J Henderson

The 4GR engine in these cars is chain-driven, so talk of any cam belt being replaced is false. I guess it's possible they meant the serpentine drive belts, if the water pump was indeed replaced. I think I would lean towards the 2007 car despite the higher miles. Looks like it could be an SE-L and appears pretty clean with previous/current owner having had it for a while. Nice price too. The newer car would have more Bluetooth connectivity, but that's about the only real difference of note, apart from the cosmetic changes introduced in 2009. If the screen and all other functions are still working, it could maybe just need a new map DVD to get the navigation working again. Either way, a replacement nav unit can be swapped in at a reasonable cost. Or, just replace the whole thing with one of the Chinese Android head units that are available.

Bumping this and quoting myself after fitting the 15mm & 20mm Eibach spacers to my car yesterday. The 3IS F-Sport wheels fitted over both sizes without needing any modifications.

I think there's two types of Toyota oil available - Fuel Economy and Premium Fuel Economy, which is more expensive and presumably fully-synthetic.

Never heard of them either, and I don't know what the setup on your car is, but be aware those are the smaller solid discs. Not vented ones.

The £15 one comes with some "R" clips (which you won't need), but also appears to include a sachet of pad grease. For reference, you can get a genuine fitting kit from amayama for £25 delivered. Thats what I did, but would've just got that £15 set had I known about it beforehand. The price on lexuspartsdirect.co.uk (£80) is what made me resort to importing.

£15 for a Pad fitting kit

Looks like an ISF one. IS250 doesn't have extra display screen with oil temp gauge, or 9k tachometer, or blue needles.

Thanks for asking. Yes, the car got a fresh MOT last week. I didn't do anything else apart from the MAF cleaning, fuel treatment and Italian tune-up mentioned earlier. What I did do though was take the car somewhere else for the 2nd MOT. The garage I originally went to gave me the impression they were "cowboys" fishing for work. They failed the car on a couple of other issues besides the high emissions and listed a few questionable advisories. They were also very unprofessional so I wasn't about to give them any more of my time and money. When it was tested for the 2nd time at the new garage, only one of the previous failures/advisories was repeated - Parking brake needed adjustment. Once that was sorted, happy days.

12L/100Km = 23.5 MPG. Doesn't sound too abnormal for an auto. The IS200 simply isn't a very fuel-efficent car, and an automatic one, is even worse. I had a manual one and high 20s was about the typical MPG.

Totally agree. Used tyres can be something of a false economy. In fact even buying new tyres, loose, via mail order can prove to be a worthless pursuit due to the cost of getting them fitted. I see you mention a fitting cost of £10... Is that even realistic? In my experience, that's a price from many many years ago. Unless you can get them done somewhere friendly "off the books" for cash. I had to pay £20 to have a loose tyre fitted (and balanced, with new valve) just last year. The price difference between mail order and fully-fitted on blackcircles.com is just under £20 too. I had ordered my loose tyre online a year earlier using a discount code for what seemed like a good deal (and it was), especially since tyre prices jumped a fair bit after Ukraine was invaded. But, given the extra hassle of it being delivered to my door - an extra £12.50 (and also having to make myself available for when the courier was going to show up), then storing it somewhere until it was needed... On top of this, I of course then had to take the tyre, plus the wheel to the garage to have it fitted - for the aforementioned £20. In the grand scheme of things, even with that £32.50 of extra costs, yes I did save a few quid but not enough to justify all that extra "work" involved. The only real advantage was that I could order the exact same matching Michelin PS4 that was on the car (same EU label, XL, non OEM-specific compound), instead of just showing up at the tyre centre and saying "I need a size x Michelin PS4" and potentially getting one of the many slightly different variants. That's if any PS4s would even be in stock at all since the newer Pilot Sport 5 has been out for a while now. As for used tyres, they're not really something I look for, but I've bought them a few times in the past. I remember buying a pair of Pirelli P-Zero Nero off ebay for my IS200, not long after I got it, then being absolutely shocked at how much Kwik-Fit charged to fit them (£42). So, that bargain pair of tyres ended up being a £100+ purchase - for half-worn tyres. I also bought another pair of part-worn Continentals for that car but ended up giving them away to a friend, because they made horrible vibrations felt through the steering. I think they had been subjected to a track day, or had been rubbing on bodywork or something in their previous application. Saying that, I did have a very favourable experience when I bought a nearly-new set of Michelin winter tyres. They were bought during the summer so were lower-priced than normal. Plus, In that case I handed them over along with a spare set of wheels that I wanted refurbished. So, the fitting costs were essentially "free" as they were absorbed into the price of the refurbishment. I wouldn't be against buying used tyres in the future but they would have to be very well-priced, and/or nearly new or low mileage, given the fitting costs involved. Ideally, combing the purchase with a wheel refurbishment job, to be fully cost-effective as there's a place quite near to me that does full powdercoat refurb in basic colour (black,white,silver) for only £150.

I cleaned the MAF sensor. I couldn't really tell if it was any dirtier than usual, but I gave it a good clean anyway. Probably hit it with the most liberal amount of Contact cleaner I've ever done. I also put in about 500ml of the stuff my dad gave me to try (Dipetane) when I filled up with petrol, then went for a spirited drive down to the Borders and back. I covered about 100 miles in total, mostly on the Motorway or fast A roads with a heavy foot. I mostly used S mode and paddle shifters the whole time and the engine was rarely below 3000rpm, with me looking to overtake or go as fast as I could where possible. Despite the aggressive driving style, I recorded over 36MPG (dashboard reading) for the trip, which seems unbelievable if the engine is performing at a suboptimal level. The power, response, smoothness and the idle all feel spot-on too with not even a hint of hesitation or a misfire etc. Hard to believe a car that performs like this is "faulty"!

Never uses a drop. I bought a 1L bottle years ago to keep in the boot for topping up, and I've never had to use it.

Good stuff guys. The exhaust is only 2 months old, but was custom made so it's possible that it could have a small leak somewhere. Maybe where it bolts up to the manifold since that's where old meets new. If the spark plugs really are faulty I'd be disappointed since they've done less than 30K. They were also Denso ones bought from Lexuspartsdirect so I'd be even more disappointed if they were fakes. Its been at least a couple of years since I last cleaned the MAF sensor, so I'll definitely try that first. My dad has also given me a fuel treatment that he swears by, so I'll give that a go as well, but because the CO figures are so far off, I'm thinking that a faulty sensor is most likely.

My car just failed the MOT emissions test, and the result wasn't even close to say the least. Does anyone have any suggestions on where I should start troubleshooting? Anything really obvious to glean from these results? No check engine lights and has never ever displayed one. The car is also fed a strict diet of E5 Super unleaded and runs perfectly.

The Cool Blue Intense? Absolutely. Mine are 6 years old now and still fine.