johnatg

This morning my tyre pressure warning light came on as soon as I started the car. On checking the display, one of the pressure readings was illuminated in yellow, although it was still transmitting pressure. The pressures were quite low, but I put that down to the low temperature (-6 deg). As I drove the tyre warmed up a bit and the pressures rose - even the one showing a problem. Does this mean that the sensor in that wheel has a low battery? I guess I'll need to get all 4 replaced - the car is 8 years old today. I understand that the batteries can be replaced with a fit of a fiddle - maybe I should get 4 new sensors but keep the old ones with a view to fitting new batteries. Any recommendations, preferably avoiding Lexus dealers? Apologies for the blurry photo - it was long exposure on night vision.

I'd suggest that the wiring to the ABS sensor has been damaged. Replacing the sensor possibly jiggled the wire enough for it to work again for a while. It sounds as if it's the fault of the mechanic who replaced the wheel bearing.

You're lining yourself up for a rip off there. Problem is the 265/35x19 - that's an unusual and expensive size. Go on the Black Circles website and do a search - you'll find a few tyres which more or less match your criteria except for the 'higher' than mid range. You won't get new tyres anywhere else which are significantly cheaper than Black Circles. 2mm is below a safe tread depth for winter. Still legal, just, but tyres, especially on performance cars, should be replaced at 3mm. Other tyre suppliers are available. NB - no connection with Black Circles except as a customer - I find them to be excellent value and efficient.

Trying to get my head round this. Do you mean that the battery was just standing loose in the corner of the boot - secured by what? - the cables? It is absolutely essential that the battery is secured by solid brackets - original or fabricated - so that it cannot move. I repeat - absolutely essential! And loose tools flying around are highly undesirable!

Apologies. I know it's not a laughing matter for you. But really........ I often think that it's only we septuagenarians who actually understand how the world works!

ROTFL! That belongs in the Quora topic - "What is the stupidist thing a mechanic has said about your car" There's nothing special about GS batteries except that they are a bit of an odd size and they have a temperature sensor (stuck on the outside, so not fundamental). Any 12v battery which fits will do. You have a short somewhere. Probably intermittent and due to chafed cables. Or a faulty electrical component with an internal short.

A possibility but who puts a private plate on a 16 year old car? Incidentally, I also run a MX-5 which is 30 years old. I am the 2nd owner except for Mazda Cars who had it registered for 2 days. It's been 16 years with me. Lots of them still around but Mk 1s are very rapidly getting rarer due to rust.

Possible obviously. Just that the disappearance coincided with a due MoT.

I'm posting this because my old IS250, sold 3 years ago, has suddenly disappeared. Story is - car first reg April 2006. I bought it as the third owner in April 2012 at 29750 miles. I p/ex'd it for my GS300h in October 2019 at about 74000 miles. It was in excellent mechanical nick with a few cosmetic blemishes. I've followed it on MoT check now and again and it's passed each year with a few minor advisories since. It was due for a MoT a few days ago. But now it says reg not recognised, nor does it show up on most enquiry sites and registration enquiry sites (there's one where you get a list of all registration numbers issued and still current by a local tax authority for example. It lists URA, URC, URD etc. But no URB, which my car was.) So I speculate that it failed the MoT at a little over 100K miles and was scrapped - could there be another explanation? Is 16+ years a typical life expectancy? More or less? I must say, you don't see that many Mk 2 IS models around day-to-day and even fewer pre-2010 models And Mk 1 IS200 have all but disappeared. What do you think? How long should we expect an IS250 to last? (And extrapolate the answer to GS300h if you like!)

One other thing - vent tubes. Batteries discharge Hydrogen and Oxygen. Without a connected vent tube the hydrogen poses a slight flammability /explosive risk - probably insignificant unless you have a cigarette in your mouth when bending over the battery. (Advice is always not to go near a battery with a naked flame) But the discharged gases carry trace amounts of sulphuric acid - very small with AGM - a bit more with flooded batteries. This would eventually cause corrosion in the battery area. I have seen many MX-5s where it is common for people to fit a flooded battery (instead of the original AGM) and not connect vent tubes. The result is horrible corrosion after a few years. If there are vent holes in both ends of the battery, fit tubes to both vents and T them together. Windscreen washer tubes and fittings are handy. Vent tubes are not usually fitted when a battery is under the bonnet - but check out any old Ford! (or others)

My battery is now more than 8 years old so this is a subject of interest to me - so I've done a bit more research. I should have said that the original battery is Panasonic S65D26L - the L refers to the terminal layout. There is a temperature sensor mounted in a cut-out in the corner of the top of the case. The battery has no hold down ledges at the bottom of the case. 068 batteries generally do and that is why they don't fit properly. You need to modify the battery (by cutting off the ledges) or the tray. So far as I can tell the only batteries which fit properly and have the temperature sensor are the Panasonic and Yuasa equivalent. Both are available from various sources but cost at least £250 - I think the best current price is from Lexus Parts Direct. They don't actually specify the make of battery, but the diagram looks like the Panasonic. There are several sources, particularly for the Yuasa version, and various prices. Someone posted here that you can buy a battery from Toyota dealers at a lower price - I don't know if that is actually the exact Panasonic or something different The Hankook battery I mentioned does appear to have bottom edge hold down ledges which may need cutting off. If you are fitting a battery other than the Panasonic or Yuasa you need to remove the temperature sensor from the original battery - apparently this is pretty difficult but it can be prised off and glued to the new battery. Or you could just not attach it to the battery but that's obviously a compromise. The new battery should be a AGM type - that is for safety in the event of a crash because it won't drip acid. A wet (flooded) battery will work perfectly well but you have the risk - slight though it may be. The GS hybrid boot is fairly well separated from the passenger cabin though. Note that a wet battery will be a 068 type and won't quite fit properly. There are various other AGM batteries (described as 068 or S65D26L or both) which don't have the temperature sensor (eg Hankook, Power Plus) and which cost just over £100. Wet 068 batteries are available from about £65. Any battery other than the Panasonic or Yuasa involves a compromise - your choice!

If you go onto the RAC website you'll find they don't do a suitable battery for a GS300h /GS450h. And that's typical for many battery etc places.

I'd agree that there's nothing mysterious about the battery but it's not quite as simple as that. The original is a Panasonic S65D26 - the case size is D26 (A JIS (Japanese Industrial Standards) spec). The S65 refers to the electrical spec. These batteries are available - eg on ebay - there's one listed at about £290. There's a Yuasa equivalent available from mdsbattery.co.uk for about £309 - so they are expensive. They are AGM batteries - there's a lot of discussion on here about whether that's necessary with the consensus being that it's not. Be aware though that when batteries are mounted in the boot by manufacturers they are almost invariably AGM. The D26 case size is almost, but not quite the same as our 068 battery. There are reports on here of versions of them being a little too big but the main thing is that they usually have 'superstructure' which goes up to the level of the top of the terminals - I worry that this makes the case too high to fit like the original. 068 batteries are themselves unusual and often not stocked. The case size is the same as the more common 069 but the terminals are the other way round. I would think that you could fit a Bosch 068 battery, for example, but be sure to fit the vent tube. If I was buying a new battery just now I think I would go for a Hankook AXS65D26L (https://www.batterymegastore.co.uk/product/hankook-axs65d26l-dual-purpose-agm-battery/). That doesn't have the superstructure, it's AGM and has the vent hole. It's £113.46 at time of typing. The temperature sensor can just be swapped over. As long as you disconnect the old battery in the correct order (negative terminal first) and reconnect the new one correctly (positive terminal first) I don't think you will have any electrical problems. Your dust does worry me - my battery is about 6 months older than yours and is spotless. Maybe your car has had some very dirty/dusty stuff carried in the boot?

Plenty of alternatives and most do ship from UK. Just do an ebay search.

Smells from A/C come from bacterial growth on the condenser. If you get them you need to set off an aircon 'bomb' to sterilise the system.

So - why do I think that the fuel economy of Lexus GS/IS hybrids is more down to the CVT gearbox and less to the hybrid power train? That's not the popular perception of hybrid cars but that's because of politics and marketing. Let's like at what fuel consumption is - it is based on the transfer of chemical energy into kinetic energy in the vehicle. In hybrids, regenerative braking and spare engine power transfer some kinetic energy and chemical energy (petrol) into chemical energy in the traction battery. That can then be used later to boost the kinetic energy in the vehicle, either by reducing the amount of petrol needed at any one time or to add to the power available from the engine to aid acceleration. But the hybrid battery capacity is very small and you can watch its power reserve plummet quickly when called on for acceleration. (And equally you can watch its power available increase rapidly - even from near empty to near full when descending even a small hill.) The amount of petrol being used at any one time depends on a number of things - the capacity and design of the engine, throttle opening and engine revs. Politicians and the green lobby want us to reduce the amount of petrol consumed and car manufacturers have gone about building this requirement into their ice vehicles in various ways. Current fashion is to use every small engines, which intrinsically use very little fuel on cruise. But then they add forced induction (mainly turbo charging but also supercharging or both) to increase power when needed for acceleration. Mondeos (RIP) and Range Rovers with 1 litre engines, anyone? I suspect that long term durability is very much an issue. Lexus took a different approach - use a relatively big old lazy engine and run it at low revs and small throttle openings. You don't need much power (and therefore petrol) to trundle a vehicle along at 30 mph - my wife's Seat Mii runs at about 1750 rpm at 30 mph - (that's not even on the power curve even on its little 1 litre engine) and is probably making about 20bhp or less. That's all you need - a GS is going to need a bit more but not much, until you open the throttle to accelerate and then the revs go up and the petrol starts pouring in. See current fuel consumption on the dash display! It's true that the amount of petrol required at that point is reduced by the boost available from the hybrid battery, but see the comment about how small the hybrid battery capacity is. The revs all depend on gearing. The great benefit of a CVT gearbox is that it's always in the 'correct' gear. If you engage S mode on a motorway you can observe your engine revs - and you will find you can cruise at 70mph at about 1700 rpm on a level road. That is remarkable and not achievable with a manual or normal automatic gearbox unless you had many more available gears than is practical. (Not many people would want to drive an 18 speed manual as in Australian road trains etc) But at 1700 rpm and a moderate throttle opening you are using very little fuel - and that is why CVT gearboxes enable impressive fuel economy. You will observe 50-60 mpg instantaneously in cruise. At 70mph on a motorway the hybrid battery is doing little or nothing - but it will help some when you come to a hill or need to accelerate after a slow down. Meanwhile, more recent hybrids (and plug-in hybrids) have a large capacity traction battery and can achieve substantial range on that battery. The GS and IS hybrid ranges are now 15-20 year old designs (from the drawing board) - you might argue that the origins are even older in the Prius. Electric vehicle technology has moved on by leaps and bounds so I'm afraid our cars are now rather outdated (but well proven technology). Which isn't to say that I won't be keeping my car for a long time yet!

I think that's about right. I get in the range 36 - 42mpg - the higher figure on long motorway runs. It's a big heavy car - I don't know that you can reasonably expect much more. The battery is pretty small by current hybrid car standards - the range on electric is very small - less than 2 miles and only at slow speed. The hybrid/traction battery is there to boost acceleration. Incidentally my view is that the fuel economy is down to the CVT gearbox, not the hybrid power set-up. For the size and weight of the car, I think you would be lucky to get 25-28mpg with a normal ice petrol power train, so to get 50% more is pretty good really. I'll expand on that sometime and explain why I think that and what my evidence is.

There's nothing special about Lexus aircon. Any competent operator with the correct machine can do it. Google Groupon ats aircon and get a voucher to have it done by ATS Euro master for £37.99. Check that an ATS branch near you is accepting the coupon - not all do. Offer may expire soon.

October to December

Somewhat surprisingly, there are more Mk 4 GS450h Premiers (~275) like yours, Robert, than GS300h Premiers (~240) The majority (161) of GS450h Premiers were registered in 2012/2013 then very few each year after that (25, 25, 35, 17, 11, 3 up to 2019.) Numbers approximate and net - some were clearly destroyed!

There were only 13 GS300h Premier registered in 2013 (all in Q4). There are currently about 240 Premier versions registered in UK. (all years 2013-2019) I've got one (2014, Reg December) Meteor Blue.

Those are four very different cars, each with their advantages and disadvantages. Might be good to investigate to match what you want. Most for sale in UK are advertised on Autotrader.

It sems to me to be a bit odd to lump all those service items together. If you stick to the recommended intervals you don't need them together - eg Air filter (Interval 40K miles), Plugs (60K), Coolant (100K then 50K). If my arithmetic is correct the first time you need them all is at 600K miles! I suppose if you bought a high mileage car with no service history you might want to do the whole lot and start again. And oil. Nearly £150 for 7 litres? Come on - buy 10 litres and keep the 3 and a bit for next time. Anyway, there's a lot of nonsense written about oil. If it meets the specs, that's all you need. Maybe one brand is 'better' than another - but you won't notice. I used GM Dexos2 over several years but I've recently switched to Mannol. I've been thinking about what to do about my GS300h major service, due imminently. Lexus want £630 - it takes them about an hour to do (a couple of years ago I had it done while I waited at Lexus Stockport). What I have done is bought 5 Litres of Mannol 0w20 Legend Ultra, 2 Blue Print Oil filters (a deal - one for next time) and a Blue Print Carbon Pollen filter all for less than £45 (BTW Nothing wrong with Blue Print - I've used them on and off for the last 30 years with no problems. They are part of Febi Bilstein these days) (My GS300h only needs 4 and a bit litres of oil) I don't get the Lexus warranties 'tis true, but I've got nearly £600 in my pocket. And I still enjoy doing my own spannering - at least I know it's been done correctly! YMMV!

I think you misunderstood what they said. Larger wheels give a worse ride (not because of the tyres - because of the size of the wheels) Lower profile tyres cause a worse ride (less rubber and air to flex) Two different things but they work in unpredictable ways in conjunction. The design of the tyres plays a part too. And ride is not just down to tyres - the suspension design, shock absorbers and springs all play a significant part. All relative to the weight of the car. So there are lots of different factors at work. Altering one or more may have an effect, but it may also have consequences - eg softer (lower pressure) tyres - slightly better ride, higher fuel consumption, lower grip. Softer springs - softer ride, worse handling. Ditto shock absorbers. It's a compromise between lots of different factors.

Drive each window up and down with its own switch - ie the one on the door, not the switch on the driver's door. Pause holding down the switch when the window is fully closed for a couple of seconds.