Steve44

They are symmetric beam, so dont need adjusting or any beam benders added etc.

Rabbers, my wife is loving the high temp, but I am slowly melting! We visited both Ferrari museums today in Modena and Maranello and it hit 40c, thank God for the excellent air con in the Lexus and the ventilated seats! Found that various bits of trim are deadly when hot though, center console and seatbelt buckles especially. Also saw 4 Lexus today, 1 LS, 1 CT, 1 ES (i think) and an IS, all Italian registered. A rare breed indeed. Amazed by the number of old Fiat Pandas still being used down here, as well as the general craziness of Italian drivers. Start the journey back home on Sunday, will miss the food and the people.

Couple of things to check 1) What phone are you using? I found some android phones better than others, probably to do with the bluetooth version integration in the phone. Is it one which Lexus have tested/approve? 2) Is the software in the car on the latest version - I did suffer from echo's (reported by people at the other end, now gone on later versions) 3) Can you reduce the transmission volume when on a call? I used to try and reduce the outgoing volume by -2 which helped a bit.

DJP - myself and my wife have done a 3wk driving tour of northern California, Nevada, Arizona etc as our honeymoon. This included driving from San Fran to Monterey down Highway 1, a stunning road and scenery. We also stayed in Yosemite (watch out for bears), Death Valley (55C during the day not pleasant, finally found somewhere too hot for the wife), Grand Canyon, Monument valley, and Las Vegas. All spectacular scenery and highly recommended, easy to see at a sedate 55mph too. Definitely recommended, though in a convertible might be too much as the sun and temp is scorching. Trick is to not plan to drive too long each day - 150-200miles (4hrs or so) is enough and allow plenty time for visiting places along the way that are your wife's choices.

As a comparison, I'm also on the latest version and whilst I don't think there are no real big issues with it now compared to earlier releases, it still isn't perfect. I use a 160GB Ipod classic and it is better now, less crash prone than it was and podcasts for me work perfectly. Phone is good and the echo I had reported on the other end appears to have gone. The SatNav bit is ok too - as an aside, travelling through Europe this past week with it, it has been a constant source of amusement that while the sat nav instructions have continued with the normal female english voice, the local place names have been read out in the language of the country, with their pronunciations etc. Some have been funny, others virtually in-decipherable!

So, here I am in Scarperia, Tuscany (next door to Mugello circuit for Petrol heads!), after 1200mls of pan European driving. Lexus has performed admirably, cruising at between 110 and 140kph and returning approx 46mpg. Only had one road issue, where an elderly gentleman in his older Mercedes almost wiped us out as we overtook him and he decided to overtake a truck, on the autoroute in Belgium. I've also not seen another Lexus (IS, CT, RX, NX anything) since we left UK, not one, you European guys are really a select bunch. Drove 2 interesting roads on the route here. 1) Epinal to Mulhouse on E512 through the Parc de Vosges - the downhill descent had us on EV for most of the 15km or so and the battery max'd out full. 2) Gottard pass in Switzerland - the tunnel queues were long southbound on Saturday, so we took the old N2 road and wound our way up the pass to Gotthard (spectacular views and road, highly recommended), where we stopped for a bratwurst. Downhill section on the other side was interesting, again battery max'd out and on EV for most of the way, except for trying to slow the descent down, as the road is wide and sweeping, so using the paddles to run in D3 or D4 to keep it in check at between 80-100kph. Car is now absolutely filthy including being divebombed by birds crapping cherry stones on it,need to find somewhere local to wash it off, though it drys so quick in 36deg heat!

Could be another bug. Are you on the latest Nav software? Can't say I've ever noticed this, though I know the phones where texts have displayed on the car, they don't update on the phone if you read them in the car.

Thanks for the info Michael/Tel, I've got an apartment in a villa booked via Airbnb in Scarperia for a week and we have 5 days to get there, a week there and 4 days to get back again. Route I've got on way there is Leicester - Eurotunnel - Saint Omer - Verdun - Mulhouse - San Bernadino Pass - Milan - Scarperia de San Piero. On the way back, I've still not booked any hotels, so route back is still up in the air, much to the wife's annoyance - This isn't the first time doing a pan-euro tour such as this. About 7yrs ago, we did - Leicester - Eurotunnel - Haselt - Zwickau (for the MotoGP in Sachsenring) - Feldkirch - Verona - Bologna - Florence - Lyon - London - Leicester. Took in all the petrolhead sites in Italy - Ferrari World in Maranello, Lamborghini Factory tour in St Agata, Ducati factory tour in Bologna, plus we did the opera in Verona (know what you mean about sore behinds Michael, especially after the amphitheatre has been backed during the day at 35C), the Duomo in Florence and the Uffizi art museum. We had a great time and we are looking forward to this trip to. I've got all the hiViz jackets, warning triangle and bulb pack from an old Astra to show anyone who can care. Car is a company car, so in event of problem it has european recovery. Better start packing and sorting out the last minute bits too...... hope those french port workers don't continue to throw a spanner in the works with the crossing. :tsktsk:

Great stuff Tel. Myself and wife are off to Italy on 8th July via France and Switzerland for a 2 week holiday. 2nd time driving the continent, 1st time with the Lexus. Couple of questions. How did you handle the spare bulbs requirement? What were you paying for petrol on your trip? What route did you take?

Ah, confusion explained, I thought you were moving from a newish IS250 to a IS300h. Not aware of any way you could do this then.

It's the brakes, not the suspension. Sorry, yes it is the brakes creaking, not the suspension. The IS is pretty bad about this though, there was another thread on here which talked more about it.

On the Premium Nav - you can export saved destinations in the memory to USB, then reimport them into the new one. You don't say which trims you are moving between, I would expect this only works between same Nav versions.

it's not particularly good - BMW N20 in current 328 is approx 140kg. I'm pretty sure Lexus could have pushed the output further if they wanted to, but given the more relaxed/refined nature of the brand, I'm sure it fits those values well. However, for a company that seems to want to push the envelope with tech and engineering expertise, it doesn't really hit it for me. Yes it combines turbo charging with variable Atkinson cycle etc, but if it was really ground breaking, then emissions would be below 140g/km or MPG would be 50 for the same power output. It's all very middling.

The brake by wire, regeneration braking I'm still not used to after 26k miles. It still catches me out sometimes where the car doesn't slow quickly enough to a given pedal pressure. Brakes on mine had fluid changed at 24k service and rebled which improved things slightly. I also think light braking g can glaze the pads and an occasional hard braking session is needed to sort them out. The modulation between regen and actual brakes is computer controlled and for me could be better. It is a hard thing to do well, just look at the F1 guys doing the same in their cars on the limit and how much time and money is spent trying to perfect it. Regards the suspension creaking, they all do it on the transition of coming to a stop or creeping, the IS seems particularly bad at this.

Very nice, pity the emissions/economy are so high. Seems to be pitched between the BMW 328i (245bhp 145g/co2) and 335i (305bhp 170g/co2). I'm guessing on the price being £39K+, based on NX200t cost. Wonder if they will do it in a range of trims or just F-Sport?

Company car should be on 12k service intervals. you can check in the settings on the main unit, on mine it is Setup/Info/Maintenance, your dealer should have set this up before you got the car, mine did but put in 10k details! you can set a whole load of other reminders for tyres, brakes, wipers........... 49-52mpg @ 80mph on motorway is good. If you drop that to a steady 70mph with cruise control in Eco mode, you should see an easy 55-60mpg. Bear in mind petrol is cheaper than diesel, so you are quids in anyway! Door locks, is there not a setting in the setup menu, where you can change what happens with the door locks? i.e unlocking opens just the drivers door, or all doors. All doors lock on shift away from P, or over 12mph, doors unlock when shift back to P, or only drivers door unlocks etc. Mine has this setting. I have it set to all doors unlock when I open the car, doors lock above 12mph and unlock when I shift to Park.

There's plenty of ways to connect your phone the car for data streaming. Only problem is where as BMW allows for Internet browsing, apps, spotify intergration, email etc once connected, on the Lexus you can do hardly anything. Apart from Google street view, which as my wife points out, you can just look out of the window :) BMW also charge a subscription for internet access and some of their connected services after between 1 and 3 years from first activation. Some of the forum comments from BMW users says it is crap too! I can stream spotify and tuneinradio over Bluetooth using my phone. The ability to Google search for a hotel or new building from the Sat nav and navigate directly too it is good. It makes up for the poor search for POI's in the nav unit. The traffic updates are pretty good too, it is the same service/data as BMW use for their RTTI . Overall, it is good for me and I make use of the features.

Been out in the car again today and a few mods to what I had above. Grey is for minor roads and residential streets, B, C class etc. Yellow is for A class roads and main streets. Red is for major trunk roads, single carriageway. White with a thin red outline is dual carriageways. Yellow with a thin red outline is motorways. Blue is your route on the Sat nav, regardless of the road type or colour. Traffic conditions are added to the outside of roads, with arrow indicating direction and colour of green for all good, orange for congestion and dark red for major incident. If you only have traffic updates over TMC on the radio, then the coverage on roads can be patchy, if you have connected services and online traffic, it is generally more widespread across more roads, both directions and even roundabouts and junctions. When you have a route set and traffic info displayed, then the road colours can be hard to see, especially when you are zoomed out. Got to say, it's not consistent, as I have 2 sets of dual carriageway near me, the A46 and A50. One is just red, the other is white with red border?!?

Yellow is normal A roads. White with red thin border seems to be dual carriageway A roads. Motorways are purple I think? Blue is your route on the Sat nav. Traffic indication, green is all good, down through purple, dark brown and red for varying degrees of problem. That's what I can see/remember.

Carpet mats should be std. Rubber ones do come with the protection pack, not sure if they were meant to fit on top of the carpet ones or in place of them, but if replaced,I would think you should have got the carpet ones as well with the car as they are std. Protection pack is a dealer fit pack I think. Was your car bought new or used?

I'm surprised your Premier has rubber mats, thought it would have carpet ones? My F-Sport came with Lexus fitted carpet mats as std. Pretty sure the Premier I had as a courtesy car came with carpet mats too. Sure someone has swapped them before you got the car??

Check your car software version by clicking on menu/setup/general settings/software update. Read off the code beginning VC##### or VD###### Ask at the dealer, it only takes 10mins to do and it should be free, though they might not do it while you wait.

Stolen off the forecourt, or not returned from a demo?

1. Not seen this , but I had this on previous releases. I'm now using a HTC One (M7) running Android Lollipop V5.03. What phone have you got BB? 2. This only works for me in this release. I'm using a 160GB Ipod classic V7, with about 3k tracks - 40GB of music in it. 3. This has been poor for me, but I'm not really impressed at all with the Lexus routing, does seem a bit weird what it does and I've had issues with it trying to route me down closed roads and getting itself completely flumoxed in heavy traffic. I get the Voice activation is initialising, but I can always quick jump in the menu using the ABC buttons etc. What Ipod type are you trying to use? The latest software releases sound really really buggy. I have to say I'm suprised at how quickly Lexus are releasing software updates for the nav/phone system. Our car came with version 'D', have to say the only time its crashed was when the iPod crashed, so nothing to do with the car. I think I'll be leaving our car on version 'D' for a good while later, hopefully Lexus will start to release stable software builds, rather than beta versions. Gangzoom - you're 4 versions behind currently and IMO the latest version is a marked improvement in stability of connection over bluetooth and USB to Ipod compared to previous, plus the speed of operation of the system is super quick, no laggy graphics or feeling like you are navigating through custard on the interface. I'd say there is no reason not to upgrade, as each time they seem to have fixed some things, not introduced anything different or new afaik. I'm impressed they are even updating it, my previous vauxhall didn't get one update in 4yrs and it had some significant drawbacks too.

IN DAB screen, use the manual button, then scroll through the Ensemble button to find the collections of stations. The service buttons below, then allow you to scroll through the selection of stations in an ensemble. Couple of other tips - pressing the Radio hard button under the CD slot, cycles through the various radio options - AM/FM/DAB - and quick jumps you to the radio screen if you are in any other screen. The Media hard button does the same for Bluetooth, Ipod, USB, AV etc. You can change the order of them in the source menu on the main screen. The other knob (not the volume one) has various functions depending on which screen you are in or which button you've selected. If you are on DAB presets, turning it will cycle through the preset stations you have saved. If you are in DAB Stations, turning it will cycle through each station it can see - it does it through the stations in the each ensemble it can see. If you are in DAB manual, then it will scroll through all the ensembles and stations it can receive. This is similar for FM and AM too. The up/down arrow buttons on the steering wheel do the same thing as this knob, as do the left/right arrow (or seek) hard buttons on the center console, or you can use the remote touch (mouse) or rotary input too. 4 different ways to do this seems excessive Lexus! Page 200 onwards of the Navi manual if you have Premium Nav, page 339 of the main IS manual otherwise.