sorcerer

Yes, it'd fit but the circuit wouldn't be protected by the fuse. The live bus bar is on the left of the fuse, so current has to travel up the left leg of the fuse tap, through the fuse and out to the load through the red wire. Turning it through 180o will mean the current doesn't flow through the fuse.

After some investigations with my multimeter, I discovered that there are no fuses in the engine bay fusebox that are only live when the engine is running. In fact, there is only one fuse that becomes live when the ignition is switched on, all the rest are either permanently live or only become live when lights are switched on. So, that 10A fuse at the front it is then - or not Turns out that the construction of the fusebox means that the piggyback fuse tap can't be pushed fully into place and it's not even viable to cut out a notch either, so it looks like I'll have to pick up power from the fusebox in the driver's footwell after all. No great hassle, just means that it'll be a few days before I can carry on with the job.

Welcome to the forum, hope you enjoy it and stick around as there's lots of useful info and very helpful people in here. I'm afraid I can't really help because my RX300 doesn't have a DVD player in it but I do know that when other people have had DVD player problems they have replaced the unit with one of these from eBay At just £25 it may be worth it to buy one of those if you can't find the codes. Having said that, you may get the proper answer that you need (and quicker too) if you post in the dedicated RX300/400h/450h forum rather than here in the 'new members' section. Cheers, John

Certainly Ray - these are the beasties With a bit of furtling and a couple of relays they can also be made to go off when you switch on your sidelights, just as 'real' factory-fitted DRLs do. If you're not sure how to do that I'll post more tomorrow but for now, I've got to go and pick up wifey from her weekly darts night

First one could be a brake pad sticking (which will hopefully be sorted for you this weekend) but sorry, no idea about the rattle.

Glad you found the date codes Never heard of those tyres but I'm sceptical about them. I can understand the attraction when you need five of them but £57 sounds just too good to be true. Hmm... I may know why I've never heard of them. When looking for "Openo" Google automatically displayed Oponeo, where I can find tyres made by Hifly but not the "HiLife" you quoted - mind you, I've still never heard of either of them so it makes no difference If I'm looking at the right ones, they're E rated for economy, C rated for wet grip and 71dB as opposed to the Avon's C, A and 69dB, so personally I'd still go with the Avons.

I've had no problems with running Techstream 9.xx on an old XP laptop and also a Windows 7 laptop, both were just old 32-bit machines. In fact, the only 'problem' with Techstream is keeping my fingers out of menu's where I may do some damage because I press the wrong thing!

Have a look here for workshop manual stuff Carl.

According to this article tyres have been date marked for a long time, so it should be there somewhere. I wonder if they've been put on inside out and it doesn't appear on the inside? When we bought our car the spare was brand new, still with the little bobbly bits on, but had gone hard so had to be destroyed - that was dated 0705.

I notice that your model year is 2012 so I wouldn't think you'd really need the most up-to-date version of Techstream. Even if it does a lot more things than older versions, the car software would still be the 2012 version and wouldn't handle it would it? I don't know for sure, just thinking aloud

I believe that it's preferable for DRLs to be on only when the engine is running and not in either the ACC or IGN key positions of the key switch. I really don't want to be running a wire from the front to the back of the car to pick up on the fuel pump connections there, so can anyone tell me which fuse supplies the pump and the location of it - or indeed, any other circuit that is only energised on 'engine run' that I could tap into, in the engine bay please?

Fair enough Steve. Like I said, no offence meant but I thought you were asking for a bit of mental advice in a way. You said that the wheels haven't been off in a year and you also said "anyone else have issues like me, or am i over thinking it. Its been on my mind since about 3months in of ownership months before its due" which means that this has been worrying you for nine months or thereabouts. My answer to your question is that yes, you are indeed overthinking it - in spades my friend.

Not at all. What I'm saying could be condensed down to one word I suppose - pleasure. Presumably, like most people, you work hard for your money and spending it on whatever you want should be an enjoyable experience. In your case, you wanted this car and it must have been a real buzz to drive it out of the showroom. It must also be a pleasure and a wonderful feeling to drive it. But all that joy and pleasure and enjoyment is being negated by your fear of parking it or leaving it anywhere. You yourself have admitted that it's causing arguments with your wife. Your level of paranoia (for that's what it is) about a car is rather at the extreme end wouldn't you say? You need to enjoy it for what it is (a car) and stop worrying so much. If you can't stop worrying then sell the car to someone who will enjoy it and you buy something cheaper that you won't worry so much about - it might just save your marriage

I TRULY do not mean to insult you. It would be a strange old world if we were all the same; each to their own and all that. However, I really do think you are overreacting to the point of maybe you should be seeing someone about it? My dad worked in a car factory and over the years he bought two brand new cars while he was there. Admittedly not Lexus, but still brand new and a hell of a whack of money for him to lay out. We lived in a mid-terraced house with no driveway, no garage and nowhere to park his new car other than on the road. The house was on a bus route and the road had its fair share of traffic. I asked him if he was worried that it may get hit, scratched, dented or damaged in some other way. His reply was that a car is to get you places and once you've reached your destination you never know where you'll have to leave it. He said that whatever would be, would be, and there's no point in worrying yourself silly about it - life is for living and cars are for driving; you just have to live life and hope it doesn't throw you too much crap along the way. Again, not meaning to insult you but if you really are that worried about an inanimate lump of metal, perhaps it's not the car for you. Get a little old banger for a couple of grand so that it doesn't matter.

Like Peter said, if you're going straight to the battery then you need an inline fuse. I prefer to use these piggyback fuse taps myself:

You know you're going to get completely opposing views on this, don't you? Personally, I think that anyone who takes a car that is over 10 years old to a main dealer just has far too much money to play with. Any main dealer pricing is far too high but Lexus take it to a whole new level. By the time cars get to 10 years old there's very little resale value left in them and having the official stamp in the service book is worthless at that point, so why do it? I'd rather just go to a local garage and know that my money is going into the local economy rather than just buying yet another bottle of bubbly for some corporate fat cat. Before my back injury, I used to love working on my cars myself and would buy named brands from places like Euro Car Parts for instance. Sadly, I can no longer work on my car but I do go to a trusted garage and get great service from knowledgeable guys at fair and reasonable prices. If it needs things like shocks or discs I don't specify what brand I want, I just trust the mechanics to buy the parts in and fit them. I've been at the garage when vans from well-known (here in Preston anyway) motor factors places like ECP, Andrew Page, BBC and Dodgsons have been delivering parts so I know they aren't buying from China or some back-street places and I'm happy with whatever they get and wherever they get it from. Lexus/Toyota, Ford, Nissan, Vauxhall et al do not, as far as I'm aware, manufacture things such as batteries, brakes, exhausts or tyres etc., etc., they just buy in from whoever does make them, so I also see no point in going for 'genuine Lexus' parts and again, paying over the odds. Of course, this is always a bone of contention and we're opening a right can of worms, so I'll now just sit back and watch the fireworks

Weasel words Peter. You're not a lawyer by any chance, are you? It's a rip off because it's a legal necessity and the insurance companies can put any requirements, terms and conditions in there knowing that we have no alternative but to accept them if we want to be able to drive. I have obviously not read the Ts & Cs of every insurance company in existence but I'd bet a month's wages that each and every single one of them will have a clause in the small print that says your premiums will increase whether the accident is your fault or not. You only need to look at the original post to come to the conclusion that insurance is a rip off in many ways. It only happened yesterday and already, even at this very early stage in the proceedings, with Chris having paid for his insurance and being 100% blameless in this accident, they are even now preparing the ground to at least partially evade their responsibilities. From the initial post: " I am going through insurance but they have warned me that roundabout incidents are nearly always considered a "Shared Blame"

Absolutely, categorically, you are right and the other guy is completely wrong - and if your insurance even think of trying to pull the 'shared blame' trick or anything else for that matter, tell them that you expect them to fight for you every step of the way or you'll be taking them to court. They've taken your money and now work for you and if ever a case could be described as 'clear cut' or 'an open and shut case' this is it. The road markings clearly show that you were in the 'straight ahead or turn left' lane and the other guy was in the 'straight ahead or turn right' lane:

It's a beautiful colour and great car and I'm sure you'll be very happy with it. Regarding the tyres - You'll not be disappointed with the Avons -here's the text from a previous posting I made in these forums back in November I've just put 4 Avon ZX7s (235/55 R18 100V) on my RX300 and ordered them from http://www.tyreshopper.co.uk for £386 then used a Tyreshopper discount code to get 5% off, making it £366 and also got 3.15% cashback by going through http://www.topcashback.co.uk making the final, fully-fitted price £354. They were fitted at a local branch of National Tyres who, if I had bought the tyres directly from them, would have charged £421. I'm VERY impressed with the tyres. They're 'A' rated for wet conditions and they certainly deserve it as the car is so sure-footed now, in both wet and dry conditions. I can highly recommend them. And here we are, ten months and about 10,000 miles on and I still feel the same.

On an even more serious note, I would hope that such a thing would be permanently on by default - if only it wasn't due for release on April 1st

Hope it goes well, looks to have been an amazing find if it does

Having been a passenger in an air suspension model a number of times and owning a standard, non-air model, I really see no difference whatsoever or very slight at best. Therefore, in my humble opinion, the risks of the air system throwing very expensive faults is just not worth it (plenty of examples on here). Having said that, I've only experienced the RX300's not the 450h's, so my opinion may be worthless anyway but that's the way I see it

See!! That's why I hate insurance! I too was with Aviva last year and nothing changed at my end, no accidents, no change of address, absolutely NO change of anything - and yet my premium almost doubled from £385 to £720!!!! Of course, I queried it but the best they could do was £632 and no one could explain to me why it had gone up so much. The manager did point out that insurance premium tax had gone up but admitted that that wouldn't account for all of the increase. They wouldn't put me in touch with the underwriters but they supposedly did question it with them but basically the reply was almost 'because we can'.

That's the point really - insurance is such a dodgy game that even quotes with the same company can vary with the wind direction, what colour your socks are etc., etc. And you can never get like-for-like quotes anymore because they all offer something different. I long to go back in time to when you would just ask for a 'fully comprehensive' policy and it did what it said on the tin.

You're not the first one to say Powerflow are expensive but the guy in that thread I mentioned used Cybox based in Bromborough on The Wirral rather than Powerflow. It might be a bit of a trek for you but if the savings are substantial it may well be worth it. Here's a quote from one of their FAQs: Q. Do you offer a Custom-Build service? A. Yes, we do, but strictly at our own premises and not via a third party or franchisee. We manufacture everything in-house so have the ability to create the right results rather than having to rely on a limited range of silencer designs and components.