Thackeray

On 3/3/2024 at 5:39 PM, appuku10 said:

I was more worried that there is something removed from the hood. I could see some naked nuts on the left of the engine

I don't think there's anything missing. Mine looks exactly the same.

On 1/18/2024 at 12:06 PM, Notamech said:

we have a honda jazz also with summer tyres but that doesn't crab

Maybe an additional factor could be that the Jazz is front wheel drive and the Lexus is rear wheel drive?

15 hours ago, JeffL said:

I am considering the pros and cons of disconnection of our home landline telephone (3 cordless phones).

One factor to consider in giving up the landline, is how reliable the local mobile phone masts are and how good the mobile reception is at your house. We had repeated problems with reception from local masts, while they were doing upgrade work for several weeks.

So, as you may know, the easy solution is to make sure you have Wifi calling available from your mobile phone service provider. This means that if the signal from the local mast is unavailable, the phone automatically switches the call to the internet router in your home. This means you have the convenience of the mobile phone being in your pocket but you also have the reliability of the wired connection to the house. Not 100 percent reliable, of course, but the fibre connection is likely to survive most of the time except for when remote parts of the country are cut off by snow.

11 hours ago, MLW said:

Never jump start a hybrid, the electrics will blow out and cost a fortune. Hybrids work by the 12v battery telling the computer to start the engine. You cannot and must not 'shock' it into action.

It's true to say that you shouldn't attempt to help someone jump start a broken down conventional car from your hybrid Lexus or Toyota. The hybrid 12v electrics aren't designed for the heavy load produced when the conventional car's starter motor draws on the hybrid car's circuitry. Having said that, I seem to remember someone reporting that they had done this without any problems but the possibility of expensive damage is probably too great to take the risk.

By contrast, if your hybrid car's 12v Battery is flat, you can jump start the car from a conventional car in the usual way. The manual describes how to do this and there's a convenient jump lead connection point under the bonnet so that you don't have to connect directly to the Battery.

I was once asked to help someone start a conventional car by jump starting from my hybrid Lexus. I said I couldn't do that but I had a cheap Chinese jump start pack we could use. I connected it up and he tried the starter motor. The starter motor didn't turn but the jump start pack started to smoke and looked as if it was about to burst into flame. I decided not to buy another cheap Chinese jump start pack after that experience.

3 hours ago, Casaubond said:

I am messing with the fans to find an optimal position setting.

There was a thread a couple of years ago (I can't find it at the moment) where a new owner was reporting something similar. It turned out that this driver was trying to adjust the fans to a preferred setting. But the problem he/she had was that when you adjust the fans, their auto speed setting is also turned off. Everything else remains auto but the fans will continue at high speed if that's how they were set earlier.

With climate control set on Auto and the car starting from cold in cold weather, my experience is that there is initially little air coming out of the vents. This is because the air is still cold, even if it's being drawn from inside the car rather than the freezing air outside. But when the engine is warm enough to provide heat (maybe three or four minutes - maybe longer in cold weather) the fans start to speed up to provide warm air to the cabin, including from the face vents.

This continues until the cabin has reached the set temperature. The fans then slow down again and the face vents gradually switch to cooler air. So you then have warm air near your feet and cooler air towards your face.

But if you make any adjustment, the function you've adjusted will no longer be automatic until you reset the Auto button. I find this works fine.  If yours is not doing this when climate control is on Auto and no adjustments have been made manually, then, as you say, there might be a software or sensor problem. Let us know how you get on.

Incidentally, here's the link to the earlier discussion, though this was mainly about demisting.

18 hours ago, yaboyking said:

I do drive the car almost every day, (about 50-100 miles everyday) 

Can anyone tell me, is there a specific 12 v battery I need to replace it or will any do?  I know there is a temperature sensor in the Panasonic battery, what do I do with that?

I would have thought 50 miles a day was plenty of driving to keep a healthy Battery charged. It's also worth remembering that it isn't necessary to drive the car to charge the Battery. It doesn't have an alternator like a conventional car that might produce more electricity if the engine is spinning faster. Instead the 12v Battery is charged from the hybrid Battery and it only needs to be in the Ready state and the gear selector not in Neutral for the 12v Battery to be charged. It makes no difference whether the engine is running or not.

I was asking the same sorts of questions around three years ago but I can't now find the thread. When I was asking about the temperature sensor, I think it was Colin Barber who said the temperature sensor is under the Battery in the frame (Apologies if I've misremembered this.) So there's nothing to actually connect on this model. But there is a tube for the hydrogen vent that should be reconnected to a new Battery, assuming it has a vent. This is to avoid the remote risk of a build-up of hydrogen in the boot area.

19 hours ago, ALAW said:

The steering wheel paddles. Never use them should I. Posted a long time time back about them used for regeneration

19 hours ago, PaulWhitt20 said:

The paddles may be useful if you want to keep a higher “gear” to provide engine braking when going down a long steep hill.

Back in the 1930s, brakes on cars weren't very good. They also suffered from "fade", which meant that if you applied the brakes continuously down a long steep hill, there would come a point when they didn't really work any more! (Or so I was told - fortunately I've never experienced this.) So it was pretty important that you didn't use the brakes continuously. Instead, people would change down a gear or two and use the resistance of the engine to slow down the car a bit and give the brakes a chance to recover.

The habit continued into the 1960s and 1970s when brake linings were beginning to become a lot more effective and less prone to fade. People have continued to use engine braking down hills even though the original reason for it scarcely exists now.

With a Lexus hybrid the situation is different again. When you apply the brakes gently, initially the only braking force comes from the resistance of the motor-generators. Instead of wearing out the brakes, the car generates electricity and stores it in the hybrid Battery. Press the brake pedal a bit more firmly and the actual brakes may come into operation as well. But for day to day gentle driving a lot of slowing down can be achieved from the resistance of the generators as they produce some electricity to save in the Battery. So to regenerate electricity use the brakes.

So what happens when you use the paddles to shift down to a lower gear ratio? As expected, you get some engine braking like on the cars of 80 years ago. But just as 80 years ago this resulted in less brake wear, nowadays in a hybrid it can result in less power being passed to the generator and hence less regeneration, not more.

On 10/21/2023 at 1:06 PM, Paul Brooksbank said:

I've got everything back except DAB tuning, it says "No Signal" which is strange as the pre programmed stations work!

You probably already know this, but the DAB radio can say No Signal if it's out of range of the selected "Ensemble". When this happens, you have to find an Ensemble which is in range. If the pre-sets are working then the No Signal message might be something to do with this.

3 hours ago, boothy said:

Any advice and thoughts welcome 😁

Everyone to their own tastes, of course.

But personally I can't see the point of spending a lot of money on changing the visibility/non-visibility of exhaust pipes. I'd rather spend the money on a holiday in Majorca.

I await the people shouting me down for such an extreme view on a car forum!

On 10/22/2023 at 8:33 PM, David lings said:

l would suggest you have the battery checked for a defective cell but also get your alternator checked and what your parasitic loss is.

Just to clarify, the Lexus/Toyota hybrid system doesn't have an alternator. The 12v Battery is charged from the hybrid Battery whenever the car is in the Ready state. It isn't necessary for the engine to be running, so long as it's in the Ready state. I'm assuming a 2006 GS450h is the hybrid model.

17 hours ago, wharfhouse said:

when put alongside any new car it doesn't look out of place and the lines still flow very nicely

Speaking of lines, I've had mine six years and only just noticed an elegant bodywork feature on the side of the car. There was an IS300h on some drama I was watching on television and for the first time I noticed something that the film lighting managed to clearly highlight.

There's a bodwork line that begins below the front door and rises gently towards the back wheel, leaving space for the word Hybrid below the back door. But what I had never noticed is that the line continues on the other side of the back wheel until it ends just below the rear light cluster.

Maybe I'm the only one who's never noticed this line extension below the light cluster but I can now see that it looks very elegant, swooping all the way from the front door to the back of the car.

18 hours ago, Dells said:

I had to do a 130 mile round trip today and according to the computer I averaged 56mpg so hoping that is somewhere near accurate I will be happy with that although to get a really accurate take I would need to do a tank brim to brim but considering my 1600 Bclass could only manage 40 I am chuffed, as for the sat nav why do they take you one way and back a completely different way, it’s not just Lexus all my Mercs were the same.

Dell

Hope you're enjoying the car - I think you said on another thread that you recently acquired it. I've had mine six years and I'm still very happy with it. Quiet, comfortable, reliable, and the fuel consumption can be pretty good.

However, on the mpg computer, I've found that it's about eight pct optimistic over brim-to-brim fuel measurement. That's to say, typically, if you subtract three or four mpg it'll be close to the real figure. Nonetheless, even 52-53 mpg seems pretty satisfactory for a car of this body and engine size.

The best I've seen was 54.1 mpg over a run of 299 miles and the computer showed 59.5. But that was in August four years ago and as autumn comes the mpg will deteriorate. At the moment, the outside temperature where I am is averaging around 20-22 degrees, so no need for heating, little need for aircon, no lights, heated seats, screen defrost, windscreen wipers etc. But as the weather gets colder, the engine will not stop so often because the car uses the engine heat to warm the cabin. Plus all the other electrical items are ultimately powered from use of the petrol. At worst, I found that one winter, doing repeated four-mile runs that scarcely warmed up the engine before it started to cool down again, I got as low as 29 mpg over the course of a tankful.

More typical over the whole year is around 44 mpg, or 48 on the car computer. I'm happy with that.

8 hours ago, ScottAdams86 said:

What's the average L/100km you think I should be seeing? I did the mpg conversion and most places online say mid 5s. I haven't seen it go below 7l/100km..

It's pretty unlikely that you'll see 5l/100km. I think that's around 55 mpg (UK gallons) and while you might see that for a while on a long steady journey, my impresion is that it would be pretty unusual for long-term consumption over a whole year and all seasons.

This website spritmonitor.de shows that the average is around 6.5 l/100km (or around 44 mpg).

I once went to Kwik-Fit about 30 years ago. I had a new company car on which one of the front tyres had been damaged and needed replacing.

For company tax reasons, the car was legally mine and they paid me additional salary to cover the cost of the car but the maintenance was handled by the company account and I had a charge card for any of the work that needed doing.

So I went into KwikFit and said I needed a new tyre for my nearly new car. They went out the back to look for the tyre and then made a phone call to the service card provider. After a little while they came back and I asked them how it was going. They arrogantly responded, as if I was wasting their time, that they were in the process of fitting two new tyres. "Wait a minute," I said, "I only asked you to replace the damaged tyre. The other one is virtually new." "No," they said. "We're fitting two new tyres."

So I told them this was my car and I wanted one new tyre and didn't want money wasted replacing a virtually new undamaged tyre. They said, "That's ok, we've checked with the service provider for your company car and we're fitting two new tyres."

I eventually persuaded them that as it was my car, it was my choice what was replaced and they just fitted the one new tyre.

I've never been back to Kwik-Fit.

I wondered about the colour match, too, but it's hard to make a judgement without seeing the car. However, every metal panel should have a VIN sticker. If a non-Lexus bodyshop does a respray they typically won't bother about replacing the stickers and may even spray over them. A Lexus approved respray would replace the stickers, though they cost £100 each.

There should be a sticker towards the bottom of each door on the inside rim; one on the boot rim on the right hand side on the UK spec model. Also on the UK spec car there's a sticker on the central left-hand pillar between the front and rear door. I'm not sure if there's one on the right hand side. There's also one inside the bonnet lid but I can't remember where. If these are missing, it's a sign that there's been a repair. This isn't necessarily a problem if the repair has been done well but at least it's something to negotiate about.

As for the seat, it doesn't look as if there are switches for heated seats, which suggests they are the fabric seats as per the Luxury spec. The wheels also look like the 10 spoke 17inch wheels, which if they are original would also help confirm it's the Luxury model, at least in the UK spec.

As Herbie pointed out, it used to be the case that you needed a Green Card to take your car to Europe. This provided the evidence that you had insurance. Then the EU, including the UK when it was a member, decided that Green Cards were no longer needed.

Then Britain left the EU, which meant that Green Cards were necessary again.

But this only lasted a few months until a new agreement was reached in August 2021. This means that you again don't need a Green Card. See this page from the AA. You do need your insurance documents, though, to confirm that you are insured.

It also used to be the case that you needed a GB sticker or GB designation on the number plate. This has changed, too. Now the sticker or the number plate should say UK. (Apparently, this was Britain's decision - nothing to do with the EU.)

For driving in France, you also used to have to carry an alcohol breath test device. But the French couldn't sort out how this might work. So eventually, they dropped the requirement after breath test makers had made loads of money selling unnecessary test devices to tourists. (The French, of course, had taken no notice of the rule while it was in place, which is their usual approach to any sort of new regulation.)

I seem to remember that Versaille has a nice market. As in most French markets the French still take no notice of decimalisation (even though they invented it) and you can buy, for example,  une livre de pommes (a pound of apples).  The British used to worry about such things when they were in the EU but the French didn't bother about what the EU rules said.

As for tips on driving in France, here's a brief video

On 4/27/2023 at 5:32 PM, Nigel Coleman said:

So the last few days the alarm goes off by itself for a short period then stops. It's happened 4 times and I'm now getting funny looks from the neighbours!

I checked that the boot, bonnet, doors and windows are properly closed - and they all are.

Any ideas please?

In earlier threads about alarms going off, the culprit is often an insect trapped in the car. As Spring arrives, there are probably more insects around unexpectedly triggering car alarms.

As you've now bought an ES, I'm a bit late to comment on the IS300h but I'd second what others have said. I've had mine for six years and nothing has needed repairing or failed. I've had new tyres and just to be on the safe side I decided to buy a new 12v Battery even though the car has never failed to start. But nothing else has been needed apart from annual service. I wouldn't go back to Mercedes because the better reliability of Lexus is something I put a high value on.

I have the impression that although German (and come to that French and Italian) car makers do brilliant engineering design, they haven't cracked the factory process in the way Toyota and other Asian makers have. So I would guess that the ES will be just as reliable as my experience of the IS

Just wondering what the outcome was for this story.

Was the mileage 2,200? Or was it what you were hoping it wouldn't be and actually turned out to be 75,000?

10 hours ago, Bluemarlin said:

I suppose it's possible that the servicing dealer got carried away with putting zeros in when doing the service, but a Lexus dealer should be able to read the mileage from the ECU.

If it's been serviced on schedule over the course of 75,000 miles - every 10,000 or 12,500 miles - it should have had at least six services. If the mileage is recorded for each of these services it might help to build up a picture of what has happened to the car. It's unlikely that the mileage would have been recorded wrongly on every service.

Are all the VIN stickers present on the car's bodywork?

There should be one on every metal panel. For example, they should be on the inner rim of the boot lid, bonnet, every door edge, the side body panels. If they're present, do they show the correct number? If any are missing this suggests bodywork repairs, which would not be surprising on a 75,000 mile car.

Does the service history show any repairs or changes of tyres? If it's really 75,000 miles you would expect around three changes of tyres.

On the IS300h the symbol on the button represents something called "Pollen Removal Mode". There's no dedicated button on the IS300h but you can turn it on from the air conditioning screen where it shows the symbol. From memory, I think this function turns off automatically after about 10 minutes.

My guess, partly based on the picture on the button, would be that it concentrates all the air through the filter, whereas perhaps this doesn't happen to the same extent in normal operation. So I'd be inclined to take out the filter and see if it has some scent!

You're right. I found it in a couple of seconds! Actually I use Qwant rather than Google for searching. Just on principle, I'm not keen on Google knowing everything that I do!

That's the item. But how did you find it?

I find the forum search function impossible to use. In this example I knew it was by Britprius and I knew it was about TPMS but nothing I do in the search page will produce the right item (or indeed any results from Britprius).

Even knowing it's by Britprius and now knowing the title is "TPMS system fault" I still can't get the search function to find it. What am I doing wrong?

1 hour ago, Bluemarlin said:

it might be worth putting something like clear nail varnish over them to protect any exposed metal

Isn't the bonnet made of aluminium so no risk of rust?