Linas.P

So what pressures do you actually use? and what exact size of wheels and tyres do you have?

Just to clarify - so what pressure were you using? Because I am certain IS250 does not have pressures for 19" on door jam as such wheels were not fitted to IS250. IS-F has different pressures, because it has 235/265 tyres, so that would not be suitable for you unless you have 235/265s on 8.5/9.5J wheels. In general I would expect larger wheels would require lower pressures, if memory serves RC200t with 235/265 wheels required 22-24PSI, compared to 30-36PSI on 18". Under inflation could hurt fuel consumption massively - like 20-30% depending on how badly underinflated are the tyres. But looking at your tyres they don't look underinflated, they look like they are wearing on the edges which is common on IS250 and other Lexus cars... and assuming you put 30PSI they are likely to be overinflated. That said over inflation should help for fuel consumption, not hurt it.

It is perfect daily, although if you like to step on it, then fuel consumption will be what it will be. In other hand I never had issue putting fuel in IS250 as much as I had issue putting it into RC200t. In IS250 when you step on it you know you wasting the fuel, but in a good way, like when you shooting money in the sky with fireworks, or throwing the wood plank into bonfire - it is enjoyable sort of waste, because it sounds good and it pulls well. In cars without good sounding engines like RC200t, which sounds like angry hairdryer I just don't feel the same.

Ohh yes those are the ugly ones, I hate the screens instead of dials which is common on new cars. But that is why F-Sport dials are unique, they are digital, but they feel like real analog dials, the RPM is "analog", but yes speed is just a number. I personally don't mind that and it is easier to read than small numbers of analog dial. But again maybe that is part of my comment above - Lexus could have allowed to switch between speedo and tachometer on the screen if they wanted to, but they haven't used real estate to give such options. For example for people like you who want analog speedo, they could have allowed to set-up dials as such that main round screen is speedo, and the smaller screen which you can open when you slide dial to the side is RPM. That is absolutely possible with tech in side the car, but they just didn't set it up this way. Basically, the way I would summarise F-Sport dials - "digital dials done right", because apart of F-Sport dials I don't like any other digital dials and likewise prefer analog dials over just plain screen.

It is fair to say there is difference between Premier dials and Executive, SE, Luxury dials. Premier gets more like textured metal faces and other just gets drab grey plastic. Premier dials are sort of equivalent to mk2 in the way they look, but the rest really looks even older not newer, hence I said "2003 hybrid looks", or probably something one could expect to find in Dacia from 2010. The F-Sport dials are real party piece, every time you turn on the car is just like "wow I am in the space ship" sort of feeling. To be fair after few months you kind of realise that apart of looking nice they are not much more functional. I mean they are slightly more functional as you can get more information there, but Lexus didn't really utilised them to full extent. Having this real estate with very good quality sharp screen could have been game changer. They could have develop like apps, or widgets for the dial and literally had unlimited functionality, like showing map on the dial or really unlimited number of options, whereas currently choice of what you can do on the screen is quite limited. Not sure what is there not to like about F-Sport dials, as they are not only "nicer", but as well objectively better with slightly more information and easier to read, because you can selectively choose only the information you want to know, but I guess everyone to their own.

As I said Premium audio you get with premium navigation is good, I would argue even better for pop-songs than ML, more bassy. ML is more high definition and more clarity, but not necessary for listening to the loud music. And the whole 10 vs. 15 speakers things is semantics because, they are in same locations and the difference is just that ML get's 2/3 way coaxial speakers in few locations, so they count single speakers as 2 or 3. Likewise 6 speakers is not what makes standard system bad, what makes it bad just generally bottom of the barrel speakers which costs probably 20p each (I am not even joking, you can get better quality speakers for £2 on ebay) and that car doesn't even have dedicated amp, so it is all driven from head unit itself. And yes IS300h is comparable to IS250 in many ways, it is in the car which in same segment, same target market, same size... same body, same equipment levels. The difference is just the engine and gearbox, so it would be hard to argue it is not similar. However, is harder to argue it is better as there are many compromises in IS300h.

F-Sport had reversing camera together with "Premium Navigation" or "ML" (because to have ML you had to have Premium Nav). To my surprise it was not standard on F-Sport, because I have driven many and never seen one without reverse-camera. But that should not be an issue, because you should be looking for car with ML or at least Premium Nav anyway. The last thing you want is to find car with "standard" audio which has no business being in any car nevermind Lexus, it is just horrible and has the level of sound quality and definition of radios fitted in 1980s cars. I am exaggerating a bit, but it is only suitable to listen to radio, listening to music on it is just painful. So go for Premium Nav which comes with 10-Speaker decent audio system (in my opinion on par with ML in mk2) or ML which was segment leading quality (with 15 speakers), and then reverse camera will be there. As for retrofitting the camera - everything is doable, I guess you would need to get aftermarket widescreen sat-nav (which I would do anyway as it is much better than Lexus one) and then it would come with required connections for camera and likely camera itself, but that will be ~£500.

I was really disappointed with it as I had high expectations for the car, the reality is harsh contrast from marketing. They said it is like 3L car with fuel efficiency of 56MPG, smooth and effortless, and fast and sporty and comfortable at the same time. Can argue with comfortable and build quality is very good, design is good and interior let's say is "special". But if I can't drive it the way I wasn't I may as well take public transport, engine is simply not there, it is not powerful, it does not sound good, it is not fast and if you push the car it isn't even really that smooth. The way Lexus sold it was like it is "upgrade" to IS250, half way there in power towards IS350, but more fuel efficient. Sadly it is straight on downgrade. Looking from other perspective - it is massive upgrade for IS220d, that it is really the car which it has replaced and made great job of it, not IS250 thought.

I have not noticed any difference between Premier and F-Sport in terms of comfort, as they both have 18" wheels which in my opinion contribute more than suspension to "harsh ride". The Luxury and other trims with 17" wheels will be softer. Yes F-Sport can be made to ride harder with electronically adjustable suspension and sadly the issue on early cars is that you can't set suspension independently i.e. if you set car to sport, then car will be firmer, but to have suspension in comfort you have to set whole car to Eco. Whereas my preference would be to leave suspension on comfort and only turn gearbox and engine to sport. Face-life I believe allows to set these individually, but then we are talking about 2018 cars. Other thing to consider is the tyres - depending on times Lexus had either Yokohama or Bridgestone tyres and they were just not the best tyres, kind of noisy and Bridgestone's were unnecessary "sporty". Simply going for better tyres could improve the ride a lot. Obviously IS will never ride like NX... after all it is entry level sport/exec car so it will be more planted, sporty and less comfortable, bouncy and wallowy around the corners.

Black Circles usually allows fitting at your local shop and prices are usually good. You can't go wrong going for Goodyears (good shout by Peter on Asymmetric 6), Dunlops (RT2s), Continentals (Premium or Sport Contact 6), they are all good tyres. Michelins are good, but they are overpriced for what they are. Brigestones and Yokohamas are just generally subpar and in my opinion are not worth their "premium" tyre name (or at least Brigestones, as Yokohamas are mid-range anyway). Generally speaking I would avoid Brigestones and Yokohamas, value for money just not there and even ignoring the price tyres are just very mediocre.

This would make sense that car overheats if fan isn't running. As well check the fusible link carefully, because it is known they blow sometimes and it is real pain to replace. Note as well fan has relay (actually 3 relays), not normal fuse. Fan definitely kick in when car is stationary and reaches working temp, it blows for 5-10 minutes and then stops, then repeats it. It is kind of hard to miss because it makes real racket and easy to hear when stationary. Although if you said it does not activate via techstream it will be bad fan or bad wiring, or bad relays.

I like F-Sport wheels look, Premier is actually better equipped standard (I believe they go ML as standard and few other bits) with one massive caveat - it get the "ugly dials from 2003 hybrid" and that would be deal breaker for me. Whereas F-Sport get LF-A style digital dials. After all you spend more time inside than outside and spend more time looking at dials than wheels 🙂 vs Other thing you can only get on F-Sport is Dark Rose Leather, but obviously it is not for everyone. By the way - how about mk3 IS250? Sadly they are rare and could command premium, but they don't have any downsides of IS300 (and no upsides). To be fair I personally never considered mk3 IS250 amazing (but to be fair the same goes for IS300h), because Lexus kind of was lazy and put exactly same 4GR-FSE from mk2 without any modifications. On IS350 they have improved 2GR-FSE quite a bit, added atkinson-cycle and engine makes more power, reaches peak torque earlier and is more efficient, but with IS250 they just didn't bother and it almost feels like the car was obsolete at launch. Still much more fun to drive than IS300h and you get new shape car which looks more modern. ... P.S. checked and it is literally the only one on sale for stupid price at the moment https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202207057485814

Makes sense - you went from heavy 17" with 245 in the rear to light 18" with 225 in the rear, so obviously your fuel consumption should go down. However, going to heavy 19" with 255 your fuel consumption would go up and finding 19" lightweight wheels for reasonable price is very difficult. I know Lexus fits wheels from Aston Martin and there were some light 19" options, at least "light" for factory wheels. I mean sure there are forged 19" wheels for £2000 per corner, but it is much more likely to find really light wheels in 17/18" size, or if going for very cheap - forged 16" used racing wheels. I agree that the driving contributes most to overall fuel consumption, but wheels just raises that "bottom line" a bit. For example on 17" I was able to reach that 44MPG on motorway, with 18" it was like 41MPG, because that is it - you just can't get same economy on larger, heavier wheel with wider tyre.

The temperature going just above the middle, is not an issue, if it really goes towards 3/4 then it would mean big issue. Has the radiator fan kicked in? AC should not impact the engine temperature, as John said, only turning on heating could help with cooling. I am wondering whenever A/C condenser could have impact on radiator efficiency, but that is quite unlikely. Were all parts fitted OEM? I am just speculating here, but if radiator fitted is aftermarket, maybe it is not up-to standards?

Would be best to ask in GS forum, however carbon build-up isn't really as big issue in UK as it is in US, secondly oil consumption/piston problems are not mileage related, it is maintenance related. You can buy car with 200k miles and good maintenance record and it will be fine for another 200k... or you can buy car with 70k miles which only had 3 random services and have a lot of problems. As such when buying Lexus, key is not the mileage, key is to check that car was regularly and properly serviced.

Very interesting, never seen Mazda with ventilated seats, but on other hand I have not looked at Mazdas for long time as FWD is showstopper for me.

You know twice I ran out of fuel, one was 200m away from petrol station, maybe even less... 100m, but it was slight uphill and second one was kind of not my fault, I landed in the airport and the petrol station was out of petrol, looked at the trip and realised I still have ~75miles of fuel left and ~70 miles to go. So I drove to the petrol station which was near my home... and that one was out of petrol as well! Then I drove home and car run out of fuel 2m from my parking space. Like literally I started turning into parking space and petrol run out half-way 😄 As well, once I had very scary night in Poland, basically on their paid motorways you can't really drive off, or you have to pay to get off and then back on, so motorway petrol stations knows it and charges premium for petrol. I left Warsaw at like 1AM with 3/4 of tank and my plan was to refuel in petrol station by the border with Germany which I knew is very cheap (like 60% cheaper than motorway ones), because the paid motorway kind of ends there and it is 2km to the side. Anyway that was 474km away. When I was 100km from the destination there was motorway petrol station, but I still had 40km range left + reserve and I skipped it, then like 20km later it said 0 miles left, meaning I have to do 80km on reserve which is kind of scary. But there suppose to be another petrol station after like 40km so I pushed on thinking I will put 10L of "expensive" petrol there to get to cheap station... comes that petrol station and it is closed! F.... so I have 40km left to drive and have no idea how much fuel is left, because I was doing 200-220km/h all along and there are no more petrol stations in between. So last 40km I drove at 80km/h and got there eventually, filled the tank and it only took ~52L, so I still had ~2L left. As well that means car consumed ~8.2L/100k at ~210km/h. Since then I stopped driving 50 miles into reserve and started doing 10-15 miles maximum and I as well bought 10L jerry can which would be filled with 98 Octane and stashed in the boot for emergencies. BUT actually it is not good for the fuel pump, so I should not recommend it - fuel pump is cooled by petrol and when petrol runs out it could overheat, as well it is better for fuel pump if it is at least 1/4 of the tank left as then it basically floats surrounded in petrol. That said my normal routine would be to drive until it says 0 (meaning ~5-8L left) and drive to nearest petrol station, so maybe 5-10 miles. Wheels could be part of the problem, my fuel consumption jumped by ~10% when I went from standard 17" to 18" wheels, so on 19" it may be even more. Really depends on how much they weight, but being 19" I would not expect them to be very light.

The RC has dedicated A/C went which kind of blows towards rear passenger seats, but could as well be picked-up by front seats... in that respect it technically makes them "cooled", but not to the same degree as LS where vent is dedicated to the seat. Previous gen IS/GS didn't even have vent under the seat, so the seats were definitely just ventilating. Althought my point remains the same - what other make offers even ventilated seats? I don't know about Japanese expectations, just know that americans expect very high performance as deciding factor (or at least one of major ones) in car purchase. As well Japanese are weird - hate leather smell etc. so who knows what works for them, I don't even want start trying to understand them 😄

Yes there were rumours of AWD which would be better than FWD, although for me RWD is always the best choice - simple, efficient and handless as the car should. I am not even sure if ES350 is any better, considering it is still FWD. At least 300h does not have power to matter which wheels are driving, but on ES350 that would be a concern.

New LS really looks really unique and inside is really something else in terms of quality and luxury, but I am just wondering - if GS would still be available, maybe in form of imaginable mk5 would you have gone for GS or LS? Or LS was only option considering ES kind of failed to really replace GS as a drivers car and it is only available with anaemic hybrid drivetrain?

I am sure many places around the world does have the need for A/C, like middle east for example, but I heard americans can literally choose cars on A/C performance alone, I mean evidence is anecdotal at best, but I was told they rock-up at dealerships get in the car, crank A/C to the max and expect instant freezer inside the car, and that alone can impact buying decision - the car with best A/C gets bought. Now it is kind of funny and probably not even true for majority, but in other hand A/C you get with car most likely can't be upgraded, so if performance is inadequate one will be stuck with it. As well there is brand loyalty based on that like "I only buy Lincoln because they have good A/C and I don't buy Fords or Nissans" or something along that line. Going to middle east part - in my experience they are just used to heat and therefore they don't have same high expectations for A/C, on top it would be counter productive, because if you get car down to 16C in 44C weather then cold is guaranteed right away. So they use A/C all the time, but they don't go to certain part measuring contest whose A/C is coldest. In short what I am saying in US A/C performance is disproportionally important in car purchasing decision making process compared to rest of the world. Lexus is US centric product designed with US consumer and not Japanese consumer in mind, so it just makes sense that Lexus puts a lot of focus on A/C performance and design - quick example... how many cars do you know with cooled ventilated seats? Literally apart of Lexus these are only optional on likes of 7-Series and S-Class, these were not available in likes of BMW 3 or 5 Series whereas Lexus fitted them to entry level products like IS. But... I am not saying it is bad thing, apparently not everything that comes from america is bad.

I think Lexus generally having high performance A/C is something they do because of american influence. In US A/C being ice cold is very important criteria and Lexus being US-centric product puts a lot of focus on that. The suggestion that car is using 5-10% on A/C is a bit wild, only in exceptional circumstances like having large car (like SUV) with tiny engine and driving in start stop traffic that could be true. Sadly such cars are more an more common nowadays - does anyone want Nissan X-trail with 1.4L or Qashqai with 1.1L engine? Yes on cars as such I would not be surprised that the fuel consumption to be 5% or higher with A/C. Now I am kind of biased, but I never had a car with engine smaller than 1.8L and I personally consider that engines smaller than that should not even exist in cars. So to be fair I can't speak from experience here, but with anything above 2L A/C fuel consumption is certainly much lower than 5% nevermind 10%. The fuel consumption can be somewhat calculated based on HP of the car, as typical A/C compressor will use ~1.6-5HP... this becomes slightly harder to calculate impact because car does not make it's peak power until certain RPM... but just taking IS250 for example, it makes ~140hp at 2000rpm, the A/C once cabin is cooled and when it only needs to maintain the temperature (meaning no open windows and no outside air) will not work very hard so we can assume lower figure of 1.6HP to be true. This is exactly between 1-2% of fuel consumption which I assumed A/C is using. Now however if we change the car to Nissan Micra Convertible 🤮 with 1L engine and 88hp and driving with roof down and A/C on full blast all the time "cooling the planet", then we can quickly see how this could turn into 10% consumption, but that isn't exactly "normal".

It always amazes me how many people don't even know what it is or simply do not use it. Likewise I always insist on all windows being closed in A/C is ON - "darling either you have your window open, or A/C" 🙂 I use recirculation for two things 1. it is just more efficient 2. it prevents dirty air from traffic entering the cabin (or at least significantly reduces it). So generally if I can I leave window slightly open (or back of sunroof lifted) when car is parked, I start driving in quiet dead-end street to ventilate the car and then I turn on recirculation for the rest of the journey to make sure it is mostly the relatively clean air which is as well being filtered constantly. So it is in my opinion healthier as well, but I haven't seen many drivers doing it - they just sit in the traffic sucking-up the exhaust from the car ahead of them and it doesn't seem like it bother them at all! And sure even outside air is being filtered, but filter can remove CO2 nor NOX, nor even smaller particles like soot. Other thing I noticed - most German cars has outside air by default and you can't force them to stay in recirculation, which it seems they consider like temporary function and then just turns it off right before some mo**** comes in front of you with his diesel and starts rolling coal in front of you. Either that or they have start-stop and every time engine starts again it goes back to outside air... which drives me nuts!

There are no issues with reliability on IS300h, fuel economy is better in town, but you need to learn to drive it "like hybrid". It does not reward you if you want to drive it "hard", it does not like to be launched, it does not sound good and generally it is opposite from IS250 in that aspect i.e. the harder you drive IS250 the nicer it gets, the engine sounds better etc. with IS300h you just need to relax and cruise around. eCTV is not that bad, but don't expect to downshift with it and held the revs, as boring as it sounds it is best to let it do it's thing as it will get you where you going quicker. That said IS250 is faster car, this is fact and it is noticeable - I know many IS300h owners likes to fight it, but facts do not care about the feelings. But that kind of depends on your needs, if speed is not an issue for you then you will be fine, simply IS250 was already just borderline acceptable for me, if there is anything to fault on IS250 in my mind I would like it to be slightly faster, so going down to IS300 was just not acceptable for me. Can't stand ASC - it is just so fake. But overall interior is more modern, just make sure to get better spec. car and make sure to get at least premium audio or preferably ML. On mk3 they really cut down on standard equipment and made differences between trims noticeable. Standard audio system in mk3 for example is awful (6 speakers compared to 15 on ML) whereas mk2 just got 13-speakers instead of 14. But premium Audio is good enough (10-speakers). Likewise if I would go for mk3, then the only model to get is F-Sport, this is because F-Sport cluster really elevates the car and makes it feel modern, therefore it's must have. By all means try it yourself, I have driven many and I didn't like them at all, but that is because I need faster car which I can enjoy driving.

There is a hole at the bottom of the lock cover, it is exactly the same size as the key and you just need to pry it open. However I advise have some tape on the key or use plastic trim removal tool instead, because otherwise you may scratch the paint. The next thing you need to consider is whenever the key battery is flat or the car battery is flat, if it is key, then you can touch the key against the start button, but is later then you need to charge or replace the battery.