sorcerer

Amazon, eBay, Halfords, autobulbsdirect.co.uk, plus any 'bricks and mortar' car accessory shops local to you. More info here

Just searched for "OEM thing" on eBay and no results. Do you not have a link or other name?

But who would be daft enough to go to a Lexus dealer and pay their grossly inflated prices? If the car is only a year or two old then fair enough, maybe even I would. However, the latest 400h available is 2009 I believe, making it about 9 years old which is far too old to be going to a main dealer. I had cambelt, idler/tensioner and water pump changed, and 10 litres of new Toyota Super Long Life Pink coolant, labour, VAT, job done, all for about £440-£460ish on my 2005 RX300 at a local Toyota indy specialist.

I've never had a 400h (I had an RX300 and now a 450h) so I don't know about the 400h specifically, but the reason most people change the water pump at the same time on most cars is that they are usually in the same area. Taking the RX300 as an example, about 90-95% of the work involved in changing the cambelt would have to be done again to get at the water pump if it wasn't done at the same time. The water pump itself may cost about £40 and given that a goodly chunk of the cost of any job is usually the labour charges, it makes sense to just spend that little bit extra at the time, rather than pay (for example) £350 to have the cambelt/idler/tensioner changed and then later on, another £300 to have the water pump changed.

You're very welcome Geoff - and I have to confess that I've probably already eaten too many Easter eggs! Have a good one yourself too my friend.

I think the problem is, Geoff, that we can't predict the future. Without knowing what make and model of camera you would buy in the future, we don't know what connectors it has so we can't say if they would be available or not. I think all anyone could say would be that the adapters and/or connectors you would need may be available. The job would most likely still be doable though, even if you can't buy adapters or the connectors themselves. You would have to buy a short lead with the required connector already terminated on the end and then cut off the excess length, leaving about six inches to a foot of cable on the connector. Strip the ends off, use a multimeter to work out which colour wire is connected to which pin and then solder the new 'stub end' to the car wiring, rather than soldering a new connector on the car wiring. Hope that all makes sense

Aha, yes, fair enough, I now see what you mean - probably me interpreting things wrongly Yes, I completely agree with you there John.

OK Geoff, I think I've got you now If I've got it right, you left the old cables in the old car but kept the camera itself for the new car that you've now got. You're now going to fit (or pay someone to fit) new cables and the camera into your new car. Your query is actually about some hypothetical point in the future, if or when your camera stops working, at which point you'll get a new camera and hope to reuse the wiring that will already be installed in the car. Is that correct my friend? If I've got that right, then looking at the connectors in that photo I would say that it's perhaps unlikely that a new camera would be able to use them, which will then mean you'll either need to replace the cabling or snip the ends off and solder the correct connectors on to the cable ends. In reality, even if you're happy doing the soldering, I think it would be very difficult to do in the car. Take the front camera for instance, it will be mounted high up and the cables will drop down to it from up in the roof lining. If they leave a lot of slack up in the headlining space you may be able to pull enough slack to get to a comfortable working position. If there isn't enough slack you'll be working up in the air with about six inches of cable - not the ideal way to work with very thin conductors and a hot soldering iron

I'm no mechanic or MOT Tester so make of this what you will, but I reckon that's a failure. Something structural has happened there, which is why it's not returning to its normal shape. This is what the manual says:

Tried to edit the above but I was too late, so here's a copy: EDIT: Sorry Geoff, it's a Sunday and my brain never works properly on a Sunday I'm just a bit thrown by the fact that your original post talks about avoiding the need to replace the old cables and yet this photo above shows what are presumably the old cables and you say that you're about to put them in the car? If you're going to put the old cables in the car, why don't you just put new cables in of the type that the camera requires? I've probably got the wrong end of the stick but....

No problem John, as you say, it may be faulty or it may be a limitation in the early software, but I do, however, dispute your assumption that the battery level reading in either the multi-function display or the speedo display is not representative of normal use. We, as the drivers and end users of the car, only get to use, say, 40% of the battery's actual capacity (not sure of the actual figure but 40% will do for the purposes of this discussion). The readouts on the displays are showing us the state of charge within our 40% band that we can get at, so for practical purposes if that display is showing almost empty, then as far as we're concerned, the battery is almost empty. The fact that it may still have about 60% of it's total capacity left is of no consequence to us because we can't use it.

Hiya Geoff, No, I hadn't seen this photo until just getting your PM. It would help to know what make and model of camera you're going to fit so that I can look up the manual. Cheers, John

Partly, yes, and also the mechanics of it too. Hybrid cars often have AC compressors that are driven by an electric motor rather than a traditional drive belt in a 'normal' car and the windings of the motor are immersed in the compressor oil, which has insulating properties. If that oil becomes contaminated with 'traditional' compressor oil then bad things can happen. Most aircon specialists can deal with hybrid AC systems, but definitely not places like Kwik-Fit etc. Some interesting info here.

Aircon doesn't need regular maintenance or servicing. Just leave it on all year round (you can have hot conditioned air as well as cold) so that the seals are kept lubricated and don't dry out and it'll be fine. The only time you ever need to give it some attention is if or when it doesn't get as cold as it used to. As far as I know, all the hybrids use a special gas that isn't readily available at places like Kwik-Fit, ATS etc., etc.

Surely that's not correct John? That indicator is for the hybrid battery and would normally look something like the picture below:

All the cameras I've seen so far have all had mini USB connectors so I think this may be a case of the manufacturers actually using a bit of common sense for once. However, if push came to shove then yes, snipping the plug off and soldering a new one on isn't too difficult. Sent from my D6633 using Tapatalk

Great guide and thanks for taking the time to do it (even though I don't own an LS400). If I may just be slightly picky, I suggest that you save the document as a PDF file. A DOCX file requires Microsoft Office 2010 or newer to open it and not everyone has that because it has to be bought, whereas Adobe's Acrobat Reader (designed for PDFs) is free and you can almost guarantee that everyone has it. It is true that the free LibreOffice can be used to open Microsoft Office files but it has been known to cause problems for some.

DG65 OHE is on askmid.com as insured and is a Vauxhall Insignia, which is what that car in your photo is. Checking the MOT history, DG65 OHE is a Black Vauxhall Insignia - am I missing something here?

Upload it to Youtube and then post it in here.

Well the first one certainly isn't unusual. If you lose all keys to a lock then yes, a locksmith could dismantle it but it may work out cheaper to just get a new lock, complete with keys, when you take into account labour charges. As for the '0906 Tech Support number' I don't know, it may be legit. I mean, if you ring a dealer, whose responsibility is it to know about key codes? The mechanics/technicians will only know about repair and/or exchange so it could be an admin responsibility but doubt they would be able to give info on older imported cars. The service book for the car (the one you get stamped) should have the key code written in - the one I had for the RX300 and the one I've got for the 450h have it in there. No idea why two main dealers would give conflicting info, other than they just don't know the answer but don't want to admit it, or who to go to to find out the answer. A complete guess here but it may well be that they can't get keys for imports because a) they just don't have the contacts or admin channels to get them, or b) maybe the Japanese transponders work on a different frequency that may be illegal here in the UK so they aren't allowed to bring them in. Like I said, just guessing.

In that case I'll leave it to someone else as I've never owned one. Good luck in getting it sorted.

What model year and which RX is it - 300, 400h or 450h?

A traditional starter motor can draw anything upwards of 300A when starting but the hybrids don't have a traditional starter motor. The batteries are much smaller because all they do is to power the security/entry/exit system and the computers to get the car into the ready state - the engine is actually started by the traction battery. However, although you don't strictly need a big beefy set of jump leads I would still be tempted to go for them as the small ones can often give problems. We've had nothing but automatic cars for almost 30 years now so I've always carried a big beefy set of leads in the boot, but about a year ago I also invested in one of these units. I've never actually used it yet so I can't give you any anecdotal evidence of how good they are, but there are loads of videos on Youtube showing them in action and they seem to perform very well. Also very handy for helping other people because I'm not sure if a hybrid can actually be the car to provide the jump start if someone needs it.

The more I look at them, the more I agree with Phil; the wheels themselves are a good design and look good, just need to be silver rather than black - for me anyway.

Each to their own and all that Connor, but I'm afraid that I'm no fan of black wheels either (on anything). Your originals suited the car much better in my opinion but the main thing is that you like them so onward and upward