scythe

Hi Mike, Welcome to the lexus owners' club! I don't mean to be critical but maybe you haven't noticed that you're talking to people possibly long deceased! The thread was last active in 2008, and most of the people involved in it are long gone. If you try chatting to the living then you'll find that people here can be very helpful and friendly! : o )

Hi Han, yes, you'll have tpms sensors. Also, I'd expect that you don't need a module ... check your manual and I think you'll find how to bring the tyre pressures up on screen. Search for "tire pressure warning system", (with tyre misspelt!) and it will be there. : o )

Ireland is in the EU, but it's also in the CTA - common travel area - for people from Ireland, Britain and Northern Ireland. There is no legal requirement for a passport for British people to visit Ireland - you can come and go as you please. When you arrive you may be asked by customs what nationality you are, but when you say British they won't normally pester you anymore. Having a passport with you can however be useful if you need to prove your ID. But so is a driving licence. : o )

Does the attached pdf contain the data you need to complete these calculations? It's the older stuff on page 2 of it, rather than page 1. : o ) Lexus-UK-Sales-Figures-April-2024.pdf

Hi TJ Things might be different in Ireland, but here there isn't an upgrade for a LS500H, as far as I can find. Why not give your dealer a ring and see if one exists for you, but I think the news is bad. : o (

Thanks for that follow up. In my last car, the first battery lasted til it was 11 years old or so, so I'm hoping for a good few years from mine. I sensed that when the time comes, I wouldn't be sure that a dealership would necessarily be able to source a correct battery - it's good to be pre-armed with information. : o )

Thanks for pointing this out - I hadn't known about this. It may come in handy one day. (And yes, I've not read all of the handbook!) : o )

First, the tyre size. Two different sizes of tyre were originally fitted to this model of car. The size of tyre is either 235/55R18 or 225/60R17. This is because there have been two different sizes of wheel hub fitted. One type has a diameter of the metal hub of 18 inches, the other 17 inches. You can check the size of the fitted tyres by looking for a set of letters and numbers, with the slash in the middle, in big writing on the side of your tyres. The bit above, is the metal dish that holds the bottom of the spring? Try passing something between it- such as a bit of cardboard. If it's not touching (and it won't be, because, as you say, you'd have worn down that bit of tyre) then everything is ok. Incidentally, if you look at blackcircles.com (who sell tyres online), and put in your car registration, it should tell you the size of tyres that your car needs. The reason you can see so much spring is that the body is higher than a saloon car. This means the wheels have the space to travel up and down if you're driving off road. The only issue that I can see is that if the tyres are 5 years old then they may start to perish very soon - but they will have been checked when you had your last MOT. : o )

Really, if the battery is failing, and it's an approved used car, I'd expect the dealer to just replace it. Don't ask for it at cost price - just ask if they can replace it. It's possible, of course, that the original battery did fail earlier, and was replaced by a non-agm battery because it was cheaper, and that this battery has been rapidly destroyed by being mischarged. Talk to your dealer. : o )

My understanding is that it should be an AGM battery, because it's in the enclosed boot of the car rather than under the well ventilated bonnet. I believe (but may be wrong) that this is to reduce the chance of hydrogen gas being generated in this enclosed space. Out of interest, and because someone else was worried about his 12 V battery, I tried to find out what the proper replacement was, but I haven't managed. The problem searching on Halfords and the like is that they seem to be guessing that because the car is hybrid that a stop start battery is needed - and you're right, it doesn't because the petrol engine is started by the traction battery using M1. Grunt (high current!) isn't needed from the battery, and it doesn't even need to be high capacity - all that matters is that there is no hydrogen build up. But be aware that I can't find this documented anywhere. : o ) Oh, and .... ... both side rise up - the whole car!

Yes, there are others that do that, but not from NextBase. The issue is that the camera does require a bit of power to run, so runs (very very slowly) your 12V battery down. Some cameras even have a heater to warm the windscreen, to stop ice forming. It's fine, but there is that current drain. Your fitters should be able to advise you what's best though, and you can make the decision. : o )

https://nextbase.co.uk/parking-mode-feature#:~:text=Intelligent Parking Mode is an,except the G Force sensor. To quote from this item, "If your car is bumped and the G Force sensor registers movement, your Nextbase Dash Cam will automatically switch on, record for 30 seconds, and then shut down again."

If you're buying a replacement SD card it's important to use an endurance one. I've got the "Samsung PRO Endurance 128GB microSDXC UHS-I U3 100MB/s Video Monitoring Memory Card", currently £26 at Amazon. : o )

The intermittent nature of the problem - is it one of your battery connections that's the problem? I'd be tempted to clean the connectors on the battery, sticky-uppy battery bits and the connectors, then to check the braided connection to the car's earth. Just an idea. And cheaper than a new battery, though you may find you need one of those too. And as Jon said above ... https://www.screwfix.com/p/lap-dc-digital-multimeter-600v/793RT?kpid=793RT&cm_mmc=Google-_-Datafeed-_-Tools?kpid=KINASEKPID&cm_mmc=Google-_-TOKEN1-_-TOKEN2&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwncWvBhD_ARIsAEb2HW-qR-dz8L3Z2fRvSxmXw8o-hG6P8Zey52uSWt3apOoyZb-8Qerc8boaAr0AEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds#product_additional_details_container ... this will help to show what's going on, then when you've finished with it sell it for £15 to a mate. : o )

Steve - I see now that you're simply a shiny-pedals person, and won't necessarily be adding go faster stripes or a leather steering wheel cover - though I do wonder what you've got hanging from your mirror. Please do be aware though that I am only teasing. And there's no point in boasting that you're 70, because that's probably the median age of contributors to this forum, myself being no exception. I did go through a phase of making minor modifications to motor cars. Just little things like replacing drum brakes on an anglia with discs from an old ford capri. And popping a cortina engine in instead. A weber carburettor. A four into two into one exhaust manifold. Oh, and then a high lift camshaft. Some wider tyres of course, to look the part. The axle tramp was terrible. And there were more cars after that. Shiny pedals - pah! But it's all fifty years in the past, and we don't talk about it in the family any more. : o )

Hi Steve, yes, indeed, each to his own. However, and I'm sorry about this, but your shiny pedals just make me feel rather sad. I don't understand why, when you're a decent bloke who takes extra-special car of his car, you'd do this to it. However, yes, each to his own. : o )

Hi Steve, My LS500h fuel flap has failed to open properly just the once in the time that I've had the car. I think that the problem is that the spring that pushes the flap open isn't quite strong enough. My intention is that I'm just going to live with it. Even though the car is going for a service next week, I'll not be mentioning it. I've had too many experiences of small things getting much worse when a dealership tries to fix them. I realise that this is a different approach to life! : o )

Yeah... lots of places seem to sell replacement sets - but there are only four sensors in the set. The car should be good, then, for the next 16 years : o )

I'm a bit surprised about this, but according to the pre-launch brochure for the LS600 from 2007, intelligent parking had to be specified - it was optional. LS600 BROCHURE.pdf

Yep, I agree with Steve. Front camera has no screen, and fits tightly on left hand side of central mirror and stuff, and there's a back camera of equal quality. And it's very discrete. : o )

https://mag.toyota.co.uk/coronavirus-toyota-hybrid-car-maintenance/comment-page-12/#:~:text=We%20recommend%20you%20put%20the,Coronavirus%20(Covid%2D19). I understand now where the advice came from now! : o )

Certainly, in a LS500h, that would charge the 12V battery for the hour. But why? Why not take the car to Tesco, buy some groceries, and then drive it home? Or any normal sort of journey? And why would someone make a youtube video of this? Can I just say that the LS manual doesn't have this sort of advice - why not check your own Yaris manual to see if you can find this there? If you are going to change the battery then why not lift out (or get a mechanic to lift out) the current battery, just to see what's written on the side, and then insist on getting one that's just the same? Then you could try to forget that the car even has a 12V battery, and just enjoy driving around in it. I recommend a ferry, followed by a nice drive across to the west coast of Ireland and back, with perhaps a week in the middle in a holiday cottage. : o )

Yes, my last car was a 2007 460 SEL. I got it in 2008, intending to keep it for five years, but by 2012 Lexus had nerfed all of their 460s, and I didn't want a 600, so I just kept on with it till last summer (when it was about 16 years old), and did the swap then. I bought my first LS (LS400) in 1998, then had a couple of 430s, so I've only driven LSs for 25 years. Just for their reliability, comfort and safety there's nothing else I'd want to drive. I had seen your video. I suspect, though, that you and I have a different approach to the cleanliness of the outside of our cars. : o )

Yeah, that's pretty much it - the only thing is that no motor/generator is used to directly charge the 12volt battery. The car has an inverter/converter that does a range of things electronically and efficiently, including directly producing 14V dc from the 310V battery to charge the 12V battery. There is no generator that directly charges the 12V battery. (The inverter/converter also increases the voltage to 600 ish volts, and drives the two motor/generators, making AC from the traction battery's DC, and alternately uses AC electricity from the motor/generators,and converts it to charge the traction battery. If you do chose the Hull route, why not make them ring Lexus technical, or look on their service manuals, to make sure that they are fitting the correct battery - find out what the original equipment battery is, and ask them to fit that? I'm not trying to give you any grief over this - but the idea of the car is that it looks after itself, and lets you just get in and drive it, and just gives you pleasure! If you're using the car regularly, I'd expect there not to be a problem with this at all. And if the 12V battery was getting low, I'd expect there to be a message and a bingbong to tell you that you there was a problem, and to start the car to charge it, just like in my old 2007 LS. : o )

Using jumpers will very rapidly bring the emf of the 12V battery up to something reasonable for the electronics of the car to work. When the electronics work the traction battery does the work of starting the car. The traction battery will then also start to charge the 12V battery. The 12V battery doesn't do the work of starting the engine. It just activates the hybrid system - and all the electronics and lights and blowers and radio and everything else, just like a normal car. Incidentally, taking the car for a run won't increase the charging rate of the 12V battery. There is no alternator. 12V electricity is made from the 310V electricity by the magic of electronics. and if the traction battery has spare energy it deals directly with this. : o )