J Henderson

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.

Apologies if this one is already known about... LC500 £35,990

Well, there's also the Cool Blue Intense variant from OSRAM, which would be fully-legal, MOT-compliant etc, if that's a concern. The output won't be quite as blue/white as the 7000K bulbs that @IS300FSPORT has, since they're "only" 6200K, but they're still way bluer/whiter than stock bulbs. I was considering getting a pair of these Boost bulbs for my high beam, so I could better punish these idiots that don't dip their headlights for oncoming traffic. 🙄

Well in my case, I've an IS250 not an RC, and the drop was quite significant (35mm), so not really comparing oranges with oranges. I'm thinking maybe the level sensor connected to the suspension was already maxed out or something.

Had the car been lowered? My headlights were aimed far too low after installing lowering springs.

Initial idle of roughly 2K for a cold start is pretty normal, but it should only be that high for like 10-15 secs or something. It should then drop to about the 1200-1300rpm level that you're experiencing until the engine is a bit warmer. Once warm though, it shouldn't be anywhere near 1300. More like half that - 650-700rpm with A/C on. Abnormal idle can be a symptom when the battery has recently been disconnected, so It could be that your car is still "learning" the base engine map settings, but it really ought to have normalised after a 3hr journey. If the battery hasn't been disconnected again recently, something else must be amiss and preventing the car from coming off the fast idle setting. Re: the temp gauge. I think on my car it sits bang in the middle, or very slightly before halfway, when it's warm.

Mine started out as an advisory in 2022. I wasn't even aware that I had a leak when I took my car to be tested, but it was clearly audible about 6 months later, which prompted me to get it welded. Yours might be in a similar state come April as the Winter months won't be kind. These cars seem to generate a helluva lot of exhaust vapour in cold weather. The person that welded mine was reluctant to drop the system in case it opened up a can of worms.

Sounds like a similar leak to what I experienced? i got mine welded so it would pass an MOT, but within 6 months or so, it had started to leak elsewhere. The front pipes near the 02 sensors had some small perforations, and the rear Y section also developed a big leak before eventually snapping in two. I've since had the whole lot replaced with a stainless steel system. If you can get a weld repair done cheaply enough to tide you over, I'd do that, but be aware that the rest of the exhaust is probably going to follow suit.

I think I would pay the extra for that £350 one. Looks like it's probably better quality and it ought to fit better too since the 3 pieces will offer a bigger range of adjustment. I'm pretty sure the cheaper one posted earlier has really small tailpipes, which make the cutouts in the bumper look cavernous. I seen an IS250 the other day with what looked like one of these £250 exhausts, and it frankly, looked stupid, and cheapened the appearance of the car.

Unless the journeys you're doing are mostly urban stop/start stuff, a GS450h wouldn't be dramatically much better on fuel. Comparing official combined average figures, the difference would be about 5-8mpg, which sounds quite sizable at first, but there's literally no difference at all when doing mostly motorway/A road journeys. You would need to be looking at one of the newer 300h models (either IS or GS), or a CT200h to see significantly lower fuel bills.

Lexus On Screen

I had to replace a rear brake hose a few weeks back due to it leaking. I intended to change it myself and got one from eBay for just over £20 and it arrived within 24hrs. Long story short, I couldn't fit it as I couldn't even get the old one off as the metal brake pipes were so extremely corroded and weak - they were just twisting and on the brink of snapping when I made any attempt to remove the hose. I ended up having to get a local garage to fit new hoses and replace the sections of rotten piping on both sides. Now yours might not be as bad as mine were, Bilal, but just thought I might warn of what could be in store. The stability control component is interesting. Could the tester be talking about the headlamp level sensor? It's found on the nearside and has a rod linkage... Looking at parts diagrams, the actual skid control sensor just looks like a wire of sorts - Diagram

Amayama refunded my payment as they can't get hold of the part. Looks like I'll have to ride the zip-tie solution a bit longer. You mean drill out the ball & socket joint and replace with a nut & bolt?

Could be the pyro fuse. It's designed to blow in an accident to minimise the risk of fire, electric shock etc.

Looks spot-on. The 2nd dot is the maximum level. In my experience, the streaks higher up the dipstick are unavoidable.