dougie175

Been a while since I have done an update on this one, basically at the end of December me and my wife are all set to have a baby girl so "Modifications" to the Lexus have been few and far between. After buying lots of baby stuff I have realised the IS250 is far from an ideal baby car! I have managed to get the push chair in the boot and hopefully I can fit everything in we need for a baby without the need to go buying an estate car. Only estate car that actually tickles my fancy is the New Subaru Levorg, ticks almost every box for me apart from the fact I couldn't afford one and getting finance on a vehicle just before having a child and my wife dropping down to maternity pay doesn't seem the most wise decision to make. Anywho..... I have been baby proofing the car a little in the form of a nice rubber boot protector, and looking at a possible roof rack and roof box combination. In the mean time the car has been getting lots of valeting and I have finally managed to get the 4 wheel alignment sorted. As you can see with the camber bolts fitted the car is all nicely within spec despite being lowered so shouldn't suffer any additional tyre wear. Before wheel alignment results, the camber is already correct as I had already set the camber a month or so ago After: 1 Random picture of the car sat out in the miserable weather beeding away after all my hard work with the Autoglym HD wax treatments, the old girl has had a lot of wax applied in the last few weeks! So as far as future modifications go I am have decided to probably go with the Whispbar roof rack as they look the nicest, then I have literally no idea on roof boxes, I want something that suits the car and looks ok but can fit suit cases or baby things in as and when required. Any help and suggestions on roof racks and space would be really appreciated

Have a look on eBay, you never know what is on there!

Looks great mate, is that splitter plastic or one of those stick on rubber jobbies?

Really interested in this let me know how you get on. Cheers

That's actually very impressive, we replace a lot of glass at work when mirror get smashed into the glass this could be a great repair method for the bodyshop!

I'm guessing that has had an awful paint job and the mirror covers paint and bridged to the body itself?

Ah right well if it has been established for a year should be pretty well established yeah. Nitrates at 80 is too high yeah! Guess I'm really lucky in this area having nice clean water. As said you can get RO filters quite cheap, the only issue is they waste lots of water! Even with how clean the water is here about 80% is waste making RO water here. Be careful with PH drops and rises very quickly like that, fish do not like big PH changes. Fish are very adaptable and can put up with most ph levels and a hard or soft water as long as it is consistent, it is quick changes that stresses them and leaves them susceptible to disease. You do want your water closer to 7ph for goldfish than 4ph I believe, however you want to bring it up slowly. Unless the ornaments are leeching then they wont effect the PH, the bogwood will however it is known to leech into water that is why people use it to lower PH's Don't worry about my thread mate there is nothing much happening on my car at the moment anyway, bit busy!

Also ideally the lower the better with nitrates but even 30 would do no harm to those hard goldfish. 30 is a long way from starting to burn them or anything, obviously below 10 is ideal, but compared to the levels a lot of people keep unfiltered goldfish tanks at 30 is luxury. If it was my tank I would stop buying di water and do regular tap water changes I'm lucky as I live somewhere it rains 95% our water is very clean and nitrates are un-detectable, at 30 I would personally look to do regular water changes and just ensure it never goes over 40

Looks well that mate, is that bogwood in there? It does serve a purpose bogwood but you will find it leeches into your water and will be sending the water cloudy also! I haven't kept a lot of goldfish if I am honest, but onion plants are usually pretty much left by everything! Given the filtration and tank volume I would say you should be looking good, that's a nice amount of filtration for 2 fish. How long has the tank been setup? And how long ago did it finish cycling?

Ah right thought you were making the di water yourself. You can get ro filets very cheap that could work for you if you're not on a meter? If changing water more frequent is not possible then you have other options. My first thought would be to increase the filter media to help control the nitrates. Reduce feeding they really don't need a lot. Install some plants, however you do need to be careful to pick something they don't eat otherwise you end up with lots of plant waste which gets broken down and nitrates go up again. Onion plants often work well and very few fish eat them Yeah get some pics up

On a non established tank mate you want to do them a lot more frequent than that. What level nitrates are you seeing? You can get it down to 30 by doing at 20% changes every other day for the next few weeks, then get it down to every week then eventually for to fortnightly. I used to do 50% water changes twice a week on my heavily stocked cichlid tanks. The bacteria isn't lost as this is kept in the filter. You can essentially remove all the water and top it up straight or the tap without causing a cycle providing you have a nice well established filtration system

No its not as easy as some people make it sound, understanding the nitrogen cycle will give you a huge understanding of what's happening and why things go wrong! If it is of any use, this is a video of a tank I built for a side project I had years ago putting fish tanks in home / businesses and maintaining them, this is a Male Only cichlid show tank, I no longer have access to the youtube account, but thought you may enjoy watching it, this is the closet thing I could build to a marine tank without the need for salt and extra work. The key to any tank is water changes and lots of them!

What type of fish do you keep mate? I was big into keeping Malawi Cichlids a few years back and have also kept a nano marine tank. Love keeping fish but don't have the time anymore

I had to double check my plugs this morning after this comment before replying as I thought I had missed something. I have double checked every plug I removed there is zero oil on any of the plugs they are nice and dry so no leaking seals. I got the new "customer satisfaction manager" at work to check the plugs this morning also as he was service manager for 25 years and mechanic for Toyota for over 30 years at Batemans in Grange over sands, he confirmed the slight discoloration on the white part of the plugs is consistent with a Toyota engine that has done 6 years on a set of plugs and he has seen very few plugs changed in the last 20 years that didn't have this, he said if it was his car he would be happy with the condition of the plugs

Exactly! Yeah they were all fine to be honest mate you can see 1 of the plugs in both picture 1 and 2

Little bit more progress on the car last 2 weeks, nothing exciting just its 6th service. The car has only done 43k but decided to go all out and do the spark plugs early anyway as they have been in 6 years. Was dreading doing the plugs due to people on the internet claiming its a nightmare job, but to be honest it was really nice and easy, takes a little bit of time but its really not hard to actually do. 6 nice genuine plugs ready to go in Part Number for anyone who requires it Also replaced the intake manifold gasket seals, wasn't really necessary if I am totally honest as there was nothing wrong with the original but better safe than sorry and didn't want to get involved taking the intake of again if I did cause a leak Half way through the driver side of the plugs changed and the intake tube removed Intake manifold removed and plus getting changed Intake Manifold removed, bit of tissue stopping anything going inside the engine and area cleaned New seals installed ready for everything to go back together So the car has now had its 6th service and plugs done, just need to change the break fluid at some point also. There was nothing wrong before so all of this did nothing but 1 of those jobs that's got to be done and well worth getting out the way

Just spoke to Carlisle Lexus, mine only requires the Airbag recall. They have ordered the part and said it should be in with them in 8 weeks time! Said they will give me a call once the parts are in and get it sorted.

Has anyone managed to get the airbag done under warranty yet? I'm ideally wanting to get both warranty things done together, its a 3 hour round trip and a day off work to get it sorted so ideally want to get any work that needs to be done by Lexus done in 1 day. Will try ring Lexus Carlisle this week and see what they suggest and report back for others

I just did the reg check on the Lexus website that confirms I also have an outstanding safety recall, never received a letter about this but that's life. Out of interest is this recall likely to be the washer or airbag fault, I cant see any evidence either has been changed in my cars history? The more important question however though is can I have this recall done at a Toyota dealership? It means taking a day off work and 3 hours of driving to go to Lexus and back!

Just a quick update as work is still on going on the car, just not had chance to do anything much. Today was a day I was dreading but it is done and dusted, I have fitted the camber kit from the US! Didn't take many photos just these of the front adjuster once pressed in place, the kit is fantastic quality and works superb, but its a long hard drawn out process installing it and tinkering to get it setup So after a full day of undoing and doing things up, putting the car up and down getting all the heights and camber right I am finally happy with the ride height and camber is back in alignment, but my body is killing lol! All that is required now is to get the car on the 4 wheel aligner to make any final tweaks required to the camber and set the toe if lowering it has thrown that out also. Then I am done on the suspension and steering. No exciting update I'm afraid, but glad to get it installed and running!

Thanks mate, Carlisle is pretty close there's another IS200 owner in Morecambe I know from another forum, few more and we have enough for a Cumbria/Lancashire meet lol!

Thanks, no I have the F-Sport lower air box modification and a Genuine Lexus Sound Creator intake hose. The 2 compliment each other very well and look stock, there's photos of these mods further back in the tread

Thanks, yeah really happy with the aesthetics of the car now! The reason I went with the sound creator over the induction kit was because the whole theme of this project was to create something that looks like it was made my Lexus but still stand out and be sporty, the sound creator gave the exact same benefits as the induction kit (noise) but looked more OEM Also there is another benefit of the sound creator in that it is tweakable if you wanted it even louder (really don't think anyone would it really roars) but you could bring the pipe through the bulk head like Toyota do with the GT86 or if you wanted it quieter you could essentially put a tap on the end of the pipe to block some of the noise As you are listening to the videos you may as well enjoy them all in different scenarios https://www.youtube.com/embed/D2L5vjHfIqY - Exhaust closed Window closed setting off https://www.youtube.com/embed/ar81jJGed1w - Exhaust open Window open setting off https://www.youtube.com/embed/HktyZKkeETU - Exhaust open Window open setting off 2 https://www.youtube.com/embed/PhyuKdUmdtI - Exhaust closed Window closed accelerating https://www.youtube.com/embed/I2N-XjNXBVU - Exhaust open window closed accelerating

The sound creator just amplifies the natural sound the V6 makes it doesn't create some fake V6 sound? I can assure you the engine is very much audiable now. This should give you a good idea of how it sounds https://www.youtube.com/embed/HktyZKkeETU

I'm not sure you understand how a sound creator works? Its nothing like the BMW system