Cotswold Pete

Never used this company, but might be worth a call. Lexus Breakers Details for Paul Frost Autotek Lexus Spares Direct Cottonhall Street Darwen Lancashire BB3 0DW 07590 072646 On the door problem, not aware that it is a common problem LS, though wifes last X-Type had same problem cured by liberal doses of silicone lubricant via the gaps in door handle. On the jag due to a problem where window mechanism slightly fouled one of the lock links. Not sure if silicon lubricant on LS worth a try in first place

One reason why autonomous vehicles are only as good as the programmer(s), I like to call it AS (Artificial Stupidity), as nothing is perfectly intelligent (apart from LS owners - of course)

IMHO the only good thing about Monaco is driving back (in other words leaving). Went there one for a sale conference back in 2000, stayed in some s****y hotel next to Casino, paid $15 for a bottle of (330ml) Heineken, paid £30 for a taxi ride, when I could have walked to hotel in 5 minutes. Thank heavens my company was picking up the tab for 3 days. It was kind of like Torquay with stupid amounts on money and a darned sight hillier, but I guess if you want to pay Zero tax then the price is being stuck in such a place. No disrespect to Torquay, it is a million times nicer than Monaco and a lot more affordable, and way better beaches

You're all lucky, when I were tut lad, I ad to pay mill owner for privilege of sleeping in tut boot of my LS, and he woke me up with tut quick whack using cranking 'andle from Austin Cambridge. Them were days, and I could barely afford to put 1 pint of petrol in tank for trip to wash 'ouse never mind worrying 'bout state of tyres!!!

That is always going to be an issue as all non-fossil fuels require energy to be created and are not as calorific as just pulling oil out of the ground and refining it, not so sure a world covered in wind farms and/or solar panels is one that would be pleasing, and in this country the local authority would not allow me to put panels all over a 250 year old house. An interesting challenge, with no easy answers if we all want to travel (by bus/train/car) more and more, not forgetting planes.

Well I take my hat off to you for giving it a go, not sure I would be so brave.

Just reading this post and wondering if its worth getting on the blower to Japex and seeing what they think. Not sure if this is Osaka territory, but no harm in calling them as well. Give them a shout if the local service dealer cannot pinpoint anything specific

It would be nice to try one out just to compare to LS, but as to owning, not really, I would feel like I was in some mid 90's American film always driving to a rough part of Chicago ready to pick up the next package/hooker/shady hustler.

I love that way that a post about a Mk1 for sale ends up talking about Boris Buses (or lack of), Police cars and a lesson in chemistry. I can just imagine a pub where we all get together (post Covid) and drink a few beers and see where the chat goes, or maybe this is what happens at Lexus meets. Regarding the Bus Post, the comments on using battery tech is relying too much on the Chinese. Surely any technology will have the Chinese racing ahead, and even if we invented something new, we would want to have some other low wage economy build it, and they would then 'copy' any Patents or IP to their own advantage. If we could make a car run on Indecision then we could use our politicians as fuel.

I just carry a spare, as they seem to blow about every two or three years (well the halford replacements do). The Mk4 cluster is easy to pop out. Never had any other lights fail in the rear clusters, so no idea whether they are still original or not, even so I have had the car for 7 years, so not too shabby. Just had a front side/parking light go, that is one of the jobs I was going to do, and I need to either replace o refurb the off-side front indicator housing (has misting), its these really small jobs that must wait a few more weeks/months, and my MOT now overdue, but we did a 700 mile motorway blast the week before Covid got me, so hoping that will make the emmissions fine. All in good time, as I have other DIY projects that my wife keeps telling me have to wait, so just spending a lot of time in the garden pottering, and watching all those series I recorded over last year I never thought I would have time to catch up with.

Now if it had a stretched boot than it would be my thing. Always find that when we have 4 adults out on a road trip for a long weekend the boot is just a shade too small for the luggage the walking gear and the bottles of boooze my wife and my mates wife like to take along (just in case). Another 20cm on the boot would do. If I had 39000 euros burning a hole in my pocket I would buy one, only long as it would fit next to 460, the MX5, and Toyota Hilux (for going to the tip), all of which would fit in the large garage of the large house I dream of now and again.

Simon, glad to hear your now cracking on with the 400. I have just disconnected my screen washer float, did look at buying a new one (or repairing the current one), but been living without it for two years now, and always carry a 1.5 litre spare of wash in the boot. I really want to do some work on mine with all this nice weather, but the Covid gave me Pneumonia and Heart Attack so even 5 weeks out of hospital, I find that lifting the bonnet and bending down to check wheel arches is a making me out of breath for a good half hour so likely to be a couple of months at least before I am going to be tinkering. Going to be firing up the 400 today or tomorrow as it is now 8 weeks since the engine turned, battery seemed okay a week ago. Even though Dr say I can drvie now, methinks will not be wanting to drive anywhere just yet (even though a trip the Garden Centre would be handy).

Lex is quite a safe drug to use, does not seem to cause any long term damage, other than ability to want to own other marques with same affection (IMHO)

Handbrake will sieze up if not used, usually takes a fair few years though. I only tend to using P when in traffic, and then when parked up always P and handbrake (only because when I first owned an Auto, I got a bit 'sloppy', and once parked my car in Bath on a hill, and open the car door, put my right foot on the road and felt the car lurch backwards, luckily managed to get my left foot on the brake in time. Did it twice more (in gently sloping car parks, and so gave my self a good telling off and got into the P & handbrake mode of action). When spending time in USA, never made such mistakes, so not quite sure why owning my first auto in UK, my brain went doo-lally. Have owned electronic handbrake cars, really dislike them, never really felt in control.

Had same problem on both my 400's. Easy to fix either with new boot seal, or pull out the old one, clean it up and refit with silicone seal. With both of mine, what was happening was the water wicking up over the seal near the rear window, and then finding its way down the seal and then trickling into tyre-well right by where the boot lock latch is. So the tell tale rust by the latch was the give-away. Doubt it is the sun roof drains as water would have a hard time getting into tyre-well from there they exit near rear arch. If you have removed bungs, make sure you fit them as they were originally as I have noticed that where I fitted mine wrong way around I had some water incoming via the bung.

Surely if you were stopped and you said you bought the car because your 'orignal' had stopped working and you need a car for 'work', caring for relative or something like that, then how could police argue, unless they were going to 100% check your story. It also seems to depend on which Police Force might stop you, and I assume on the motorway they are not (surely) going to chase you down, though they may stop you when going itno service station. A tricky one for sure, but if you did it would be like going back to the 60s when motorways first opened. Last time I drove on a nearly empty motorway was 2005, on M74 coming south on a wednesday afternoon, managed to drive 15 miles of it without seeing another vehicle. Back last year same stretch, mid week same time(ish) maybe 300 yards without seeing anything else (how times have changed)

Personally not quite sure what real Jazz is, I like all styles from Mammal Hands, GoGo Penguin, Cassandra Wilson, Nina Simone, Astrud Gilbreto, Stan Getz, Miles Davis, etc. I only got into Jazz as a result of a girl friend dragging me off to the Beaulieu Jazz Festival in 1976, where among others I saw Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen (and I might be wrong - but Oscar Peterson, or someone in similar style), and given I was a metal head I had my horizons widened. As to Jazz when in the LS, a definite NO NO, Jazz is for a comfie sofa and a nice whisky and soda with a log fire to warm your cockles

Some great tracks on this post. If I were to have a favourite it would be a Neil Young track either Unknown Legend (from Harvest Moon) or Pocahontas (from Rust Never Sleeps). - I think Pocahontas edges it Not sure how to post YouTube clips, but none are quite up to scratch of the originals. (with a collection of over 600 albums, 600 CDs and 2500 downloads I could pick a few more - but these two tracks always make me go AAH)

Built like brick outhouses (not so sure about more recent models), and I have mate who had a Volvo 240, used is a builders van, never went wrong in 30 years, my missus had a 440, (not an estate), but I recall it had a Renault engine, with some niggley faults, kept if for a year before going Honda. T5 lovely car, so long as you could keep a petrol station in the back, always interesting to put your foot down and watch it tell you it was doing a shade under 2mpg (not even my LS gets that bad even when hammering up a local 20% with foot to the floor.

It is the most beautiful estate/brake ever made, saw one once and nearly displaced my all time favourite car since I was a kid, which was the 7 litre Iso Grifo, and got to see one in the flesh when at a garden show in 2018 one parked in front of me. Made my day. Would have preferred it in blue like my Corgi model was, but hey

In my simple view, the party that decided the way to save the country was to make sure the bankers who ruined the country needed more Lambos and Bentleys while the people who underpin life in the UK could all have a pay cut and sign up for food banks, was eventually going to some unstuck, but was not expecting a pandemic to be the trigger. While in hospital, had a lot of time to listen to Radio 4 and World Service, quite a few economists saying the Thatcher/Regan model of selfish capitalism is likely to be a victim of Covid-19, we shall have to wait and see if our 'leaders' show compassion when this is all over, or will they tax the heck out of the lower classes to pay for generosity being handed out to the luckier ones (I am going to be furloughed, so feel like one of the lucky ones). The one thing all my friends who work in the NHS agree on, is too many managers not pulling their weight, so need to make sure we throw money a the right parts, but like any big system the incompetents and sheer naffing lazy will find broom cupboards to hide in. We can only hope that the government takes a different tack, and that the spoon faced skin-head Dominic Cummings is marginalised. 'Political rant over'. As you may tell, I am getting better (though I would struggle to throw an MP over a wall onto a quiet motorway!!!!)

Lovely cars, a bit thirsty around town, but on long runs hot too bad, and lovely to drive.

Lexus reliability seems to be available in most Jap cars, though I find the Toyota estates a little 'ugly'. My choice of Jap estate would be a Honda, rock solid engine body work robust, My wifes Honda was treated with next to no respect by her, but kept going until 200K, when a badger strike took some lights out (mind you we still got £250 trade in on an Jag X-type, lovely car the X-type, until it rusts and rusts and rusts at the age of 10 years old). By the way I always loved the look of the Aston Brake (and the Lagonda - which was like being on your favourite chair with a steering wheel) much preferred to DB7 and DB9 I have been in (mainly noise and two fingers IMHO)

Now I am a cynical old s*d, and have a few number of friends in NHS (both high up in management, and down on the shop floor), and before I was laid up in hospital we all were saying, 'stuff the clap", what the NHS needs is to stop being starved of cash/resource. Anyway while in hospital recovering from Covid-19 and heart attack several of the nurses said that they were really touched by the clapping. As there is little industrial noise, one said she was over 1 mile from the centre of Gloucester and she could hear it clearly. So old cynic converted, and totally stand behind the work the doctors, nurses, cleaners and so on are doing. So having been told to take it easy by the nurses, I am nearly ready to go see how my LS is doing, as it has been sat idle for 6 weeks, so will probably need to whip battery out and re-charge. Am looking forward to when I can have enough energy to do some of the smaller jobs, as I am likely to only be working part time once work re-opens. Sure as heck looking forward at some point in about 2 months to be taking the beast for a drive.

That is a darned good price, I paid a bit more to sort out the Y-Piece on my 400, but was only a 15 drive from where I live.