Steviewevie

It's a real pain to do IMHO, lots of fiddling about to get the bulbs out. Not saying it's that hard, I did it on mine (so it can't be hard really ! Just fiddly).

Once you've got your sports grille, you might want to considering moving the horns, which can appear a bit too obvious behind the grille (IMHO at least). It's very easy to do, and there's a walkthrough here.

On taking my car to Toyota for an estimate on body repair (thread and pictures on this in the Lounge :tsktsk: ), they told me that to keep my 12-year body corrosion warranty, I need to get the work done at a Lexus-approved body shop. It was news to me that my 9-year-old car is even still covered by the original corrosion warranty ! Other than by phoning around different places and asking, does anyone know if there's a way of finding out which body shops are Lexus-approved ? Or are most of them these days and it's not an issue ? Any information would be useful, thanks.

989,818

Sorry for your loss. As for upgrades, I can't recommend some uprated ARBs highly enough ! They will transform the handling and make your car virtually flat going around corners. I've got the C-One ARBs on mine, and they're excellent.

989,821

Bleeding the brakes won't make any difference if it is a sticky caliper. I'm wondering if it could be a wheel balancing issue, even if it does only show up when braking ?

No CCTV I'm afraid. Yeah, ironically I was talking to a police officer (who had inadvertantly blocked my car in !) when I spotted the damage. I have reported it to the police (phoned and did that) but basically nothing's going to happen because they haven't got anything to go on, unless of course I find a neighbour who spotted who did it and happens to know who it was etc (unlikely !). The police officer just picked up the post and chucked it to the side, so I don't think they were too interested in prints !

Folks here are great at helping you figure out what parts you need. I've got an IS200 so there will be some differences from a Tezza (e.g. I may well have a different engine to you), but there are an awful lot of parts in common too, and there are loads of IS200 owners here. Also check out Tezzaworld.

Stuck thermostat ?

This site will let you look up all the parts for your Tezza :winky:

You might be interested in this thread on Detailing World, which compares several products for swirl removal, being applied by hand. It includes Autoglym SRP which actually came out on top in this particular test. Obviously if your car is totally covered in swirl marks then some sort of machine solution is going to be an awful lot easier than applying by hand !

Ah ok, my memory is working better than I suspected then , I thought you'd tried swapping it before. So did it work for a while but then the problem came back ? Which would sound like it was still leaking, as you say. Hope you really do get it finally sorted soon. Also hope my windscreen never needs replacing !

Great news if that's sorted it once and for all ! Was the theft deterrent ECU not something you'd already swapped though ? Was it someone else who had tried that ?

Is it only when braking ? Completely fine when you're not braking ?

Carbon style lettering isn't allowed though, they could pull you up for that !

Thanks for the support guys. Rob, you're spot on, I took it to a repair place today and they reckon that although they can try and attempt to repair the rear panel, the folds in it (swage lines) will make it more difficult and it might need a new panel. Looks like the price of that is around £300 on its own. They reckon the smaller door dent will be easier to fix. They're sending me an estimate tomorrow, and I'm going to take it to Toyota and get an estimate from them too. I will try the estate agent, but I don't hold out much hope there, I have no idea where that pole would have come from, it can't have been that near my car, it obviously got taken there.

ok, I've just done that one myself (replaced with LEDs), and had to ask too because I couldn't get it open either. There's a walkthrough here on how to do it.

Thanks guys. I just phone up my insurance brokers (Sky) and checked what excess I have. It's apparently £250, and even though my NCB is protected it'll probably mean an increase to next year's premium if I claim. Parthiban - thanks, I hadn't looked at the parts diagram when I originally posted but I see what you mean now about the door. Looks like a whole new door panel would be needed if a new part is required, which looks pretty expensive. Hopefully it won't come to that. There's a small dent there, which doesn't show up well in the photo. Rob's Lexx - yes, as you say the paint doesn't seem to be broken at the rear. There are actually two largish dents there, but both are pretty rounded in nature so I'm hoping they'll push out without too much trouble (and therefore not be too expensive). I will speak to the insurance company themelves, but I imagine it's going to be cheaper to get this done myself.

That looks like Granite Sky, code 1C6. The paint code should be on the VIN plate, which on the IS200 is on the engine bay bulkhead, at the rear of the engine bay. Don't know if it's in the same place on the IS300.

Which light do you mean, the central one or the map-reading one at the front ?

Lowered 40mm from what though Aaron ? I'm not trying to be funny, but after looking into this it seems that a relative lowering of 40mm lowering for one IS200 may result in a completely different ride height from another similarly-lowered IS200. Along similar lines, using the same set of springs that another IS200 has used may result in a completely different relative lowering amount - i.e. because the two cars are starting at different ride heights and end up at the same height. I also do wonder if the advertised lowering for different makes of springs are relative to the same starting height ?! e.g. does one set of "-40mm" springs give the same end result as another, given that they might have been compared against different starting points :duh:

According to Tony's article here, up to a 35mm drop is ok but lower can bring tyre wear issues. However, I'm guessing this is just referring to the car used from the research (Altezza), and from recent postings it seems there's a very large variety of OEM ride height depending on model year, sub-model (e.g. Sport) etc. So I'm coming round to thinking that talking of how much to "drop" isn't very helpful, because of these large differences, and a much better guide would be how high your car ends up riding after the drop. I've got the TTE lowering springs, which in theory are a 35mm drop but I think on my high-riding early IS200, the drop will be more than that. even though it's a Sport and in theory is already lowered a bit. I will measure when it's done and find out !

If the shocks are up to it, they shouldn't do (e.g. why would Lexus sell something like that ?), but you'd have to obviously get your proper geometry settings recovered or I imagine the handling would be awful. I'm getting my springs fitted at WIM on Thursday, so will get the geo reset there too, can't wait ! :D

For number 2, can you figure out where the noise is coming from ? Sometimes people have heard a strange noise apparently from the engine bay, which has turned out to be from being low on coolant and is the coolant moving around (check the coolant expansion tank behind the radiator). Otherwise perhaps it could be the heat shields underneath the car, or in the engine bay over the exhaust manifold. Where do you think it's coming from ?