Linas.P

I remember this case now. Did you get anything from Lexus considering their head was clearly defective? As for the problem now - sorry to say it, but you have car with "known bad engine", so all bets are off... could it be failed oil pump, yes... at this point it could be literally anything. When camshaft was split it could have easily shot metal pieces all over the engine and seized or damaged oil pump. I mean that is speculation, but again with known history of this engine it could be anything. If I were you I would look for used engine rather than trying to fix this one, it needs full rebuild and very careful inspection of every part, just can't see it being financially viable to fix it (the engine itself), when used ones starts at just £300 and rebuilding would require engine out anyway.

No it won't, the answer plausible deniability - "I don't know what was or wasn't under the bumper". Do you really believe insurance knows what parts are under the bumper? Even can they expect a person to know what exists and don't exist under "the skin" of the car... no. People should stop having this paranoia of "all knowing insurance" as it it is some sort of god. Why am I saying this? Because I had 4 accidents (all of which was not my fault), but in one my car was written-off. Did insurance inspected my car even once? NO! Did insurance tried to scam me over the pay out? YES... every single time. I actually had discussion with insurance regarding few different points anonymously e.g. does the mk3 wheels on mk2 counts as mod, does facelift headlights counts as mod etc. And they always said NO. The car has to be road legal, that is key point and as far as cosmetic mods are concerned - they don't care unless you want them covered as part of the policy. Well that is at least insurance brokers I used. Thigs like this foam can simply be missing from the car and insurance won't be able to prove it either way... maybe mechanic took off the bumper to replace the headlight and forgotten to put it in... nobody would ever know. "Energy Absorber Foam" is not legal requirement, nor regulation, it just happens to be fitted by Lexus - is car road legal without it? YES it is, so it cannot be denied cover for not having one. Telling anything to the insurance is same as asking to stay 20 years in prison just in case you decide to murder somebody at some point, you get punished right away regardless of what it is. As soon as you say car has mod, you are automatically on the different level and pay double or triple the price even if the "mod" is just a sticker. So be very mindful of what needs to be declared - performance mods (if obvious) say IS350 engine in the bay of IS250 should be declared... anything else should not be declared unless very obvious AND safety related e.g. blacked headlights or tail lights are both obvious and safety related, because if you happen to have a crash at night, other party may claim they could not see you coming (and rightly so). But some piece of foam under the bumper is not that. I am not saying you are wrong, but declaring this to insurance would be nit-picking of the highest degree. If the broker is somewhat honest they may even tell you-off and say "look I don't want to know about it, because I won't be able offer you good price".

Yes but you talking about oil additives here, not fuel additives. I started using oil additives on IS250 as well, mainly to do with sticking valve lifters and noisy VVTI... not only it makes cold starts quieter and engine overall smoother it as well makes economic sense and it is somewhat proven to work, but oil has completely different purpose in car than petrol. On top of that £15 once a year on oil additive makes economical sense and results are noticeable, whereas £6-15 on top of every tank of petrol and no noticeable results is much harder to justify... I would not be surprised if 90% of the stuff is "snake oil".

2AD-FHV is diesel (IS220d), as well oil burning is not the same as lack of pressure, besides IS250 is about average compared to other cars, nor really worse. @Ben774 - not heard of pump failure being common issue, however Lexus diesels are prone to all sorts of issues, head gaskets etc. so if engine has issues in the past, like head gasket and oil was mixed with coolant, then engine was fixed, I would not be surprised if that affected reliability of oil pump. Why do you think there is no oil pressure? Could it be a sensor which is faulty?

Ok - so worst case scenario, it burns ~1.8L of Magnatec every 7k miles. That would be well within acceptable range. What is the mileage? All in all, I found that my IS250 quite liked sipping Magnatec, so potential solution is to go for Edge or Mobil1 XL.

Filter keeps ~0.6L, so it is important to consider whenever the drain includes filter or not. Assuming it is 10k miles service 5.5L would be well within normal, to be fair Lexus has ridiculous limits - something like a quart (0.95L) every 1000 miles. So 0.8L over 10k is very healthy engine. My old one toward 200k miles (so sort of after 160k) was burning ~ 1L between services, as I always used to have small bother of Magnatec in the boot. As well it would be burning noticeably more towards the end of, so maybe 0.2L for first 6k miles and then 0.8L for second 6k miles. That said I simply switched to 6k mile service intervals thereafter and oil burning pretty much disappeared or it was too little to notice. 10k miles is actually a lot for the oil and I do not recommend it, 6k miles are much more appropriate (that is as well what Lexus would do all across metric world 10k kilometres). Other thing to note - depends on the oil, Magnatec or whatever standard oil Lexus was using would be as I said ~1L per 10k miles, but I had Mobil 1 Extra Long life 0W40 once and it did not burn anything at all. Other important thing to note - oil has to be checked regularly, at least every other fill-up, which in my case would have been once a month when I was driving more. Few times this saved me, because I realised service has underfilled the oil. In such case not only you start with less oil, but it burns quicker when amount is insufficient and if it is left unchecked between the services this can result in very sad outcome.

Yes, you probably right here - the black foam should be trimmed for full mk3 replacement kit. But that would not be something I would tell insurance about anyway. It is actually called "Energy Absorber Foam".

Just to be clear, the bumper and grille would be Lexus OEM part, so see no reason to declare this to insurance. The only part which would be "modification" would be front lip, but that would be massive nit-picking. If one would go for full front end replacement with mk3, then it probably would be a thing which needs to be considered, but being cosmetic I would argue - only inform insurance if in case of accident you want to claim the cost of modification i.e. if you spend £2000 on getting it done and cars is only worth £6000, then in case of an accident you may want to insure that extra modification of £2000, because if it is not declared, then insurance won't pay for it under any circumstances. Although that said do your own research - I am not a layer, this is simply what I would do with my experience dealing with insurance. As for trimming "shock absorbers" (I assume springs) that is very bad idea so I am not sure where this suggestion is coming from and why.

According to Lexus, it is only after 2007, that is starting with 07 or 57 plate. Before 2007 cars are not compatible. This is apparently due to some rubber seals which are not rated for ethanol, but it is speculation because if you compare the part number before and after 2007 there is no difference, so who knows. Lexus does not provide specifics of what and why isn't compatible. https://mag.lexus.co.uk/e10-petrol/ Now again, my personal opinion - I will use E10 without worry, despite my recent purchase is 2006/02 registered IS250 on 55 plate. I have driven my previous IS250s on not only E10, but even E85 without any issues (although namely two of them were 2010, 2012, but the one I had the longest and used E85 the most was 2006). As a matter of fact majority of Europe uses E85 and the only issues is fuel consumption, because E85 is not as energy dense. In IS250 in particular consumption is not that bad - 5-10% higher than pure petrol, but I assume the maximum power output is lower e.g. I was not able to reach same top speed on autobahn on E85 as I did with pure petrol. For normal driving it was not noticeable, but for top speed it was instantly noticeable, especially as I had one tank right after the other. So I reckon ECU detects different fuel and adjusts timing in a way that it uses just slightly more fuel, but makes slightly less power. To get same power or even more power on E85 one needs to have forced induction and bigger injectors - as E85 has higher octane (less likely to pre-detonate) many drag racers and tuners really like it, as provided fuel injection volume is not an issue they can run loads of boost and make huge power. But for daily driving this is not a benefit, only detriment. E10 is actually better in that aspect - ethanol could be used as injector cleaner, so not sure what would you use injector cleaner on top of already using E10?

I don't think that is realistic possibility (and as you said you have never heard of it happening in 45 years) to generate so much hydrogen that spark from clamp would make an explosion. Literally I have never heard of it happening. What is realistic possibility is that when charging bad battery it could short, overheat and if connected via body of the car instead blowing just a battery or the charger, it would destroy entire car electrical system. That said decent chargers have protection from that and should never result in battery overheating, it may short, but charger should sense it and stop charging.

Don't inform your insurance! That would be biggest mistake ever!

Somehow according to BMW it starts at £72,995 and according to Tesla the Model 3 Performance £61,063 ?!

How does that work? i4 M50 3.8s, Tesla Model 3 Performance 3.1s and BMW is still £12000 more expensive?! Yes Tesla "quality" is like cheap Chinese toy, but many people seems to be able to look past it.

The problem is that many people already knows which car they like and that is Tesla... and now other makes have to make people switch.

We will have to agree to disagree on this - a lot of people buy cars based on numbers alone. That is why we had period of diesels, just based on stupid and unachievable headline MPG figures. Besides, Tesla have areas which are actually better, not just number - like range acceleration and charging... and it is actually cheaper.

Yes agreed - under normal driving conditions the best "feature" of IS200t (and I had RC200t) is that engine cannot be heard. One has to push it all the way to even hear it and it seems that engine is not overly happy to be revved and doesn't well either.

It is noisier than 300h, but that noise it makes isn't what I would call "nice". All in all I have never seen 4-banger which sounds "good", some are loud (like boosted 4G63 with 600hp), but none are good, just not the configurations which is known for sounding nice.

I agree that Tesla is horrible when you get into it and build quality is just not acceptable for "premium" brand, poor reliability and customer service. However, for Lexus or any other automaker to really get up-to speed they need to beat Tesla either on technology (like range, charging times) or price and for time being they are doing neither. I have predicted in the past that when other automakers going to start making proper EVs Tesla will be dead in the water with their sub-par quality, but it has not happened because it seems that so far all other makers are happy to lose market share for some short term profits. Like take for example i4 vs Model 3 - seems like no brainer for me, because BMW is an actual car and Model 3 is stupid toy, but then when one looks to price i4 is prices closer to Model S than it is to Model 3, yet it is not even as fast, nor has as good range. Basically, unless established automakers going to start some loss leaders (which would be sensible why they still have reserves) to get back market share in this segment, they won't catch Tesla.

You can find them in the ebay, otherwise Lexus. But Lexus may not sell it to you unless you provide matching VIN for the part. But 17408-31100 shows me the standard round tip when searching for it.

Won't make a difference on IS300h... There is saying "junk in junk out" - if there is no sound to begin with, what the custom back box will do? If you have nice engine sound which just get's muted (like IS250) then sure, but if there is no sound, then what are you amplifying?

Yes, sorry I only looked at it from cosmetic point of view. If the exhaust sound is important, then the only option is IS250. IS200t sounds crap itself and IS300h doesn't have much sound at all - there is exhaust already under the bumper, and just having chrome exhaust tips won't make sound any different.

IS300 is called IS200t in UK, IS200t has same bumper with tailpipes as IS300 in US. Likewise IS250 has same bumper.

I think it is just "clever" marketing, but potentially. Ethanol itself could cause 2 types of issues - as solvent it can damage some seals which are not meant for the ethanol and secondly ethanol attracts water more than petrol and thus could corrode some parts which are not resistant to corrosion. For first issue I don't believe redex would help and that is more relevant issue in modern cars (that is eating at seals), but I would not be surprised it redex would contain some rust-inhibitors to protect from rusting. Now this second part is not really relevant for newer cars as it is very uncommon for petrol system to corrode, nor it is really relevant for E10 anyway, because it is only 10% ethanol and even when we say that ethanol attracts water it is just slightly more than petrol. BUT... all that said this later part allows redex to claim they "protect from ethanol", sure it does not make ethanol into petrol and it doesn't make it "safe" (if we believe that E10 is actually unsafe), but it does "something". As for E10 - I will be running IS250 on E10 without any worries, I have driven thousands of miles in Europe on E85 and had no issues. The only thing I was told and I believed it, was that one should not leave ethanol in the tank for long time because it attracts water, so I always made sure that I only use E85 for journeys where I can burn entire tank in less than a week. However, after many years I now think this is somewhat unfounded worry - yes ethanol degrades quicker than petrol, but the difference is minor. If you leave petrol in the tank for 6 months it will be off and it won't burn as well as fresh petrol, perhaps same will apply to ethanol (E85) after 3 months, and after 6 month maybe you won't even be able to start the engine... which may turn out to be expensive thing to resolve. But by this time we are way detached from the problems of E10 and rather in extreme circumstance of abandoned cars which should not happen anyway. So my opinion is that issue with E10 is way overblown, we have already had E5, so if 5% ethanol didn't blow the seals I doubt 10% will do (just my opinion), likewise I have used E85 extensively without any issues... in fact most IS250 owners in Europe most likely uses E85 every day, because in many countries that is default option. Yes ethanol goes bad quicker, but not as quick that it would be an issue for average car driver at least once a week and refuelled at least once a month. Nor an issue which would require specific additives to prevent damage. As for ethanol itself - I don't like it, but not because it damages engine or something, rather because ethanol is not as efficient fuel and in my opinion should not cost the same as petrol... yet they simply replaced E5 like for like. And secondly - the science behind the environmental benefits is really divided, on one hand it is renewable, but on other hand it is probably even more polluting. SO not only it basically costs more, because you need more of it, but as well there is no obvious benefit and perhaps some downfalls in certain vehicles.

I am quite certain it is not the case - pre-facelift F-Sport had real leather (maybe not semi-aniline, but it was real leather), face-lift had Tahara an no other options for F-Sport.

That is my thought exactly - would have been market leader in 2015, sort of "good enough" around 2020 if competitively priced, but by now is little bit underwhelming. Similarly priced cars would have like 100miles more range from similarly sized battery. As for Lexus being just "Toyota with Lipstick" - it kind of already is, look at UX or ES... The only cars which are somewhat better are LS/LC, NX/RX just get's much better interior and equipment, making them somewhat good value, but apart of that the differences between the brands really disappeared a few years back.