Linas.P

In UK they don't check that... It is just so surprised that somebody decided to check whenever tyres can do 240, 270, 300 km/h ... but they still allow to use absolute rubbish, fake and unsafe chinese tyres which are dangerous at any speed above walking pace?! How does that make sense?! I don't know...

But RC has same ML system as RC-F, I had ML in my RC and it had folding seats, so it is not about audio system. it is quite obviously a brace to put more rigidity between towers... my opinion is that they test drove the car on Nürburgring as they do and decided that extra brace makes it better on the track. This is definitely true if you tracking it, but I honestly doubt it is necessary for daily driving it. Besides as I said - more elegant solution of putting U-Shaped brace could be fitted to both have folding seats and add the rigidity back... looking at it seems like Lexus gone the cheapest possible way, just bit of stamped sheet metal and job done... but I think it could be done better and it could allow folding seats... and even then I doubt it is strictly needed if you don't track it. Clearly they sacrificed some practicality to make car better to handle on the track ... and that is why in US one would choose RC350 if they care about practicality... here we kind of have big gap between RC200t and RC-F...

Yes - better idea would be to buy battery protection kit (it senses voltage and turns off the dashcam if battery drops below certain voltage). Because I would say dahscam is as useful parked as when driving.

But why would that prevent seats from folding? If I am not mistaken once RC headrests are all the way down they extend about the same as RC-F fixed ones and when folded RC headrests don't really touch the front seats anyway.

And then think ... public transport. Yeah sure... the price would be astronomical, you would have to do 10 changes and I doubt you would get there same day... and Imagine if you have luggage with you what the choir that would be! And as for them driving at 40MPH... 100%... anything above 50MPH is killing range... nowadays only Trucks and Teslas are in the first lane! What annoys me is that Trucks now mainly moved over into second lane, because they keep having to overtake Teslas! So that is "progress" for you!

I guess just good illustration on how different people have different needs and perspectives. For me public transport is most horrible thing ever... I often say I am allergic to it, but I can't think of more horrible way of travelling, standing next to other people, smelling their armpits and whatever junk food they took on board, or scrubbing your suit against the guy going to construction side all painted over and covered in dust. Perhaps as well depends on introverts vs extroverts... so no - in my opinion public transport is never a good solution. Sure I sometimes don't mind flying or Eurostar business class, unless somebody bring damn kids onboard... anyhow, I just can't see how to make public transport acceptable in huge city with 100s of different cultures, all ages from 1 to 100, all sorts of jobs, social classes etc... and make it as such that everyone enjoys it. Just not possible. Public transport is as well just phenomenon of last 100 years... at least personal transportation gives freedom and is positive phenomenon in my opinion public transport instead is dehumanising punishment. Second point - why are there so many cars on road? Maybe because our road network was designed for 1900 when population was 30 million and build in 1960 for population of 48 millions... and by the way in 60s they designed the roads for future, but as you may know they never built them. Stupid protests took place, roads got cancelled ... and sure "homes over the roads" except we are now prisoners in our own cities because we can't damn drive around without roads... all great if you want to be stuck in tower block for the rest of your life, but for city planning it is horrible. So yes - there are 2 times as many people than the infrastructure is built to handle and 4 times as many cars as the roads can carry... and by the way in last 10-20 years government made roads literally worse, in a lot of places capacity was cut, not improved. So again I just disagree here - if we spend half of the £40bn collected from the roads each year for building new roads and widening them, then there would be "enough road for all the cars". Almost always this is countered with "yeah but there is no space"... I am sure there is enough space - build it vertically if it can't be built horizontally, built 2, 3, 4 layers of the roads... everything is possible if only we wanted to make it work. When they build trainline, they don't say there isn't enough space for railway in the city - they just build the tunnel under the city. I think there was study saying that there is limit of lanes after which it no longer makes sense - I believe that limit was 5 lanes, 3 were restrictive, 4 were optimal and there was no perceived benefit after 5, in which case we just need more roads, even if we can't widen them. Take M25 for example... it is only so busy because it should have been 3rd ring road from 4 planned... what it is instead is often 2nd from only 2.5 built. If we could build more ring roads the load will even out. So in summary - there isn't too many cars, there are simply more people then there were before and they need infrastructure to travel. Public transport is needed, but it is not solution for everyone or everything... certainly not silver bullet to solve all future problems. Now where I do agree with you - it seems that BEVs are simply not solution for everyone, why will depend from person to person, but it is clear that as they are today they just can't work for majority and they need to fundamentally change to work for all the needs.

Yeah that was always the case - just a ski hatch... really really limits what you can do with the car. And I would almost say that is deal breaker for me when I can only have one car. That said section in the rear is just bolted in, so I guess in theory could be retrofitted with folding seats: And I guess if rigidity in the rear is a concern (which I doubt, considering that standard RC meant to be convertible and is more rigid than LF-A), then I guess some U-Shaped piece can be fitted to add the rigidity back.

This was debated fiercely many times and there are 2 camps. One say this is "modification" and thus has to be reported and has impact etc. and the Other says this is round pieces of rubber, they are road legal all the way to 1.6mm and that is all it matters. My perspective is somewhere in between - tyres are the only thing between you and the road so I always only get premium tyres (and by the way they are worth the money, because they last longer and per mile are cheaper) and it seems we are on the same page as far as that is concerned. I personally don't believe it impact warranty unless explicitly stated, nor insurance unless explicitly stated... and as far as I know neither has clause saying slightly different tyre size is explicitly prohibited. Yes insurance expects you to report "modifications", but then it is left vague enough for you to pretty much interpret what "modification" is. I do not consider going from 265/35 to 255/35 or 255/40 a modification. Going to 285/60 off-road tyre on the rear... yeah that would be modification. Or fitting like ultra-stretched tyre like 225 on 9" for "style" and then run it on 45 degree camber (no idea why those cars are allowed on the road). And from perspective of "what is better" - 265/35 Acellera Ultra-shaitegrip 10000 or 255/35 Goodyear Assy 6... I think it is obvious which one is safer and has more grip. So I personally would not declare it anywhere. I had done that on IS250 without issues in the past 255>245 and 225>235. Now I guess what I am saying - there is no definitive answer and you will have to weight the risk/benefit yourself, at the same time 265>255 difference is small enough not to matter in my opinion. That said I would actually go for 265/40 and 2.7% under-read. In my experience all Lexus already overreads by 5-10% (they have to by the law), so bringing it little bit closer to reality 4is always my goal. Is it "safer" to have over-read... in my opinion - yes and no. Every time I have over-read I am abusing it because "34 is just about 30"... and then before you know it you already doing 40... which is 36... Whereas if speedo would show actual speed I think it is actually easier to stick to it, because if you going over it is over and there is no hidden margins to take into account. I guess in grand scheme of things depends on person - if you actually stick to indicated speed all the time, then yes indeed you will never going to be speeding, but then it may annoy other people when somebody in front is consistently driving at 26... but as I said this seems like personal preference thing 🙂

Your statements seems very sensible. RC-F sure - UUHP probably makes sense, but having them on RC300h really has only negatives. On my RC200t I had mixture of Dunlops and Bridgestone's. Fronts were Dunlop RT2s, great tyres (I had them before on IS250 as well) and they are one of my favourite, but sadly they are becoming obsolete now and not available for the rears. Then I had separate set of wheels and they came with nearly new Bridgestone Potenza RE050a which were massively worse, louder, worse on fuel and less comfortable. Sure they were grippy tyres, something that I would have appreciated in 500hp car, but in RC200t I really didn't. I consider Goodyear Assy 6 as direct upgrade to Dunlop RT2 (which was basically rebranded Assy 3) and they should be decently comfortable and compliant, but they not available in 265/35. Same story for Conti Premium Contact 6 (not Sport Contact 7), it is more of touring tyre, but again not available in 265s... The only tyre which I know roughly and which is semi-decent and even decently priced would be Uniroyal Rainsport 5 (it is Michelin sister company), they not going to be as comfortable as Primacy 4, or as sporty as PS5, but they should be nicely in between and they are available in both sizes. Other option - playing around with slightly different sizes, I know this is not for everyone, but for example 255/40/19 has way wider choice of tyres and for way better prices... and I am struggling to see how RC300h justifies having 265 wide tyre in the rear, besides 255 on 40 profile should be more comfortable and more fuel efficient.

Yeah... and basically scrap. Because you can't drive it on the road.

It is not possible to upgrade the existing system to have Android Auto. So you have 2 options - either you buy separate module which connect to existing sat-nav and allows Android Auto/Apple Carplay (~£300 deal), there is thread just below of how to do it. Or you buy whole new sat-nav unit with Android, which will as well allow you to do it + you get nice 10.8" screen instead of small 8" one (and that is more like £500) - again there is thread just below for that.

Without knowing what code cause the limp home mode it is nearly impossible to tell. Could have been anything. I guess for the future - get cheap OBD2 scanner with phone app and if it happens again at least you will know where to look.

Do you have service/workshop manual? The codes do correspond to: DTC C0200/31 Front Speed Sensor RH Circuit and DTC C0205/32 Front Speed Sensor LH Circuit, but both are still quite uncommon faults. I would be inclined to check the wiring and validate sensor fault before throwing new hubs at it.

What is the mileage of your car? I can't remember wheels speed sensors being very common issue, so I am just thinking maybe it is not a sensor fail?

It's been few years since I been in RC300h, but I don't remember being bale to rev it... I think the revs may go up-to 1.5-2k but that is about it. I think mostly as Phil said to protect the system as it is CVT transmission and there is no reason to ever rev it e.g. you can't brake-boost it like automatic. When driving you can change the fake ratios to increase decrease revs, but even then it is hard to get it above 4k rpm.

Unless it is something obvious like the tyres, yes - no papers is same as not done. And it is not trust thing... simple example, if you ever want to sell the car then you will be asked same questions and price knocked down for you, so it is just fair. And yes - that is what I have always done with all the cars. I would do the service and reject all the extra suggestions, then I would go and either do it myself or use independent shop, because that works out like 50% cheaper... and on many occasions I bought the same parts from Lexus, but the labour costs is what makes a difference. And then next year I get Lexus to check the car again during service, so that kind of acts as a double-check on the work independent shops did or on what I did myself. If it passes Lexus inspection then I assume they wouldn't have done it better themselves. The good thing as well that Lexus cars rarely needs anything apart of consumables and part of what is in Lexus schedule, so it is kind of rare that dealers will try to upsell you for major job. Sure each cars has something specific to that car which needs additional attention (on IS250 for example that is rear callipers), but all those things are well covered in this forum. The most popular upsale items are "lip" on the disks, corrosion on brake/fuel lines, advisories for the tyres when they have 4.5mm+... all in all nothing egregious and generally easy to spot and overall they generally not pushy, they just say "that is what we would advise done" and if you say no they never ask again... kind of appreciate that when dealing with Lexus.

Wouldn't that just put more soot into DPF, sort of pushing the issue further and making it more costly at later date? It seems MOT does not check EGR if this car passed, but generally not acceptable solution. I guess my point is that EGR delete only makes sense together with DPF delete, which as discussed is highly immoral and highly illegal... OP - I think you should check if your car still has DPF, as that might not be there either...

I don't think anyone could give you definitive answer. From outside it looks identical, I believe it is identical... but I can't confirm there are no differences underneath, maybe different bracket or clip, or something. I don't believe there would be anything major that can't be modified to fit. And obviously getting used wing for 2019+ RC is near impossible, so you have either option to go 2018- or go with new one from Lexus for ~£500-650.

Isn't that exactly the same thing I am moaning about all the time!? As I said - the only reasonable conclusion about 2030 deadline is that the plan is to take the cars away from masses! Most people won't have freedom of personal transportation... I said that so many times! Only elites will be able to have one, the people who will be able to afford £100k car and charge it at home... all the rest will walk... literally.

Assume they were not done - service usually only covers strictly what is in the schedule... and most owners will reject any other items as to be fair it makes no sense to do them at Lexus... unless somebody is willing to pay £3000 just for rear shocks... I suggest later - somebody who has sorted out IS-F will be able to tell straight away if car feels tired or does not pull as it suppose to (+ calm head nearby always helps when buying car!), as for inspection just call the nearest Lexus and ask... I would say a week in advance would be good guess. Some will charge money, some may even do it for free... I would not mention anything about purchase, just that I want car to be fully inspected to understand why it needs doing to be 10/10.

ohhh... I have no hope for that happening, indeed politicians won't agree on anything... nevermind something important! I am just saying that is what rational race of intelligent beings would do (clearly majority of humans are neither)! Imagine "disaster" when politicians realise that energy is almost free and clean and we can do carbon capture and THERE IS NO WAY TO SCREW EVERYONE with extortionate taxes! What a "disaster"! It is much better to create waste, pollute everything, destroy environment, destroy countryside with wind gazzillion wind turbines and then tax the poor for existing and make them live like animals... that sounds like plan they can agree on. Nuclear fusion - clean and endless source of energy sounds like too good to be necessary! I am just saying it is ridiculous that BEVs are presented as "solution" despite cars being minor contributor and despite all the damage making them does... not to mention how much worse they are compared to what we already have in terms of utility and overall result of taking freedom away from masses. And secondly - if we could harness power of nuclear fission with 40s technology, if we could land on the moon with 60s technology... then with technology of 21s century we certainly should be able to figure out how nuclear fusion works... instead of playing with stupid BEVs and carbon taxes.

I guess other way of looking at it is - what is your expectation and what you can live with... If the expectation is that car is 8/10 and that is complete satisfactory, then it seems the car in question will be 8/10... if the expectation is 10/10, then the questions is who should cover the difference? Market seems to suggest that it is expected for the buyer to pick-up the bill, again - what is your own expectation? If you happy to spend £3k on top of £15k to make it 10/10, then perhaps that is good buy. I think I am on the side that believes that for £15k this should already be 10/10 and it is the seller who should pick-up the bill. I am not saying seller hasn't done it, maybe it is just not mentioned in the ad? So perhaps if all the things that Imy mentioned are done it is worth £15k... Otherwise I think we back to £12k and that is where I would always like to be as a buyer i.e. buy car which is NOT sorted for less and then having flexibility to decide whenever it satisfies me as it is, or I want to put more money into it and make it as it should be. Now knowing myself I always opt to fix it and it always turns out to be bad financial decision, because you just never get it back when selling (or in my case when some bellend crashes into me, writes off the car and insurance just looks at the mileage and concludes it is worthless)... If I have saved that money when buying already then who cares I guess. However, I would never overpay for the car hoping it is right and then learning I will have to spend extra on it.

Hard to advise really... the best way would be to test drive low mileage newer example to get the "feel" on how car should feel - kind of hard to do with older car like this. Say 10 years ago you could have rocked into dealership and test drove their car before going driving used ones... no such opportunities today. As well note that 2008-2009 cars had harder and more crashy suspension anyway, compared to 2010 revision... so if you compare with newer car the harshness of suspension may give you wrong impression of being more "tight". All in all, what you would expect is that 144k miles car will be less "tight" on everything, more worn out... but there is no way of telling it by just looking or even driving, unless you have had extensive seat time in one of these before. I personally would just assume all bushings will need doing, they may not be ripped, but they are sure worn out and loose after so many years and miles... and let's not forget IS-F generally benefits from better bushings as factory ones were kind of too soft and comfort oriented. Shocks - again if they not leaking they are good in theory, but that is not to say that replacing them with new ones would not make the car feel better on the road. I sadly, can't say anything specific, because everything will be worn by "feel"... ... and no point of paying for inspection, exactly the reasons you mentioned - they would have no clue what to look for on older, rarer performance car. You can get it done for peace of mind and obvious things to maybe use as reason to negotiate the price down, but they won't pick-up on subtle issues. I probably would rather take it to Lexus and ask them to inspect... they may try to upsell some stuff and again that could be reason to negotiate the price. But the key thing here is - it is not about condition, it is about the bargaining power...

I have different view on that... you see - war actually started in 2014, we in the west just forgotten about it after first few years... because we were pre-occupied with our bullshaite problems and more interested in what celeb bang what celeb than people literally dying in the war in Europe... Is invasion related pandemic? Yes... absolutely! Let me explain - ruzzia starts wars when the energy prices are high, have always done so historically... and they always lose wars when energy prices goes down and their economy stalls. What happened towards the end of pandemic? You guessed it - energy prices were record high due to demand picking-up and supply slowing down. So I do believe putka has included it in his calculation and he thought "west won't do anything, because they are too much energy dependant and they already have high inflation and they will not risk 1. sanctioning ruzzia 2. prolonging the war by supporting Ukraine... ohhh and MASSIVE 3. Ukraine won't fight anyway, so by the time it is taken in 3 weeks, west won't even be able to agree what to do about it!". Clearly he was wrong on all 3 counts and to large degree third point was most important, if Ukraine would have folded in 3 days or weeks and there would be new puppet government west would have done nothing, there would be no reason to do anything, because Ukraine itself would declare that no harm was done? So what would you sanction ruzzia for? As Ukraine lasted long enough, that basically became impossible for west to ignore and sanctions and weapon deliveries followed. Are there hidden motives in the west? Ohhh... no doubt, west is clearly a kind of proxy now (it isn't really a proxy war, but it would take long time to explain why not)... however one very clear motive is to disarm ruzzia... and OHH BOY it is working. The deal we are getting by supplying Ukraine cannot be matched ever... it is literally the best deal west ever had against adversary... West pledged ~£40bn last year - this is drop in the bucket! Pledged does not mean it was delivered and not everything was military equipment anyway... delivered estimates fluctuates ~15-25bn... but even that is highly misleading because this is "replacement cost". Except when one delivers Marder which was decommissioned and would have costed £100k to dismantle and calculated £14million replacement cost for Puma... clearly that doesn't make sense... and what was achieved with these literal bread crumbs of military equipment? $1 trillion loss of military equipment for ruzzia, they lost half (1500) of their entire tank fleet, 6500 IFVs... they lost more tanks and IFVs than UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain has combined! Not to mention they pretty much lost their entire professional army. Let just think for a second - why do we have military in Europe? Honestly only reason is ruzzia? Who else we planning to fight? So draining our sole enemy makes a lot of sense... It is win-win... and that is why this war will continue... and to be fair we can do more, but I think our overlords have cynically calculated that winning too quickly may not destroy sufficient numbers of ruzzian equiptment, whereas keeping it on "slow burning" mode and not making ruzzia feel like it is impossible to win and withdrawing will result in them eventually putting more and more equipment into the fight... sort of sunken cost fallacy... and it seems it is working. It will be historically known as biggest trap in military history... or... well... there will be nobody to write that history anyway... but make no mistake - it is 100% ruzzian fault! The energy companies profiteering is another matter and that is our government corruption problem, not war and not ruzzia. Energy prices already dropped to pre-war levels... so why we still paying £1.50 for petrol and record high prices for gas? Because friends of our government are making killing profiteering!

IS-F taillights (just outer piece) are £400 a side... VLANDs are £300 combined (all 4). Hopefully owner kept original lights otherwise not sure how selling VLANDs allows you to put the lights right?.. finding UK spec. IS-F tail lights is kind of impossible now. Obviously there is always an option picking-up IS220d lights for £50, but they are not the same as IS-F. As for the cost - I agree that this is "market price", although all IS-Fs on sale have been on sale for 6 months+ so there isn't exactly queue standing to buy them at said "market price"... There is as well what is known as "sellers market" vs. "buyers market" - IS-F is clearly sellers market - there are more people who want them then there are people who sell them, but as I mentioned because this is such a niche car we talking about 10 sellers and 15 buyers... and the chances that those 15 people all willing to overpay £5k is slim. Many people would want these in theory, but once they have to put £15k of their own money suddenly there are no takers. As well remember - these are mostly "cash" sales... sort of people who have spare 20k in cash generally don't look at 15 years old performance cars, and those who look at them generally don't have 20k in cash. And I might be wrong - but I don't think IS-F is comparable to Supra or NSX, I just don't believe it will ever appreciate as much (nor it had depreciated as much). Very low numbers sold prevents cars from dropping very low in value, but I can't see them climbing much further. What I am saying - I don't believe IS-F is "investment" car and/or there are cars which are better investment at this price point (~15-30k). And when it comes to performance cars - for that sort of money there are much faster cars one can buy.