Linas.P

That is very true indeed, as I said I respect individual police officer and I don't think it is their personal fault, it is the "system" in my opinion. As you well pointed out CPS are big part of it and then the laws themselves. For example I can find my stolen wheels on ebay now, go to purchase them, call police when I am sure they are my wheels, prove that they are my wheels, but the person selling them won't face any consequences. Their most likely defence is going to be - "I bought it myself, or my friend gave it to me, or I happened to find them in the bush" and the sentencing will be "£50 fine for disposition of stolen goods". So you right - for police officer who has to spend probably a week documenting the case and for prosecutor that is like spit in the face - catch criminal, collect evidence and they walk free with the fine which is less than train ticket to attend the hearing. I had two cases where it went to CPS and evidence was not high-enough standard to prosecute. Like literally perpetrator admitted hitting my car once (it was as well on dashcam), but said "yes I hit it, but I didn't damage it" and that was enough, CPS decision - "it cannot be proven beyond reasonable doubt that damage was cause as result of defendant hitting the car"?! My project was minimally affected as luck may have it, as I was well and truly into it for 3-4 months already and therefore I have taken 80% of the tools which covers 99% of need back home, or left them in the car. So whatever was stolen or burned were some rarely used tools, but from time to time I realise that I have to buy something that I had in the garage. Yesterday I had to buy riveting tool and rivets, something I obviously had in garage. I am sure I will have to buys sandpaper, some detailing supplies and tools. Most of what burned was virtually useless, but example of such thing could be old wiring harness piece, which in itself worth nothing, but when you fixing car wiring it is very useful, because you can just go, cut piece of it patch whatever witting you working on. One thing which going to impact me soon, or sort of starting to impact me is the wheels. I had 3 sets of wheels which although not perfect would have been great candidates for refurbishment and new tyres. Now it seems I will have to buy set of trashed wheels for £300-£400, then refurbish them and then fit new tyres, whereas if not for garage fire I could have saved that initial £300-400 on what looked like worthless set of old wheels. Basically I had 3 sets there - bas**** stole one set and somehow decided that they need to set the rest on fire. So basically they stole 10% and just burned the remaining 90%. I don't know what was the logic (doubt they know such a thing as logic), but maybe they thought that is good way to hide the evidence of breaking in?!

Being car of known figure with connections I am sure it will be found and returned with minimal damage and the thieves will be hanged and quartered. Just not except same response from police when your (ordinary person) car is stolen, they will advise you to call insurance. Talking from experience here, car stolen last year, case closed within 6 hours, garage burgled and set on fire last month - took 3 weeks for police to confirm Crime Reference Number. I suspect they haven't even bothered to officially record it as a crime and only after 2 online request, e-mail and 3 calls they finally decided that maybe it is a crime worth recording... and then closed case 12 hours later due to "lack of evidence". Have I said police in UK is kind of joke nowadays... well I guess I am not the first person saying it! Shout out to London Fire Brigade as well - did you know that if you want to have report of the fire, of your own property which has burned you need to pay them £550 to share such report?! I mean I assume they create report and analyse the cause either way, especially in the cases of arson, but to have a look at it you now have to pay... And me silly thought this is paid by extortionate amounts of taxes we pay. Now just to be clear - I think individual police officers and fire fighters are heroes (and therefore I respect them), but the institutions they works for are kind of fundamentally rotten, corrupt and there fore ineffective nowadays.

The motors are fine, I can power them with 12V, but it is not motor which is faulty, it is throttle position sensor. And when ECU detects that throttle position sensor is faulty it cut's power to motor (kind of hate electronic throttle for this reason, analog one you can always bypass with the "power of your foot", here ECU just says "nope). So what I need to test is a sensor and sensor should be 1.2-3.2Ω at 20oC... funny enough outside is like 21oC today. So I am not expecting much of the difference. I mean it could vary a little bit and perhaps 0.5-5Ω would still be fine, but when I am measuring 100s or 2000, it is clear that sensor is dead on the units and it won't work.

Damn... how ridiculous is that, got throttle body today and it is still faulty, this is third one! I don't understand what is going on - is it really that difficult to buy working throttle body?! I mean the two used ones for £30, ok I understand they were kicking around the warehouse (of not left outside on breaker cars), but 2 out of 2 faulty is still kind of disappointing, but new one is faulty as well. Now I am going to go and check my wiring just in case, but the point is that the units are faulty by themselves if Lexus workshop manual is to be believed. The used ones measured 2000Ω and 2900Ω, but even new one still measures 104Ω, whereas it should be 1.2-3.2Ω between E2 and VC (that is sensor side of throttle body). So I don't even need to connect it to the car to know it is basically dead on arrival. Just this stupid part already wasted 2 weeks of my time, order wait few days to get it, test it, send it back again and repeat. Never thought it could be such a hassle just to get used part as described! 🤬

It is actually very easy, there are 4 clips inside and they can be undone with small screwdriver. The vents themselves come out easily, but you need to be careful with the dash edges because they are easy to crack. Workshop manual advises masking tape, but that doesn't always help. I vents were trashed when I got the car, not because I removed them... seem like somebody tried to paint them maybe but failed, so they were all just blotchy.

OEM Lexus is £500 vs. OE Toyota is £90 - that is correct. The problem is that there are no OE throttles in Lexus spec. to buy (that would be Denso with that bent pipe), but there are plenty of generic and OE electronic throttle bodies which are literally identical. I could have picked-up no-name reproduction for £50, but opted for what claims to be Denso part for £90. 6 pages in is kind of chronicle already 😄 Lol - Lobster Claws! I find set of GS mk4 F-Sport wheels, but I am not convinced I like the looks of them on IS250, furthermore 19" is a bit much, gets into territory of uncomfortable and don't look right without lowering. Same for Aston Martin alloys - there is set with good Bridgestone Potenza's for £900 (that is much better than getting 17" standard set refurbished and on decent tyres), but again they are 19" and they have 275 on the rear... Surely not the tyre I want to run on IS250. The Aston Martin wheels looks great on IS-F thought with right spacing and right height: Just not practical to run such wheels on daily driven IS250... although still £900 is way better on these wheels, which can take off anytime and sell for same £900, than spending similar amount on trashy standard IS 17" wheels to get them back to the shape.

Yeah, strange - I wonder if that is some issue with LOC servers. For me the pictures shows in page, but if I try opening they just give me error. Lets try again. Dirty: Getting there: Clean:

Thanks, yes I am sure that few people had them, I think somebody even had them on IS250 as well. What size spacers have you used for yours? As well what you did with centre caps left AM ones?

Yeah, First Aid Wheels - they are still around, but £312 to exchange set of standard IS 17" I just don't see the point. That is literally the cost of refurbishing them anyway and they even state that if wheels are badly corroded (which mine are) they may not take them for exchange, making it £448. I can just refurb my wheels for like £70 each, which is £280+VAT, but I am just not a fan of original wheels anyway. Even something like original 18" sport wheels would do (which were plentiful previously), mk3 F-sports have became unobtanium (they always been in high demand), but even more common ones like Hoshi and Baransu are nowhere to be found, or the two below (not sure what they called... "mk2 Fsport"?) And maybe I am coming to this with unrealistic expectations, but it used to be the case that buying set of used wheels with tyres would often work out cheaper than buying set of new tyres alone. And I don't even expect premium, as long as they are like 4-5mm left and some mid-range on wheels which little bit of scratching, but nothing major I would be fine. But now I see people literally listing badly corroded wheels with 4 different trash tyres for £400. That just doesn't compute - so I get the wheels which must be refurbished (say £300) and then set of tyres (say another £300) and all in all that will be £1000 for set of bog standard wheels. £1000 used to be the price for IS-F or "mk3 Fsport wheels". So I look at it the way that if wheels require refurbishment, then they are worth like nominal price of £100 and if tyres are not matched and not usable, then they add no value... but it doesn't seems to be the case in current market. To be fair there are plenty of mk1 wheels in various conditions, but mk1 wheels never looked right on mk2. It is ironic that I had mk3 F-Sports, but that car was just stolen with the wheels on never to be found. Then I had 17" advance wheels in need of light refurbishment and that would have been perfect for me now, because I kind of like the way they look, those got burned in the fire and I can only find people selling 2 of them individually for £169 for wheel. Few years ago when I was trying to sell whole set nobody wanted them even for £250. I am still looking for my stolen set to turn on sale, there are not many of RC300h F-sport facelift wheels around, so it will be very obvious if thieving s..m would decide to sell them. Although, I am sure they probably sold them on same day to some tyre shop for £50 to get a shot of crack. Not that I would put them on IS250, but still interesting where they would end-up.

Ok so the IS250 nightmare project car was going kind of slowly recently. New wiring harness turned out to be fine, but required bit of "persuasion". Got DTCs P0352, P0354, P0356 - Ignition Coil "X" Primary / Secondary Circuit. Basically entire bank stopped working. Turned out it was bad secondary engine ground strap... which was bizarre, because I have previously removed and cleaned it, but it was enough to take it off, put it back on and coil issues were gone... and that is despite there being at least dozen other grounding points! Secondly, for some reason throttle has died (motor is good, but position sensor is dead), probably was on the way out. Now as I find out apparently it is not so easy to find replacement in UK, strangle that 9 out of 10 used ones listed are from Lithuania (and generally much of Lexus spares). Bought 2 in UK and both were dead on arrival, so had to return them. New one costs ridiculous money - £1182 + delivery, but more realistically ~£500 from amayama or similar place, but still very expensive. So what I did in the end I have ordered brand new OE replacement one for Lexus CT, Toyota Yaris, RAV4 etc. It is identical throttle body to IS250/GS300 and the only difference is that one coolant line goes 90o right, instead of being bent 90o backwards. Anyway £90 later I ordered one and planning just to transplant the sensor and rivet it back on my old throttle body and hope for it to work. vs. Third, I have elusive C1201 error which is just VSC error without much description. I suspect some grounding issues somewhere, but still have to figure out where. For time being I want to solve throttle body so that car runs and drives properly. The next things on the list 1. fix sat-nav digitiser, have bought replacement one for £18, screen is good, just digitiser not responding from the day I bought the car. 2. had to order new central vents as mine were just trashed, but that is just cosmetic. 3. Badly need new gear knob, but LPD wants £169?! Seems I have to wait for one to be delivered from amayama £37, for IS-F knob. 4. The horn stopped working, but I suspect wiring issue in steering wheel as I have messed that-up replacing steering lock, got replacement ordered relatively cheaply from scrap IS220d. 5. Generally, prepare car for MOT... seems like the only two issue remaining are VSC light and horn. 6. I am struggling to find suitable wheels - the existing ones to be honest are good enough to pass MOT, but they are just ugly and doesn't really deserve to be refurbished. Problem is that nobody seems to be selling Lexus alloys for reasonable price (unless one considers completely trashed set with all 4 different tyres for £400 to be good price). Funny enough, I never thought I will ever need to buy Lexus wheels again, as I had hoarded 4 sets myself, but they were either stolen or literally burned in arson (the times we living in!). In either case the status for now is that car runs and drives, just not well enough to pass MOT. Once MOT is done and it passes my present back will be full detail, for time being just detailed interior, as it there was genuine risk of catching diseases inside. Before and after was quite dramatic even if it is hard to show it in pictures here:

For some who have followed long journey on crank-no-start auction IS250, this may not be new, but after almost 6 months I got the car running and driving again, just required half of electrical part replaced ... But now starts the more "pleasant" part of the project... and that is to detail this hairy beast. Surely the results are pleasant, but the ways getting there are let's say interesting. For time being I started with interior, because I don't want to catch mild case of death driving it, nor MOT tester would appreciate the condition of interior, so it got it done first. Started with quite shiny and very sticky interior, faded and sticky door panels and plenty of questionable stains. If it doesn't look too bad, then check out what started coming off the seats below. It was probably the dirtiest interior I have ever seen... I don't even want to know what is the white stuff that was coming off drivers seats... least disgusting guess is that some idiot applied leather cream to sealed leather, but it could be much worse... The rear had some banana milkshake treatment and thus I decided to go with heavier than usual treatment on leather. Usually, leather cleaner would have been enough, but one has to touch the seat to understand how dirty it was, but... preferably not with bare hand! Lets say "circumstances required" it, so some 10:1 Surfex HD (APC) was first step, then general purpose shampoo (Gtechniq G-Wash 100:1) to sort of rinse it off and only then I used my standard Dodo Juice Supernatural cleaner/sealant - amazing stuff and works amazing, but this interior was just too dirty to waste it. And after nearly 3 (like 6 times longer than interior should take to finish) hours I was quite satisfied with the results: To finish off - set of new carpets as car came without any... I wonder what they looked like. The door trims are still little bit sticky, but I knocked-off the layer of white residue and they look 10 times better. Next step will be 50% isopropyl to literally wipe the stickiness away (one has to be careful with that, but there is no cure for sticky rubber, the layers has to be removed), before applying some permanent trim restorer. But for time being they are "good enough". Don't mind missing went, the replacement is coming and I still need to replace digitiser on sat-nav screen. If or when I get the car past MOT it will be time for exterior detail... it will be challenging to say the least.

And that is correct - thinner oil will leak down faster, but that is only desirable when engine is cold, when engine is hot you kind of want for oil to stick as much as possible to protect the surfaces and that is why we have multigrade oils - so that we can have thinnest possible oil for cold starts and thickest possible oil for when engine is warm. It is all kind of relative because all oils will be much thinner when warm, so second number just indicates that they are better at resisting thinning out too much. How thick you could go? Well, first of all you probably want to keep it thin for cold starts, so 0 or 5, which leaves you with 0W40 or 5W50. I personally used Mobil1 Long Life 0W40 and it was much batter compared to 5W30 Magnatec, stayed clean, didn't burn at all and I didn't notice any negative effects. Obviously Mobil was just better grade oil, fully synthetic vs. hydrocracked Magnatec, so I shouldn't be surprised. That said, your issue is just weird, as if there is no issue on cold starts, there should be no issues when engine is warm. I can only speculate but it seems maybe something is expanding the way it shouldn't when engine warms-up and then it starts grinding? VVTI is complex system and hard to diagnose, but I may look to VVTI solenoids or something like that. Solenoids should regulate the oil flow trough the system, meaning that maybe they close little bit when they detects that engine has warmed, but maybe one of them malfunctions and closes too much or not at all.

Hey, I know this was long time since you made this post, but I just wondering if you still have the wheels and/or are still selling them... and if not then maybe you know few details about them. It seems that Lexus wheels are in extreme low supply now and I don't feel like refurbishing the trashy standard wheels on IS250, I had 4 spare sets (hoarder kind of), but some f....wit stole one set and then set my garage on fire (well that apparently happens). Long story short, I remembered that Aston Martin Vantage wheels fit Lexus and someone have them fitted on Lexus, so my first thought was to go on the forum and find who that was. It is clear they are 5x114.3PDC and if I am not mistaken 19x9J? . But maybe you remember what was offset and centre bore on them? Thanks,

By cluster - do you mean whole headlight? Which would be strange as not much could be wrong with it, apart of physical damage to the lenses. If they are xenon then the ballast could be bad and require replacement. Note as well that if you have xenon, then you better of disconnecting battery when working on headlight, the ballast generates 10000V and that isn't generally the voltage at which humans operate well. Anyway - if you looking at replacing whole headlight then entire front of the car has to come out, bumper, grill, mudguards etc. It will be easier to advise if you could add some pictures of what you mean.

If it happens on warm engine after 20-30 minutes of driving, then it is different issue altogether. This issue with lifters/valve train/valve chain is specific for cold start. Not sure how 0W20 helps, as cause of rattle likely to be lack of lubrication and if it happens on warm engine then it probably means oil is already to thin, not too thick, so by adding thinner oil with lower warm viscosity you probably will make it worse rather than better. Thinner oil only makes sense for cold start i.e. using 0W30 instead of 5W30 so that it flows better right away, but on warm you should be looking at second number and generally the higher the better (within reason).

That is more likely - whatever is different between services they charge extra and recommend doing it, rather than including in the service for different cost, whereas service cost itself is just oils, filters and checks. It would make sense for people on low mileages where part replacement like spark plugs not actually due. However, if you try to book a service with your number plates you will see that say 100k for IS250 is £650, for RC200t it is £600 etc. So they are definitely not flat £550. I mean site literally looks like it is under development at the moment as each day it says different things, like 3 days ago there was no summary of "approximate" service pricing and one could select different services after entering car plates. Today it just says recommended service based on car and mileage and I can't even find how to choose different service. Perhaps we should give it few weeks and they will sort it out, because at the moment it is just confusing and misleading.

Service manual as well advises that once throttle body is replace ECU needs to "re-learn idle", however I was not able to find such function in TechSteam. As far as I understand there is no IVAC, but there is EVAP, however I doubt it has something to do with your idle. Then there is whole fancy swirl control system in plenum, anyone's guess if that could be malfunctioning.

All brackets are: 49 N*m (36 ft.*lbf) The drop link bushings are: 84 N*m (62 ft.*lbf) Workshop manual does not specify having wheels on the ground, but recommends checking alignment afterwards.

Funny how it isn't even correct - "IS, NX, RC, ES - £290 / £550"? Surely, it does not cost the same to get full service on IS250 as it is on IS300h, nor 60k miles service costs like 100k miles service. I really struggle to understand what Lexus tried to achieve with the page changes, previously one could at least see what is included and how much it costs. It was not very simple, but understandable enough. Now it is outright misleading.

If there are no DTCs then check is throttle body is clean, dirt can accumulate in throttle body and it can start sticking. As well overtime ECU adjust for throttle body dirt, but it could only adjusts like 2 degrees, if it gets too dirty it may start handing on revs. Apart of that you may need to look at live data and see what parameters are changing when revs are jumping around, but looking at life data is same as predicting future with crystal ball, I never get it especially without knowing what values to look for. It is kind of funny because my car has all the issues ever... just name me the issue with IS250 and it has it. Likewise I have this rough idle... but in my case it is dead throttle body (position sensor in particular).

Either this or dry valve lifters themselves. No, in my experience it made no difference whatsoever. First thing which helped me a lot was engine flush, without flush the rattle would be back after 4-6k miles, with flush there would be no rattle until like 10k. Second thing, simply doing oil changes more often (or rather at "proper" intervals like 5-6k) and that should solve it. Third thing, there is Wynn's additive for specifically valve lifters, it is like £8 and definitely makes engines sound much smoother on start-up and eliminates this noise. Likewise I heard ZX1 helps with same thing, basically you need some additive which make oil film stronger and makes it stay attached to metal surfaces rather than drying out.

Removing the plenum to access sparkplugs is 15 min job max, 5mm hex, 10mm and 13mm sockets and that is job done. Apart of 1 annoying bolt behind the throttle body the rest takes literally as much as it takes to unscrew the bolts. I have done it like 8 times just last week (I rather not to, but such is life).

Everything was clear for me. There was Lexus IS300 and IS300 AWD in US, Middle East, maybe Oceania and ruzzia. Maybe South Africa as well. They used 3GR-FE rather than 3GR-FSE (like GS300), but came with A760e, same as 2GR as it is stronger gearbox, but maybe a little bit more lazy on gearshifts than A960e. So the first question - is it possible to put 3GR-FSE in IS250, the answer - yes they came from factory with dimensionally and functionally identical engines. Now whenever people have used 4GR ECU to run 3GR... I guess everything is possible. Throttle body (I have literally bought GS300 throttle body to replace mine few days back), Coils and injectors indeed seems to be the same, but that does not mean GS300 or 3GR comes with same ECU as IS250/4GR. In either case - if you planning to do it I advise you to buy entire GS300 breaker. There are other nice bits like larger front brakes which you can transfer. In either case it seems you know more about this swap than I do, I am not aware of anyone in UK who did this, perhaps you need to check on clublexus or my.is forum in US where they had done more such stuff. Otherwise sounds like interesting project and something nicely in between IS250 and IS350 with 248HP. P.S. Just make sure you actually have blown head gasket, it would be kind of waste otherwise. Head gaskets don't blow on these cars often and this must be 2nd case in over 8 years.

Nobody has done this swap before, so I doubt you find much information on that. What I can confirm is that the engine does not use same ECU, in other hand you can get whole GS300 for probably £2000 and from there on it should be mostly plug and play because IS came with this engine and was called IS300. GS300 used different gearbox (A760e instead of A960e), but again so does IS300. In short - if you just get the engine then it will not be plug and play, but if you have entire car (maybe write-off GS is even cheaper - https://www.copart.co.uk/lot/52264852/clean-title-2006-lexus-gs300-se-a-sandy), then it should be fairly straightforward as IS250 body/chassis is identical to IS300 chassis which used same engine and gearbox.

That is something I have noticed about Lexus site recently, you cannot check what is included in the service plan any longer or it is hidden somewhere in stupid place. The closest I can find is US site, which will give you idea of what is generally included, but their neither have schedule for IS300h (which I assume includes maybe hybrid check), nor it necessary has to be the same as in UK. https://drivers.lexus.com/lexusdrivers/service/maintenance-schedules I think in UK they now expect you to call to confirm what is included or use option on the site for them call-back. Quite disappointing really as in the past it was possible to check what is included in every single service and compare.