johnatg

There's no inherent reason why stainless exhausts should be noisier than mild steel ones - it's just that stainless ones are often made from much thinner steel than mild steel ones. Likewise with welds - thick stainless can be welded (by an expert) just as well as mild steel. My MX-5 has a Jackson Racing stainless exhaust - MoT testers often say it is the best exhaust (and the most neatly welded) they have ever seen. It has been on the car for the best part of 15 years. Expensive (for a MX-5 exhaust - not in comparison with Lexus ones!). A good stainless exhaust fabricator can make an exhaust to your spec - including the noise it makes. Quieter than standard, just like stock or 'sporty' - up to you and price (although finding a good fabricator may not be easy). If you are anywhere near Macclesfield I can recommend JP Exhausts - I've had various bits and pieces made there - always excellent workmanship. I've often seen Ferraris and such in there having custom exhausts made - usually people wanting quieter than standard 'cos stock Ferrari exhausts are LOUD!

You can reuse the old ones if they are OK. I don't know if new ones are included with Lexus pads - they are not included with aftermarket brands such as EBC. Some types have a sort of rubbery coating on the back of the pads - this is to substitute for the shims. Or you can get a spray can of anti-squeal coating - can't just remember the brand/details. The workshop manual says that the shims should be replaced. Your choice!

Indeed - Belfast is in Northern Ireland, not Ireland. Just buy it, insure and tax it and drive it home. That, obviously, will involve a trip on a ferry. Apart from the ferry, no different from buying a car in London.

It is almost impossible for all electrical systems to fail at once - it would involve multiple fuses blowing. I think this must be down to battery connections, either the battery terminals themselves not being secure - eg can you just pull the terminals off the battery (try it - you might be surprised) or the earth point at the body from the battery -ve terminal may need cleaning and remaking (disconnect the battery before messing with that connection).

I wouldn't (well I wouldn't have a diesel anyway) - if you do, you will fail the MoT for sure at some point. As a result of the VW scandal, testing of diesels for the MoT is bound to get more stringent sooner or later. Then the DPF will be expensive to replace. Not having one when you should is already a MoT fail - people depend on testers not knowing it has been removed - for now. That will change, IMHO.

Correction - actually the day after budget day, which was Wednesday 22nd March 2006. The tax changes took effect from midnight that day, hence cars (manual IS250s) reg on Thursday 23rd March and after were affected. Hope the fog has now lifted completely! :-)

See here: https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables/rates-for-cars-registered-on-or-after-1-march-2001 The crossover date is 23rd March 2006 - manual IS250s registered before that date are band L (£290), on or after that date are Band K (£490). Autos are all band L (although I think maybe some newer ones have gone down a band by reducing CO2 emissions?) Why 23rd March? It was budget day!

Oh - and re brake pad thickness. New rear pads are 10.5mm thickness and minimum 1.0mm, so 2-3mm is pretty much shot but not an MoT fail. (But you'd need to check the inner pads, and if the caliper pins are seized the inner ones could well be more worn) Again, no excuses - EBC Ultimax pads are fine (for the rear) for less than £25 a set - more expensive/upgraded ones are available! They are very easy to fit (once the calipers are sliding freely!).

Sadly, a car which has certainly not had the service attention it deserves (and needs). That air filter is a disgrace - no excuses - a perfectly good Blue Print filter is available for £14.06 on eBay. But I wonder about the other filters - oil, fuel, cabin? And oil changes. And all the other service inspections?. As for the brakes, there is a high probability that the caliper slide pins are seized. They are not even on the Lexus service schedule, but it is critical that the brakes (front and rear) are dismantled annually and the slide pins cleaned and greased. Get that done as an absolute priority. And then - I wonder about the state of the EGR and DPF. I hope that you are going to do serious miles on a motorway with this car. Then with proper service attention you have some hope of keeping it going. Otherwise I'm afraid you could be in for some problems. If only people would come here first - every week an innocent lamb turns up here after being led to slaughter - then you might have bought an IS250! But hopefully you can get some enjoyment from the car without too much expense! Good luck!

And they are indeed just dip!

PS - it's true that the IS250 workshop manual specifies the slotless wrench you've got. But why does the housing incorporate lugs which the wrench doesn't use? I wonder if the tech writers had ever tried to remove an overtightened filter housing..? Mind you, they also specify a particular torque setting - which implies use of a torque wrench - always follow all of the manual! Wrenches with slots are regularly advertised on eBay.

It all comes down to the design of the filter housing and the technique used. If the filter was torqued up correctly and it was last done 5K miles ago or so your slotless wrench will probably work. But if it was last tightened up to FT rather than the correct 18ft lbs it probably won't. (The housing is fairly easy to turn with the wrench until it suddenly becomes hard to tighten any further. Stop at once - if you add a bit of extra ''umf' (which is tempting) it will be too tight!. Preferably use a torque wrench) And the housing seems to tighten up with time since it was last removed. It has very large diameter aluminium threads - not much smaller than the overall diameter of the housing. If they are not driven accurately (ie square rather than a bit tilted) they will bind up and be difficult to unscrew. The slots and lugs ensure that the drive is from close to the thread position and 'square'. I think that the six slot wrenches and four slot ones have exactly the same dimensions and one will not fit better than the other. The six slot one will fit in two positions - the four slot one in only one orientation. But IMHO you must have slots!

I can't see any slots in the one you've got. You need three slots one side, one opposite. But the ones with three either side are OK - the oil filter housing has three lugs one side, one on the other. If you have three slots on both sides, two don't get used but they don't cause any problems.

I noticed in the original description of the jack that it has a rubber pad and that's good. It seems a bit sunk in the saddle, though! You won't do any significant damage using it as is - I wouldn't put anything else between the jack and the car. My jack just has a metal cup like yours - no built in pad. But I have an ice hockey puck trimmed to fit sitting in the saddle - it sticks up more than your pad. (Ice hockey pucks are made of really hard rubber, are just the right size and are dead cheap on ebay!) There isn't really any way to lock the front wheels - you just have to rely on chocks - get bigger ones if you feel the need!

So long as it's not too much of a slope you'll be OK. Just make absolutely sure that the car cannot move. And park in the direction such that the car becomes more level when jacked, rather than sloping more, if you see what I mean - ie the car should be front to downhill when jacking from the front and front to uphill when jacking from the rear. Be specially careful when jacking from the rear - no handbrake action and no in-gear brake so chocks (on the front) doubly important.

If it's on level ground (and you should only jack on level ground) it won't slip. Set the handbrake and chock the back wheels if you're raising the front - even if only with bricks or something.The weight of the car makes for a pretty solid joint between the jack saddle and the cross member of the car. The jack does need to adjust it's position a bit - as the car lifts the jack wheels will creep forward slightly (ie move towards the back of the car if you're going in from the front). That's because the effective length (horizontal) of the jack reduces as the saddle rises. (The arm goes to an angle rather than being level-ish)

I think diff oil is 25K intervals (that's what I do anyway) - same on auto. It's not an interval you need to be too precious about. Re the auto transmission fluid - the refill hole is behind a cover on the left hand side of the box - the cover is secured by two bolts. You do need something which will pump the oil horizontally, but then you need that for the diff oil too.There are two plugs in the oil pan - the drain plug is the rearmost one, the other is an overflow plug and is used to check that the level is correct. There is a bit of a complicated rigmarole for checking the level and on the whole it's probably best not to mess. But having said that auto transmissions do benefit from a fluid refresh after 100K miles or so or if the change becomes jerky. Note that you can only drain 1.5 litres (out of 7.2 litres total) by removing the drain plug, so doing a significant refresh involves quite a few bites at the cherry! There is a strainer between the oil pan and the valve body (ie above the oil pan). But I wouldn't go beyond the drain/refill of 1.5 litres unless there's a definite fault.

Yes. Once you've got the axle stands in place, lower the car on to them then remove the jack.

By 'runabout' you imply short journeys. Absolutely do not buy a 220D or any other diesel with a dpf for that usage.

That will work fine. As long as the saddle is located centrally ( fore and aft and left/right) on the cross member it won't slip.

I have a 2 ton hydraulic trolley jack - 'Master Mechanic' brand - which I've had for a long time! I usually run the car on to two planks of wood first to give a bit more room. I do have ramps but since I had my (imprinted concrete) drive refurbished a little while ago it's too slippery (even with long straps which reach to under the back wheels) and the ramps just slide if I try and drive onto them. I do it from the front. Most garages (when they use a jack - these days they usually have a lift) use a much heavier duty jack which inevitably has a higher saddle at minimum height so they would find it difficult to get in from the front. I see nothing wrong with doing it from the front if you can. And you can do it from the back - saddle under the diff. Machine Mart is a good place if you want to buy a new jack. They have a 85mm min saddle height one, but it's expensive (£102). And an el cheapo 130mm min height one for less than £25.

Here's a sketch of the official jack points: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hpvwkq2ykohmd2n/jack%20points.pdf?dl=0 You need quite a low trolley jack to get under from the front - or run the car up on to ramps or blocks of wood first. BTW - ramps are much safer then a jack - never venture under a car supported by a jack only - at least put axle stands under the side sill jack points

I don't agree that it's primarily the sun which yellows plastic headlamp lenses - not over 9-10 years anyway. It's mainly UV from headlight bulbs which don't have a UV filter (typically cheap high power ones). And I guess the yellowing is more intense on the insides, which means that to restore them properly you need to get the lenses off the light units and reseal them afterwards. Good luck with both of those. Always use branded quality bulbs of standard correct power rating incorporating a UV filter.

Since posting my reply above, I've been reading the current issue (Sept 2015) of 'Car Mechanics' - their resident "Diagnostics Doctor" mentions the walnut shell method as a potential remedy for an intractable problem with a Mitsubishi. Apparently it was developed because it does not need cylinder head removal - the inlet manifold is removed and that and the valves cleaned with the shell abrasive. So it may not be catastrophically expensive. The "Diagnostics Doctor" is a Dave Peacock and I suspect he is half of Peacock and Purvey operating out of Nottingham - might be worth a call. Search with Google!

I think this can be caused by carbon build up on the back of the inlet valves. Thing is, with direct injection engines the valve backs don't get washed by fuel, or by anything you introduce into the fuel.The carbon comes from combustion gases which escape from the cylinders past the valves, and by oil leaking down past the valve stem seals. Opinions vary on whether it's mainly caused by fuel or oil - probably both. The only advice I can offer is to use the best (clean-burning) fuel (Shell V-Power) and change the oil (fully synthetic of course) every 5000 miles. Getting rid of the carbon directly is a very expensive exercise. (It can be done by blasting the valves with ground up walnut shells). Water injection is another possibility - various youtube videos show how to clean engine internals with water - at your own risk! (But my 24 year old MX-5 has water injection (primarily for charge cooling) and it keeps the engine internals spotless!)