parkman

Hi, I would like to follow up on the replacement battery issue. I bought a Yuasa HJ-S46B24l[S] battery, which I found listed by a Dublin battery wholesale supplier as being the correct battery for my 2013 IS 300H Premier model. When I went to fit the new battery I found that the terminal posts on the new Yuasa battery are the same as a standard car battery post. The posts are much bigger than the original Toyota battery posta, and, of course, the new battery won't fit into the car. The new battery cost €220 and is currently not useable. I wonder whether anyone has any solutions to this ? I have looked on the internet, looking for battery connector adapters, but I can't find much that will fit onto the original Lexus connectors and will allow connecting to the new bigger posts. I did come across an item call a "Pencil post adapter", and without major surgery to the cars cables I think that this adapter may be the only option. The only other choice that I have is to see if I can return the new battery, and then put the car into the local Toyota dealer and let them fit a new battery. The problem is that it will probably cost about €400 -€450, which really gets up my nose. In the old days I would just file down the terminal post until it would fit, but nowadays one might need the warranty and filing down the posts will defeat the warranty. Any ideas or advice would be appreciated. Parkman.

I wonder whether someone can tell me how to get the mirror glass, with the plastic backing, out of the mirror housing ? Some prat broke the mirror glass a month or so back, and I have only just got a used replacement. I would like to see whether there is a video anywhere for removing the broken glass and fitting the new one. The car is a 2013 IS 300h. Parkman.

Zotto, thanks for the reply. I will give it a try tomorrow and see if I can get the route direction to change around. Parkman.

I wonder whether someone might have an answer to a question - is it possible to turn the sat nav route direction around by 180 degrees ? I have always used after-market Garmin sat navs and the map route direction is orientated from bottom to top so the the car icon is always moving in an upward direction, also meaning that the direction is logical and you are moving towards the horizon. In the IS 300h the nav screen is always moving from the top of the screen to the bottom, which to my mind is illogical. It makes it look as if the car icon is showing where I have come from, rather than showing where I am going. If you read a normal paper map you would normally read the direction from top to bottom, even if you turn the map up-side-down. Any answers would be appreciated because I keep the the Garmin on the windscreen because it is easier to read and understand. I would like to be able to rely on the car sat nav but I can't. Parkman.

Colin, thanks for your useful information. Maybe I am jumping the gun about the testing centre, but unfortunately one learns to be a cynic when dealing with Irish government bodies ! I will wait and see what the dealer comes up with, when the car goes in, next week. I did look at the small print on the extended warranty and it does say that the bulbs are covered by their MOT protected status. However, I don't believe that I still have an extended warranty anyway, as I exported the car from the UK to Ireland. Parkman.

Many thanks for the replies. I had a quick look a few minutes ago, and I see the places where the adjustments are made, but I have decided to book the car in for service and the dealer will reset the headlight alignment. A very interesting comment about the lifetime warranty on the xenon, or LED, bulbs. I must make a few discrete inquiries. If I ask the local dealer in Dublin they will definitely refuse any warranty - unless I can get Lexus Japan to tell them otherwise. It is normal here in Dublin that if a warranty claim can be refuted then it will. Until a higher authority can tell them to adhere to the warranty rules. First rule of business - refuse all warranty claims !! I had a Lexus breakdown service when I bought the car but when I brought the car to Ireland and rang Lexus Ireland how I could continue the service I was told that it didn't apply to Ireland. End of story. No new renewal. I believe that perhaps I could buy a separate breakdown service but instead I just rely on my insurance breakdown service, should I ever need it. Parkman.

Hi, thanks for the reply. I know that the series 3 IS has LED headlights but I am not sure about self-leveling I have looked up the specs for the Premier model but it doesn't mention whether or not there are self-leveling. I did see a method of testing this by starting the engine, putting on the hand brake and then very gently pressing the accelerator to see if, when the rear of the car pulls down the headlights also turn down. The problem with this is that you are having to get the car to strain against the handbrake, and how long do you need to do it for, before the electronics see that the car has gone low at the rear and needs to turn the headlights down. Where would it say whether the car has self-leveling headlights ? Edit; I have just looked through an online IS brochure and it says that the IS 300h has "[1] / Xenon headlights Auto-levelling High Intensity Discharge Xenon headlights with high-pressure cleaners and LED daytime running lights are standard on the new IS." I could imagine one headlight becoming misaligned, but both, and by the same margin ? I would also like to know how the test mechanic tested them, to see this problem. I have a classic Mercedes and I tend to be very careful of speed bumps and potholes, to the extend that I slow right down to walking pace to pass over a speed bump, and I will zigzag all over the place to avoid potholes and damaged road surfaces. I don't care what people think, I don't see why I should allow bad roads to cost me loads of money repairing my car. If I have to stop in the middle of the road because of a pothole then that is exactly what I do !! Parkman

I have a question that maybe someone has an answer to. My car is in Ireland, having moved from the UK last year. It is an original UK car. It is a 2013 IS 300H Premier, the latest model, and it came from a main dealer. It is now in Dublin, and it needed to have an NCT test, the Irish equivalent of the MOT, but operated by a Spanish outfit. Unfortunately, this company uses the annual car test as a cash cow [as with a lot of things in Ireland, such as road tax] and you have no idea what the requirements for passing the test this year might be. Each year the car goes for a test you can be sure that there will be different rules this year than last year, and passing the test will be totally speculative. My car has just failed this annual hi-jack due to both headlight being unaligned correctly. I had a look under the bonnet this afternoon and I can't see where the lights are aligned, and this has made me wonder whether there actually an alignment mechanism in the IS 300. If the test centre have decided that the lights are incorrectly aligned, both left and right, then they have been this way since the car was supplied to me 18 months ago, and having looked through the service receipts I see no mention of headlight adjustment or re-alignment. There are only 40,000 miles on the car, and since the last test which the car passed 12 months ago I have done just over 3000 miles, and I can't believe that the lights have gone out of alignment within that mileage so there are two possibilities; [1] the lights have been out of alignment from the day the car was supplied or; [2] the bandits at the test centre have just invented this to fail the test with the result that I need to get a retest, which has to be paid for. I called into a Lexus/Toyota dealer on the way home, and his answer was that the headlights have gone out of alignment because of driving over speed bumps. What a lot of utter nonsense. I said that if that was the case then there is an inherent problem with the car because I have never had the lights on a car go out of sync due to road conditions. Maybe someone can tell me if they have had any problems with car headlights going out of alignment during normal use, I would be most interested. Parkman.

I am wondering whether the direction of travel in the sat nav display in the 300h can be changed ? I find that the display is a bit confusing because when using Garmin or Tomtom the map on the display scrolls down, so that you look like you are moving on the map display in the same direction as the car is moving. With the car display the maps move upwards, in the opposite direction to the cars direction of travel. It can very confusing if, like me, you are used to third party sat nav's. Can the map direction on the screen be reversed at all ? Parkman.

I have just fitted Red pads front and back as well. I haven't done more than about 50 miles so far, but the brakes feel OK. As you say, time will tell as to whether the alloys get very dirty with the new pads. When discussing older cars one thing that we had to do on a couple of occasions was to pour Coke mixed with sugar into the clutch when it cooked and started slipping. It was an amazing quick fix which really worked. Parkman.

I have quite a lot of old car stuff in my garage due to having had a couple of Ford Escort rally car back in the late sixties and early seventies. Copperslip was a vital component for any self-respecting rally car owner back then !!! You couldn't go to the pub and be taken seriously unless you had some under your finger nails !! Parkman.

I had to sell the W124 because I am moving house and I just needed to make room at my new house. I have a 1983 W126 500se, as well, and my IS 300h, so the 124 just had to go. The 126 is my preferred chariot as it only has 53,000 miles from new, and one owner from new. I am not sure whether the Golf, A3 etc. were around in 1990 though 😏 The 124 central closing also worked on the early remote key fobs, just that mine didn't use the IR keys, only the key itself. But the key did do a good job, it worked every time closing all four windows and the sunroof. You just had to remember to keep the key turned until everything was closed. Like the later, 2004 E-class, if you let the key go, the same as the later IR key fob if you took your finger off the button, then the windows and roof stopped and you had then to turn on the ignition and use the internal switches. Parkman.

Yes, that was the case with my 2004 E-class. You had to have the fob pointed at the small, square receiver in the door handle, and be no more than three inches away. If you moved the fob at all while the windows were rising then the windows would stop, and you then had to get back in the car, switch on the ignition and lift the windows as normal. You don't get a second opportunity. And, yes, it is operated by IR, so it had to been in direct line of sight of the receiver. I had a 1990 Merc W124 260E, which I sold recently, and that used the key in the door lock to close the windows and sun roof. You just kept the key turned in the lock position and everything closed. I can't understand that 25 years later modern cars don't have a total closure as standard, especially as it is now so simple using computer chips which are so easily programmed. Parkman.

Carl, have you tried using the Carista dongle ? It looks quite interesting, although I probably couldn't justify a subscription for one car. Mind you, £34 for the year isn't very much. The one thing that would concern me is whether the main dealer would see that one has accessed the computer system when the car goes in for service. I deal with company laptops in a minor way and in our service department I am aware that we can see what external equipment has been plugged into a computer. So I presume that when the car is in the garage then the operator could see that a programmer has been plugged in without it being a Lexus component. Would that then void any warranty ? Again, my car is 2013 so I probably don't have any warranty left anyway !! Parkman.

This is a question about an issue which I have not looked very carefully into, and while I am away from home, in other words I don't have the car with me at the moment. But here goes anyway. Does the IS 300h Premium have central closing when the car is locked ? What I mean is, does the central locking system close the windows if they are open when the key fob is pressed ? With my Merc E-class you could close the sunroof and all the windows by keeping the "lock" button on the key fob pressed. As long as you kept the "lock" button pressed then the windows would rise until they were fully closed. Then you release the button/ If the sunroof is open, and all the windows are open, then they will all close while the button is kept pressed. I briefly tried the same thing on the IS 300h but nothing happened, but perhaps I didn't do it correctly. I didn't try it again, and I didn't look in the user manual either as I forgot. Maybe someone might know if total closure does or doesn't work on the IS 300h. Parkman.