johnatg

Following on from the posts in the thread I started 'Inactivity during lockdown': You can connect a battery charger - either a trickle charger (preferably disconnect the battery from the car) for a very short period or much preferably a smart charger (which can be left connected to the battery and the battery to the car - don't forget it if you drive off though). When you charge a battery Lead Peroxide is formed on the + plates and the - plates become spongy lead. If you carry on charging after this process is complete the battery will start to gas - release Hydrogen and Oxygen. You are electrolysing the battery acid or at least the water content. The plates are not suitable for that and will be destroyed in short order. (Electrolysis of water from renewable energy to form Hydrogen in volume is the holy grail of hydrogen fuel technology) When a battery discharges Lead Sulphate forms on the plates and if it is left too long in a discharged state the process becomes irreversible - the battery is sulphated and sooner or later, scrap. A smart charger (eg Ctek or CSI Airflow - other brands are available)) charges the battery up to full then discharges it slightly and continues to cycle it up and down so that it stays more or less fully charged but never overcharged. It can be connected indefinitely. (The process is actually a bit more complicated - see Cteks web site - https://smartercharger.com/) Never use a standard type fast charger on a maintenance-free (or AGM) battery - plates reinforced with Calcium are much more prone to damage than old fashioned Antimony - reinforced batteries.

I would have thought that was enough voltage from the car battery. What about the fob battery? Are you keeping the fob in your pocket and it's getting warm between attempts? Maybe that is boosting the fob signal? Sent from my PSP7551DUO using Tapatalk

Thanks guys - useful info. I won't comment on my personal situation, enough to say that the question occurred to me yesterday. I don't use the Lexus for food shopping - it doesn't risk supermarket car parks - my wife's Seat Mii is for that. And what if we have more stringent restrictions - you thought that couldn't happen here...could it?...but hinted at this morning. My nephew was recalled to his battalion two weeks early a few days ago..... There will be an end to this mess and you'll want your car to be in good shape then Another few tips if your car is going to be laid up for the duration - keep the 12v battery charged - it will discharge within a month or so if left parked with the alarm set. If you can't hook it up to a smart charger in the car consider pulling it out. If you haven't got one, a smart charger (eg Cetek or CSI Airflow - others are available) might be a good investment. If you have an AGM battery it will not like complete discharge (neither will a flooded battery really) and it may well be permanently damaged or compromised so that you may need to buy a new one - that'll cost more than a charger. If you do remove the 12v battery you will have no alarm - but no-one is going to drive your car away with no battery. You could consider pulling some vital fuses and/or relays but make a note of where they go! Consider putting an extra 10psi in the tyres to mitigate flat spotting. Protect the interior if the car will be out in the open - cover the dash with cardboard and the seats with covers of some sort - it's surprising how much a car's interior can deteriorate with time in the sun. I prefer a full fuel tank during storage - I lay my MX-5 up for six months every winter - looks like it will be well longer this year. The fuel may well deteriorate to some extent, but a large amount with no air will go off much less than a small amount in a tank with a lot of air. It has never caused problems for me. More ideas welcome!

Of the car, that is. Does anyone have any observations on battery maintenance during lockdown? We know that we can keep the 12v battery in good nick indefinitely by using a smart charger. But what about the traction battery? How long can it safely be left idle? I suspect there might be a lot of flat batteries of one sort and another around when we are all released! And any other simple tips to keep the car up to scratch during this longish lay-up?

Bit premature - March 19th is first day of Astronomical Spring. Meteorological Spring starts March 1st Meteorological Summer starts June 1st, Astronomical Summer starts June 20th. https://www.almanac.com/content/first-day-seasons Nice carpets though! 😊

Not based on experience, but I think I would try deflating the tyre partly so that a fault shows on the dash display, then pump the tyre up again and reset.

Great! The car will need to be MoT tested as soon as possible after arrival in UK.

You can get UK insurance using the vehicle VIN number for identity. (It's called Chassis number insurance) One company offering this is acorninsure.co.uk It should be fairly straightforward - if the car has a non-EU VIN number (eg an 11 digit Japanese one) there are additional complications, but if the car was first registered anywhere in EU (when it will have a 17 digit VIN) there shouldn't be any problems.

As a relative newcomer to hybrid systems (GS300h), I have a question. Approaching my home village I descend a long (a mile or so) gentle hill, but one on which I need to take action to keep within the speed limit. I can either use the paddles to change to a lower effective gear ratio or apply the brakes gently but fairly continuously. Which is better?, for driving mechanically sympathetically and/or for optimum traction battery charging - from the bottom of the hill I can usually drive most of the way home in EV mode - it doesn't seem to make much difference which technique I use. I am not one for changing down whenever possible to minimise use of the brakes in old school fashion - if you are going to stress part of a car, brakes are cheaper than engines and pretty effective these days. So what do you all think?

The fan runs to cool the condenser - that's where the gas returns to liquid. Then it goes round to the evaporator where it evaporates back to gas. The latent heat of evaporation keeps you cool (the heat goes from the car into the gas, then from the gas to the air flow from the fan) That's very simplified but is basically how it works. Sent from my PSP7551DUO using Tapatalk

Yep - quite normal. There's a lot of coolant in a cold system and the engine isn't doing much work at 30 mph. Sent from my PSP7551DUO using Tapatalk

That sounds good! Lexus are undervaluing their service - you don't get European cover included in the AA standard (or even top rate) service, I think - don't you have to buy it separately (at vast expense from them)?

As I understand it, you can buy a Lexus warranty (what they call 12/24 - 24 months cover but paid over first 12 months) any time up to the car being 10 years old from first reg and less than 140000 miles - so you could theoretically get covered up to the day before the car was 12 years old. Regardless of previous history or warranty purchase. One of the terms is " To maintain the validity of the policy, the vehicle must be serviced at an official Lexus Centre in line with the manufacturers service schedule" You can buy the Hybrid Health check separately any time up to 15 years old. (again, regardless of having had it before) Why would you buy Lexus Roadside Assistance alone? It's " equivalent to the AA’s top level of cover for which they currently charge £135 per year" AutoAid only costs £59.99 (that was a big jump from last year - hope they don't bump it up again by a large amount!)

Let's not get too carried away here. Any engine with worn bores/pistons/rings will pressurize the crankcase and blow oil out of the most well sealed cam cover. But a reasonably well maintained (frequent enough oil changes) Lexus will not do that, at least until starship-type mileages have passed. Oil on the plug threads is just from oil sitting in the spark plug recesses and arrives on the threads as you withdraw the plugs - there is no way that oil can come from the combustion chambers. Most modern engines use a neoprene cam cover gasket which fits in to a groove in the cam cover. Although nice and soft when new these gaskets harden and become brittle with heat and age - it's quite instructive to compare a new gasket with one that has done 50K miles or so. Eventually oil will seep out and end up in the plug recesses, in the vee and down the sides of the block. James - you need a new cam cover gaskets, plug tube gaskets and various other seals - see attached pic (just right hand side shown) - oh, and you need to tighten your spark plugs to 25Nm/18ftlbs.- see the pic.

That's an optimistic view! They wear and go soft or leak eventually. I've replaced quite a few in my time. Sent from my PSP7551DUO using Tapatalk

Well there's a thing. So I looked in my workshop manual. Would you believe - somewhere in the Workshop manual, I found the diagram as posted by Declan above (can't just find it again) showing the torque as 18Nm, 13ft lbs. But everywhere else in the manual, eg under Engine Reassembly and Ignition System on-vehicle Inspection, it says 25Nm, 18ftlbs. Can't help thinking that someone, somewhere has done a bit of double take. See screenshot of one bit here: : 13ft lbs just isn't tight enough - I doubt it would even crush the sealing washer enough.- hell, you can easily get to 15ftlbs just by gripping a socket drive extension and turning it by hand, not with a ratchet or breaker bar. Even 18ftlbs doesn't feel very tight. The correct figure is 18ft lbs - it's pretty universal figure for 16mm spark plugs in ally cylinder heads.

I don't think there's anything to worry about in the medium term. The oil will be coming from the rocker cover gasket - fix it when you can but not really urgent. The oil on the plugs comes from there - as you unscrew the plugs they effectively pass through an oil bath and it will seep down the block and into the Vee. I can tell you that if you remove the oil cap, oil will come out if the engine is running - I once accidentally left the cap off on another car - it was years ago. After a short drive there was a hell of a mess in the engine room! A little bit of oil goes a long way. Don't overtighten spark plugs - 18ft lbs is perfectly adequate.

Hmm....Andrew's list - I guess might have come close to the warranty cost. Phil's wheel bearings - they're not ruinously expensive - £120 or so each (+ fitting) Paul's list - doubt it would have come to more than what he paid for the warranties. My view is that you're very unlucky if you need to spend more than £1095 on warranty-covered repairs in any two year period for a sub-10 year old Lexus driven a normal number of miles - might be different if you're doing 30K+ per year, but even then... I guess it partly depends on your diy capabilities - if you are prepared/competent to work on the car yourself, you can probably buy any necessary parts for considerably less than the warranty cost. Different if you're going to need to add Lexus dealer labour charges. Of course, there's always the chance of a really big hit. I have a warranty at the moment because it came with the car but I doubt that I'll be renewing it. But I'll keep the hybrid system warranty with an annual hybrid inspection at least.

If you are leaving the car untouched for more than 10 days or so, particularly in the winter, it's probably a good idea to hitch the battery up to an intelligent charger such as the Cetek. You can leave it connected indefinitely as the charger will monitor the battery state and cycle the charge a little to keep the battery in good nick. You don't need to disconnect the battery from the car. I keep my MX-5 (now approaching its 29th birthday) in my garage all winter - it doesn't see the light of day for 6 months, more or less. I keep the battery (installed in the car) connected to my CSI Airflow Battery Conditioner - I also have a Cetek one and there's not much to choose between them - the Cetek is much newer and more advanced tech - I've had the Airflow for 20 years or so. But note - it must be an intelligent charger - you can't / mustn't leave a standard battery charger (even a trickle charger) connected for long periods.

The car must be thinking that you have disconnected/reconnected the battery - that will have unset a few things. Switch the car on then press the mirror 'auto' switch (top right quadrant around the mirror control switch) so that it shows green. You probably also need to reset the windows - if they don't go up and down with the window switches on the drivers door, drive each window up and down with its 'own' switch - the switch in each door. Hold the switch for a few moments when window fully down. The battery should last 4 weeks or longer, but if it's weak through age it may not, or if something is draining it. You could get it tested - many accessory shops and garages will do that free of charge

Yep - Cetek chargers are good - just the job.

BTW - have you got a suitable battery charger? Your battery is probably original and if so is an AGM type. Don't just use any old charger, even a trickle charger. It requires an intelligent charger, with battery charge sensing and charge rate control. If you haven't, better to jump start the car (with care) then take it for an hour's drive. And drive it quite a lot for the next few days

To do that, slide the mechanical key out of the fob. The boot key slot is located on the downward facing part of the boot lid, just above the number plate, on the left hand side. Have you got a dash cam 'always-on'? Or maybe your battery is just getting tired after 7 years.

I wonder if it could be caused by some sort of spurious radio signal received from the wider world - I guess it just has to be the correct frequency for a very short period - speculating that the long press on the key fob - which we know does it - actually causes a switch to a short burst of the correct frequency for opening the windows after a period of a few seconds? It does seem to be that often the behaviour is completely unexplained - when my IS250 did it I never thought that I had done anything to accidentally press the fob button. (Although I do know with other cars that crouching down to work on the wheels, for example, if I have the fob in my pocket the central locking will often lock and unlock almost randomly!) Disabling the facility via Techstream of course switches the function off in the car, not in the key fob - so it is a permanent solution.

If you do conclude that the ecu is faulty, you could explore the route of getting it rebuilt - various people on-line offer this - search Lexus Ecu rebuild. If you can get it rebuilt it would be way cheaper than a new one, which is likely to cost the best part of £1000. You may be able to get a second hand one from a scrapper.