Thackeray

I've had this problem in the past, too. I gave up using car dealers for MOTs as a result and ever since I've used the local council testing station, which has no interest in selling you repairs as it only does testing. They told me that worn edges are not an MOT fail. On your MOT advisory, item 5.2.3.(e) in the MOT handbook says "Tyre tread depth not in accordance with the requirements Dangerous" In fact the outer edges can be bald as long as the central three-quarters of the tyre has 1.6mm. Here's what the MOT handbook says: The primary grooves of the tread pattern must be at least 1.6mm deep within the central three-quarters of the breadth of tread and around the entire outer circumference of the tyre (see diagram 1). Either side of the central three-quarters of the tyre can be devoid of tread (‘bald’). Diagram 1. Primary and secondary grooves in tyre tread pattern

I might be wrong but I suspect the speedo will become more inaccurate on the high side as the tyres wear, overstating rather than understating the speed. For example, if the speedo says you will cover 70 miles in an hour, that figure is calculated from a fixed number of revolutions of the road wheels. That number won't change as the tyres wear. But as the tyre gets smaller the distance actually covered per revolution of the wheel will get shorter. So although the speedo says 70, the smaller worn tyres actually cover two percent less distance (using reeac's calculation). And when the speedo says 70, you actually only travel around 68.5 miles in the hour. Or have I got this the wrong way round? Some cars allow you to reset the tyre wear measurement to reduce this inaccuracy.

I think I've now got a better idea of what's happening when the battery is nearly full and the car is going down a long hill. Have I understood this right? This is what seems to be happening. If you look at the power split device graphic on eahart.com/prius/psd/ and adjust MG2 to set the car's speed to around 30mph, MG2 (connected to road wheels) will be spinning forwards and MG1 backwards. Both will be generating electricity which is being fed into the battery. The engine (ICE) is not turning. But when the battery becomes full, something has to be done with the electricity that is still being generated. So the electricity from MG2 is re-routed to MG1 instead of the battery. MG1 now changes from a generator to a motor and spins forwards rather than backwards. On the graphic, setting the ICE (internal combustion engine) to spin at around 2,000 rpm shows this effect. MG1 is spinning the engine, using the electricity that is being generated by MG2 as the car continues to roll downhill.

There was another thread about this in January but for anyone who didn't follow that discussion, it might be worth just recapping what the issue is. Which? says in its review of the "IS hybrid" (ie 300h): "It's a very good car, but we found the Lexus IS emits so much CO (carbon monoxide) in our tests, that it would fail to meet any EU emissions limits set this century." So what does that mean? The carbon monoxide limits for Euro 4 (2005), Euro 5 (2009) and Euro 6 (2014) are all the same at 1 gram per kilometre (g/km). By saying the IS300h would not meet any of these standards it's saying that the IS300h emits more carbon monoxide than 1g/km. It's not clear to me how they reached this conclusion as I haven't been able to find details of how their testing is conducted. However, I did find a website for a specialist emissions testing company called Emissions Analytics. According to their website, their testing uses on-road emissions monitoring equipment in a three and a half hour run. By contrast, Which? until recently seems to have done a 20 minute lab test, though I haven't found any details to absolutely confirm this. So what results did Emissions Analytics find? It classifies its results with a letter of the alphabet. The Lexus IS300h gets the top rating of A++, which corresponds to carbon monoxide emissions of between zero and 0.125 g/km. This compares with the Which? result of at least eight times as much carbon monoxide emitted, or possibly much more. Emissions Analytics publishes its results in a table called EQUA Index. Click here for the webpage of results. Type Lexus into the search box to find the Lexus results. So who can we believe has the more realistic test approach? A company which seems only to specialise in emissions testing, and claims: "We are the leading independent global testing and data specialist for real world emissions."? Or Britain's biggest consumer products testing organisation that assesses everything from washing machines to cars and computers? I think there's a lot to be said for measuring actual emissions from the exhaust pipe in a real-world road test. If I remember rightly, this is how the Volkswagen scandal came about - they did well in the lab, but quite poorly when actual emissions were measured on the road. The IS300h seems to be the other way round - it didn't do well in the short Which? lab test but on a longer real-world test, measuring actual on-road emissions, it got a top rating.

After looking for information on Prius websites, this seems the most likely explanation; just slightly lowering the battery charge level. That would presumably mean the engine was spinning but not firing, despite my impression that it was running normally. While looking for an explanation I came across some people who had experienced the engine continuing to run without stopping. This generally seemed to be because something like a plastic bag was blocking the battery cooling vent! The engine kept running to prevent overheating of the battery. When they removed the plastic bag blocking the vent, the engine behaviour went back to normal. If only most other problems were as easy to fix!

Thanks for that explanation. That makes sense for what is happening when you go down a hill with a "full" battery. (It's probably only at 80% as I understand it but that's the limit set by the system designers.) But I'm still not sure I understand why the engine would keep running for five seconds or so after the car came to a halt with the battery on "full charge". It sounded to me as if the engine was firing. The electric motor (MG1) could have kept the engine turning without using fuel to reduce the level of battery charge. But it sounded more as though the engine was running rather than being spun without using any fuel.

Reviving an old topic, until now I've never seen eight bars on the hybrid battery level (ie full) As mentioned in my post above, I usually see two or three bars in the town driving that I often do. But last week, after going down a long winding hill of 2-3 kilometres in France, I saw eight bars for the first time by the time I reached the bottom of the hill. Following discussion in another thread, I only used the regenerative braking going down the hill - the speed limit was 50 kph (30 mph) - rather than "changing down" a gear ratio or two. The other interesting thing was that when the battery was full and I kept on braking, the engine started running. In fact, when I reached the bottom of the hill and stopped at some traffic lights the engine kept running for around five seconds after the car had stopped. Normally, the engine stops immediately when the car stops at lights. Someone in another thread said they were puzzled by the engine apparently running when the battery was full and the car was slowing down on a motorway. I assume the engine running while going down the hill with the battery full will allow the generator to turn more slowly to avoid damage. But does anyone know why the engine keeps running for a short time when the car has just stopped and the battery is full?

Did you try taking out the fuse and cleaning the contacts? It might just be corrosion on the fuse connections. I'm afraid I don't know which fuse it is. Maybe someone else knows.

It's obvious to any IS300h owner that the Which? magazine figures for fuel consumption are nonsense. They say you can get 97 mpg around town. If you spent a day driving around town (like many taxi drivers do with a Prius) I don't believe anyone would ever get anything like that. Maybe somewhere near the official 65 mpg. But 97 mpg is just clearly rubbish and should never have been published with the claim that this is fuel economy "you can really expect to achieve." I'm quoting what they used to say on their explanation page of consumption testing. I think they've now removed this claim but they're still quoting the nonsense mpg of 97 mpg around town. The claim of 34 mpg on the motorway is equally dubious. A couple of days ago I drove a couple of hundred miles on French motorways at a steady 130 kph with four passengers and a boot full to bursting. The dashboard showed 48 mpg, which in my experience is fairly typical. So if the Which? tests are so wrong on mpg, how can you trust their emissions figures? These are probably based in some way on fuel consumption but they won't spell out the details (I've asked them) except to say their tests are based on the NEDC official tests with some additional features. They now have a misleading photograph of on-road testing equipment on the back of a car in their latest Car Guide. It's misleading because on-road testing wasn't used in the 2013 tests. But the figures they still quote for the IS300h seem to be based on their 2013 tests which didn't include any on road testing and only lasted about 20 minutes. Here's a video of the NEDC requirements simulated on the road rather than in a lab. It highlights what's wrong with the test. But when you try to apply the same test to a hybrid for the sake of comparability, you get all sorts of distorted results. If the car's hybrid battery is at 70% charge when it begins the NEDC urban cycle, a Lexus IS300h might travel two kilometres out of the total four kilometres test on its electric motor alone. Then comes the "extra-urban" test section. But by this time the hybrid battery needs charging. So some of the engine's power is diverted to charging the battery rather than turning the wheels. If you measure this over just a few minutes, it will look as though you're getting very low mpg because not all the engine power is moving the car along the road. I would guess that this is why they got 97 mpg in the urban test but only 34 in their out of town testing when the battery needed charging up again. From memory, they originally gave the IS300h a test score of 82% and best buy status. When the emissions data became available later, they downgraded the car to 78%. Now they've upgraded it again to 80%. They give the impression that they don't really know what to do about the test results for hybrid cars. Maybe when they start using on-road testing they'll get more realistic results than the ones from 2013 which they seem to be still using. But unless they run the test for at least an hour or two, it's still going to be doubtful whether the results give a realistic picture of everyday driving.

Have you tried playing a CD/DVD? Does CD sound cut out in the same way as the other sound sources? If it does, when does the music track resume? If the sound comes back at the point later on in the song where you would expect it to have been if the track had kept playing, then the audio output connection might be the problem. If the DVD restarts at the beginning or resumes at exactly the point where it cut off, then the power to the amplifier might be cutting off. In that case it might also be a connection but it might be a fuse that's not secure or needs cleaning.

So you're saying that all three work fine when the car is not moving. Is that right? When you say Bluetooth works, assume you mean you can play music from your phone to the car speakers, rather than just getting the symbol that shows Bluetooth is connected. Do you mean the sound comes and goes? Sometimes it's on and sometimes it's off? If the Bluetooth connection symbol is unaffected (ie it's showing that the phone is still connected to the car,) this would sound like a loose wire somewhere. It presumably isn't a connection to a speaker as the other speakers would keep working. So it sounds like an audio output connection.

That looks an interesting app. As I don't have an OBD adapter could I ask you a couple of questions about the data it shows? I've wondered in the past about the details of what is indicated by the "hybrid system indicator" on the IS300h. I've always assumed that in section 1, when the pointer moves all the way to the lower limit, that's indicating the maximum amount of braking regeneration. If you then press harder on the brake pedal the brake pads would come into operation. On the app, I would guess that the brake display will change colour (red if I remember rightly) as the brake pads are applied when the pointer on the dashboard reaches the lower limit. Is that right? In the lower part of section 3, the EV light stays lit but if the pointer goes into section 2 the engine starts. I expect the app will show the same information, (except when the engine has to run to warm up, charge the battery or any other reason.) But what does section 4 mean? Maybe the app can throw some light on this. My guess would be as follows: In section 2, the engine is sending power to the wheels and to the battery. In the left part of section 4, the engine is sending power to the wheels and electricity to the motors to add torque to the road wheels. In the full power section on the right of section 4, the engine is sending power to the wheels, and the motors are driving the wheels from generated electricity and from the battery. Does the app give any information that supports these guesses? Or can anyone describe what is happening in the two parts of section 4?

That's an interesting point. I've been wondering whether it's better on long hills to brake rather than change down as you might in a conventional car. Your explanation confirms that this is probably the right way to make best use of the hybrid system. This also links to something else I've been wondering about. When you brake, the hybrid meter dial pointer moves down to show the amount of power regeneration. My guess is that when the pointer hits the lower limit this is meant to show that maximum regeneration has been reached and if you press the brake pedal any harder when the pointer has reached this point the brake pads will be doing the braking. So maybe there's a case for saying that if you've reached maximum regeneration on a long hill, with the pointer on the lower limit, changing down to bring in some engine braking will save wear on the brake pads. This, of course, on older cars was part of the point of changing down to slow the car - when brake pads wore quickly you could save some money by using engine braking. At one time, it was a general assumption that you would change down to slow the car (unless perhaps you had plenty of money and didn't care how often you changed the brake pads.)

What about 3D printing? There are lots of search results on the internet, for example this one called Print My Part There's a link on this website to someone who will do the design too. It looks a simple part to replicate. From your picture it looks as though it fixes with a pin in the centre. I'm assuming the bit that's in your photograph still clicks and turns, so the cap is just cosmetic. Some 3D printers will produce parts in aluminium or you could choose some other finish.

Annoying to be hit by this excess cost. When hiring cars I always take out excess insurance cover, but last year I discovered a policy that covers courtesy cars too. As I was due to have a courtesy car for a couple of weeks I decided to take out an annual policy, which has covered me for the loan car, a second loan car for routine servicing and for hiring a car in France. So it has worked out as good value. Not all excess insurance covers courtesy cars as well as routine car hire but this one does. https://www.insurance4carhire.com Fortunately I haven't had to claim so I can't say anything about how they perform at that key moment when you have to make a claim.

Interesting to see the picture of the accident-damaged IS and to see how the air bags come out, particularly along the side, which I don't think I've seen before. You can also see the pop-up hood lifters deployed in the picture of the engine compartment with the bonnet raised.

It may depend on the Lexus model. But the IS manual recommends rotating the tyres. The manual then says: "The tire pressure warning system must be initialized in the following circumstances: ● When rotating the tires. ● When the tire inflation pressure is changed such as when changing traveling speed or load weight. ● When changing the tire size. When the tire pressure warning system is initialized, the current tire inflation pressure is set as the benchmark pressure." This seems to suggest that rotating the tyres on the IS won't cause any problems but the system has to be initialised. But it may be more sophisticated on other models.

I couldn't actually hear much on the video. Are you sure the noise is only audible when braking and it's not something to do with the sound of the electric motors? I expect you know that the IS300h has no reverse gear as such (no gears, at all, really). Instead reverse is achieved by using the electric motors. Maybe you could try reversing with EV mode turned on to make sure the engine isn't running as you reverse and you can hear any other noises more distinctly. In principle, when you apply the brakes the car switches from propelling the car with the electric motors to generating electricity as you brake. I assume this happens in reverse the same as when going forwards. There's probably a change in noise as the load is applied to the motor-generators. There's a kind of whistle you hear as a Toyota/Lexus hybrid car slows down for a junction that's easy to recognise when you're familiar with it. But it's more of a whistle than a clicking noise. One of the youtube reviews of the IS300h mentions the whistle but I can't find that particular review at the moment.

It's good to hear that I'm not the only one who thinks this. I have to say that I can't remember a single occasion, over many years of driving in many different cars, where I've accelerated on a normal road 0-60 at full throttle. As it's a feature I never use, I'm not interested in how long it takes. I'm not sure that many other people are doing it either. I certainly never see them. Maybe I need to go out at 2am to see the people who are interested in this feature. So why car makers and reviewers keep emphasising this virtually unused feature is a mystery. On the other hand, I join motorways at, say, 40 mph on the slip road and it's nice to get up to 70 as quickly as possible, particularly if there's heavy traffic going at 70 mph in the left lane. Being able to do this rapidly is a far more useful feature than being able to get from 0-60 two-tenths of a second faster than in another model. Agree with this too. What I really like about the transmission is being able to cruise at almost any speed with the engine generally turning at around 1200 rpm.

If you're saying the pads themselves are worn down to 2mm, (not a gap between pad and disc of 2mm) that seems surprising unless the car has had a lot of hard braking. The front ones start at 12mm when new and the rear ones at 10mm. On a conventional car, you might be expecting to replace the pads at this mileage or sooner. On a hybrid, it wouldn't be surprising to find the pads with only a quarter of that wear, from what I've read. So maybe previous drivers have done a lot of hard braking. Or maybe there's another issue causing excessive wear.

Something I discovered a few months ago is that you can disable the Auto function completely. I thought it was broken for a few weeks, as when I pressed the Auto button the light didn't come on and the wipers didn't start when it was raining. It wasn't a major problem as I could still turn the wipers on manually. I was going to get it looked at when it went in for a service but after a few weeks I thought I would look it up in the manual. I found that if you press and hold the Auto button until the Auto light stops flashing, the Auto function doesn't work at all. Instead, you can operate the wipers manually, including the variable speed intermittent mode. So it wasn't broken. I had simply pressed the Auto button for too long and didn't notice the light flashing. You do the same again when you want to turn on the Auto function again. This probably isn't relevant to what's happening on your car. But you might be right in saying that pressing the Auto button on and off is causing a problem, perhaps by confusing the software.

If the control is the same as on the 2014 IS300h, something should always happen when you push the lever down to the first position. I haven't found a GS manual but this is what the IS manual says about the wiper controls. (Sorry if it's different on the GS!) If the GS300h is the same, then the problem seems to be something other than the sensor, as if the wipers are off (presumably even in auto mode) then you should get low-speed operation when you push the lever down to the first position.

It sounded as though you were talking about the gap between the pad and the disc. Is that what you meant? A lot of the discussion seems to assume you meant the pads were worn so that only 1.5mm and 2.5mm of pad material was left. That sounds very low if it's the thickness of the pad. My similar aged car has around 10mm left, which is only around 20 pct worn. The pads shouldn't be wearing too fast on a hybrid because a lot of the braking is done by the hybrid regeneration rather than the pads. So just to clarify, did you mean the pads are worn down to 1.5mm or that the gap between the disc and the pad is 1.5mm?

You say the alignment is out, too. It sounds from your description as though you're permanently holding it against veering to the left. I had something like that once on a previous car and it's really irritating when driving. And it may also be wearing the tyres unevenly. I was told by an MOT tester to find a garage with a Hunter machine to get the alignment done. I think it cost about £80 and was well worth while. After it was done the car was perfectly poised and balanced and the steering wheel pointed straight ahead. Maybe this is a separate problem to your possible brake issue or maybe it's related. Either way the Hunter machines work really well in my experience and it's well worth finding a garage that has one.

When the weather started to warm up two or three weeks ago, I began to hear creaking from the back of my IS300h. I couldn't tell where it was coming from but it sounded like the sort of body flexing you might get in an old convertible. More of a metallic creak than anything else. I hadn't yet got around to getting someone to ride in the back of the car to identify where it was coming from. But I remembered reading this thread a while ago and eventually I began to wonder if it could be the rear door seals, even though the sound was more like creaking metal. I hadn't got any silicone spray and I've never seen where you can get "Nextzett Gummi Pflege Flege Car Rubber Stick Door Restorer". I also thought using detergent might not be good for the rubber. So I just wiped the rubber door seals with a damp cloth. A couple of small areas felt a bit sticky but they only needed the damp cloth to clean them up. Result? The creaking has completely stopped. So, many thanks to all who described the creaking door seals. Two or three minutes with a damp cloth has saved me from annoying and expensive trips to a dealer.