Linas.P

To be fair this is problem which only exists in UK. In most other countries where proper self-defence is premitted this would be expectioanlly rare, but in UK seems to be quite common relativelly speaking.

Yes we live in the world where everyone is babysitting us... now including our cars. I had similar isseu with my RC, left sunroof slightly open to keep it ventilated and I believe fly got inside and triggered the alarm. To be fair nowadays all cars does that, but I was pleasantly surprised with clever detail on 2021 MB C300. I believe the car locks itself after 3 or 5 minutes, but when I left all the windows open and left it for a while it locked itself as expected, but didn't closed the windows all the way. In stead it left ~5mm from the very top for ventilation. It seems Le Zermans considered that driver may want to ventilate the car and programmed it to keep some ventilation, but not enought for anyone to squeeze their finger throught.

Not tried to hold nozzle upside-down, but I often have to hold it slightly to the side. This is not Lexus issue as far as I am aware (as I had it with other cars as well), but more specifically UK issue... UK pumps are funny like that - not only the lock mechanims are disabled (you can't just lock it and leave it), but they are very sensitive compared to rest of the Europe. Must be something to do with obssesion over risk aversion at any cost in this country.

Congrats! I think Lexus had what was called "protection pack" and that had rubber bootliner, mud guards and few other bits. Not sure if you could purchase bootliner alone, but protection pack was ~£400. Lexus dealers should certainly know what it is.

Maybe not such a bad thing - if they don't know that they are selling, maybe it is and opportunity to negotiate better 🙂

Lexus Recommends E95 for IS250, so engine basically does not take advantage of 97, 99 or 104 or whatever other octane you would have. I don't want to repeat same old topic, but what I am trying to say - apart from placebo it won't change how your engine is running, expecially at low to med RPM. More or less same for engine oil - all current oils exceed manufacturer spec for what effectivelly is 2003 engine desing. Mobil ESP is great oil and certainly won't cause issues, equivalent on Castrol side would be Edge (full syntetic) rather than Magnatec (hydro-cracked synthetic), but overall getting cheaper oil and replacing it more often is probably more beneficial than getting best possible oil and keeping it for long time. I have always ran over bumps at full speed and never cared for suspension. I even get ****** off when other drivers nearly stops over the bumps (to be fair I appreciate they simply care for their car and thatis their right) and I have even overtaken other drivers over the bumps when they slow down for them. I have never changed any suspension component and car had all original suspension in good shape when I sold it at 192k. There where some age related things like perihing boots on ball joints, rusty steering tie-rod ends which had to be replaced as I could not get alignment done, but none of major components failed or had to be replaced and I certainly did not take any care about the car supension and didn't try to avoid bumps. In short in my oppinion the suspension components on IS250 are nukeproof.

Won't fit - those covers are for IS mk3 mirrors.

What is mileage of the car and how long since last oil chnage? In my experience after around 6,000 miles my old IS250 used to have hydraulic lifter sticking issue. Basically, when you start the engine cold the oild would be too thick to get into necessary place and lubricate the lifters resulting in roughter than normal running until oil warms up a little bit. Or maybe pasages would get blocked preventing normal flow. I don't think there is real solution for it, but from my experience engine flush as suggested by Colin does extend the life of the oil (probably by making oil passages cleaner), but ultimatelly the oil replacement after around 5,000 miles would cure it for sure. 10,000 miles service is non-sense and it is aimed at reducing servicing costs, not at protecting the engine. In most contries normal service intervals are considered either 6,000 miles or 3,000 miles. Most of the time I ran the car with Magnatec 5W30 A5 and it is great oil (far better then Toyota intended when developing the engine for sure). However, my car used to burn ~0.6L of Magnatec per 10,000 miles, which is not terrible considering mileage. I only used Mobil 1 ESP Long Life once for a long trip and it was 0W40. It was noticeable inprovement over Magnatec because no oil was burned and after ~7,500 miles it still looked very clean (althought it was only used for 2 months). During the time I had no issue with sticking valves either. The only issue I have with Magnatec to be honest (apart of it burning for some reason) is that it is quite dark out of the bottle, because it aparently has some aditives. This overall makes it difficult to tell how dirty the oil is, becase even after 1,000 miles it looks like old oil you would excpet to look after 10 times more.

I guess it is early days, but IS-F price is "through the roof" and I would even argue they are over priced. Absolutely agree, for first 10 years the only thing it will do - it will increase used Lexus value and even after 10 years car with FLSH will be more valuable compared to the car with "opportunity" to extend the warranty for thousands just to get the car warranted for 2 more years at the cost which is half the price of the car for most models.

I think the perception for most owners/buyers will be that new offer is even better. Yes - we after reading T&Cs know that it is not a good, but average Joe Shmoe is none the wiser. The way Lexus advertises this new warranty sounds like industry leading plan which is "free" with service. So public perception about Lexus only going to improve because of this, because on the face of it amazing. I think this was absolutely brilliant idea from business perspective... they made the warranty worse, but made it sound like significantly better! Customers who buys new or nearly new cars from them will benefit, customers who are unprofitable anyway will cost them less to support. As I said before - I would be mad at them, but I can't be just because I see how much business sense it makes. It was genius move!

I agree that cosmetic mods could be done at the owners discretion, even performance mods to some degree, but not mods which pollutes more. Number plates do not unnecessary poison people around you for 10hp gain. Although some plates fitted on motorbikes are definitely very illegal and fitted for single purpose of avoiding responsibility. As I said previously - for track car that is fine, for road car it isn't. If you can't modify the car to keep it road legal, or without a need to cheat during MOT, then I don't think such modification should be considered.

That would be amazing deal if the car condition is reasonable. I have not seen GS-F for under £40k for long time! This is certainly cheaper than any GS450h facelift at the moment.

Likelihood of blowing through clear by using one of the mildest compounds is next to 0%, so don't worry about that 🙂

I can pass mot by giving £50 to the questionable tester or just taking car to questionable garage where they simply not bothered to test the car and just give passes for everyone... So yes - technically car with valid MOT is road legal - the way you pass the MOT is question of your own morale.

Some cars are easy to tune and very rewarding, so it is possible to find car which let's say has "conservative" tune from the factory and with little bit of tinkering add 30% of power. BMW B58 engine good example - it is turbocharged petrol which could be found in various different power levels from something like 280hp all the way to 376hp from factory. As such if you get model with 280hp (say BMW M240i) it is easy just to get it chip tuned to nearly 400hp without making any other changes. And there are loads of such examples of TD and turbo petrol German cars... But Lexus is not such car where gains can be made easily or cheaply. So whereas on BMW or Golf £300 can buy you 100 more hp, on Lexus £1000 will get you 20 more! It is absolutely not worth tuning Lexus, just not the car which is "tuner friendly". Now I would fully agree with John - if you want more power just get IS350... but wait... they never sold one in UK 😞

One... is the clientele - as you said it is not a sports car, but secondly it is 100% illegal and immoral to do that on road car.

Interestingly I received call from Lexus regarding service as my old car is now do for it, but they have not updated detail (to be fair I have not told them to update). It seems they are calling everyone who is due service and who would benefit from Relax it. Now interestingly, I kept chatting with the lady about Relax and she claimed it is exactly like manufacturers new warranty. I said "but it is not as good as previous Extended warranty" , but she insisted that everything is covered as before. So what is happening - Lexus advertising the Relax Warranty as like for like replacement and customers will be none the wiser unless they compare T&Cs... I would imagine 3 years later it will be very difficult to find old T&Cs or to do anything about it. This is little bit dirty as I am sure majority of customers will not notice that it is reduced service and Lexus seems is not willing to be transparent when offering it.

It is 100% protective film... it being your car from new I guess you would be the one who forgotten to remove it 😄 I would not expect dealership to remove protective films as this is sort of thing they would leave to the owner to experience "unboxing of the new car". Mine had ML and had exactly same film - bought with it, sold with it. The good thing, you could only see that fill when opening the boot and now you find out why it is not removed - because it is **** to get to!

True, but GS250 is even rarer!

Taking NA cars to tuner is a thing which is far over blown... there isn't much to be gained from engine like 4GR-FSE, especially on stock engine without substantial mods. Sure if you supercharged it or turbocharged, then taking new set-up to the tuner will matter a lot! When it comes to racing cars and where keeping car "road legal" is not required I imagine there are more gains which can be made. Again - claim was "take seats out and sound proofing and your car is 2s faster to 60". As I said that is just around 100kg, and removing 100kg in the car won't matter much on 0-60. If we go step further and gut the car entirely to bare shell (say -250kg) and then do other track mods, light wheels, slicks, lightened flywheel (on MT), different ratio diffs etc. Sure with such extensive modifications you will shave 2s, maybe more. But clearly that is not what was said, that is not just taking the seats out! As for lightening the car for track use - I absolutely agree, reduced weight will make massive difference over the lap, even if just standstill accelerations does not change that much. But we talking cross purposes here - the OP wanted to gain few HP on IS250C, nobody is making bare rolling shell for a race car from it. That "cold air intake" makes no difference I agree, certainly not as sole modification. For what 4GR-FSE needs the standard airbox is more than sufficient and even if one gains 1hp, this won't be noticeable. F-sport airbox is again - absolutely the same + little tube which transfers some intake noise to interior if properly installed. That is all!

GS250 are certainly rarest, because they were sold only for couple of years before facelift. GS450h are rare because they were very expensive when new, but not as bad as GS250... and for GS300h - they choice is quite decent and price is not bad, even in comparison with say IS300h, which is nowhere near as good car. As for eCVT - I think it should be least of anyone's worry, it is far better than CVT in older hybrids and it has "fake" steps which are surprisingly enjoyable to use on the twisty roads. Now obviously - if you floor it from the stand still it will get locked at something like 3000-4000RPM and causes disturbing drone, certainly does not make car feel very sporty when accelerating. Yet there is not other way to put-it - that is the most efficient way to accelerate as it keeps the engine always in perfect power band. The only down side is perceived noise, which I admit is not as nice... especially in 300h where engine sounds dull as well, but not so much and issue in 450h as V6 sounds fairly good even at said 3-4k RPM.

Just a coincidence buy perfect video to prove my point was uploaded recently by ChrisFix. So indeed the seats weights ~80kg and what is or isn't "sound proofing" is little bit move vague, but generally things which just unclips or can be removed easily wasn't that much more ~56kg... So as I said total weight saving around 100kg... for this beemer in particular it was 136kg. Later he stripped the car almost to bare shell and even that was just around 200kg, he had few more pieces to remove... so say "bare shell" would give you 250kg weight saving at most... And result - 0.8s... so as you can see just seats and sound insulation out would never get you 2s faster acceleration.

mean to say can't... I guess some info could be useful i.e. if cat was previously stolen just to see if it was properly replaced... But I don't think knowing insurance claim history is necessary for that - simply take car for pre-purchase inspection and they should check it. Even MOT nowadays checks whenever cat is fitted.

But that is only if car was deemed write-off or if entire car has been stolen and then recovered. Neither would help to check if the cat was stolen, unless the entire car was written of because of it (which is quite unlikely). As John said - you can check such info in UK and (hopefully) in most countries in the world. If you could, then I could see quite a few privacy issues arising from that.

That sounds like contradiction to me... because the reason I justified taking car to dealership was specifically their knowledge about the car. As I alluded in my pervious post I would get them to do inspection on the car outside of standard (fluid and filters change) and thus I would get good indication if anything obvious is wrong with the car. Once I know what exactly is wrong, I no longer need dealer to do the work. As for the service itself, Lexus service is quite cheap, especially if you get discount of service plan (not sure if they going to continue discounting now when "relax" came into picture). Not much money can be saved servicing car elsewhere.