Linas.P

Sorry... tyres are confusing... 🙂 What I am saying - the car has incorrect size for the model, correct size would be 255/40/R18. Second point - if one fits incorrect size anyway (which may be worth doing), then 245/40/R18 is much better than 255/35/R18 when it comes to comfort and fuel efficiency - yet both have almost identical circumference. Wider tyre (255) always means lower MPG, the lower profile (35) always means less comfortable if comparing two tyres of same model.

Dunlop RT2 are great tyres and I do recommended them. They are great all around performance tyre, with good price, grip and wear and that is why I like them, but I am not sure they are most comfortable and quiet tyres you can get for that size. I am not even sure they would be more comfortable than Kuhmos on the car. Other thing I noticed is that rear tyre size you currently have is incorrect, that is the size for mk3 IS300h and that lower profile will automatically make ride harder. Same circumference from 245/40/R18 would make both more comfortable and more fuel efficient tyre.

@The-Acre - cars do get bigger over the years, but mk4 was bigger car... not only for it's time, but literally as well. For new Supra to be on the same level adjusted for times it should be the size of LC... More appropriate name for this Toyota/BMW collaboration would have been Celica (small sports coupe), not Supra (large GT coupe). There is nothing wrong with it being BMW, but I still don't like badge engineering and the fact that Toyota was fully capable making a better car and arguably had better platform for it. Their excuse is that they didn't have in-line 6... but that is total BS. Not only they now going to offer supra with 4-banger, which they arguably have themselves (8AR-FTS), but that 4-banger (which is terrible) was specifically designed as next-gen modular engine. So for Toyota to take 8AR-FTS as base and add 2 more cylinders wasn't really that big of an issue, and just cursory calculations shows that power from 6 cylinder version would be comparable to BMW unit... if not little bit better. Besides as I said - BMW Z4 gets all the latest toys and technology, whereas supra based on exactly same platform get's last gen. Further - the price really does not make sense for what it is - £52k+ for small sports coupe?! No thanks. If one wants cheap and cheerful coupe there is very good (Subaru) GT86 for half the price. I feel that the only reason for this compromised car is that Toyota didn't want to compete with it's own LC500. In 90's it was OKEY to compete with Lexus SC400, because Lexus wasn't all the more premium, it was just more American and it was all about Luxury. So it was fine for SC400 to be built on the same platform as Supra as both cars occupied different segment. Supra was sporty GT car, SC400 was Luxurious GT barge. Nowadays LC500 is Luxurious, but it is still sporty GT... New Supra if based on the same platform would still be Luxurious and still sporty GT, but likely for say £10k less and it would cannibalise LC sales. However, LC based Supra would be truly good car, whereas Z4 based Supra is very very compromised car... I quite liked below view/opinion:

It is Lexus spec for 17s it is 225/245, for 18s it is 225/255. Technically, you have to follow this as it could for example invalidate your insurance (which many "but's"). Could you fit 225 all around... technically you can, but I would not recommend it. Rear tyres actually wears quicker than fronts and car being RWD it makes sense to have wider tyres in the rear. How much wider - that is anyone's guess and preference. On my 18s I had 225/245 instead of 255 and probably would have gone step further for either 235/245 or 225/235... Could this be done - sure it can, actually Lexus IS250 AWD model exists in other regions and it has 235s all around on the same 17" wheels, I believe AWD runs 4x front wheels (8J) on 18" and has 245s all around as well. Lexus does these excessively wide tyres in rear and narrow in front to give "safe handling" characteristics to the car. Now I say "safe" in quotes, because it is exactly opposite of that - this comes from flawed logic that oversteering is dangerous and understeering is safer. It is probably true for inexperienced drivers in very RWD powerful cars, but IS250 is not powerful. So many manufacturers deliberately makes car balance as such that it understeers before it oversteers and IS250 in corners acts almost like it is FWD car, front looses grip before you could ever get rear to step out. In either case I would keep wider rears to get approximately same wear and little bit more grip on rear, but not as excessively as Lexus. Neither I would go for square set-up.

I would just say that there are many levels of quality within same brand, so buying say Bosch does not automatically mean it is good. I am not really an expert when it comes to appliances, but below are just my experience. I remember when I was like 5 years old we got first washing machine and it was used Miele, that used washing machine lasted over 10 years and it was only replaced because the outer sheet metal started rusting, the replacement Whirlpool didn't last even 3 years, was fixed twice under warranty and third time it would have costed to repair more than new washing machine. The replacement Bosch lasted even shorter time because it was one of the cheaper models. Not much of conclusion here, but I would says that newer appliances nowadays are not made same way as old ones and they designed only to last through warranty period. So get the brand which offers longest warranty - but then you will realise that most appliances with longest warranty will always be the most expensive, just the way it is. Second thing to note - sometimes it is not fault of appliances themselves e.g. in most of UK water is notoriously hard and this just destroys anything related to washing. So this becomes question of getting filtration and water softening right as even best washing machine will die quickly. Kettles in my experience only ever fails because of this, but I found perfect solution - get some concentrated citric acid granules, few teaspoons of that boil it and all the scale is gone. As it happens I rent the apartment so appliances are not my problem now, everything was fitted with Electrolux. Washing machine and dishwasher was constant pain, but that is partially because of second point. Fridge, oven and cooker were fine, not amazing, but not bad. If I would have to buy my own.. again I would go with longest warranty and likely get Bosch... Miele would be cool, but often one can get better product from Bosch (higher tier) for the same price as lower tier Miele. Reason... at least if it fails it will be worth fixing and there will be spare parts, engineers and appliance itself made in the way that it could be fixed. Many cheaper brands nowadays cannot be fixed at all - if they fail you just throw them away (basically they are single use and disposable) and that is inherently bad thing. The only thing I have from Miele is surprisingly a vacuum cleaner and it is decent - I got it because it was discounted during some black Friday deal from £299, to £129, not amazing, but not bad either - I would certainly by it again. And the worst appliance I have is Kirby vacuum. This is one of those silly direct marketing things where they come and do presentation and try to sell you snake oil. Obviously, I would have never bought it, buy my girlfriends mother was brainwashed like 15 years ago and bought it for something like £2000 when all accessories are considered and then was afraid to use it... very "useful" thing. Long story short she gave it to us when we moved in and it is worst vacuum I ever used in my life, tried shifting in on eBay and nobody wants to pay even £250 for it (frankly it isn't worth even that much IMHO, but people list them for £300-400). Few more things to note - integrated appliances are always worse like for like compared to freestanding, for same price they will be have worse functions, worse specs and probably will not last as long. As far as I know for every brand integrated appliances fail much more often. As well the more functions, the more reasons to fail... washer/dryer is twice as likely to fail than just a washer. In summary - make sure to buy not just a brand, but high tier appliance within a brand, look for long warranty and make sure to give your appliances best chance by softening water etc. not overloading them and using them in line with instructions.

As John says above, try the car first and see if you actually need softer tyres. You may already like it as it is, if not then getting more comfortable tyres will always be an option. Finally, no - you can't fit same size tyres of 17s, both 17s and 18s are staggered. Only 16s have same size. The difference between 17s and 18s is that 17s are the same size rims, whereas 18s both rims and the tyres are staggered.

It meant to be really beautiful, but to adapt it to Z4 they have shrunk it to this silly looking chubby and over-aggressively styled car. I don't think it looks horrible, but nice it certainly isn't. As well inside it is carbon copy of BMW... it would not be a bad thing but it is copy of last generation BMW, whereas Z4 actually get's latest infotainment. Not sure what you mean by it being big? It is certainly smaller that A80 or it's own concept car. New Supra is about the size of Porsche 718 - that it small sports car and not GT car like old Supra. I think they should have based it on LC platform and then hardpoints would have been closer to original concept making it actually stunning looking car. Looking at below images and comparing to what we got it is like comparing real Ferrari and MR2 based Ferrari Replica - sort of looks similar, but proportions are all wrong.

That doesn't sound bad, I can hardly imagine the car nowadays which I could have bought from 5 weeks starting salary... never mind insuring it... that alone would be good 3-4 months when I started working.

Yes that sounds strange as actual windscreen wash bottle and pump is located on passenger side, and it is easiest to access via wheel arch (alternative being - removing entire bumper and lights). Maybe it is headlight washer pipe leaking or it is leaking on the tray and that drips on the opposite side? Other thing to check if the washer jet is not stuck, maybe you tried washing headlights and it just spayed inside if stuck.

First of all it is important to note that this is highly selective graph which shows like worst case scenario for BEVs and worst case scenario for transportation itself. Yes these may be correct in EU, but climate change and emissions are global problem so we should look into global figures and not selective countries. They claim claim transportation is 30%, but we need to understand that this is only because we import a lot of manufactured goods from outside of EU and we do not have much of manufacturing ourselves. However, technically that manufacturing exists and pollutes only because Europeans buy and consume the goods... not counting that is quite cheeky really. Then they conveniently hide the fact that 100% of transportation pollution itself is like ~10% of total carbon emissions (globally) to make it look more important when you realise that 60% of roads cars pollution is actually ~6% of total. Then newspapers quote it saying cars are 60% of pollution and thus key in climate emergency, whereas that cannot be further from the truth. As well this graph only considers CO2 as that is the only type of pollution. What happens to heavy metals mined for lithium production, lithium lifecycle chemical waste, lack of batteries recycling options? That are many many types of pollution besides of just CO2. It is already well known that overall CO2 emissions are lower from BEVs compared to ICEs, but they are not 0 and even if we go by the facts presented in your link, the difference between clean ICE car and BEV is marginal at best (about ~25% reduction from ~210g to ~160g). Yet again this takes best case scenario, because EU energy production is relatively clean. So if we look again to that figure of 6% it means that replacing ALL ICE cars with ALL BEV we will achieve overall reduction of CO2 emissions of 1.5%. WOW! And that would not even be true globally. Now consider that manufacturing is like 40-50% of pollution and it quickly becomes clear that focusing on things like planned obsolescence, e-waste, fast fashion, poor quality goods would have much bigger impact, that focusing on 1.5% reduction on cars. It is all politics and looking for scapegoats. As well I find it highly suspicious that Heavy Trucks pollutes less than cars, not only Truck itself pollutes much more, but as well they have massive mileages. It is not uncommon for truck to do 100k miles a year, there are plenty of trucks 5 years old with 700-800k miles. Obviously would be me disagreeing with facts, but I just struggle to understand how that could be correct. It could be said that there are lies, damn lies and statistics. It is always possible to take factual statistics and twist it in ways which completely misrepresents the situation. This infographic would be good example of that - focusing on area which is most convenient, highlighting selective facts which supports the point, ignoring total pollution and focusing on singly type etc.

@Barry14UK We do not have petrol stations at home, but that is because petrol car can be fuelled in a matter of seconds, without any alteration plans or delays etc. That is why it is ok not to own your own petrol station, but when charging EV takes 20-30 minutes you must have charging point at home. For this reason the number of public charging points and the range is actually irrelevant. What would be big thing is charge time reduction e.g. how much one could charge in say 30s or 1 minute. I am not saying car has to be charged in full in 1 minute, but if 100miles of range can be charged in minute or less (and without degrading the batteries) then this would be massive deal maker. If that would happen you would be right - you may not even need to charge EV at home. Other reason is cost and accessibility. You see electrical charging points don't work like fuel stations where you simply come put whatever amount of fuel and pay. Electricity itself is cheap in comparison (mostly because government doesn't add criminal amount of unjustified and punitive duties on top of the actual cost), but if you want to use public charging points you will need to have specific membership to use it and there are dozens of them. If you don't have specific membership then you simply can't use it and having all of them just not an option because many have different charging structures and monthly fees. I guess more can be done e.g. where government steps in and mandates that all charging schemes must work together and allow other schemes to use their chargers. As for BEVs overtaking PHEVs that is not surprising and actually logical, people who own PHEH most likely have place where to charge it... as such they have place where to charge EV. As first generation EVs and PHEVs got to 5 years old e.g. Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, BMW 330e just few very popular ones, they are now being replaced by BEVs. Further BEVs have larger government grant and even lower BIK so it just makes sense. I actually know 3 households who did exactly that 2 replaced Outlander PHEV with Tesla Model 3 and Model X and third replaced BMW330e with Golf-E. But what we need to understand here - it is not hybrids being replaced by BEVS, it is just specifically PHEVs which are effectively just inferior version of BEVs which are being replaced. Finally, the "Car as a service (CaaS)" model has been considered for some time, but that adds extra level of complexity to the discussion so I don't even want to predict where it will go. Some short term services works relatively well - where you just grab the car off the street and use it. But more sophisticated models for more Luxurious cars don't work very well. I personally would not use one and several studies shows that this is not viable for Luxury cars i.e. that people who buy Luxury cars generally are quite specific when it comes to their needs and they want particular cars and actually own them (that would be category I am in), this service would be more relevant for people who don't care about cars and who view car as a box to go from A to B... but such people are equally likely to simply use taxi, or public transport and they are very price sensitive (meaning that if train is cheaper they simply use train). So really this CaaS model is quite fundamentally flawed, because people who have money and care about cars won't use it and people who would use it don't have money nor care about cars.

It may be right, but the issue here is not only Polestar being BEV. Lexus overall are quite uncompetitive and not advantageous considering taxation in UK. Secondly, as per my post above - one BEV market is saturated there will be hard cap on how many people can buy BEVs. Sure people will eventually start changing their existing BEVs with new models, so there with be some sales from that, but what we have now is a lot of "first time" BEV buyers, it won't continue forever.

The growth of BEVs is clear and I know that market almost doubles every year. However, currently it can double because it is a question of being able to afford BEV and them being actually good, and government initiatives. So at least at this moment there is realistic competition between companies of who is going to make best BEV and there is actual market for cars. However, there is hard cap on BEV market, legislations literally does not matter when that hard cap is reached, and that hard cap is infrastructure. One thing is to have legislation encouraging people to get BEVs, the other thing is when majority of population lives in flats, apartments and areas where installing suitable infrastructure to charge BEVs is going to be challenging. They simply can't have BEV no matter if they want it or not. For example I was considering PHEV (e.g. i8) because with my driving pattern before COVID this would be ideal - I could charge it for ~25miles of range and almost never refuel it. Problem is I live in apartment and there is no way for my to charge the car, not only that there are only 30 parking spaces per 100 flats... meaning that 70 people do no even have allocated space. In my case government can legislate that freeholder and building management company must allow me to install the charging point, or even install it at their expense... but what other 70 household will do if they don't even have space where to park? That is why I am calling 25% target by 2030 optimistic... it only consider capacity to make the cars and buyers interest in buying, but it ignores the fact that for many buyers by 2030 it won't be matter of affording the car or wanting it, it will be matter of simply lacking infrastructure. And you you think that in 9 years we can improve infrastructure, then I would call it even more optimistic... especially knowing that our government is literally incapable of solving most basic things, I have no reason to believe they will get such a massive and complex thing like charging infrastructure right. If they really going to keep their goal of no ICEs sales by 2030, that sadly I can assure you this will mean the only thing - 70% of people won't have cars. That may be their goal (I would not be surprised) and car will again become status symbol only for the right to have. However, there is another alternative - whole this BEV thing may suddenly end like DERV. I can see clear similarities, like journalists and government ministries pushing for half-baked solution, exactly like they pushed diesel in late 90's and early 00's. Then studently it became apparent that by producing little bit less CO2 DERV makes 10 times of all sorts of other crap. Same with BEVs - they great on CO2, but results in a lot of other types of pollution due to how lithium batteries are made etc. So this BEV fad may go out of fashion by 2030s and we will be moving onto something else. Overall, the policy of only focusing on CO2 is very short sighted as we should consider overall pollution over entire life cycle. Besides passenger vehicles only contributes ~2.4% CO2 globally (2.1% diesel and 0.3 petrol and hybrid), so passenger cars are really just scapegoats if we looking to reduce humanity CO2 footprint. Car are only targeted because they are convenient to target and car owners are likewise convenient to tax because they are wealthier.

There is another reason, which is quite a lot simpler. BEVs are at best 10% of sales and as most 1% of all cars on the roads.... meaning that 90% of sales and 99% of of cars on the road are not BEVs. Even very optimistic estimates puts BEVs at most of 25% of sales by 2030... again meaning that 75% will still be non-BEVs. Market size translates into sales and into profits... what I am saying is that need for developing and selling BEVs is blown far out of proportions, in reality they are still very vey niche market and majority of sales are still various ICE. Further that means developing faster, better and cleaner ICE should still be priority.

Hankooks are not known for good wear, they are quite sticky and comfortable and this indicates they have soft compound which is obviously compromise on wear. I drive my cars super hard at all times, yet Dunlop Sportmaxx RT lasted me 37k miles, Michelin Pilotsport 4 were at 6mm after 20k miles. So there are certainly tyres which can do the mileage - rubber compound is formulated differently and they are just better for wear. If you want absolutely best wear then my recommendation would be Michelin Primacy 4 or Goodyear Efficientgrip. However, they are not the best tyres overall. If you want great tyre which still last long I would recommend Goodyear Asymmetric 5/Dunlop RT2 and they are priced very well. Original Yokohamas/Brigestones are quite terrible tyres - uncomfortable, loud and quite unpredictable below 8C or in wet. Certainly stay away from those, especially considering that better tyres could be had for less.

I really doubt the fuel could cause that, IS250 is really not picky when it comes to fuel ... I have ran it on E10 and even E85, various brands of "super market fuel" and never had a problem. It may be the case that clearing codes will be all it needs, maybe driving it less often caused temporary issue. Secondly, it would be good to compare fuel trims on both banks to see if you have "lazy" o2 sensor - sometimes sensors starts getting faulty, but not enough to cause permanent fault in ECU.

Indeed - I don't even see reason to update it, it is useless either way.

If he is not planning to work on car (like many people) then spares only going to take-up space which may be an issue if say living in apartment. What I found strange that such people generally have no preference for the tyres, but this one seems to have... or he thinks that "wasting" few £ on presumably premium tyres you offering is not needed and he just fit cheapest stuff when it is needed. Stop worrying about it. £5500 was high price, but fair price - if there is buyer who wants car in good condition and with all the options then they had an option to pay this. Sure one can always get the car cheaper (I would), but then they will pay double or triple the price when it comes to servicing car etc. From seller side it is sometimes difficult to convince people you have done all the work and they won't need to do it again... this is partially because there are car sellers who are less than honest, so I kind of understand this sentiment. That is why I would rather get cheaper car, do fixing myself and know it is done. But in the end of the day this is preference - either you get more expensive car in better condition for more (like yours), or you get cheaper car and fix it yourself (like I would do). In short your car was priced fair according to conditions, mileage and options. As for dealer - they will definitely offer you £1600. The only reason they offer you more would be if you looking at the car which is over priced by £1000. The price is simply linked to the profit they aiming to make on their car - Dealers never overpays for PX. When I took mine to Lexus the guy refused to even make PX offer on my car, he said verbally that the offer would be something silly like £400 and he just don't want to offend me and then we laughed when I said that my wheels alone are easy £900... So yes be prepared to hear bottom of the barrel price which is meaningless really.

Yes I believe all F-sport were the never design where it is HDD based and updated by SD card rather than DVD.

I cannot say what the car is worth, because that usually depends on supply and demand, in short how desperate is seller to sell and how desperate is the buyer to buy and what choice exist on the market. In either case guide valuation is irrelevant here. It does not matter what the valuation of the car says and if it says it is only worth £3700 private sale and £1600 PX. Reality is that you not going to find 55k miles 2006 SE-L for under £4000 and depending on the condition may not even find one under £5000. Valuation usually ignores trim, accessories and condition so they just list average value for that model and year. This is same like insurance - they will always offer you valuation price, despite you not being able to replace the car for such value. If I would put the car for £5500 and somebody would come saying that Glass or other guide puts the value PX at £1600... I would "politely" offer them to go and buy the car for £1600. As well I highly doubt that valuation only values this car at £3700. My old SE-L was written off and Insurance valued the car at £3850 for being in "excellent condition", poor condition was something like £3200.... and it was 193k miles. When it comes to actual year - there is no practical difference between 2005 and 2009. If you actually interested in newer car, then I would advise looking FL cars after 2010+. But before 2010 really the only valuable comparison is mileage and condition.

yeah... I am in the same situation so had to think about it myself. The process is - driver has to be insured. Meaning that it may be difficult or illegal to allow people to test drive your car on public road, you can do it on private road, but I doubt you have a road of your own?. I for example have massive gated communal underground garage, so I guess in my case it would be fine to let the buyer to drive around the garage (but even that is grey area). In short you have two options: Check that they have insurance which would cover your car. Most (but not all) of Fully-Comprehensive covers allows driving other cars as long as they have at least third party cover. If they have that, then they can test drive your car and you can sit in the passenger seat. If that is their first/only car then most likely they don't have insurance, in which case it is illegal for them to drive. As such they sit in passenger seat whilst you drive. The dealers usually allow you to drive on "dealers insurance" which specifically allows for the test drives, however at least in my experience they usually take your license and you sign paperwork saying that you would be liable for like £1000 in excess in case of accident (always read the small print). You as private seller don't have such cover and the risk is an offence of allowing uninsured driver to drive. If you want to take such risk then it is up to you, but I would rather be careful on this. I know not all buyers would be satisfied with that, but such are the rules in the country and I am not sure car sale is so important to risk it.

I have used autoglass last year and the guy came with new trims and clips, however the trims were non-genuine or not 100% correct. OE trims should be colour coded and his ones were matte black... it didn't bother me that much as my old trims were very broken and I was happy to see them replaced, but it would be interesting to know where he even got them as Lexus ones are a bit of rip off (£89+VAT each). Anyway point is - Autoglass has to fit new mouldings and clips, they are disposable and cannot be reused. If they say anything but that then refuse to have windscreen replaced before they get it sorted. Not so good point is that windscreen heating stopped working after replacement and even with lifetime warranty Autoglass have not figured out why it doesn't work. To be fair I could not be bothered to chase them on that, but still quite disappointing. Finally, Paul is right - this will increase your insurance premium next year. It does not impact your NCB, but it is considered as incident (I guess similar as non-fault accident). But here is the thing - as you already told insurance fraudsters what happened, your insurance will go up either way now, so you may as well go ahead with replacement.

I don't think it has anything to do with maintenance, it is more likely that people simply have different expectations when it comes to the engine power. Myself considered IS250 as "borderline sluggish car", it was not slow, but it was not fast, reality is - it is great luxury cruiser, but not sports car. However, if somebody comes expecting it to be sporty I can see them being disappointed. Further, anyone coming from turbo cars will feel lack of mid-range torque which is characteristic with modern luxury cars... you need to rev IS250 all the way to the redline to get the best of it...and the beauty of it is - it pulls all the way, the higher the revs, the more it pulls and the sound gets better as well.

as well all the cover on the bottom... at higher speed wind may pull them down to the ground, but when you stop they may not be visibly hanging.

Yeah... I do not spend time checking 9 month old threads. I recently seen one guy remapped his IS-F in US and it added like 8HP, so I guess we can imagine on IS250 it's going to be what... 2-4HP at best, but as said above by John... even the best mapping going to add at most what you have already added to the car e.g. if you have cold-air intake or less restricted exhaust, it could help to realise those mods. I guess the only realistic change which could add decent power is lifting the rev-limit, but that that point one would be destroying their engine (literally) and the power gain would be only that 250-500rpm at the very top which isn't even that useful for everyday driving. Sure maybe it can shave 0.2s from 0-60 and produce dyno sheet showing 10% improvement, but is that even worth it like £300-500? I doubt it