Linas.P

Not sure what is long term benefit of such monitoring for Lexus... I agree with your point that people who knows little bit about the cars and maintains them outside of what is provided via dealership service will have cars which lasts longer. I tend to think I would be John in your example 😁 I used to do Lexus service every 12k miles, but I used to have oils/filters changed by myself in between. As well I always tricked dealer into investigating issues for free during service hoping that they can get bunch of money from me, but I have never fixed any of the additional items they recommend via Lexus. So my car was basically services twice a year, every 6k miles, but once by dealer and once by myself or by independent. And all recommended items during the service I would do separately, because it is less than half the price e.g. callipers + pads + discs from Lexus would be more than £1000, yet I done it myself for something like £480 and on top of that I got them power coated and thus much more resistant to rust and looking better. At that rate I don't think it is surprising car lasted easily to nearly 200k miles without any major faults and if not for small accident and getting written-off, I probably would still drive it.

Just to note here - F-Sport intake adds absolutely no power and it is identical to standard intake, bar breather tube which sends some intake sound into cabin.

Customs SS headers can certainly be made for £500/650, however I am not confident they would be better flowing than even terrible factory ones. And that is for what? 8hp maybe? My £1000 claim was for HKS/Greddy headers which were properly engineered and have some graphs suggesting this "8hp" gains. To be fair they cost more than that and you won't find them anywhere anymore anyway, so it is moot point... and even the gain is easy to fake even on dyno. What I am saying is that in - in theory it is possible, in practice is quite unlikely and certainly it won't matter. Weight of the car obviously contributes to acceleration, however I doubt that removing seats and sound proofing would give you 2 second advantage. We are talking about like 100kg here... I have no such chubby friends, but having 2 people in the car certainly does not add 2 seconds to 60, so I doubt removing equivalent weight would make such significant difference either. Just to be clear what we are talking about - official IS250 0-60 is 8.1s... holding the brake for little boost before launching achieves ~7.5s already. So if what you saying would be true, then IS250 should be 5.5s to 60 with -100kg? No I don't think that is realistic... That is faster than IS350 with 306hp which only manages 5.7s and it would be just a second slower than IS-F with 470hp. Sure it would make car faster by maybe 0.2s, but not 2s! Even if you strip the car to bare shell, with engine, wheels and single seat.... I doubt IS250 would ever do 0-60 in under 6s. Just not enough power, not right gearing etc.

I am fairly confident that there are no IS250 making anywhere near 240hp. The standard mods like less restrictive air-intake and exhaust... that at most gives 5% of extra performance... so we talking 10hp at very top of rev range making it maybe ~214hp... probably single most effective mod would be new headers, because factory ones are really puny and bad flowing... but here we talking £1000 for custom headers for few hp gain. So after spending £3000 on all these mods one may expect ~220hp. Unless you enjoy the process of modifying car so much, I really see no way how one could justify wasting so much money for no gain. Not only that, but this isn't even straight gain, it is compromise and is delivered at loss of low end torque which to be fair is much more important day-to-day than top end hp. The only way to push IS250 past ~220hp mark is supercharger/turbocharger and then the sky (or rather rods) are the limit.

Most likely remanufactured refurbished OEM callipers.... It is very unlikely to find new callipers to buy. In other hand - why wouldn't you just refurbish your own? It will cost about the same and as added benefit you can get them in colour you want which will protect callipers from rusting at least visually.

I admit I am keen to try hair dryer next time, because if it works then it will be 100 times easier to remove stains - "just hold hair dryer for a bit and it is gone"... sound a lot easier than polishing at very least entire panel on the car... because let's face it - if you just polish the place where the poop was, then there will be one shiny spot on the panel and it will stand out as well. Other idea which came into my mind - if hair dryer works, then in theory just driving the car in summer should be enough to remove stains or at very least reduce them significantly, because sun get's the panels really hot as well. Cannot say I have noticed this effect much...

I had IS250 without warranty very long time and without many issues either (126k - 192k). However, new Lexus cars are not build the way they were built in the past and very few cars comes with no-nonsense petrol engines like IS250. I was quite happy to run IS250 without warranty and would do it again, but that was because the biggest risk in car I had was engine/gearbox and those only cost £800 to buy assuming replacing the engine is even economically viable for such car. That said I would not be as "relaxed" on new Lexus cars... not only because of hybrid systems, but overall I don't feel they are build as well as in the past. Back in the day when IS300h came out I felt like older IS250 was more solid overall, and this theory was kind of reinforced with my experience on RC200t - seat motor replacement was eye watering £4k (covered by warranty) I know they are expensive to fix. Your second point is as well valid - Lexus does not mind people keeping their cars a little bit longer, because "good and reliable" car experience creates returning customers and even after 3 years people are still key demographic for Lexus (basically they can up-sell them with newer model) and they still likely to use Lexus service, the only thing Lexus does not want is for people keeping cars "too long" and it seems they decided 10y/100k is that limit. And finally longer leasing is great point as well... Lexus makes quite a lot money from interest on leases - more so than margin on sale of the car... longer lease = more interest... and if service plan allows it, then it all just makes sense. I still think this is "genius" move from business perspective, but I can see that they decided to trim some excess liability to achieve that.

I guess the other area of reduced value is for people who do more than 10k miles per year - obviously, if you done over 10k miles you need to service your car regardless (in fact I much prefer 6k miles instead), but previously one would have warranty separately and it was for 2 years... and serviced the car whenever it is due. Now it is going to be that one will be forced to have warranty every 10k miles in order to keep warranty. In theory that is not a problem, because warranty is free, but who is to say that service price won't creep-up overtime to reflect extra cost of warranty?

You can edit feedback via eBay itself, however I would not bother. You got you money back from paypal, you left fair feedback for the service and there is no need to contact the seller any longer or communicate at all.

I guess they are working on the assumption that people get warranty at the same time as the service, so basically when your current warranty runs out, they would expect you would be due for service anyway. That probably is true in most cases...

In other hand - this may make Lexus over 100k miles cheaper to buy in the first place... I know not exactly good thing when you are on selling end... but sounds good for me when I may be buying 😄

I think only select models have this "self-healing" top coat, it is certainly fairly new thing (I would say ~ last 5 year).

I was thinking more about it... and I concluded overall it is a good thing for most, but not all owners and better than any other make. Further, it seems to have sound business reasoning and I can't fault them. Basically, all owners who have car between 3-7 years old and under 100k miles will benefit from this as they will be basically getting "free" warranty. Sure - it does not cover as much as old Lexus Extended Warranty, but it covers far more than no warranty. The only group of people for whom it will be worse will be Lexus owners who done more than 100k miles, or has cars older than 10 years... I does make perfect business sense for Lexus - motivates people to upgrade cars after 10y/100k and reduces liability on extended warranty. Obviously, this is cold business calculation and is designed to make them more profitable. Now... yes it is true that Lexus being so reliable many people got into habit owning them for longer and with higher miles, but I recon they are "non criteria" clients for Lexus... I felt that very much when I owned my old IS250 and I was getting "second tier" customer service every time. Finally, let's face it - Essential Service and Lexus Extended Warranty were far too good to last and I completely agree, they made 10y+/100k+ Lexus still viable for longer. The new Relax warranty is certainly not as good for those older/higher mile cars and I do understand some people may be upset for a reason. Perhaps Lexus should consider introducing separate product for additional cost ... specifically for parts not covered in Relax and for cars over 10y/100k...

Somebody intercepting/repeating signal ? Lexus immobiliser can't be intercepted in RF method, but it doesn't mean some scum not going to try it anyway.

Especially not allowed near cars... almost as bad as bird poo itself 😄

Again really depends... I assume you had your car coated or at least sealed, so whatever little etching you get may be taken out with heat gun/hairdryer. Golf has hard clear so maybe that helps as well. Lexus in particular is known for having soft clear, so it is much easier to scratch and etch - bit of nightmare to get paint work perfect and keep it that way. Although theory is that softer clear should not chip as much.

Hair dryer method may work if it was left overnight maybe (the poop I mean). Depending on the paint and depending on how long the poop was left there even polishing may not be enough. It may even depend on what bloody flying rat was eating, because different stains requires different methods to remove. For example my old IS was left under the tree by new owner for whole year because of covid and there were literally year old crap on it. I thought bonnet was shot and will need repainting, but to my surprise it was just a matter or removing previous ceramic coating (basically it only stained the coating), however there was long shot going from the mirror down the door and I had to wet sand the paint to get it out. As in all car detailing work - start from least aggressive method and work your way up... was the car with pressure, contact wash the car, cleanse the pain either chemically or with say cay bar (although I consider that car must be polished if clay bar is used), if the stain still there then next step machine polishing using finest compound/pad... still not coming out - harder pad + courser compound... if polishing does not help - final step is sanding. And after that ... well repainting. If you not doing detailing yourself, then I guess all the steps after contact wash will require detailer. Now I would not expect bird etching to require repainting, but as I said I seen stains bad enough, that wet sanding was the only way. Finally, sometimes there are defect in the paint which are simply not worth getting out if they compromise rest of the panel too much. For that reason best stain prevention is preventative - keep car waxed, sealed or coated and clean. Mine always had ceramic coating and it never got stained as long as I washed the crap in few days... although bird shots I always tried to remove asap, if not for the panel... at least to protect the coating.

I guess technically they were right, if it was not offered in UK at the time. However, if you have any evidence in writing i.e. if they said Relax is not available via e-mail... then I would raise it with them. However, as other people have said - Lexus extended warranty seems to cover more items than new "relax" policy. Not sure how relevant it is for your car being just 3 years old, but maybe these products cannot be compared.

No it says that warranty is not part of the service - that is all. No full Lexus service history required... however it says to look at T&Cs and perhaps if car was never serviced all the way to 60k miles there may be some conditions. That is not strictly true - extended warranty was as well for up-to 10years/100k miles... however if extended before deadlines one could have it for longer i.e. you come day before 10 years old or at 99k miles, get another 2 years warranty and it would last irrespective of mileage age for another 2 years. I remember some people had extended it twice for 2 years in theory giving 14 years of warranty past 100k miles, but importantly you could not get say 9 years old car with 130k miles and get warranty for it, you could only get it if you extending existing policy.

That's is barely run-in... I bought my last IS250 at almost that mileage! 😁

Or dodgy headlight... I mean seriously... how somebody could drive with dodgy headlight and not notice it. I guess some people don't care about failing MOT, don't understand anything about cars and importantly don't want to understand anything. So they take car into the MOT "as is".... if it fails, they simply fix bare minimum to pass and go for re-test. This is not helped by re-test being free and if I am not wrong - during re-test MOT centre could only check the parts which were fails previously - meaning you have almost guaranteed pass unless it is emissions related. I always have basic pre-MOT check, like tyres, pressures, lights, indicators, even just cursory look at brake pads and whatever obvious suspension components I can see without removing wheels or going under the car - basically just look around the car if anything amiss doesn't even take 5 min. Fair enough sometimes it fails for something like crack in anti roll-bar bushing rubber, but that is something you can't see without getting under the car and inspecting it, unless it was previous advisory.

This sounds too good to be true! Doesn't this make Lexus extended warranty (which in itself is amazing deal) obsolete? I guess maybe Lexus Relax will not cover as much as extended warranty does? I guess one limitation I can see is that Lexus extended warranty applies for entire year and you have a little bit more flexibility whenever it is 8k miles or 12k miles. Whereas here it will be valid for 10k miles after service... not an issue in itself as car should be services at least every 10k miles (and arguably more often). Obviously, Lexus figured out this could be a great way to ensure service centre income, but Lexus service itself being good value + now basically including warranty which cost just as much as most services this just sounds far too good deal... but I cannot find any catches! What?!

I have replaced side lights with matching colour "temperature" (6000k) Osram LEDs:

Would be interesting to know where you got the spare compressor and overall costs of fixing it?

BMW330e does exactly that it is Turbo 2L + hybrid, Volvo goes even further - SuperTurbo Charged 2L + hybrid. I don't know how ze Germans are doing it... BWM 530 and MB 300E are both 2L turbo cars, but they are both much faster and somehow doesn't suck to drive. Even economy is not terrible. Either way, V6 is just so much better in real driving conditions. Instead of turbocharging rather boring 2AR-FXE, they could have used 4GR-FSE as a basis for 300h... same like they used 2GR-FSE as a basis for 450h. Hybrid would complement V6 nicely with little bit of torque low down in the rev range where it is lacking.