Thackeray

On 12/25/2022 at 1:22 PM, JackIS said:

Mine jumps quite a bit. So I have adopted that with the car stopped on the brake pedal, I always apply the Parking brake, then move the selector to "N", release the brake pedal let the car settle on the Parking brake and then move into "P". It's a couple of seconds longer but It's never done it since.

My guess would be that there's a good chance that this technique results in the parking pawl sometimes not engaging with the parking gear. I don't suppose this matters as the parking brake is holding the car but here's a video that shows the parking pawl and parking gear in a similar Toyota transmission. From this you can see that sometimes the parking pawl may not slip into a slot in the parking gear. This is the Prius P410 transaxle, whereas the IS300h has the L210 transmission, which is pretty similar but designed for rear wheel drive rather than front wheel drive. If you look at the video you can see that the parking pawl won't necessarily fit into a slot on the parking gear unless it turns a fraction to line up the pawl with the slot. This movement is what causes the jolt you sometimes feel when it engages.

It probably doesn't matter whether it engages or not because if the parking brake were to fail, the parking pawl would still slide into the next slot of the parking gear before the car had a chance to move more than a fraction. And for normal use, if the brakes are holding the car whenever Drive is selected, it will never be obvious whether the parking pawl was engaged or not.

3 hours ago, Thackeray said:

it mentions "inverter coolant" replacement at 150,000 miles

I've just noticed from a document on the internet about the 2007 Camry that at that time Toyota was recommending inverter coolant replacement at 100,000 miles. For the very similar setup on the IS300h it's now 150.000. So it may be that they revise the recommendation in the light of experience.

I noticed a couple of days ago that when I pressed Auto for the climate control, the aircon light went off. Usually aircon will be turned on when you press Auto. I've never noticed this before and guessed that it must have been because the outside temperature was around minus 5. But as far as I remember, I could still press the aircon button to turn it on again and I think it came on automatically when I pressed the button to demist the front screen. It was just when I pressed Auto again when the demisting was finished that the aircon turned off. I haven't looked at it in enough detail to know if it would come back on again if the outside temperature rises enough.

20 hours ago, Notamech said:

I thought about it a little more and I realised one of the reasons i typically change the transmission oil on all used cars I buy is primarily because I don't know how lovingly the car was treated. Especially when its new / has warranty people are more likely to drive it rough because if anything breaks its covered.

One of the advantages of buying a second-hand hybrid Lexus is that you know the transmission has never been in the control of someone driving roughly. It's entirely computer controlled and all the driver can do is make requests to the computer for speed or acceleration via the accelerator position or the simulated "gearchange" controls. Everything the transmission does has been decreed in advance by the engineers who designed the transmission software. By contrast, a manual gearbox can get all kinds of abuse (and maybe damage) from an aggressive driver.

As for the service schedule attached above, it's interesting that it mentions "inverter coolant" replacement at 150,000 miles. As I understand it, the inverter coolant circuit also cools motor generator 1 (MG1) and MG2 which are both integral parts of the transmission, with the water based coolant circulating what must be just centimetres from the transmission oil. If Lexus go to the trouble of specifying coolant replacement for one part of the transmission it looks odd that they don't specify oil replacement within the same unit if it's actually required.

Although they list "automatic transmission" for inspection, I'd suspect that they mean a conventional automatic, not an e-CVT. Toyota make automatics, as well as conventional CVTs too, and the oil recommendation for these wouldn't necessarily apply to a hybrid e-CVT. So why do they mention the automatic in this schedule? I think it's just a general schedule for different types of car. For example, it says inspection is needed for the ancillary drive belt for alternator, power steering and air conditioning. But Lexus hybrids don't have any of these - there's no alternator, the power steering is electric, not belt driven, and so is the air conditoning. This list is obviously not specific to Lexus hybrids.

Having said all that, it seems odd that the differential oil is specified to be changed every 20,000 miles, whereas the oil in the planetary gearset of the e-CVT has no schedule for change, even though conceptually the differential and the e-CVT are quite similar - just a set of permanently engaged cog wheels. I wonder if it's that they've made the judgement that on balance there's more that might go wrong with a careless change of the transmission oil than will go wrong if you leave it untouched from when it leaves the factory. A bit of a mystery.

2 hours ago, Nick0 said:

I can tune to other stations, but there seems no way to save over the 6 presets

On the IS300h you

• switch to the station you want to save,
• display the preset screen
• press and hold the preset number you want to overwrite with the currently playing station.

It may be different on your car but "press and hold" seems a common way to save a new preset station.

1 hour ago, NemesisUK said:

Lorry drivers never do this.

They would if they could! I think lorries have limiters restricting speed to 90 km/hr (about 56 mph) and buses 100 km/hr.

20 hours ago, PaulWhitt20 said:

If I leave it for 10 minutes, then try again it starts. I think it has convinced me to get a new 12V battery.

My guess is that if you leave it for 10 minutes this is long enough for the Battery to recover enough to get the computers going and into Ready state. Check the voltage if you can but it sounds as though a seven year old Battery is being drained by the radio just enough to prevent it having enough power to get all the systems started until it's had a bit of time to recover.

On 10/11/2022 at 3:38 PM, Roger Bill said:

Apparently tyres filled with nitrogen are less affected by temperature changes than air: https://tractionlife.com/nitrogen-vs-air-in-tires-whats-the-main-difference/ Only costs £2.50 per tyre at ATS but I've never bothered, in fact I use a foot pump at home as I'm too tight fisted to spend money on an airline at a petrol station!

It doesn't cost much but I've always felt that filling with nitrogen is just a marketing ploy when applied to ordinary cars. (Formula One may be a different matter.) The fact is, if you fill with ordinary air, that's already about 80% nitrogen.

As I understand it, (correct this if it's wrong!) the nitrogen molecules are bigger than oxygen molecules so they don't seep through the rubber tyre, whereas the oxygen can gradually escape through the rubber, reducing the tyre pressure.

Much of the remaining 20% in the atmosphere is oxygen. So that gives the potential for up to 20% of the air to seep out. But even if all the 20% escaped, the air that was used to replace it would again be 80% nitrogen. So the original inflation gives you 80% nitrogen and a second inflation to replenish the missing 20% gives you another 80% nitrogen taking the total volume to 96% nitrogen just by inflating the tyre with air and then topping it up once.

So I've never bothered with paying for nitrogen inflation.

1 hour ago, NemesisUK said:

Touching the door handle to lock/unlock will only work if the key fob is within range, so there must be a radio signal present?

Good point! As you say, the advantage of using the touch method to lock the car is that you can see and hear that it's been locked. If the key's radio signal was jammed and the touch method wouldn't work, you'd notice that the car wasn't locked. Whereas if you used the fob only you might not notice whether the car had been locked or not. This is all probably quite a remote possibility anyway but you do read in newspapers anecdotes about these kinds of attempted thefts. Maybe they don't really happen in practice.

After all the design effort Lexus put into the locking system, it's a pity that it won't keep the car secure.

So I've gradually refined how I lock the car. The habit I now use is:

1. touch the car handle to lock the doors. This is because if you use the key fob the radio signal could be jammed by some thief across the car park, the result being that the car isn't actually locked when you walk away from it. When you use the touch pad on the door handle I assume (perhaps wrongly!) there are no radio signals involved.
2. Disable the key fob. The combined button operation means that this does two things at the same time. First, the lock button double-locks the doors since they are already locked before pressing the button. Second the key fob is disabled so the radio signal can't be relayed from the keyfob to the car.

On balance, as a habit it's little more effort than just using either the keyfob or the touch pad on the door handle but potentially makes theft of the car a little more difficult.

As others have said, a steering lock would be a good addition but I haven't got around to doing this and as the car gets older it's probably less of a target for thieves anyway.

I don't know if the DAB radio has been improved in recent models but it's hopeless in my 2014 car. This forum contains many comments on how people have given up on trying to make it work. This weakness indicates two managerial shortcomings that Lexus UK might be able to help with.

First, the software setup of the DAB seems to indicate a complete lack of understanding of how UK DAB works. The Japanese digital radio system is different, I believe, and it seems that whoever implemented the UK version had no idea of how it was supposed to be used. The result is that you have to switch from one "ensemble" to another (I had to look this up on Google) before you can switch from one station to another. This is nonsense and represents unfinished software. Instead you just want a complete alphabetical list of available stations. That's just one individual problem but it represents a lack of any attempt to understand non-Japanese requirements. UK input is needed on something like this at the design stage.

The second problem is that having designed some software that is very difficult to use, there should be a user manual which explains how to make it work. Here the problem is that the manual gives the impression that it was written in Japanese and then translated into English by someone who also didn't know anything about UK DAB radio. The result is that you have a feature that is not intuitive to use and the documentation does not help.

What's missing here from the managerial point of view is Document Testing. Ask the man at Lexus if they have a Document Testing department. Probably the answer will be "no". If it's "yes" that's good but in the case of the DAB radio it's obvious that they didn't get a native English speaker to test the document. The testing should involve getting a native English speaker with no knowledge of DAB radio and sit him or her in the car with the manual and see if he or she can get the radio to work. If they can't do it and the radio isn't broken this is a failure of the Documentation and the manual needs to be rewritten and re-tested until it achieves its goal of successfully helping the user. It's a complete waste of development and manufacturing time, even with good products, if the buyer can't make it work and the manual doesn't explain clearly how to use it.

So an English language Documentation Testing department is needed or if it already exists it needs to be reorganised to achieve its goals.

Toyotec in Redhill seem to get good reports. I haven't tried them myself though, so it would be good to hear of any reviews good or bad.

Are you able to say which insurance company this is? Maybe all insurance companies act this way or maybe this one is best avoided for the future.

On 3/24/2022 at 9:28 PM, agent_dess said:

is there anyway to get the capacity reading as a % rather than gauging from the bars?

It's a while since you asked this so maybe you've resolved the problem. But if not, the Hybrid Assistant app shows the actual percentage. In this picture, it's showing 64% on the right of the display.

The normal operating range for the Battery on my car seems to be 40% to 80%. When the Battery gets down to 40% the dashboard is showing two bars and the engine starts to recharge the Battery. I've never seen one bar that I can remember so it's surprising if you're seeing one bar. Eight bars represents up to 80%.

The range 50% to 60% seems to be represented by three to six bars.

8 hours ago, javadude said:

perhaps the engine noise nicely masked the CVT. My NX sounded awful when reved with that 4 cylinder engine though. I don't know how much was the engine and how much the CVT

I doubt that the CVT transmission actually makes much noise apart from the usual noise you get from electric motors. If the engine is not running, I expect the CVT with its two electric motors would produce a similar noise to an electric car.

When journalists talk about noise from the CVT I think what they're talking about is the engine noise. That's because the CVT allows the engine to spin up to maximum power which for most petrol engines can be quite noisy. Conventional transmissions don't allow this unless you change to the lowest possible gear.

3 hours ago, LenT said:

he believes the signal was captured when Deidre arrived home earlier in the day

I don't understand this. I'm sure the president of the AA knows a thing or two about cars but I thought modern cars used rolling codes from the key. So there's no point in capturing the code from the key as it will be different next time.

In a previous thread, I seem to remember Len mentioned a technique in which thieves block the signal as you lock your car and then you don't notice that the car is left unlocked for collection later. Maybe this is what happened to the AA president's wife's car.

Since that thread, I've adopted Len's advice and locked the car by touching the handle so there are no signals to intercept and you know the car is locked. Then I do the key combination on the fob to turn the key off. This simultaneously double-locks the car and turns off the key's signal.

This seems pretty secure to me unless the AA president is right in thinking you can capture key codes and then come back later to use those codes and steal the car.

39 minutes ago, Bluemarlin said:

So, as I understand it, it replaces the continued acceleration/rise in revs, with a momentary drop in revs as it shifts gear,  and so is for aesthetic reasons?

I hadn't really noticed it too much to be honest, especially with the windows closed,  but I can see how it might bother some people. I'm probably the odd one out, but prefer the feel of the continuous acceleration over the slight dip as the gear changes.

People want the momentary drop in revs and the physical jolt of the car as you change gear because several generations of drivers over the past hundred years have been taught that this is what a car does. But I'm another odd one out and also prefer the continuous smooth acceleration, particularly at a green light when the cars beside me are speeding up and slowing down, going ahead and dropping behind as they change gear. (I'm not talking about racing away from the lights - just gentle acceleration up to 20 or 30 mph before the next red light comes up.)

However, what I don't understand is why the people who want the jolt and drop in revs in a car don't demand the same in a jet plane or a power boat, or an electric powered train, come to that. Can anyone explain why people don't demand the same lack of smoothness in these other forms of transport?

On 6/23/2022 at 8:12 PM, DF-300 Sport said:

Being a hybrid newbie, I have a question about what i should be expecting after "normal" 25 mile motorway commute in normal drive mode...(in cruise control at 65mph and fairly flat terrain)? When i arrived at work it still had 2 bars of charge to complete after getting to that level within 15 miles and i'm just not sure if that is normal in Summer temps etc?

It's worth remembering that the primary purpose of the hybrid Battery is to store electricity regenerated from braking. If the Battery was full, the regenerated electricity would have to be thrown away as heat.

So the car's computer aims to keep the Battery around half full. This leaves plenty of space to store newly regenerated electricity. And it also gives a decent reserve of power for the occasional boost of acceleration from the electric motors or a short gentle cruise on Battery alone with the petrol engine turned off.

What I've found with my IS300h (other Lexus hybrids may be programmed differently) is that if you leave the car stationary in Park and in Ready mode, the hybrid Battery will gradually run down to 40%. This is shown as two bars on the dashboard meter. The engine will then start and recharge the Battery up to 50% (shown as three bars) and the engine will then stop. The Battery will then start to go down again until it hits 40% and the process is repeated.

When cruising, the parameters seem to be different. I've found that setting cruise control at 70 mph results in the hybrid Battery being charged up to 60% or around six bars. The range from 50% to 60% seems to be shown by three to six bars. This sounds like your experience after 25 miles of cruise control.

I've only seen eight bars on a couple of occasions. This represents around 80% charge and at this level the car takes action to prevent overcharging the Battery. I've seen this when cruising down a long continuous hill of around two miles. At some point, it sounds as if the engine starts after not running at the start of the descent. This seems confusing. But actually the engine is turning without fuel and just sounds as if it is running. It is being turned by the electric motors to use up electricity and actually discharge the Battery slightly.

I've never seen one bar on the dashboard display. This would be less than 40%.

If you're interested in seeing all of this in action, the free Android app Hybrid Assistant is worth a look.

22 hours ago, agent_dess said:

Does the TMPS not need to be reset via the reset button?

Interesting that the manual says the TPMS must be reset if the tyres are rotated. Can someone explain why this is?

It may be that later models than mine have a different system but I thought the sensors inside the tyres simply transmitted an ID number and the tyre pressure to the car. The car can then report the pressure for each sensor to any device that can read it. (On the dashboard it just puts up a warning light if any of the pressures are too low.)

But how does it know which corner the tyre is on unless an installer has identified the location of each sensor? If it's just a radio signal from the sensor to the car, how can this be affected by moving the tyre from one corner to another? And if it can't, why is there any need to reset the system after tyre rotation? Can anyone provide enlightenment?

On 6/5/2022 at 1:59 PM, JamesIS220 said:

and current 1996 940. All auto and petrol.

Sorry to digress but the estate version of the 940 was the perfect family car. A built in child booster seat in the middle of the rear seat and the "Celebration" end of production model came with a metal, fold-down, suitcase/dog guard grille to partition off the load space from the passenger area.

Compared to a 220D, though, its acceleration was probably fairly unimpressive. I expect the mpg was unimpressive too but at 1990s prices nobody really knew what mpg their cars did.

Look at the minute by minute fuel consumption monitor display. Typically, I see around 20 mpg for each of the first five minutes while the engine warms up. It then starts to move up to around 40 or more on longer journeys.

But in the winter it takes around 7-10 minutes to get up to normal temperature and the low mpg continues during that time. There was a period when I was doing short journeys - four miles there, wait four hours during which the engine cooled down, then back another four miles. I was getting little more than 30 mpg during the winter, with all the accessories turned on - heated seats, headlights, wipers, screen demist etc.

1 hour ago, Brian R said:

Forgive me if I've missed something along the way (and I presume this is the case with all keyless entry) but you can render the keyless function inoperative by holding the lock button and then pressing the unlock button twice. You should then see 4 flashes from the keys led and hey presto you can walk up to the car with key in hand/pocket and it will not be recognised. I do this every night and the process is as simple as a,b,c.

Well, that seems to be 11 people in this thread who use Faraday pouches, one who doesn't dare in case the key gets stuck inside a locked car and one who uses the function built into some keys to disable them. (As Herbie points out, not all cars do this.) I've puzzled over this too. Initially, I thought it was great just to walk up to the car and open the locked door, just by having the key in a pocket. But when parking in busy places, I began to do what Brian R does, except that I press the lock button twice to double lock the doors (you can't open it from the inside if, for example, the window is broken.) Then on the second press of the lock button I do the double-press of the unlock button and get the four red light flashes to confirm it's disabled.

But recently on the NextDoor website I've seen half a dozen reports of cars stolen from driveways or outside a house and I've now adopted the habit of double-locking the doors and disabling the key every time.

Now that this is a habit, I don't even think about it. It's not much different from older remote locking systems. Occasionally, in remote areas, I might decide not to bother but mostly the car is left double-locked and the key disabled. The habit saves thinking about it.

However, this represents a significant failure of the Lexus attempt to make getting into the car easier. This is a pity. All that clever design gone to waste. I hope they come up with a system that's actually usable on new models and at the same time prevents the car from being stolen, without having to resort to buying addons from eBay.

The other thing I initially thought was great was that if you open the boot by pressing the boot button on the key fob, when you close the boot it locks again and the doors remain locked - there's then a steady red light on the dashboard to show it's locked and the alarm is on. But what I forgot for some time was that when I press the key fob button the key becomes enabled again, even though the doors and boot are locked. So even when just unlocking the boot I realised I had to disable the key again before abandoning the car to the attentions of the criminals.

On 5/21/2022 at 5:24 PM, D Johnson said:

So I‘m at the breakfast table at the crack of 0530 when I notice a strange electronic-type of noise.  I follow the noise to the window overlooking the street where my darling IS is parked outside the front door.  It is very hard to hear the noise over the birdsong but it is definitely electronic and stops at regular intervals for a few seconds and then starts up again etc, etc.

 

Somewhat baffled, I carry on with my routine of getting ready to leave for work.  About 15 minutes later I am at the front door and aware that a red vehicle is parked outside (opposite my own car and blocking the vehicular entrance to a block of flats, so obviously just waiting rather than parked).  As I open my front door the vehicle starts up and drives further into my estate (but only in order to turn round, so it’s not as if they were visiting anyone) and as this car passes me I notice that it is a Lexus IS300h and from the rear seemingly identical to my own car - except the plate is 63 rather than 70.  

I live in a cul de sac, this was 0545 in the morning and I cannot think of any innocent reasons why this person/persons would be outside looking at my car at this time of day - but maybe there are some?  I have since read up on keyless theft and am wondering if the noise I heard was anything to do with this or just some weird coincidence… 

 

Mucho gracie in anticipation of any ideas, thoughts,  advice etc. 

Marianne

 

If this happens in my area, it's generally a mini-cab driver waiting for an early morning pickup for the airport. It needs to be early for the first flight to Brussels (EU meeting), Eurostar to Paris (lunch with clients), train to Coventry (company sales conference). But the driver is five minutes early so they have to fill in time. It's an IS300h so when the car is stationary the engine is not running but the air conditioner repeatedly whirs and then stops (the electronic noise?) Bored, the driver notices a newer but almost identical car and is interested to see how it's different from his/hers and so gives it a closer look. Still filling in time, it would make sense to drive further into the estate and turn round to be ready to set off when the customer appears.

This is usually the explanation if there's only a driver in the front and the car is fairly luxurious. If there are two people in the front it's plain clothes police staking out the area. But they're in a Ford not a Lexus. If it's criminals, they're also not in a Lexus - more likely Mercedes or BMW with blackened windows.

On 5/23/2022 at 11:24 PM, agent_dess said:

Can I just apend to this topic of smart entry,  and ask a question? on my old IS250 I had smart entry but nobody could ever open the boot unless you did it manually from within the car or you were standing next to the boot. But on the IS300h anyone can open the boot as long as car is unlocked, anyway to to disable this?

There's a button in the glove box to disable boot unlocking. You can't open the boot if this button is activated.

1 hour ago, NemesisUK said:

The Mercedes I had were released by pulling the handle under the dash, the pedal would then pop back up, sometimes with quite a thud! I used to rest my foot on it to moderate it's release.

In my RC setting and releasing is done with the foot. One presses down once to engage and the second push down releases it

The Mercedes design was interesting. As you applied the foot pedal it made a clicking noise as if a ratchet was operating. In fact, the noise was made by a plastic clicker to make it sound like a ratchet. If the plastic clicker broke, applying the brake would be silent. Instead of a ratchet the brake was (perhaps still is) applied by pulling a cable between two sprung mounted rollers. When the cable was taut the springs would clamp the two rollers together to prevent the cable retracting and this would hold the parking brake "on".

Apart from the tendency for the plastic clicker to break, the other problem was that the cable would tend to get sticky on its route to the back wheels. So when you pulled the handle to release the parking brake, it didn't fully release and the brake pedal didn't revert back to its normal upward position. You could use your foot to pull the brake pedal back to its upward position but this resulted in annoyingly scratched shoes.

The standard make-do-and-mend fix for this problem was to attach a spring to the brake pedal itself to pull the pedal back up to its normal position when you pulled the release handle.

By contrast, the Lexus foot-pedal feels much more robust and better designed.