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Same lights popped up on my wife's rav4 not too long ago and it turned out to be the brake light switch, cheap and easy fix.

With the amount of time it's been you'll probably want to drain all the fluids before attempting to drive it back. Good luck anyway. We were hoping to go to france this year as my dad has a holiday cottage in brittany but I'm not very hopeful at this point.

Nice one! I knew it had to be a cable issue. Glad you got it sorted. I didn't ever manage to figure out how to get to the outer handle attachment end with mine, I just got lucky by yanking it a bit 😄 When i mentioned this to my mechanic friend he said "I would rather be lucky than highly skilled".

Not 100% sure but I think that's normal as the starter draws a lot of current. On mine the same thing happens, if the stereo was on it loses power when the starter is turning over.

Do you have power and ground at the starter when the key is turned? If not there may be an electrical connection missing somewhere.

Well I'd be testing oil that has (probably/maybe) been changed more often than is strictly necessary, so I doubt they'd find metal in it after only 3000 miles. I guess I'd have to push it a bit longer and then test to see if I'd damaged anyway but meh, who has time for that. Seems like a lot of effort to save a relatively small amount of money. I'll just change the damn oil and sleep easy 🙂

Haha not my janky aftermarket cruise control. It slowly loses speed up steep hills until it passes some threshold and disengages XD

As you allude to there are a lot of factors to take into consideration, it's certainly not always one thing. That garage owner I spoke to said that it was after BMW and others introduced extended changes that he started seeing loads of cars coming in needing new engines at relatively low mileages. Perhaps there were other causes, who knows. I had an E46 BMW for a while that had a specified oil change interval of 15,000 miles. In my opinion that is patently absurd. It matters a lot how the car is driven, one person could be doing 1000 miles/week on the motorway in which case their oil is likely to be in pretty good condition most of the time. Another person might drive two miles to work and a mile to sainsburys on weekends, and nowhere else. The first person could probably go 7, 8, maybe even 10k miles between oil changes. The second person should probably change a lot sooner *if* they plan to keep the car a long time. To specify 15k for everybody just seems insane and certainly not in the best interests of the owner. Lots of people don't really care to keep a car beyond 100k miles, they'll trade it in well before then, so not really any strong incentive to care much about the oil change interval. I change mine at between 3000 and 5000 miles depending on how it's been driven in the intervening period. Maybe that's changing too often, there are certainly some people who claim that modern engines can go a lot longer on modern oils, but there are also a lot of people who say this is a bad idea for long-term longevity. The amount of money I'd save on oil changes by changing at 10k is peanuts compared to any kind of major engine repair. An oil change is £100, a new engine I'm guessing would be £3k minimum, probably more once it's been installed. Since I plan on keeping the car for as long as possible it just doesn't seem wise to take chances with extended oil changes.

I appreciate that anecdotes aren’t evidence, but I’ve heard enough experienced mechanics tell me this is so to believe it. One garage owner I spoke to described the number of sub-100k engine failures they we’re seeing as “phenomenal” and was convinced it was caused by extended changes.

https://www.digikey.com/en/blog/how-to-properly-clean-battery-contacts I would start with that as it's pretty much free and if it doesn't work you haven't lost anything.

Could be a bad ground, try cleaning the battery contacts. Be very careful disconnecting it.

That's gotta hurt.

This is indeed no secret and has been happening for a long time. I think sometime around the mid-90s manufacturers started realising that people were keeping their cars far too long and not buying new ones. This was one of the motivators for things like encrypted computer modules and extended oil change intervals (kills engines faster). Most manufacturers probably design cars to last about 100k miles, so when you look at the service schedule they give you that's worth bearing in mind. I would expect that Toyota/Lexus is probably somewhat of an exception to this but i'm still changing my oil every 3k miles. Other forces that operate on them are: 1) Need to make money, obviously. People want the latest shiny tech, features etc. this all costs a lot to R&D 2) Must comply with ever-changing emissions regulations 3) Must comply with ever-changing safety regulations If you want toys and nice features expect to have expensive repair bills at some point. I like cars that are as simple as possible with as few toys as possible, built around the mid to late 2000s. Eventually good examples of such will dry up and that will be a sad time.

***** on a bendy-bus, what kind of motor is that? I just don't buy cars with expensive stuff like that that can break 😄

A pre-purchase inspection might seem expensive at £100-£150 but it could be the best money you ever spent if it stops you spending £20k on a lemon 🙂

Buying privately is more risky than buying from a dealer. A 2015 I'm guessing is going to be a pretty hefty chunk of change. I would suggest getting a pre-purchase inspection and checking all the paperwork very carefully.

Since you're in Surrey try Russell Birch at Toyotec, maybe he knows someone?

Another thing you have to watch out for is companies with really great products and really great reputations being bought out and then the new owner gouging as much profit as possible out of the reputation by cutting costs and quality. Perhaps this isn't so common in the UK and Europe but I frequently hear about that kind of thing happening in the US. Unfortunately it's not just car parts these days, nearly everything is copied and counterfeited. Even buying direct from amazon isn't always safe, there are numerous reports of fake products making their way into their direct (not 3rd party) supply chains.

Maybe try these guys? https://www.classiccarwindscreens.co.uk

Oh that sucks. Obsolete windscreen after only 23 years? Seems a bit rubbish. I wonder if it would be possible to cut one out of another car. No idea if that's possible with the kind of cement they use though, and I guess you'd need a specialist to do it. Hope you manage to get it sorted.

Managed to get an answer from Lexus, it's the first one for my car. Ordered.

This, or change the oil much more frequently, like every 3000 miles or so.

I'm pretty sure I had your exact symptom once on one of my rear doors after messing about with a door card. I think the cable was caught on something on the outer side of the door. I just dug through my emails as I remember emailing a mechanic friend when it happened, this was back in August 2018: "I just popped a rear door card off to check the size of the speakers and had a strange issue when I put it back on. There are two bowden cables in the door, one for the handles which is all fine and another for the interior lock switch. When I put the door card back on I noticed the lock switch was stuck in the locked position. I took the card off again to have a look and it seems that the bowden cable is in the right place but there is so much tension on it that the switch can't move. I'm pretty sure it's on right as there's no other way it can go on and still be held in place. Strangely, despite the switch being stuck in the locked position, if I use the central locking with it in that stuck position the door stays unlocked. For now I disconnected the bowden cable internally, which allows the central locking to work. But I'm really baffled as to what's happened here, the only thing I can think of is that something must have slipped at the other end of the bowden cable." After a conversation and a follow-up I mentioned that yanking the cable got it loose from whatever it was stuck on. Obviously be careful if you decide to try that.

My key transmitter is falling apart so I'm considering getting a new OEM one. I have an aftermarket one but it's not very good quality and there's very little choice for a japanese import. My dilemma though is that there appear to be three transmitters listed for my car: http://japan.toylexparts.com/decode/pr_num/8907148140 http://japan.toylexparts.com/decode/pr_num/8907148150 http://japan.toylexparts.com/decode/pr_num/8907148420 with no obvious way to distinguish them. Google hasn't helped. Anyone know how I can figure out which one I need? Are they 2-button/3-button variants or just all interchangeable?

I seem to remember for my wife's car (rav4) there's an option in techstream to turn the motion sensor off. Might be worth a shot as if you're happy to just disable it then it should solve the problem.