sorcerer

Just happened to notice this earlier on this afternoon. I'm assuming that that rod should be inserted in that green bush and that it somehow controls some sort of flap mechanism or something but without a service manual it's just guesswork. Can anyone shed any light on it and let me know (a) what it should do and (b) what the car is probably failing to do at the moment, that it should and would be doing, if that push rod was properly located?

Doh, now you tell me I rang Toyota Preston earlier this afternoon just to enquire about price and ended up getting 10 litres of Super Long Life Pink for £63

I agree Piers and if it has to be, then fair enough, I'll pay it. It's just that I begrudge paying such a price for what is, after all, half water. They know how to charge better than a wounded rhino does!

I'm going to get my mechanic to change the fluids in the car and I was shocked by the high price of the Toyota Super Long Life Pink Coolant (and it seems I'm not the only one either!) Lexus do state that we can use alternatives but, given all the conditions it has to meet, has anyone actually ever found one? Or is it just a way of saying 'you've got to use this one' without actually saying it? Sorry about the poor image quality below - it does look better on my machine.

@TigerFish and @Monte Cheers guys, yes, I know I can turn off the photochromic mirrors manually, but that's just SO last year

I've not read all seven pages on this topic so what I'm about to say may be complete rubbish, or it may even have been mentioned earlier but, as a relatively new owner of a 2005 RX300 (had it two months now), I'm also disappointed about the amount of light at the back of the car when reversing in darkness. However, I think the lights themselves are bright enough but it's the photochromic mirrors to blame. The 'porch light' at our house comes on when it's dark but when I'm trying to reverse up the drive I can hardly see anything at all due to all the mirrors going dark. I drove a van for many years when I was a telephone engineer on BT so I'm more comfortable and more used to using the mirrors to reverse rather than twisting around to look out of the rear window (plus my back injury makes that movement a painful one!). Also, the brightness of the reversing camera screen, if my eye happens to catch it, can then make looking into the dark mirrors even worse than normal. Photochromic mirrors are a great idea while driving but should be disabled when reverse gear is selected, in my humble opinion anyway.

To be honest, about five minutes after posting that I had already made up my mind to leave it as it is. The RX300 is a big, heavy car and goes through fuel for fun, so those extra few litres will be welcome. And as we mentioned earlier in the thread, the safety valve will open to vent excess pressure if it ever came to that, which I don't think it will.

Just done my first 'empty-to-full' filling and my 85-litre tank took 74.47 litres, which means I may get a little more than that in on cold winter days. It also means that it's filling beyond the 80% figure (80% of 85 is 68) so maybe my shut-off valve needs some adjustment, if they are adjustable.

No, it's not just you, I can't see any MOT history either. Also, it's not currently insured according to askmid.co.uk (or at least not showing on the insurance database). Perhaps best to give this one a wide berth?

Yes, it does. It will bleep at you to tell you that you've run out of gas but the car will seamlessly switch back to petrol with no hiccups, jerks or any other physical signs apart from the bleeping. Join the LPG forum for lots of help and information and also have a look at this website for locations of filling stations and prices.

The pump should stop completely but some of them just slow down to such a trickle that I get fed up and let the button go, then just note down how many litres I managed to get in. Some pumps are quite quick, some slow and some very slow, just a bit of a lottery really - you'll get used to it It shouldn't be possible to overfill as the tanks are fitted with vents. Too much pressure will cause the vent valve to open and vent the excess off to air. If you hear a hissing and smell gas, somethings wrong with the valve so get it to a gas guy ASAP but, under normal circumstances, no, it's not possible to overfill. Honestly, forget what the lights are telling you, the gauges are about as useful as a chocolate teapot You definitely haven't made a mistake in buying it. We did over 104,000 miles on gas in our old Nissan. Rather than get bogged down in MPG figures, let me give you a real-world example. We usually drive from our home in Preston, Lancashire, to eastern Europe for our holidays and have done for many years. Last year we drove through France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia, covering about 4,000 miles for the round trip. Doing it on petrol would have cost us over £900 for the fuel, whereas doing it on gas actually cost us £437. I honestly don't know why more people don't run LPG as I truly cannot find a downside to it. It's cleaner, better for the engine, better for the environment and, best of all, better for the wallet

The gas gauges are notoriously inaccurate and you just cannot rely on them. I could fill up and have four green lights but 15 minutes later it would be on one red light (that's in the old Nissan which had a different system to the Lexus). Your 65-litre tank should take a maximum of 52-litres of gas from empty to full (80% of 65) but may take slightly more or less due to temperature fluctuations. The only way to measure your gas and/or its consumption is to let it run out, fill up, and then zero your trip meter/odometer. Let that tankful run out and then you know roughly how many miles you're getting per tankful. In the Nissan, depending on driving style, motorway or town, whether there was an 'R' in the month, what colour socks I was wearing etc., etc., I could get anywhere between 190 and 250 miles per tankful, which was around 55 to 57-litres. I've yet to find out what the RX300 will do per tankful. The MPG figure will be less on gas than on petrol, e.g. if the car does 30 on petrol it may only do 23 or 24 on gas so you use more gas and fill up more often, but because it's cheaper you win on the cost.

That looks brilliant Adam, just what I'm looking for. Thanks very much

Hi Matthew, I was going to use Leyland LPG myself because John Ross has a great reputation, but I was having difficulty in contacting them. I later found out that John had died and I thought that the firm had gone out of business, although I now know that they are indeed still trading. Anyway, thinking that Leyland LPG had closed down, I eventually decided on a guy called Simon Andrew of Yorkshire Autogas over in South Elmsall, sort of in between Doncaster and Pontefract (http://www.lpgc.co.uk) who's done a great job and I'm very pleased with it. I'm no expert but I'd say there's something not quite right with your shut-off valve. My Nissan had either a 69 or 72 litre tank (can't remember which now) and empty to full it always took 55 litres, which would be correct (80%) for the 69-litre or slightly out for the 72-litre. I've not yet done an 'empty-to-full' filling on this 85-litre tank but will let you know when I do. How have you handled the petrol gauge problem? I don't particularly want the red light on for weeks, maybe even months, continuously 'crying wolf' as it were, but I will need to know when the petrol is actually getting low.

Had our 2005 RX300 converted last week and I'm very pleased with the job (couple of photos attached). One thing that's giving me slight cause for concern though is the car's petrol gauge, which is still going down at an alarming rate even though it should hardly be using any! Although we're new to Lexus we are not new to LPG. We covered more than 104,000 miles on gas in our old Nissan so I'm comparing it to that. As an example, if the Nissan petrol gauge showed half-full it would literally take a number of weeks for it to drop to empty and put the warning light on (indicating a truly nearly empty tank), whereas the RX300's gauge is behaving ‘normally’, ie, it dropped from half-full to 'warning light empty' over the course of a 150 mile motorway journey yesterday. I think I know what's going on and it would be nice if someone could confirm it, but first, a bit of (oversimplified) background for those who may not know how the LPG conversion works. The car's original engine ECU still controls everything and it still sends the signals to the petrol injectors as normal. The gas ECU intercepts those signals, adjusts them as necessary and sends them on to the gas injectors rather than the petrol injectors. The car's original ECU doesn't see any difference and thinks the car is still running on petrol, which is where my problem may lie. Older fuel gauges relied on a float in the tank and measured the actual liquid level, whereas a lot (if not all) modern cars have an electronic gauge that I believe is worked by some black magic in the ECU and is a representation of what the car thinks it has left in the petrol tank. The gas control switch tells me that all is working as it should (fire up on petrol - lights flashing. When certain parameters are reached, automatic switchover to gas and lights go steady) but the only way I could think of to check this was to fill both the gas and petrol tanks then drive around for a few days and fill both tanks again. UPDATE – I had to go to Asda today so I took the opportunity to fill up the petrol tank again at their petrol station. I’d covered 157.8 miles since last filling it and all I could get in the tank this afternoon was just 2.37 litres, thereby proving that the car is indeed running on gas as it should and the petrol gauge is dropping in line with how much petrol the car thinks it’s using and not what it’s actually using. The problem now, of course, is that in about 300 miles or so, that red petrol light is going to come on again indicating an almost empty petrol tank when in reality it may still be three-quarters full. Not only that, at some point the red light really will mean that the tank is nearly empty and I really will need to put some more in. Is there any way to reprogram the petrol gauge via software? I know I’m not the first person to have an LPG-converted RX300 so are there any others on this forum and how did you deal with this little problem? Sorry for the long post 1 - The Flashlube valve-saver fluid bottle 2 - The gas ECU 3 - The gas reducer The 85-litre gas tank is where the spare wheel used to be and the filling point is centre of the car (so that you can fill from either side) and pokes out from below the rear bumper just as a tow bar would.

Oh no, that just wouldn't look right at all Seriously though, there's no real need to carry a spare. I've got a can of Holts Tyreweld (or some such goo) for 'normal' punctures and if it's anything more serious I'll just call out the breakdown people. I don't want to tempt fate by saying this but we did over 104,000 miles on gas in our old Nissan, with the tank in place of the spare wheel, and never had a single puncture but did carry the can of goo just in case.

Oh no, that just wouldn't look right at all Seriously though, there's no real need to carry a spare. I've got a can of Holts Tyreweld (or some such goo) for 'normal' punctures and if it's anything more serious I'll just call out the breakdown people. I don't want to tempt fate by saying this but we did over 104,000 miles on gas in our old Nissan, with the tank in place of the spare wheel, and never had a single puncture but did carry the can of goo just in case.

Fair enough Rayann, thanks for the reply. I won't be carrying a spare after next week because the car goes for LPG conversion on Monday and a toroidal gas tank will be living where the spare wheel goes, which is why I was hoping I may be able to put the spare into proper service. Like you say though, it's not worth playing with safety.

I know that within the next 4 to 6 months all four tyres are going to need replacing on our 2005 RX300. I discovered that the spare has hardly ever been used (photos attached) so I'm wondering if I could bring this into play as one of the 'everyday' tyres, meaning I only have to buy three new ones rather than four? Thing is, it's date stamped as a 2005 tyre so although it looks like new, it's actually 11 years old like the rest of the car - is that a problem?

True. The manufacturers get their figures by removing almost everything from the car, such as passenger seats etc., and conduct their tests under laboratory conditions. I've always wondered how they are allowed to get away with this but obviously, they do. We bought our very first Lexus, a 2005 RX300, about four or five weeks ago and I'm horrified by the fuel consumption (a best so far of 28mpg on the motorway and a worst of 17mpg around town). I knew it would be bad because it's such a big, heavy car but I didn't think it would be this bad. I must admit though, that it's a long time since I had to rely on petrol alone. Our last car, a Nissan Maxima QX 3.0 V6 24V SE+ Auto, was converted to LPG within one month of us buying it back in 2008 and we went on to do more than 104,000 miles on LPG in it. It's for that reason that our RX300 is booked in for LPG conversion on 4th July and believe me, my wallet cannot wait!!

Ouch!!

Thanks Chris. I've emailed the Ebay seller to see what they say but while I await their reply I'll give your suggestion a try. Cheers

Just bought a mini VCI cable and Techstream from Ebay but there's a bit of a problem. There are many Youtube videos out there showing the software in use and in all of them that I've seen, when the 'Connect to car' button is clicked then it automatically detects the correct car - but in my case it doesn't. It detects my car as a Toyota Highlander, 2003, with the 1MZ-FE engine, whereas in reality it's a Lexus RX300, 2005, with (I believe) a 1MZ-FE engine. When I manually choose Lexus RX300, the latest year I can choose is 2003 - but mine's a 2005. If I select the correct year of 2005, the software changes the model to RX330 instead of my RX300 and also changes the engine to the 3MZ-FE instead of my 1MZ-FE When I connect as a 2003 RX300 I get this display, which is missing a few ECUs: However, if I connect as a 2005 RX330 it shows the extra ECUs that my car appears to have, i.e., Back Door, AFS, Rain Sensor etc., (marked with an orange dot) but it's the wrong model and wrong engine: Am I missing a setting or something? How valid is the data that the software is showing if it's the wrong car and engine? I should say that there's nothing unusual about the car - it's a UK model, not an import or anything.

Well I'll go t'foot of our stairs, as my dear departed Granny used to say!! Phil, after reading your post I thought I'd have a few more goes and it worked first time! It must have been my timings - I think I was holding the lock/unlock buttons longer than the 1.5 seconds in Step 11. I suppose opening/closing doors can take different amounts of time each time you do it but "1.5 seconds" is a bit exact and it must be critical. Cheers mate

Ok, curioser and curioser as Alice would say! I tried your suggestion Chris (thanks very much) but sadly it didn't work. I found a Youtube video done by a guy called 'speedkar99' in which he was programming a key for some other model of Lexus, so I contacted him and asked if that same procedure would work on a 2005 RX300. He said no, but to follow the instructions in this video here for the RX300. The first part of the video deals with programming the immobiliser and the latter part with programming the remote locking. If I insert my old broken key into the steering lock without any electronics the car cranks but will not fire up. When I try it with my new key with transponder, the car fires up and runs as expected, thereby proving that the immobiliser part is working correctly. The procedure for programming the remote locking is as follows: Start with all doors closed Open driver's door Insert key, remove key Insert key, remove key Close door, open door Close door, open door Insert key, close door Turn key to 'On' position* then off Remove key The locks will now cycle to indicate that you're in programming mode Hold lock and unlock buttons down together for 1.5 seconds then release Press any button on the key and the locks will now cycle to indicate programming has been successful Exit programming mode by opening door *At step No.8 in the video, he turns the key on and there's a beep before he turns it off again - mine does NOT beep. However, at Step No.10, my locks DO cycle, which would sort of imply that all previous steps have completed successfully - wouldn't it? Unfortunately, after holding down the lock/unlock buttons simultaneously (Step 11), my locks do NOT cycle as they should (Step 12). What does that all mean and what can I do now?