Linas.P

I would say summer, UK has no winters and in real winter all seasons are useless anyway. Continental good shout (perhaps Premium contact), although they often come-up as most expensive together with Michelins (I think currently Pilot Sport 5 would be the pick), both good but not great value for money. There are other good tyres - like Goodyear Asymmetric 6. Dunlops RT2 were good, but they are kind of old design now. Yep so those would be my choices Continental Premium Contact 6, Goodyear Asymmetric 6 or Michelin Pilot Sport 5. I would as well go size down (at least) on the rear - so 225/245.

It is 30 years in France, UK has worst classic cars regulations as far as I know, certainly worst in Europe. Most countries have 30 years, some have 35 years and only UK with 40 years. Now as far as I understand it is not possible to get classic car exemption for foreign car, if you stopped by police I am sure they will be fine as they will see it is classic car and thus should be exempt, but you may still be caught by cameras... at which point I assume the process is to appeal the fine if you ever get one.

Disagree with the first part - no system is ever truly "sealed". If you want to see perfectly sealed thing, then look at glass ampoule - that would be perfectly sealed, but in mechanical, high-pressure system perfect seals are impossible. Sure refrigerant does not wear out, but it leaks out over time, very slowly, but still leaks out. And what about oil? Is that perfectly sealed as well? In which case, why you can't never recover the same amount of both oil and refrigerant? In short - even the perfect A/C system has minor leaks overtime. So I would rather stick with manufacturer recommendation here and do refill every 2 years or so, certainly cheaper than replacing seized A/C compressor. I do agree with second part, in fact I just tried KwikFrauds myself, specifically for A/C and outcome is as expected... claiming the money back. Now to be fair - I think they are fine to be used just for refill as they are using same machine as Lexus or any specialist would be using... it is just a matter of entering the amount of coolant/oil to be filled. Now sure they can certainly mess that-up as well e.g. refill with wrong amount or just break stuff around the inlets, there are no limits for stupidity in those institutions. So just simple refill - fine, but look what they are doing or even if they are doing it at all, diagnostics - never use KwikFrauds, Halfrauds or any other frauds. Independent A/C specialist nowadays are nearly impossible to find, so as expensive as it is your best bet in such situation is Lexus, sure it will cost you maybe £100-200 to diagnose, but you will save 3 times that for job being done once and right. Now my guess is that most likely it is a leak from condenser as other suggested, but it could be temp switch, or pressure switch, although OBD may not give you any codes for that.

nope your car would be outright banned to enter, but in 2 years it will be except

Not really... some countries have bilateral agreements to enforce the fines. For example France and Switzerland/Andorra/Liechtenstein/Monaco as well as Spain and Portugal, I believe similar exists between Germany and Austria. So if you are French, driving French car in Switzerland you will get the fine same as if you had fine in France and vice versa. For other countries that don't have bilateral agreements the case is rather simple, they make application as any mortal for the driver information and get that information, then they can enforce via local courts system. Now granted - when the request is made by the police of another country it is assumed to be valid and get dealt quickly, although things like parking fines probably never gets enforced. Some countries do not sell driver information at all in which case enforcement is impossible (unlike UK where DVLA would sell it to any fraudster as long as they get their damn £2), I don't remember which ones exactly but there are few. But you right, not a brexshaite "benefit" and nothing has changed at all.

With Option A I can help you: Paris Annecy Chambery Arve Valley Côte d’Or/Dijon Creuse/Guéret Deux-Sèvres/Niort Drôme/Valence Eure-et-Loir/Chartres Gers/Auch Gironde/Bordeaux Grenoble Haute-Savoie/Annecy Hérault/Montpelier Isère/Grenoble Lille Loiret/Orléans Lyon Maine-et-Loire Marseille Puy-de-Dome/Clermont Ferrand Pyrénées-Atlantiques Rennes Savoie/Chambery Strasbourg Toulouse Vendée/La Rouche-sur-Yon Vienne/Poitiers Although caveat is that they could set-up ad-hoc zone at any time anyway anywhere, and you can be sure that if it is ad-hoc, then they will be monitoring it. Vultures are vultures in any country. I guess the downside for Option B - is that you need to know to order it in advance, or that you even need to order it at all. Option C - just ignore it and then ignore the fines and see how it works out 😄

I reckon it is probably worse now... as I assume in older days people cared more about their cars and were more knowledgeable, whereas majority of drivers nowadays have no clue. In my teenage times I was as well working in friends garage and not all the work was amazing, although we mostly worked on rusty old bangers, so often there was no option of doing stuff right, but at no point we had thought of not doing the job and saying that we did it. How rotten the corporation has to be to attempt to play such game or not being able to discourage such behaviour? Because I reckon this is gross-misconduct, people should be fired for such behaviour.

It did move, I mean they even managed to park it on the footpath somewhere at some point... at least according to council ticket. Although council attendants are being di*** as well (shocker I know), as pretty much all of their car are parked on footpath, so why issue the fine to the driver when it is clearly the auto service fault/common practice. I doubt there will be any sophisticated ending, if they had the receipt and if it would be common practice to send them out via e-mails I assume I would have received it since Thursday. Now they can only try to fake it, or simply send me the invoice instead of actual receipt, but the outcome 99% will be refund. Even if they actually did something to the car (which I am 99% confident they didn't) and had CCTV of it, then they would still refund rather than sharing the footage. So in short - make a complain, get the money back, just the waste of time and that feeling that I am being gaslighted "was it actually done, or wasn't it done, is it placebo, am I stupid or just paranoid", but it is weird feeling as obviously no one expects to take car somewhere pay money and it turns out they blatantly haven't even done anything. Just weird feeling... I assume people usually trusts the shop to do what they were paid to do, they may not do it well, but not doing it at all is kind of unusual... perhaps not for KwikFrauds.

This probably would apply to all models, but as work was done on GS I will put it here. Little pre-amble - So I have long running theme with auto-centre chains and absolutely horrific quality of their work. Halfrauds is well known offender, but this time I decided to punish myself with KwikFrauds... The only reason I even went that way is because the work required was so simple that it can't be messed-up (or so I thought). So I just needed quick A/C refill, A/C was working fine, but because I have recently acquired the car and had no record of anything done to A/C I decided it would be good to do preventative maintenance, because when they blow-up (A/C compressors that is) it is expensive to fix. Now for those of you that don't know, A/C service works as follows - they connect the machine to two inlets of A/C system, punch in the VRN, enter the correct amount of coolant and oil to be filled (which is model specific), press the button and that is all! From there on everything is automated, machine does all the work itself, beeps after ~25-45min (again model dependant) and prints out the receipt. The receipt says VRN, sometimes model, what was specified amount of oil/coolant, how much oil/coolant was recovered, vaccum test results (generally just say "Pass", but sometimes on more sophisticated machines it specifies parameters, like for how long and how much vacuum was kept/lost) and finally how much oil/coolant was put back into the system. Anyway - that is key evidence of the work being performed and useful information to have in terms of any leaks and whenever more involved service is required. And the only reason I don't mind doing this with fraudsters like halfords is that they use exactly the same machine as Lexus would have (Denso, or Bosch or similar) and all the work is automated, so Lexus would not do anything different for £149, that KwikFrauds do for £64.99 (...in theory). Okey - so the appointment was at 12:30, I have called 3 days before to check if they can as well perform alignment check, they said it would be fine. Came 12:25, dropped off the car and was told it will take ~1h 40min, which is fine as I have as well added "debug" service (which is basically a smoke bomb in interior which disinfects the A/C system), so that adds-up - 40min for A/C, 30min for "smoke-bomb" and another 30min to ventilate the car afterwards. So... I decided to comeback later (which probably where everything went wrong), came back ~14:15 and found car parked outside with parking fine on it. Didn't even mention the fine to them as I don't care - it is their liability if the fine is issued during the time of appointment when the car is in their possession, but asked for receipt, at which the mechanic responded - "all good car now blows cold air! Receipt will be e-mailed to you". I thought that is little bit strange, considering it was blowing cold air all along and if they would have done "performance test", as they suppose, to then they would have known. "Were you able to do alignment check"? "nope we short on mechanics today, maybe come back later or another day". Not amazing so far... then I got into the car prepared to open all the windows as after "debug" it usually stinks inside, they use very strong artificial lemon/mentol flavours usually and it literally burns the eyes... but NO... nothing like that. At first I thought... okey, maybe they switched to odourless debug, which does exist as well and that would be preferable for me. Anyway, by now I guess you see where this is going... later on the day I popped into local workshop just to replace the oil, again just preventative maintenance, had my own oils, filters etc. so just lift the car drain it and refill it. Whilst waiting for them to finish another car I am looking under the bonnet and one thing occurs to me... the plastic cover in the front of the car where A/C inlet is located is still stuck with dirt, I try to remove it, it pops out with quite a force and dirt and moss falls off. Quite clearly it was not removed recently. The other inlet is behind the battery and difficult to access without removing it, but in my case impossible, because previous owner fitted the battery incorrectly (still securely mounted, but battery cover upside-down), so the battery temp sensor etc. is the way. Realistically to connect the hose it would require to either disconnect the positive terminal, or remove the battery altogether and then fit it correctly... ideally. In short - no filling ports were accessed and I am quite confident nothing was done to the car, they got in did performance check, it was blowing cold air, so they just set A/C to 16C and left it running for 30 min at some point to cold down the car to give impression of "good performance", I doubt they did debug, because car was rather clean and A/C didn't really had any bad smell. So all they did was the free performance check, but they still kept £64.99 for refill and £20 for debug. So how can you mess-up even the simplest job on the car? BY NOT DOING IT! I think KwikFrauds lives-up to their name, they don't do complex jobs, they don't do complex frauds, there is no sophistication... they just do KwikFrauds! I have asked them for receipt 3 times now, I have sent them one final email stating that unless they come-up with conclusive evidence soon I will recover my money. So the lesson learned - there is no job too small for KwikFrauds or Halfrauds to screw-up, in theory there should be no difference, but I have not accounted for them not actually doing the job at all!

I don't often agree with you, but I don't have much else to add this time, you are spot on - interior toast, 4 different tyres... price looks alright at first glance, but condition says this was beaten-up badly. Add ~£1000 for sorting out interior, ~£600 for set of decent tyres and you arrive at the price of £8000. And who knows what else it is hiding there... at which point you have much better options to choose from. As well ~100k miles is the worst time to acquire IS250 unless all the services were done and parts replaced, because at ~100k is where you have to start changing many major component and everything that wasn't changed as per service schedule. So expect water pump, spark plugs, o2/lambda sensors, whole exhaust, potentially full AC service and alternator... list goes on. The point is that - once you at say 140-160k, those things are either replaced or obviously broken, at 60-80k they still have some life left in them, but at 100k is exactly the point where everything that wasn't replaced at 60-80k goes bang!

Not lamda or O2 for sure, in fact I don't believe there is anything looking like that under IS250.

Well... I guess depends on perspective. If you comparing it with LS which is the most reliable car ever made, then probably yes... but if you are comparing against any other convertible... then I think you will struggle to find something even close. Then we need to talk condition, you can choose best car ever made, buy it in shockingly bad condition and then it will not be reliable. So is that cars or manufacturer fault that somebody simply neglected the car and some sucker eventually pick one-up? Again I would argue not - I have picked-up several IS250s, GS300s in shocking condition, knowing they were in shocking condition and for very cheap, but they were all shockingly bad. At the same time I had other Lexus that were maintained and with good history and they never gave me trouble apart of normal maintenance parts and occasionally some preventative maintenance that I have failed to do and now I know better. So is SC430 reliable... Yes it is reliable car generally speaking. It is simply kind of weird car, it is GT car, but it has useless back seats and no boot when roof is down, it has quirky looks... so it is not for everyone. It is not amazing daily, it is not amazing for very long drive, but I reckon it is perfect Sunday car, just cruising around on the sunny day. But as you can imagine, the number of people who have dedicated car for Sundays and then the ones who actually want old Lexus is very small. MX5 are one of the best small roadsters, extremely simple, agile, well handling, rewarding even at low speeds and generally regarded as one of the best affordable drivers cars EVER. So Smart Roadster should not even be mentioned in the same sentence. MR2 spider interesting car, but has nothing on MX5... Toyota tried, they lost and it was the end of MR2. Toyota GT86/GR86 are competing quite well nowadays, but in MR2 era again MX5 were eating them for breakfast. Now again - MX5 and SC430 are like polar opposites of each other and I am not even sure how MX5 got into this discussion, but there is one car kind of in between... and that is IS250C, has little bit more usable seats, it is more nibble etc. but I reckon it is less reliable than SC430 and it just doesn't have V8, IS350C would be cool, but we never got one here. There is other alternative, and the one I myself considering carefully - that is SC300/400. Not roadster obviously, but classy LS-Coupe.

Are you certain it is even from your car? The only thing that comes to mind would be handbake cable, but I don't believe this is how it looks.

Understood, but that is what I am saying - nothing has changed. Before they could have bought your information from DVLA and send you the letter, which you could throw to the bin... now they can do the same and still send you the letter and all the same applies. I don't believe anything has changed, UK never had bilateral agreement with any county apart of maybe Ireland to enforce the fines and they still don't have it, but they can still get your details as they always did and letter may eventually arrive. To be fair I have been flashed dozen times in various countries and nothing ever arrived to my letter box... maybe depends on the country? As I would say mine were 3 times in Germany, 6 times in France and maybe once each in both Spain and Belgium. Once I got e-mail from Lithuania, but that is kind of different as it was rented car, but who got me was that they were "demanding" 6 Euros... or maybe 4.6 Euro for 8km/h over the limit... some countries certainly are better to drive in than others.

Just go for it... why not? I know that 2006+ models are little bit more responsive and maybe slightly better on fuel due to new 6-speedgearbox being used. Sadly... and as usual in UK, expect to pay £695 road tax on 2006+ model compared to £395 on older, less economical and presumably less clean 2001-2005 model. Apart of that usual things to be considered - service history, mileage, that roof works, but otherwise reliable cars, just expensive to fix when they go wrong as usual for Lexus.

I found it inappropriate connect this simple emissions sticker with wars of last century. Are you saying French should treat Brits in some special way? What about Americans, Australians, New Zealanders? There was whole Polish squadron, all in all probably 20 nationalities fought nazis only on the western front alone. So what is Crit'Air sticker for then - only French themselves? Besides let's just be clear about one thing - British didn't do it because of their "good heart", they do it for themselves, they needed to protect UK first and foremost (can't blame them), if that meant expedition to France... that is what they did. I am not saying individual soldiers were not heroes, they certainly were... but if we looking at the big picture - the nazis were common enemies for everyone and they needed destroying. Sadly, allies kind of stopped and Berlin and let even bigger evil in form of commies ravage the Eastern Europe for over 50 years. Again just politics - nazis were close enough to be bothered about, commies were distant threat that could be ignored (for a while at least... until they developed nukes themselves and then could not be dealt with either). At least I hope we learned that lesson and won't abandon Ukraine... again. Sorry for turning political here, but I am not the one who started. So I think two outcomes are possible here - either get the sticker and pay 6 euros or so and have peace of mind, of drive as it is and then deal with fines (which in UK I still believe can't touch us). Nobody needs to storm the Normandy again just because of different emissions standards... ohh and by the way - as I said Europeans are being stung by our ULEZ, so I think fair for them to return the favour... isn't it? First of all, EU never had UK drivers database. What they had instead was DVLA process where DVLA sells our details to anyone willing to pay few £, not sure if process became harder or easier after brexshaite, but that has always been the process. However, their fines were never directly enforceable in UK, by "directly" I mean it is not like UK speeding fine where you automatically get 3 points and NIP. Instead they were more like private debt which had to be taken to the court to recover and not many have been enforced. The second part is actually bad for you - meaning that if they can't send you the fine, then they will impound your car until you pay (UK does the same to foreign cars)... which let's just say is less than ideal. As I said I doubt they will impound the car for Crit'Air, as it is not traffic violation, but it means you may get impounded for speeding. So just to be clear - this is not some sort of brexshaite benefit.

Note as well - this is 2 years old thread, so some developments may have happened in mean time and somebody may have cracked the ECU or it may be just intercepts, which were available even before and triggers "cristmas tree mode" on your dash. Little problem: Meaning this would make car 100% illegal on the road. That is £1000 fine + 6 points on the license (12 points and you have yourself a ban). I know US are lax (most states anyway) on car emissions, but in EU/UK de-cat is non-starter. As if that is not a problem - be prepared to live with always ON engine light... now sure you can say "they can programme that out for you as well"... they probably can, but that means you lose lambda/o2 and you will be running rich, stinking whole neighbourhood, you won't pass emissions and the car will be down on power. Well done ruining your car! Needless to say - this is stupid. I am all for car modifications, but when they are stupid they are stupid. This is in the same category as excess negative camber.

Completely agree with this - but what it has to do with the sound?

Yeah... I think we can agree to disagree on that. I think the noise 300h makes is better left alone and not amplified, because in my opinion it is simply not nice, so I rather have not nice-quiet, than not nice-loud. Granted - if you goal is to make quiet hybrid sound like "hot hatch", then you will successfully achieve it... but I still think all hot hatches sound horrible, so 300h will sound horrible as well... simply because most commonly hot hatches have L4 and that only has following options - quiet, drone or antisocial-rattle... and no point the sound they make is pleasant regardless of what exhaust they have.

I think it is similar to UK ULEZ, but each country has it's own system. So basically they do not know what standards your car meets when it is on foreign number plate and therefore you would be automatically classed as non-compliant and receive fine. I recently seen article where maybe French family was hit by £27,000 fine for driving in London. As for your car - "Cars registered before January 1997 and motorbikes and scooters registered before June 2000 are ineligible, and cannot be driven at all where restrictions apply." Now to be fair cars over age of 30 are except as classic, so 4 more years and you won't need one. Although in practice there is no way to get Crit'air for foreign classic... so good luck with that. The list of UK cities covered by the scheme is quite extensive, so I guess you can just assume it will be needed. Now as far as I know French fines do not automatically apply in UK, meaning that you would receive the fine, but you would only need to pay it if they would take you individually to the court in UK and won (don't that that as legal advise, this is just my understanding). As such I personally think it is safe to ignore... as well I am going to France in few weeks time and I have no plans to apply for any stickers. If they want to take me to court, then they are more than welcome to do so... and lose. As well I believe you could be fined on the spot by French police, but I don't believe they would make you pay before letting you go (as it is not traffic violation). At which point it becomes the same as fine by post - has to be brought to UK court to be valid.

Well, I guess everyone has their own definition of what is a good sound. For me it is just loads of drone, quite similar noise to what you would get with rusted out hole in the exhaust - just nasty to be honest. Not that I am surprised at all... as this is not some sort of high-end system, but simple silencer delete in the rear. At the same time... it is a little bit pointless, even best system in the world would not help it - crap in = crap out. If engine exhaust doesn't sound good, then amplifying that noise just going to amplify nasty noise. Now... it is fair to say the sound quality is horrible in the video (and by the way well done for finding it!), so it is hard to tell. And again, because you can't rev 300h that means it is hard to tell what it really sounds as car is basically driving away at low relatively low RPM. What I am trying to say - if the sound quality would be better, camera would be mounted on the rear bumper and the owner would pull 0-70MPH on motorway slip road... then maybe there is something that could be heard and isn't totally horrible, maybe this horrible noise is just what you get at 2500RPM and at 4000RMP it sounds semi-decent. But I would not call sound I have seen in video "good".

Not really... it is kind of normal for welds to rust. Basically the pipes are aluminised steel specifically because the layer of aluminium does not rust, but on the place where it is welded the aluminium layer is burned trough in the process and they always give way either on the spot where the weld is, or just right next to it. Same applies to repairs - they can weld the hole, but in 3 months time it is going to blow right next to the weld. To be fair - anything over 10 years for aluminised steel is good going, so I would not blame Lexus manufacturing on it.

I think you can get pattern replacement part in same aluminised steel for ~£300. The quality of welds probably will not be as good. If the guy is making the exhaust from scratch then yes it seems the cost of £500 is reasonable. In short - you can get it cheaper and maybe £50 for fitting, but it will not be as good quality. If your mechanic as good as you say he is then for £500 you will pay more but get better quality exhaust.

It would be louder, but I would not call it "improved".

Ohhh... let not even start with out government incompetent and outright criminality when it comes to these issues. It is like expecting wolves to look after sheep... I just don't know in this analogy who are actually wolves and who are sheep. So my expectation of them even being able to find "sensible, realistic, competent" advisors is basically non-existent. I actually believe they specifically trying to distance themselves from anyone competent, because that would expose how ridiculously stupid and corrupt they are. I probably should have mentioned that in my above post - not only we don't have materials, workers and expertise to do it, we simply don't even have capable government to make decisions to do it. So in the end, as I said - only the private individuals/companies could do it, but it is not profitable and they would not even get permission to do it. In short - it's not going to happen!