johnatg

And 2007 was the year during which they changed from solid to vented!

Maybe wait until next time - but do it a month or so before the test at least and put the Cataclean in a half full tank and run it near to empty. Try and do some spirited driving on the way. And use the car more regularly - or sell it! Redex and similar fuel cleaners are more for cleaning the fuel system and injectors (which certainly can help emissions) - Cataclean is more specifically for cleaning the oxygen sensor and cat. But it can't restore totally shot stuff.

It's probably OK - don't make a habit of overfilling though!

The correct limit is 0.3% CO at natural idle speed. That applies to cars first reg from 1/9/02. The 0.5% limit is for cars reg from 1/8/95 to 31/8/02. The other limits applying to your car are (at fast idle - between 2500 and 3000 rpm)) 0.2% CO, 0.02% Hydrocarbons and lambda 1 +/- 0.03 (lambda is the value derived from the Oxygen sensor). All measurements by volume. That comes from 'In service exhaust emission standards for road vehicles - Eighteenth edition' published by DVSA (222 pages of light bedtime reading!) NB - the actual readings obtained from a car in tip top condition should be much lower. It sounds as though the car could do with a dosage of Cataclean - excellent stuff. If that doesn't work for next time you might be in for one or both of oxygen sensor/catalyst.

It depends on the age of the vehicle - what year of first reg is it and what are the results? We could give more direct answers if you weren't so coy, Jack!

I wouldn't worry too much about specific gears - it can be a bit hard to reach high revs even in 3rd in London (although maybe in Jack's version of London it may not be too bad! ) - proper high revs in 3rd even is probably over 80 - many cars will do 60 in 2nd. Hold 2nd for reasonably long periods if it's not a dual carriageway/motorway. You want to be at 4500-5500rpm for a while.

Not legally, but you have a good chance of getting away with it if you have a retest booked.

The official oil capacity for an oil change including filter replacement is 6.3 litres. You need to take the dipstick out whilst filling with oil. Otherwise the oil can't get up the dipstick tube properly as it is airtight (more or less) with the dipstick in place. It can be hard to see the oil level on the dipstick when it's fresh oil - it's nearly invisible. Just angle it so that the light reflects off it - the reflectivity of the oily part and dry part is quite different. Overfilling with oil risks damage to the cats and the oxygen sensors - it won't burn off (at least in the engine) - it gets blown into the cats and burns there, which is not good for them at all Oh - and you should never get to the point where the dashboard oil light illuminates - that is very much a last resort thing. Check the oil weekly - as instructed in the handbook!

Surely there's no such thing as a IS300 2005 on? Until the IS300h came out - when was that? 2013? The pic looks like a IS250. I'd give them a ring - I rather think you'll find the part for the 'IS300' is correct.

Exactly - floating discs, such as those used on bikes and the BMW M5 can move slightly. The disc and bell housing are separate and the disc is mounted on bobbins or pegs. Lexus discs are one piece - the disc and bell housing is all one casting - and are solidly fixed, by virtue of being clamped by the wheel.

Not sure where this expression 'floating brake discs' comes from - I've seen it before. It implies that the discs move (relative to the hub) - they don't - they're completely clamped by the wheel and its nuts. It's just that there's no screw to secure the discs to the hub. They are usually pretty well stuck with rust though. If they don't just fall off with a tap or two, there's an 8mm threaded hole into which you can screw a bolt (M8) and that will push the disc off.

Constantine is asking if the IS250 would be suitable for going to Greece (we have well put him off a IS220d!). Absolutely - the IS250 is reliable and a comfortable long distance cruiser. Not the best leg room in the back (do you have smallish children?) and the boot is not enormous - but travel light with no back seat passengers or ones with shortish legs and you'll be fine.

Just a word of advice (to everyone) - be very careful working on someone else's car - and never, ever, do someone else's brakes or other safety critical components. Garages, mobile mechanics, etc. carry insurance. You (probably) don't - you never know what might happen!

Seems pretty pointless on a car like the IS250 to me. On a number of levels: 1) Pads and discs wear together - using the old pads on a new disc surface would quickly wear the worn pad surface into the new disc - (and vice versa with old discs and new pads but you can accept that for one or maybe two times). If the pads are damaged (ie with a deep groove) that will transfer to the new disc surface. So you really do need new pads and that means you need all the labour to strip and rebuild anyway. 2) There isn't much disc thickness to play with - there's only 3mm between new disc thickness and the wear limit - and if a 2010 car is on original brake discs they will be well worn already. 3) Once the caliper is out of the way (which involves removing one or two bolts) it takes less than a minute to remove the disc. All the time for a pad/disc change goes in jacking up the car, removing the wheel and generally cleaning and inspecting the assembly - the actual dismantling and reassembly is trivial, although you need to spend time checking the run out of the disc and possibly repositioning it. 4) And finally - you can buy perfectly good discs for ~£45 a pair and pads for £60 a pair eg from here: http://www.brakesint.co.uk/ - and cheaper versions are available. I suppose resurfacing might just make sense if the car had very expensive discs - the skimmers site mentions Nissan GTR, Audi RS4 etc and I know some Aston Martin discs are horrendously expensive. But expensive discs are fitted to expensive cars - and why are people skimping on brakes on cars like that?

Certainly not worth getting a disc resurfaced these days - cast iron is cheap - labour to set up a lathe etc is not, and you still have to dismantle the brakes anyway and buy new pads to do the job. Since both sides must match, you'd have to do both sides. If there's just one small groove it probably doesn't matter anyway. If the damage is worse then change the discs and pads. You don't need to pay Lexus prices - plenty of excellent discs and pads available on ebay and from brake specialists - brake components don't involve rocket science. Not sure about Rebecca's confidence about 'fixing it for years' - brakes need regular inspection and maintenance and I certainly agree that IS250s eat brake discs and pads - they should last for between 20 and 30K miles - if you drive more or less only on motorways or very slowly in town you can get quite a lot more but not for everyday main road driving in open country.

Hmm....'MDF' and 'Lexus' doesn't quite gel, does it? My little piece of plastic pipe does much the same job. But Lexus could have made the cover clips a bit less flimsy!

Mine had a broken clip when I bought the car - I made up a bit of reinforcement with a very short piece of plastic pipe and glued it all back together with Araldite. It's lasted 5 years so far! I think the front clips get broken when people try and remove the cover by lifting the front. Always lift the rear of the cover first then lift the front. To engage, locate on the front clips first - use the oil filler hole as a guide - then push down at the back. The workshop manual warns about the risk of breaking the cover if you do it incorrectly!

Apologies for being pedantic - but it's 'silicone' - 'silicon' is completely different stuff!

I think this from the ACEA specs web site is relevant. All mainstream oil available these days is catalyst compatible, so A and C below are pretty much interchangeable and indeed most eg A3 oil is also C3. I've added some emphases! There are ACEA specifications for passenges car motor oils (the A/B class), for catalyst compatible motor oils (the C class) and for heavy duty diesel engine oils (the E class). The classes are further divided into categories to meet the requirements of different engines. The A/B class's A5/B5 oils have lower HTHS viscosities, which means that they provide better fuel economy but they may not provide adequate protection in engines that are not designed for them. ACEA A3/B3 and A3/B4 on the other hand require oils with higher HTHS viscosities that may not provide as good fuel economy as an A5/B5 oil but may offer better engine protection in certain engine designs. The categories within the C class are divided along SAPS limits and along HTHS viscosities. C1 and C4 are low-SAPS oils, while C2 and C3 are mid-SAPS oils. On the other hand C1 and C2 oils have lower HTHS viscosities, while C3 and C4 oils have higher HTHS viscosities. The C5 category that has been newly introduced in the ACEA 2016 sequences has even lower limit for HTHS vicsosity. In order for an oil to meet this specification it must be a mid-SAPS oil and its HTHS viscosity has to be between 2.6 and 2.9 mPa*s. Depends on your priorities - fuel economy or engine protection. But I think any differences are very marginal.

AFAIK, nowhere do Lexus specify an ACEA grade for oil. The IS250 oil spec on the relevant (2005-2011) Service Data Sheet is 'SAE 5W-30, API grade SM “Energy-Conserving” or ILSAC, multi grade engine oil'. They have subsequently approved 0W-20 and say it is suitable for all IS250 (and more) engines. Incidentally, quite a few 'oil finder' type web sites from oil suppliers actually recommend oils to ACEA C3 for IS250. Your Edge 5W-30 will be fine - I use GM Dexos2 in all my cars and it is ACEA C3.

You don't need to dismantle anything to get to the belt (except the top and front covers and the air intake thing). You just turn the tensioner slightly with a spanner - there's a hole into which you can insert a 5mm drill bit or similar to lock it. The belt just slips off. (Make a note of its routing before you remove it - take a pic!) You could run the engine for a few seconds without the belt - be careful because it will quickly overheat without the water pump running. If that cures it, it's the belt or one of the units driven - check each pulley for free running or roughness. New belts are a bit stiff and unwieldy but they just slip on, then remove the drill bit and release the tensioner. If you put the old belt back, put it on the same way round that it was (mark with a snopake arrow?) New belts available on eBay for about £16.

Fuel grades in USA are only a little less ours. The numbers appear different because they don't use RON - they use the average of MON and RON (MON = Motor Octane number, RON = Research ON). MON is measured under more stringent conditions and comes out about 10 points lower than RON in the range we are talking about. So US octane ratings are about 4-5 points lower than ours and Europe's. Usual grades offered are 89 and 91 - equivalent to 93/94 and 95/96. But it's unlikely that Octane rating has any effect on carbon build up - octane rating describes one characteristic of petrol and one only - and that is knock resistance. Knock is the propensity of the mixture to detonate in the cylinder rather than burn smoothly. You hear it (if it is very prevalent) as pinking - a tinkling sound from the engine, usually when in too low a gear with the engine under load. But you don't hear it any more in modern cars because they all have knock sensors which retard the ignition to stop the knock (and incidentally reduce power/performance). A proportion of the cylinderfuls of mixture detonate anyway - the knock sensor and ecu work to maintain it at acceptable levels, along with the fact that you should use at least the fuel grade specified as that too is selected to reduce knock to acceptable levels. Higher grade fuel allows the engine to get more power is it spends less time being retarded. In practice of course engines are designed to the fuel available rather than the other way round as might be inferred from the sentence above. So why do US Direct Injection engines suffer more from carbon build up than in UK? That is one of the mysteries of the modern world - but it may have more to do with purity of the fuel and might have something to do with oil. After all, the carbon build up occurs in the inlet valve area and the fuel never gets near the inlet valve in DI engines - the valve only admits air. There may be some blow by as the valve opens and closes but I think it's more likely down to oil - but why should that be any different? Who knows?

Just to go back to Tim's post - sounds to me as if the problem is deposits on the screen - maybe wax polish, silicone, old Rain-X or oil. I would go in for a deep clean of the screen before changing blades, but be aware that the blades may be contaminated too now. Try vinegar and newspaper, purpose made screen cleaner or even an aggressive glass polish.

Nothing wrong with SE - the toys on SE-Ls etc are often discussed here - they seem to be a constant source of irritation when they go wrong! 8-year old plus cars with lots of gizmos can be very problematic, even with a Lexus badge! And you won't need to spend a fortune on updating very inadequate sat-nav! Just fit HIDs and adjust the beams - the lights are fine then. And we had a recent discussion here about headlight washers - often people don't use them, or set them as anti-cyclist devices - (very non-politically correct!). And IS250 headlights have a magical ability to stay pretty clean anyway.

And BTW - most of the VIN decoding mentioned on the internet refers to USA VIN numbers and they are different from UK/Europe numbers - completely different format and code meanings (except they both have 17 digits). UK VINs are to ISO 3779 (standard) apparently.