Britprius

It is wise to tell the MOT tester not to leave the car in ready mode, and neutral "many testers will do this". In this condition the engine cannot start. It will continue to run until a set temperature is reached if neutral is engaged while the engine is running, but cannot start once it stops, At this point the hybrid battery is steadily discharged, and can continue to discharge till it has insufficient power to start the engine. This is greatly accelerated if the aircon is turned on. The only way to charge the battery is at the dealers John.

Increasing tyre size "circumference" by 8% will also have the effect of increasing brake pedal pressure by a similar amount. This is because you are increasing the leverage on the brakes by increasing the radius of the wheel without increasing the radius of the brake disc. Not suggested by you but fitting larger tyres on the rear only will likely cause ABS problems. Three percent is the maximum recommended tyre rolling radius increase. Going over this "using non standard tyre sizes listed by the car manufacturer" could affect any insurance claim. John.

Lexus along with most other car manufacturers use a 1/4" BSP fitting at the oil pressure switch. This is probably because they buy in the pressure switches, and over many years this has been the standard fitment. Even oil pressure gauges use the BSP thread, and are piped to the same point. If you have bought a kit this should be included as it is needed on any vehicle it is fitted to. It is a simple task to remove the pressure switch if you wish to check the thread by screwing it into the "T" piece. John.

Once a week should be plenty. The first time you do this you may have to repeat the operation several times to remove a build up of rust, but once cleaned an occasional operation should be enough. John.

Although a sticking caliper can cause disc rust with hybrids the discs will rust anyway if the car is driven gently. Braking in neutral on a downhill stretch of road once or twice a month will help keep the discs clear of rust. In neutral the regen braking is cancelled forcing the use of the mechanical brakes. Sticking caliper pins tends to cause rust on one side of the discs. A sticking caliper piston will cause rust on both sides of the disc where single piston calipers are used. Where multiple piston calipers are used one sticking piston will cause rust on the same side of the disc as the sticking piston. John.

This is typical of a worn clutch release bearing, but can be caused by a gear box first motion shaft bearing or lay shaft bearings, but a gearbox specialist should be able to diagnose this. John.

A good way of hiding how bad the rust is. Also under sealing on rust does not stop the rust continuing to progress. Back in the 70's I did MOT's, and it was not unusual to see cars with what looked like good chassis rails "under sealed", but on squeezing with your fingers that's all there was under seal. The metal having rusted away inside the sealant. John.

Hi Steve. The corrosion you see in the carrier is normal due to the reaction between the aluminium, and steel bearing hub. This will not cause the problem you are encountering, and as long as the hub bolts are tightened to the correct torque should not prove problematic. The noise is very likely to be caused by the bearing, but can also be caused by the tyres. Swapping the tyres from front to rear will eliminate the noise if this is the problem. John.

Indeed yes. This is what I used on my Prius with a piece of threaded rod to join them. These also have the advantage that being plastic are less likely to seize onto the ball posts than the cast zinc versions. John.

The most common part to break is the operating rod as it's made of zink. It can be easily repaired by hot gluing or epoxy gluing a piece of metal or stiff nylon tubing over the broken rod. Make sure the ball joints on both ends are free, and lubricated. The repair can be done without removing it from the car if necessary. John.

It's quite possible the engine is still not starting, and he is being confused by the hybrid system spinning the engine at speed to try to start the engine. It seems most if not all the Toyota/Lexus hybrids need a considerable amount of fuel to be added after running out of fuel. The Prius for instance needs 3 gallons "14 ltrs" of fuel to be added before the computer recognises that fuel has been added. John.

Through a comparison site. John.

When my car was hit my insurers arranged everything in under one hour. This included the loan car delivered to me, and a fully comp separate insurance with no excess or penalties if the loan car was damaged at no cost to me. I never had to contact them after the initial phone call, and a personal claim handler kept me up to date a couple of times a week on how things were progressing. My car was collected from my house on a single vehicle carrier, and was covered with a car cover before leaving. There was a considerable delay in the repair because a new door had to be ordered from Japan, and this was on back order. This could not be helped by the insurer, but they did keep me well informed of the situation. The insurer was "and still is" Saga. John.

If the car is repaired by the insurance company the log book will not be marked with any insurance category for the repair. If the insurance deem the repair to be uneconomical or there is serious frame damage the log book will be stamped accordingly, and the car written off. When my car was being repaired They provided me with a new "21 miles on the clock" Mercedes E class diesel. I found the more I drove it the more I disliked it, and I had it for three months! John.

I also have a GS450H of 2007 vintage with close to 150,000 miles on the clock. I have used up until the last oil change 0W20 oil, but have now gone further, and have changed to 0W16 oil "Petronas". I cannot as yet say what improvement in fuel consumption is as with lockdown I have only covered a little over 100 miles. There was a reasonable fuel saving of around 2 plus mpg going from 5W30 to 0W20 when I first bought the car, and this saving in itself pays for the oil at 10,000 mile oil change interval. According to the information I have looked at the 0W16 oil gives better protection against ware, and even better fuel saving than 0W20 oil. John.

If you read my wording it states The important words here are "to name a few". To write everything down would take the whole page, but strictly speaking the 12 volt battery does not start the engine. This is done by the high voltage battery, and MG1 in the transmission used as a starter motor. The 12 volt battery would not last long with the continued starting, and stopping of the engine in normal use. John.

The normal 12 volt battery in the boot runs all the normal car 12 volt systems "lights, radio, windows, heater fan to name a few". If it is in good condition it should be capable of enabling the car "go to ready mode" to start up to about 4 weeks. The 12 volt battery is not used to turn the engine over as in a normal car. The hybrids do not have a 12 volt starter motor or a 12 volt alternator. The lithium battery is not there to use as a method of driving without the engine. Doing this reduces fuel consumption as the engine then needs to run to recharge it as well as power the car. The idea is to keep it charged from energy that would normally be wasted by braking, and turning the energy into heat in the discs. When braking the energy is turned into electricity, and that is used to charge the battery. Also some energy is regained when you take your foot off the accelerator. The engine stops, and the overrun produces some energy. In a normal car this energy would be wasted by pushing the engine round. This energy is then used to assist the engine reducing fuel consumption. It is also used to start the car once ready mode is enabled buy the 12 volt battery. John.

The aim of my post was to show how the startup rattle can be removed along with reducing engine startup ware without going to much expense. In fact the system I built cost less than £20. A little thought could probably reduce this further. The system could also prevent complete engine destruction if in the case scenario of the cam sprocket bolts coming adrift or the timing chain breaking. John.

You could have your caliper rebuilt, and save considerably. Try contacting "Big Red" at Worcester. John.

You can buy the same sort of product from Aldi for about £1.50. The big problem with using this type of product is that it will often also prevent the TPMS sensor from working ever again. This will add considerably to the tyre repair bill. John.

On all Toyota/Lexus hybrid cars there is an electric pump that runs to pump hot coolant from the engine to the heater matrix when the engine is not running, and is in ready mode. This is there to both improve heat output, and to save fuel by not requiring the engine to run just to pump coolant. John.

It perhaps should be noted that a discharge level of 50% is considered a deep discharge, and any thing above that level of discharge is likely to cause damage to the battery. Also AGM batteries have a slightly higher cell voltage compared to flooded batteries of around 0.1 volts increasing the fully charged 12 volt battery voltage to 14.2 plus volts. John.

In theory a 25 watt panel will give out a little under 2 amps in ideal conditions, but unless you keep moving the panel to face the sun "very impractical" the average output over 24 hours is likely to be about 500 ma. This is enough to maintain a battery of between 40, and 90 amp hours safely while still under some load from the cars systems without the risk of any damage. As the capacity of the battery gets smaller say 12 amp hours typical of motorbike batteries there is a "slight" risk of over charging. The reason is that all lead acid batteries of whatever type have a self discharge rate given as a percentage of capacity. As the battery gets bigger in capacity the number of amps discharged in an hour increases. The percentage remains the same against it's capacity. Large batteries such as those used in forklift trucks can have a discharge rate of many amps. Charging at even 2 amps continuously the battery will still end up after a period discharged. This is why battery chargers invariably have a battery capacity limit in the instructions. A 4 amp charger will tyipically be listed as suitable for up to around 100 AH capacity batteries, and often there will be a setting for small capacity motorbike batteries. Charge dumping circuits are used extensively in off grid solar panel installations. This is because the output of multi panel systems can output many amps, and charge a bank of batteries. If the batteries are not sufficiently discharged to be able to take the output of the panels over a period unless the charge current is dumped in some way the batteries would be damaged. John.

Not that I am aware of. It is done by using Toyota Techstream or other such program. John.

Have you done a zero point calibration on the steering? If not this can cause pulling to one side. The electric power steering needs to know where the strait ahead position is. If it thinks it is other than this it will power the steering to the position it thinks is strait. If any work is carried out on the steering like resetting the tracking this must be done. John.