johnatg

I clean mine with liquid metal polish (or paste such as Solvol Autosol) about twice a year, followed by a coat of wax (as used for bodywork paint protection. My 13 year old lights are perfectly clear - car is parked outside facing North-ish. Sent from my PSP7551DUO using Tapatalk

Nope - just click 'em on and away you go. Re Denso - Denso are to Japanese cars what Lucas (King of Darkness) was to British cars. But most of you are probably too young to remember! Denso are what Lexus and most other Japanese makers fit for electrical and some other items. Sent from my PSP7551DUO using Tapatalk

Correct and likewise - mine were £17.50 in the end of month ECP discount deal. Sent from my PSP7551DUO using Tapatalk

All sound advice. Re pad mileage - 13k miles isn't totally unreasonable - IS250 etc does tend to be a bit heavy on rear pads (And front ones - expect to need a change at anything over 15k miles. Sent from my PSP7551DUO using Tapatalk

Standard (rare) and SE don't have sat nav or lcd screen or rear window blind and the mirrors don't tilt every time you select reverse. And problems with most of these are hardly isolated or one off on here. Sent from my PSP7551DUO using Tapatalk

Re electric / electronic probs - plenty of examples on here - sat nav, lcd screes, rear window blinds, auto mirror tilt mechanisms, etc - and as a car gets to 14, 15 years and more old you must expect them to potentially get more common. OK for us with plenty of value from our cars already - but buying now in expectation of a reasonable service life and on a budget? Sent from my PSP7551DUO using Tapatalk

There aren't really any issues with early cars which don't also affect later ones - not that there are any major issues anyway. Main thing is brake calipers, especially the sliders - but they all have the same maintenance requirements. Very early cars have solid rear brake discs - they were changed to vented in 2007 but it doesn't make any great difference. Older cars are just...well..older. Main thing is specs - they changed pretty well every year in some respect or other, even in minor ways such as the trim levels and colours available. People on here always say to get the top specs - SE-L etc. But consider - then you get a lot more electronic stuff to potentially go wrong. It's a lot more irritating to have some equipment not working than to not have it at all. I've had my 2006 SE for 7 years now. I did have a serious problem with a body ecu - I suspect due to a chafed wiring loom - but apart from that - nothing.

Prompted by that to do a bit more research, I find that the KR 3 cylinder petrol engine used in the Aygo, 107 and C1 was, in fact, designed by Daihatsu in the early 2000s and has been used in a whole lot of Daihatsu and Toyota cars (NB Daihatsu no longer sell cars in Europe).. Daihatsu started cooperating with Toyota in 1967 and Toyota obtained a controlling interest in 1998. The company became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toyota in 2016. As far as the relevance between models goes - I have for several years used Dexos2 spec oils in all my vehicles (or those I have looked after) ranging from Ford Ka through various VW, Saab, Mercedes, Peugeot, Honda, Mazda and Lexus cars and including my Tecumseh-engined lawnmower. The actual product Dexos2 (5W30) is a GM oil recommended for use in all GM vehicles (petrol and diesel in Europe - Dexos1 is recommended for petrol vehicles in USA) from the Opel/Vauxhall Adam (no longer GM of course) to the most extreme Corvette. I figured that if it covered all them it wouldn't do any harm in my limited range. I used actual GM Dexos2 for a long time, but during the last couple of years have switched to UK-manufactured Exol Optima LSG, because it is Dexos2 spec and you can buy 20 litres for £59.95. I have never, ever, had any engine lubrication problems. It is fully synthetic 5W30 and meets lots of other specs (VW, Mercedes, BMW etc) as well. The only time I can think of where I wouldn't use it is in modern Ford engines which require 0w30 oil to Ford specs.

0W20 is there to give slightly better fuel economy - mainly for getting CO2 emissions down. 5W30 gives better engine protection - and is a lot cheaper and with more choice than 0W20. I'm not sure who was mainly responsible for the Aygo engine design and manufacture, but I suspect that there wasn't much Toyota involvement - the car is largely a PSA (Peugeot/Citroen) product and Toyota piggy-backed into it. The whole family (Aygo/C1/107) is made in the same production facility in the Czech Republic. So the oil it uses it pretty irrelevant to Toyota and Lexus.

Yep - it's not that tight - all the original fittings can be kept. Sent from my PSP7551DUO using Tapatalk

That's the correct battery and as you suggest the terminals go at the back with + nearest the engine and - close to the wing. It's a fairly tight fit but everything is correct - watch out for the temperature sensor between battery and engine - you need to disconnect it to get the old battery out and reconnect it once the new battery is in place.

That's the correct battery and as you suggest the terminals go at the back with + nearest the engine and - close to the wing. It's a fairly tight fit but everything is correct - watch out for the temperature sensor between battery and engine - you need to disconnect it to get the old battery out and reconnect it once the new battery is in place.

Indeed - I came across a large herd of them on the road one foggy night around midnight about 20 years ago on the descent towards Braemar - unnerving! I once hit a deer about 40 years ago on the Lang Whang - it wasn't pretty, either for the deer nor the car. Sent from my PSP7551DUO using Tapatalk

That's Power mode. I was talking S mode which locks the gear range to eg 1-4. The point of my experiment was to see if by using the range 1-4 only on a road with lots of bends but where you can keep to a fairly tight speed range eg 45-60 you can avoid gear changes altogether and still make decent and smooth progress . The answer was largely yes. It's because you avoid the bogging down effect you get in D when exiting a corner which you've entered in 6. I didn't use the paddles at all - they are mainly useful for overtaking on busy roads. Sent from my PSP7551DUO using Tapatalk

This is a follow up to a brief comment I made recently about S mode being useful on winding roads. The problem is that the box doesn't know what's coming, so it holds 6 as you slow say from 60 to 40, then realises a couple of downchanges are needed as you accelerate away after the bend. This gets somewhat tiresome on a twisty road. It's long, so if you can't be bothered reading, skip to the end for a brief summary! OK - yesterday we drove way up north to our holiday haunt in the highlands. The route includes a section on the A93 from Blairgowrie to Braemar (about 38 miles) - it's one of my favourite roads as it is a nearly continuous series of bends with a very few straight sections. I thought I would run a little experiment - as we left Blairgowrie I selected S mode and held 4. The road has a 60 limit except for a short 30 section through Bridge of Cally. We encountered just one other vehicle travelling north - a motorhome, fortunstely on a rare straight section so easily disposed of. The box held 4 through almost all the bends - speed on this raod is limited more by passengers' stomachs than anything else - not only does it have lots of substantial G corners, it also has a lot of gut-wrenching ups and downs, often coinciding with a corner - the full 3D experience! After the Glenshee ski centre, the road changes character and becomes a glorious series of interlinked fast (er...about 60 mph) open bends so I flipped to 5 for the long but gentle (~1800 ft in 8 miles) descent to Braemar. The result - 1 - yes one - downshift to 3 on one tight right hander in the 30 mile stint before the ski centre and one downshift from 5 to 4 on a tighter than average (on that section) bend after. 4 is good for a wide range of speed from 40 ish to over 100mph. 5 is better if the bends are OK for 50 - 60 mph. And progress is so smooth (except for the G forces!). We averaged ~51 mph over the section of our route (which is about 350 miles altogether). Summary - A93, 38 miles in 45 minutes, over 100 bends, one easy overtake, 2 gearchanges (4 if you count the subsequent upshifts), one not-quite-sick wife! Driving can still be fun - it's just that most of us have to go a long way to find the right roads! And S mode is brilliant in the circumstances - smooth pick up out of the bends.

Thanks Ken - makes things clearer..

I'm completely befuddled now. The exhaust has four components - two manifolds (containing a cat each), a front section (also containing two cats and a resonator) and a tail section (which includes two back boxes). Thinking about Mo's picture - the only joint with a cat close to it is the one between the manifold and the front section, but the front cat is forward of the joint, whereas the pic is labelled with a cat behind. The rear cats (in the front section) are way back and nowhere near a joint. Mo talks about two joints/gaskets - which must be the ones between the manifolds and front section. the manual doesn't show springs on the bolts of those joints. The single joint between the front section and tail section does have springs - it has the resonator close in front of it and nothing but the Y joint and back boxes behind. So - Mo - which joint is your pic?. Ken - what do you mean by 'cat back' and middle section? Is it front cats back - ie manifolds back (ie front section and tail section and therefore including two rear cats and the resonator)) or just the tail section including two back boxes? What does £3500 get you - a front section and tail section or including manifolds (but you say manifolds back)? I can't understand the difference between cat back and manifold back (as the cats are included in the manifolds). Which part exactly did PowerFlow do for £700? (My car is 2006 and still on original exhaust so I'm thinking all this might be relevant sometime soon!)

Sorry - I see you saw the gasket. There are two joints and gaskets at the front of the centre section. Sent from my PSP7551DUO using Tapatalk

No - there's a gasket - it will be mesh/composite sort of thing. I'm surprised it has deteriorated. The green arrow points exactly to it. I think we are talking about the joint in front of the centre section, not the one behind it as per your pic. Sent from my PSP7551DUO using Tapatalk

Nothing there looks too bad. No damage to the pipes? I would have thought that those nuts/bolts would undo with a good soaking with Plus Gas. Or cut the bolts - not sure if there's a spacer between the flanges, but that's easy enough to replace

Hmm...maybe a bit more damage than I had envisaged. Beware of spending too much on patching up a disintegrating exhaust - such repairs rarely last more than a few months at best. Better to spend some money on replacement - but the centre section is expensive, even to get fabricated - I assume it is the centre section and not the manifolds where the damage is? (The manifolds are the pieces directly ahead of the joints you describe - they also contain a cat each.)

Why cut the pipes and weld? Why not just cut the nuts and bolts off with an angle grinder or hacksaw, replace the gaskets and use new (preferably stainless) nuts and bolts? (I don't think that they are captive studs - just normal nuts and bolts) That would take a lot less than two hours and be altogether a lot less effort - and a better job!

That (~14K miles) is about what I got from my last rear pads - EBC Ultimax. I've replaced them with EBC Redstuff (I use Redstuff on the front - they produce very little dust and what does get deposited wipes away easily as Redstuff contain no metal - they are ceramic - the only pads which don't deposit metal particles which eat into the paint/lacquer of the wheels). They are a bit expensive though. But worth it for their excellent braking and fade resistance (once they are bedded in). I once posted that I was going to use Yellowstuff at my (then) next pad change, but then I found that they contain metal. As I said, Redstuff are the only ones (of any make) that don't

See attached pdf for troubleshooting. Height control.pdf

I very much doubt that it's skimping. I suspect that feeding the exhausts into one pipe smooths out the pressure variations - there are 3 pressure peaks per engine rev and the peaks from each bank will be out of phase with each other. So by feeding the peak from one bank into the dip of the other, you will end up with a smoother overall pressure wave and hence less noise. But then why separate out into two pipes and two silencers - was that for aesthetics or does feeding your smoothed out wave into two pipes and silencers make the wave less energetic still and therefore make it quieter? I think the latter.