catnap

Same. £107 last night again at Esso which is frustrating but what can you do. I think it's about £6 a tank difference at the moment.

No, that's true. I do wonder if that plastic basket and O-ring slowly deteriorate in ethanol which is why they were changed at the exact time the E10 cutover is noted.

Total cost for all parts from Amayama is £328.76. Not horrible, but if you work out the 10p difference a litre between E5 and E10 over a tank (£6.50), it'd take 50 tanks to recoup the cost which is 19,600 miles assuming 400 per tank. So it's not entirely viable. That said, if you were to buy the two fuel rails from a wrecked 2009 (to be safe) onwards car, you could save £200 on that cost. Let's assume you get the rails for £50. That's 11,000 miles or 27 tanks to recoup the cost. It's curious that Toyota didn't recall the IS250 in Europe- only Thailand and the US. Thailand seems to be specifically because of the low-moisture content ethanol used over there, and the US was because there was a "possibility" it "may occur" due to the ions generated by the injectors. Perhaps this is overly cautious due to the litigious nature of the US. I might write to Lexus and see if I can get any clarification on the matter. Part of me still hopes it's just those two fuel tank components I listed, but perhaps not. At least there's some clarification and a collection of knowledge on the subject now.

Excellent, thanks Colin. I've done quite a lot of reading and comparing the EPC on TIS to Amayama and the rest. I note that the fuel rails have a revision from 2008 onwards. The recall was Jan 2009, and the replacement part was August 2008 to August 2010, then 2010 onwards. That date range might work if the part was changed before the recall plan was officially ready. So there's a few parts that changed, as the TSB noted. However, the Lexus EPC agrees with Amayama and my observation that two parts within the fuel pump assembly change in October 2007- the same parts as previously noted. So in order to be certain, I would assert that the parts needed in the TSB plus these two are needed, and then the car is fine to run on E10 indefinitely. I will total everything up at Amayama to get a feel of how expensive this would be, assuming someone chooses to do this DIY, which seems quite doable for intermediate+ skill level. The only issue I see with this is that the part number did not change so you cannot be assured of receiving the newer part.

Great, I'll have a look. Comparing the EPCs I have to your source (toyodiy.com) shows identical information though it's laid out differently. The same two components within the fuel pump basket change (plastic carrier and O-ring) so I stand by my assumption that these two items are also needed for E10, given that they change at the exact date when the vehicles became certified. If I find the TSB and the associated part numbers, I'll post back.

Okay, that's really interesting. Do you know where the TSB can be found? I've been tempted to hop onto TIS lately to grab PDFs of the workshop manual (as I had with my IS300) as it's so useful to have. Are TSBs viewable on there? If you can share your reliable EPC as well I'd be very interested to have a look and see if there are differences between it and Amayama etc.

I have to disagree with this- and I should point out that I'm happy to be proven wrong on my theory, but hear me out: The fuel delivery pipes (23803-31013) were changed in November 2006, which is before my vehicle was made (June 2007) and apply to vehicles made from the very first production run until that date. However, the cars were certified for E10 use changed in October 2007 (according to Lexus and the government website checker). Thus, if this were true then my vehicle should be approved for E10 which it is not. It will already have the updated fuel pipes, which the dealer just confirmed with me on the phone a few minutes ago- it does, and that has not certified it. Is it therefore not more likely that the fuel delivery pipe issue was a general problem/recall that was fixed (because they were faulty and could not withstand any amount of ethanol rather than a small amount), and the parts changing in October 2007 as posted above are the actual problem parts that enable the use of E10? Looking at the fuel pipes recall and pointing to that as the cause of the E10 issue is not much more than correlation, especially as the dates don't match up. I would also point out that the fuel rails did not change- only the crossover delivery pipe between the two rails. Neither did the pump- there have been zero revisions to it that I can see. Again, happy to be proven wrong- but this isn't solid, hard proof. I'm aware that I don't have that either, but I do have to disagree on the fuel pipes theory for the reasons above. I'm also happy to discover a new, reliable EPC that has correct data but until then, the two sources I've posted are identical.

Please provide a link to a reliable EPC then, as Amayama use the same as these guys: https://lexus-europe.epc-data.com/is250_220d/gse20r/2912/ Also, the E10 changeover for the 250 was in October 2007, otherwise my car would be certified for E10 as it is a June 2007 model.

I don't know actually, though I did a Freedom of Information request to the DVLA for numbers of the previous generation of cars as I was curious how rare my green 300 Sportcross was (turns out; quite rare) so I might do one for the 2nd generation in the future. But yes, good point. I wonder if the 220d was as affected by E10? I don't even know if they put E10 in diesel.

You're absolutely correct. I was using the bottom right button to change between parallel park and "bay" modes, but didn't realise the left button switches modes within those choices. I'm going to leave this post up as a reminder to people to not overlook the basics before jumping to a conclusion about a problem! Thanks!

The other day I had a look around in the hidden service menu to see what's in there but I didn't do anything in the camera menu apart from see what's displayed, then exit out. Since then, the reversing camera guide lines are messed up and I can't get it back to working again: (apologies for quality, it's difficult to shade the screen) I went back into the service menu and used the "memorize steering centre" and "memorize max steering angle" buttons and got it working but as soon as you exit it's messed up again: Does anyone know how to recover from this or what I'm doing wrong?

October 2007 and onwards IS250s are able to use E10 and the compression ratio hasn't changed between these.

I'd caution against this correlation being pointed to as a cause, as the high pressure fuel pump (and all parts connected to it) are not listed as having changed in 2007. There was a revision in 2006 but this doesn't match up in the timeline and is likely a very early part revision for the first run of the cars: Only the two parts I posted are showing as having had revisions in 2007, specifically October. It's entirely possible that it's only the type of plastic used for the pump basket and the associated gasket material not being up to spec for withstanding E10, but I don't want to call this discovery a fix or the definitive answer to this question. There may, of course, be things that changed that aren't listed but I can't verify that. [Edit] To add- the in-tank pump itself did not see a revision. It's the plastic basket that contains the components within the tank that was revised- linked in a previous post.

I've noticed a mild MPG increase but that might simply be because I'm being extra careful. Last night I put 56L in for a grand total of £107 which made me wince at the pump. I'm now logging in Fuelly to see if there's a significant change or not. One thing I do need to do is keep an eye on the knock correction learned values in Techstream which indicate if the car's happy with the fuel type and advancing the timing as far as it can. The lower-grade E10 fuel might force the car to retard timing a bit, losing a small amount of power. Apparently a few wide-open pulls to redline are enough to update the value automatically. Agreed about E10 being a bit of a useless "fix" to the perceived problem. It sounds political so don't get me started on that. My wife works for a fuel company (local to the South East) and some of the senior people there have opined that E10 doesn't make a blind bit of sense. They were offering E0 as their standard which attracted a lot of classic car users, but once the summer's over they may not be able to supply it anymore as it's getting unprofitable for them. I think they have one tanker's worth to get through then they'll have to make a decision. Shame really as I was relying on that fuel to keep me going!

Maybe I should offer my services as a "technical expert" 🤔