Herbie

Why pay such extortionate prices for what is a very easy DIY job and plenty of other cheaper cameras out there?

Well I don't know exactly whereabouts in Kent you are, but a very quick search on Google brings a couple up. Caesar Auto Electrical in Rochester, rated 4.9 out of 5 stars by 14 reviewers https://www.caesarcaralarms.co.uk/ Vehicle Electrics and Security in Aylesford, rated 4.7 out of 5 stars by 7 reviewers https://www.vehicle-electrics.co.uk/ South Eastern Auto Electrics in Maidstone, rated 4.4 out of 5 stars by 47 reviewers http://www.seautoelectrical.co.uk/

It could be that the battery is on its way out. I know it's only 3 or 4 years old and you should really be able to expect more, but you just never know. It's very unlikely, but a possibility none the less, that the DC/DC converter isn't working as it should. You need to check that the voltage at the battery is around 14.5V when the car is in READY mode.

It could be that there's some corrosion around the hole that's not allowing the valve seat to seal properly, in which case you could get the wheel refurbished. Other than that mate, I'm afraid I don't know.

Surely that's just the valve itself and a new valve will sort it? Unless you have TPMS in which case a new valve will still sort it but it'll be more expensive. Before the advent of TPMS, valves used to be changed as a matter of course every time the tyre was changed.

I'm not sure if it's across all variants but my 2005 RX300 SE NAV had Bluetooth but only for telephone, not as a music player.

That's right. A 100Ah battery will take twice as long to reach that point as a 50Ah battery would, which is why you see such lengthy discussions in the RX forum as we try to find a higher capacity battery that will still fit in the battery box Thanks. The clamp ammeter is indeed a very handy bit of kit and although very accurate, they aren't expensive these days and are well worth having, as is the multimeter too.

Absolutely. Auto electrics are a completely separate trade and it's the old 'horses for courses' thing.

What I meant was that, if we say it takes 5 weeks from fully charged to fully discharged, there will be a point before full discharge where it will be so low that it's incapable of starting the car even though it's not fully discharged. I have no idea where that point will be or how to find out, but as a pure guess it may mean that the battery is only good for starting the car for 4 weeks rather than 5 (hope that makes sense). I once did a very unscientific test that seemed to show that it takes 20A or less for the hybrid system to achieve READY status. You'll see from the first photo below that with the doors open, the interior lights on and the radio on, the current draw from the battery was 2.63A. I then got my wife to put her foot on the brake and press the power button and almost immediately the current reversed direction (as can be seen in the second photo and illustrated by the black bar under the 'DC' mark) as the DC/DC converter started squirting 9.65A back into the battery. It all happened in a fraction of a second. I was hoping to push the 'Hold' button to get the peak current reading being drawn from the battery but it was just too fast. All I can say is that I don't think it went over 20A because I only remember seeing nothing higher than a '2' as the first digit. However, my very sloppy and unscientific test fails to take into account one very important point and that's the pressurisation of the brake accumulator. I already had the drivers door and the tailgate open but if they had been closed, the brake accumulator would start to pressurise as soon as the drivers door was opened. I believe that it only draws a small current to begin with but as pressure builds it draws more and more, until it's drawing about 40A when it reaches the limit. Admittedly, by the time the driver gets in the seat the pressurisation has already completed by the time the power button is pressed, but the battery has to be good enough to supply that, plus the (maybe) 20A to get the hybrid system running.

You need to push the cable through the ferrite bead and bring it back on itself and push through again etc., the more turns you can get, the better, like so: EDIT: I always thought the more turns, the better, but I've just come across this text, so maybe just two turns will be enough: Typically, two turns of the cable are placed through the ferrite bead. The impedance provided by the bead is approximately proportional to the number of turns squared; two turns provides four times the impedance of a single turn. When implementing more than two turns, the series impedance per turn rises to a high enough level that the parasitic capacitance between the cable segments shunt energy past the series impedance created by the bead. The shunting of the undesired signals through the parasitic capacitance reduces the effectiveness of the ferrite bead to less than would be if only two turns were employed.

I build/repair computers for a living and you know what the motto of our industry is - "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" It's an undeniable fact that electronics can sometimes get their knickers in a twist and only a complete absence of power will allow capacitors to discharge and reset the fault condition. Fingers crossed for you Jonathan

The 12V battery boots the computers, pressurises the brake accumulator and does one or two other things to get the car into READY mode, which is the hybrid equivalent of the engine idling in a conventional car. Once in READY mode, hybrid battery voltage (it varies by model but if I remember correctly it's 288V for the RX) is sent to the DC/DC converter (our equivalent of the alternator) where a box of electronic wizardry drops it down to approximately 14.5V to keep the 12V battery charged and also to supply and run the 12V system, just like a standard alternator would in a conventional car. Other interesting little pieces of trivia are - anything normally driven by a belt from a petrol engine is driven by electric motors. I think I remember reading somewhere that the power steering 'pump' is actually a 48V motor. I know that the aircon compressor is driven by a 500V 3-phase variable frequency AC motor, and that there's an electric motor driving the water circulation. Oh, and of course, there's no starter motor. Once they hybrid system is in READY mode you can drive away on battery power alone. When the system needs the petrol engine to run, it energises MG1 (motor/generator 1) and uses that to spin the engine up to 1000rpm before the ECU applies fuel and a spark to fire it. But I'm rambling now and I need another beer so....

In terms of starting the car and the length of time it can stand unused before the battery goes flat, they're the same. Where they differ is that the 'wet' type doesn't take kindly to being discharged too often or too much. As Britprius said above, "A battery is considered deeply discharged at 50% of it's rated capacity, and actual damage can be caused by discharging further. " I believe an AGM battery can stand up to this kind of thing a bit better than the wet type. In terms of capacity (original being 45Ah, Yuasa YBX5053 being 50Ah), the benefit can be calculated like so: If we assume a brand new, fully-charged battery and a normal baseline 50mA (0.05A) quiescent current draw to keep such things as the alarm, clock, radio presets etc., live, 45Ah/0.05A = 900 hours (37.5 days or 5.35 weeks) from fully charged to fully discharged. The extra 5Ah will add an extra 100 hours (5Ah/0.05A = 100 hours or 4.16 days) However, the reality will be very different, not only because as a battery ages it loses capacity, but also for the purposes of starting the car it will become useless well before it fully discharges.

I'd say there's either something wrong or it was just a duff battery - they should last at least two or three years.

So you only got one? I'd have got one for each end. How many turns did you give it?

Just a thought - you've not had your aircon regassed have you? Although the refrigerant gas is the same, the lubricating oil needs to be a special high dielectric one (ND11) rather than the normal PAG oil. This is because the aircon compressor isn't driven by a belt from the engine, instead it uses a 500V three-phase variable frequency AC motor and the motor windings are submerged in the oil for cooling purposes. Even just 1% contamination by PAG oil can cause the insulation on the windings to break down and short either to each other or windings to body. If you haven't done anything with the A/C, have a look here instead at these pages from the workshop manual

Now you're asking - it's a long time since I did this but, I think you just need to click on the trouble code to highlight it and then click on the 'Data List' or 'List' button on the left, which will then open a new screen with more info. I think @Greisingel has done this recently so he'll be able to advise you better than I can. I wouldn't even trust Halfords to change a light bulb, never mind letting them loose on high voltage stuff. Hats off to you Jonathan, you're a far braver man than I.

And what colour is the sky in your world? It's Lexus, of course they're going to be too high - they're more expensive than an expensive thing at expensiveworld.com! Seriously though, last time someone mentioned labour charges on here I think it was around £135 + VAT per hour, but I'll happily stand corrected if I've got that wrong.

Yes, it's a hybrid; yes, it's a Lexus - but there is nothing magical or mystical about the 12V battery and how to charge it up. In that context it's just like any other car on the road. You can keep the battery in situ while you charge it* or you can take it out of the car. If it is staying in the car you can connect the charger either directly to the battery itself or you can connect to the jump start terminal in the engine bay fuse box, which is metallically and directly connected to the battery anyway. 12V is 12V and it doesn't matter whether it comes from the front or the back of the car. All you are doing is supplementing a dodgy 12V source by connecting a good 12V source in parallel (piggybacking) with it. *If charging in situ the only caveat is that you must be using a modern 'smart' or 'intelligent' charger with a clean, regulated output and not some rusty old transformer-based thing that's been at the back of the garage for 40 years.

In that situation, being offline doesn't matter, you can still drill down to more info.

I don't think there is anything else other than ferrite cores/beads that would work. There should be plenty slack in the roof lining so do that end first and see if it helps. The other end will only be a piggyback fuse so again, should be easy enough to do.

The problem is that there's absolutely nothing that can be done to stop these people. It takes less than two minutes to pull up, get the cat and be off, and the 'lookout' is usually armed with a machete or suchlike, so even if you saw them in the act it's not worth tackling them. The only thing that will stop them is to tackle the scrapyards who are taking the cats in, but there's nothing we, as drivers and owners, can do that would be effective.

Very safe and nothing wrong in doing that Piers. The negative battery terminal is connected directly to the car body so that the whole car effectively becomes the negative battery terminal. Any unpainted metal/bracket/bolt/nut/screw anywhere will do the job. All of the above. There's been many a debate on here regarding this, the upshot of which is that Toyota/Lexus really made a mistake by only fitting small capacity batteries, but they did and we just have to live with it.

True, it is a bit strange but you can easily overcome that by doing what I did. It allows me to charge my phone easily but also keeps me informed of the battery voltage. Plenty available on eBay here. Just connect it to the power socket next to it:

In all cars, whether hybrid or conventional, the 12V battery is only used to start the car. Once the engine is running or the hybrid is in READY mode, the alternator or the hybrid's DC/DC converter will supply the entire electrical demand of the car and also keep the 12V battery topped up. When jump starting a conventional car the advice has always been to have the donor car's engine running before attempting to start the recipient car. This is so that the recipient car draws on the donor alternator, not the battery. This isn't a problem because alternators can squirt out 300A or more but, as Colin said above, a hybrid's DC/DC converter can't supply anything near that. I would hope that there would be some form of current-limiting circuitry or fusing arrangement that would protect the converter but if not, there's likely to be a big bang and an escape of magic smoke.