these were insignificant or he hadn’t noticed them - ahem! The vendor was a hook and an utter chancer. He is still trading adding aRange Rover recently to his collection of dubious cars. Look up his Company’s status on Companies Hse website. I believe seeing, smelling, touching and driving is believing. Trust me I’m (regrettably) living proof. Take NO chances would be my advice. Good luck 👍

The design of the DAB tuning system is even worse than the mpg presets! (I don't want to put you off the car; almost everything else on the car is delightful but the DAB radio tuning is dreadful.) Here's a link to an earlier thread where someone else was struggling to make it work. The problem is that you have to choose which Ensemble or Multiplex you want to get stations from. If this Ensemble is out of range, you'll get nothing until you choose another Ensemble. I didn't know what an Ensemble or Multiplex was when I started but eventually discovered that it's a collection of stations combined into a single digital stream. Have a look at the earlier discussion linked to above if you want to read some more background. Otherwise, this is what I wrote at the time, copied and pasted to save you looking for the main instructions. This works on my car, but of course your model may be different in some way. "Using the Audio Controller (that's the one to the left of the gear selector), starting from the DAB screen, move the Controller wheel to the right and then select "Manual". Instead of the list of stations, you should now see the name of one station, preceded by the name of an "Ensemble". You may already know what an ensemble or a multiplex is - I didn't before I had to grapple with this system. More on this later. If you still see "Signal Unavailable" this means that this "Ensemble" or group of stations is out of range so you need to switch to one that is in range. On the radio itself, press the small button labelled with a right arrow (I expect left works just as well). This should take you to the next Ensemble, where you may have some reception. Give it four or five seconds to decide whether it's working or the signal is still unavailable. If it's also unavailable, press the arrow button again to try the next one until you get a working station. If none of the stations work, the problem is elsewhere but if one of them does go on to step 3. Move the Audio Controller to the right and then select Stations. A list of the stations on this Ensemble should now appear. You can select from them using the Audio Controller, the arrow buttons or the tuning knob." When you've found the stations you want (ie Radio 4!) save it on a preset. Then you can forget about selecting Ensembles.

The GS has been SORN as MOT and re-tax coincided with the 1st week of lockdown. I have driven precisely 4 miles since then (just around our block of houses on private roads to move the tyres), it saved me money in the short term but I do miss driving it. Have a Biposto as a daily and the GS was my Fri-Sun treat to keep miles lower. It will be back on the road at the end of this month and I will find any excuse to go for a blast! I'm usually a mid-late evening driver, have some fantastic roads near me and I find driving very therapeutic and good way to get over a pants day at work. If you ever need a buddy for a blast somewhere, as of next Tuesday I'm all ears 😛

209 teeth for UCF-10 engines so up to October 1994, 211 teeth for UCF-20.. Pretty sure Rockauto are selling an Aisin kit for under £200.00 landed at the moment.

From my experience would avoid BluePrint for anything (had them on LS and other cars owned), the cost saving not that great and as Tinonline says, quality overstated IMHO.

I had a similar experience with a 'dealer' at a compound in Old Wolverton, MK. Rx400h, full lexus history, 1 owner, no problems at all apparently. Turned up, car absolutely filthy, exhaust blowing badly (1st excuse: It's meant to sound like that; 2nd excuse: it's because it's been sitting for a couple of weeks! When I looked underneath and saw the rusty exhaust held together with tinfoil he then offered to pay for HALF the cost of repair if I bought it. He would not accept that it needed replacing despite the fact that it had almost completely disintegrated). Brakes weak Car pulling strongly to the left Aircon not working: "everything has been checked and car is mechanically perfect, no way compressor can be broken". Told me I'd have to get it regassed myself. Service history suspiciously uniform; same stamp, same pen & handwriting for all services. Asked about timing belt: "oh no its a chain". I then took great delight in showing him a sticker on the engine cover saying "timing belt changed" with a date (not a recent one of course!). And finally, of course, he tried to pretend that the car had had an mot 6 months previously whereas in actual fact it would have run out if it wasn't for the 6 month Covid19 extension. The way he was trying to talk his way round all the issues was very funny in hindsight. I've forgotten the name of the dealer now but the compound was down a lane next to the Galleon pub in Old Wolverton. Don't go there! Sorry for going a bit off topic but I guess the point is that if something doesn't feel right I would argue it's not worth persuing. There are some real crooks out there. Plenty of fish and all that....

Thank you all so much for your replies. It has helped me decide to inform the dealer I shall need a report of the diagnostics and that it was sorted or I shant buy. I have laid a deposit to hold it but I am pretty sure I would be entitled to this back after I had found out the advertisement of history of service is different. Thank you all. Steve

My car went to 60k service this Monday, and the dealer told me that the water pump was leaking. They quoted about £390 for the pump replacement, which isn’t crazy, but I decided to do it myself. Not quite because of the cost, but water pump leaking in 60k miles seems a bit too quick, and I wonder why. When I took the pump out, it isn’t the gasket nor the belt, but Leaking from the bearing. I checked YouTube, seems like Camry with the same engine has this problem too. I went for a third party pump (First Line, about £70 from eBay) rather than original pump. I think as the original pump wasn’t that reliable anyway, 3th party one may last longer. If it fail again, it isn’t that hard to replace the pump.

I have never been in this position ever and I have imported guitars and parts for them from all over the world yet this morning I received an Email from Rock autos saying there could be a delivery problem as customs was holding them. We are both sat here waiting for the front door to be kicked in and being yelled at.

I can't understand why Lexus wants so much for mine! Anyway, I've ordered them from Rockauto, should be here in a few days.

The lack of noise when the car is accelerated hard seems a common fault for most owners. This feature only seems to work for motoring journalists. Glad you are enjoying the car. Welcome to the enlightened minority. Paul Thanks Paul

Hi Phil, glad your car passed the mot ( unsurprisingly) I bought a set of 2 rear arb bushes last year from Lexus Birmingham at a cost of £40. When you see them nothing to them, Cheers, Roger

Glad you got it sorted Chris, well done.

I think this is a shortcomiing of the display. There are a number of figures you can choose to have disiplayed but you have to choose them in advance. You can't simply disiplay them when you want to see them. I think this could have been designed more helpfully so that you can always select anything you want without having to stop the car and change the settings. However, when you have stopped the car, you can use the right hand four-way controller on the steering wheel to go into settings. You can then choose to display: Current fuel consumption average fuel consumption (since reset or since start or since refuel) average speed (since reset or start) Elapsed time (time since reset or start) Range you can drive on fuel in tank Distance travelled since start It's not very intuitive but with the help of the manual you can place a selection of two (or is it three?) of these items in each of two preset displays.You can then see the preset displays while driving. But if you've chosen the wrong options, you're not allowed to see them until you've stopped the car and made a different choice of options. This is not, sadly, the best of designs but you get used to it. Bear in mind that the mpg figure displayed, like in many cars, is an over-estimate and the real fuel consumption will be 3-4 mpg lower than the figure shown.

You can change the display to show overall mpg since reset or since refuelling. Check out the display settings in the manual.

Air con on? Quite normal to see condensate under the car in this humid weather.

Well I did it and can confirm it works. The difference in mine is vast, i pick up a lot more stations but I didn't think too much about siting the aerial, I just stuffed it up above the cluster. For the first time ever I can turn on the rear window demister without losing the radio reception. Those top vents, holy moly that was a swine, I knew what I had to do but it was trying my patience.

Some really great music in your list. These guys reminded me of Lord Huron and the CD Lonesome Dreams.

No...he meant the timing belt that drives the timing gears. The drive belt is for ancillary units like alternator, water pump, power steering pump ( if hydralically driven ) and air con compressor.

Looks ok from what is difficult to tell just from photos. It seems to have had quite a lot of rework in the past, I wonder if chasing the same fault or something different. I think the fact that you can make the fault occur by touching the wiring is probably the best place to continue the diagnosis. I'd remove a section of the black wiring shroud back to where you were moving the wiring so you can move each individual wire to identify which one has a problem. It could well be a break in a wire if the harness has been moved a lot in the past, or it could lead to a problem at the connector/pin - especially if the wiring is a little tight when fully assembled and there has been any strain.

Thank you Herbie, Cheers, Roger

Well Clarkson would break anything (except perhaps that Toyota that survived numerous assalts) but the story used to be that RR didn't like to have one of their cars seen to have broken down and that in such a case they would whisk it a away under cover PDQ.

Spark plugs cost was £150 if my memory serves me right.

Hi guys Sorry it’s taken a few days to get back to you and thanks for all your nice comments about the colour & wheels 😁 To answer Shahpor’s question, I’m based in southern Hampshire, between Southampton and Winchester, so only a quick trip along the M3!! John, if you ever see a dark (Windsor) blue ‘57 plate GS450h with rally style chrome wire mesh front grills (top & bottom) a la Jag/Bentley, along with smoked wind deflectors on all four windows; that’ll be my old girl, her name was ‘Sabine’. My new lady is named ‘Céline’. Ganesh’s black & silver beast looks very smart, in a bad *****, “don’t mess!” kind of way 😊 Stay safe & well Si

Really? Well you learn something everyday. There was me thinking it was usually caused by roadside kerbs.

Got up early this morning with the camera while the light was good and the car clean.

I just love driving and quite often take myself out and around the Cotswolds, just for the hell of it! Can be gone for a couple of hours at a time, glorious countryside, great roads. Can't be that far from you in Oxfordshire? If one loves driving one doesn't need a reason to go out. If the car isn't costing you, just to have it sat at home, then hang on a while maybe your enthusiasm will return?

there are 3 colours of arrows red - petrol being used for charging amber - regen charging blue - running in ev mode

For the first time in a long time I'm planning on keeping my 2019 IS300h Sport for about 6-7 years possibly even longer. I'm planning retirement in 2 1/2 years and I've decided to just make do with what I have. It's been the bext IS I've owned and I wouldn't be tempted by this new one even if it was available in the UK. It does look very nice granted but retirement will be all about constraining my everyday motoring costs to have some money to do other things.

If you want to remove the rear parcel shelf heres a longish vid

run your finger under the seat base and about 200mm in from the edge you will find a loop put you hands either side of it and sharply pull upwards do the same on the other side the seat base will now come out at the bottom of the side bolster there is a bolt remove this then slide the bolster up and it will unclip do the same for the other side you can then start to unclip the shelf cover so its not a hard job to do.