Herbie

First of all, the "450 CCA" rating of the battery isn't important. All that tells you is that the battery can squirt out 450A to crank the engine, but our cars don't have a starter motor to crank the engine with, and they take less than 20A to get the car into READY mode. I'm busy with something else at the moment (just taking a Coke and biscuit break) so haven't got time to delve deeper, but it may just be possible that the POAA6 problem could be related to the water problem if that water is anywhere near the high voltage battery - although this is just idle musing while I eat my KitKat. If I remember correctly, POAA6 is something to do with keeping the high voltage isolated from the rest of the car so that you don't get fried. If that water has somehow made its way into the HV battery pack or an HV connection somewhere, it could just provide a conduction path for high voltage leakage. If that were happening though, surely the hybrid system should shut down and not allow the car to reach READY mode? I'll keep my thinking cap on while I finish off my job 😊

As I said above, I don't think the GP has any say in the matter. It's the hospital consultant who was treating you, not the GP, and we also know that seizures of any form and/or duration are a DVLA notifiable condition. Once you do notify them I think they will be making the decision for you. https://www.gov.uk/epilepsy-and-driving

In theory, yes it would. It's been a long time since I looked for the data but if I remember correctly, the discharge curves say that it would produce about 20A, rapidly falling to full discharge in less than a minute. I won't be upset if anyone proves me wrong because as I said, it's been a long time and I can't be bothered hunting it all out again. What I can say, with confidence, is that my 2013 RX450h takes less than 20A (possibly even less than 15A) to achieve READY mode.

Bummer, but thanks for the update.

If it's been fitted correctly then yes, it will have stopped the drain - but it will also stop everything else too. Every time you switch it back on you'll have to reset the windows, sunroof, radio, clock etc., and, of course, while it's off the alarm and immobiliser will be off too. These things are really meant for situations where you may be putting the car into storage for months on end.

When I had a triple bypass operation a few years ago the hospital general policy was no driving for 6 weeks. However, surgeon trumps hossy and he said 8 weeks, so 8 weeks it was, with no requirement to inform DVLA. The GP had no say in it whatsoever. If it's been a hospital case I would call the consultant's secretary and ask them for the consultant's view as he'll be the lead, possibly only 'trumpable' by DVLA. Seizures are notifiable to DVLA. A friend of ours, 62 years old, had a 'Nocturnal Seizure', just one, and it was the one and only seizure of any kind that she's ever had. Her GP said that she should notify DVLA and I can't remember if he said that there's also a requirement for him as the GP to inform DVLA too. Anyway, whatever, the result was that she had her licence revoked for 6 months and if she had another seizure during that time then the 6 month clock would start again - luckily, she didn't and now has her licence back.

I have no idea who 'Never_shoots_blanks' is but he's only ever made that one post from almost 11 weeks ago and never been back. I missed his post at the time or I would have told him how to do it. I don't know what he's on about, saying that you can't "get a child's hand into the terminal location in the fusebox and no croc clips would fit it". It sounds like he was trying to get the croc clip 'on' the terminal, which admittedly would be difficult because it has a sort of 'plastic box' around it, like in this photo: That bolt terminal you can see there isn't actually the one we want. It doesn't really matter as such because it is connected directly to the battery and does indeed have 12V on it so it should work. However, the proper jump start terminal is under that red cover and is usually a flat piece of metal that you clamp the croc clip against, as in the other two photos: So he shouldn't have had any problems because the terminal is designed to take a normal 'jump-start-sized' croc clip. However, if you're like me and don't like getting wet or messing about, you could install a jump start point in the cabin like I did:

You'd know if it was - we had ours converted to run on LPG and a very small mod I did was to remove the cig lighter to enable easier phone charging. If I was going to do that now I'd use a socket with incorporated voltmeter to keep an eye on the battery.

First of all, Android all day long. I hate Apple products but that for another day. Secondly, a while ago I was introduced to the Xiaomi range of phones and I can honestly say they are fantastic. You can either go straight to their own website https://www.mi.com/uk/index.html or keep your eyes on Hot UK Deals https://www.hotukdeals.com/ where some great deals pop up. Xiaomi are never going to set the world alight and there are undoubtedly better phones out there, but these are phones with a budget price tag that are built to the quality of, and perform like, some of the best mid-range phones out there.

Usually that's correct but not in this case. My battery negative has two or three leads coming off it so to measure the total quiescent current I would need to clamp round all of them. Of course, it's just semantics really because it could be one big thick one or it could be three smaller ones, it doesn't matter - all are connected to the same negative battery post.

The only thing I can think of, although it's very unlikely, is that it's written into an EEPROM or something, a bit like a computer motherboard has a BIOS that can be flashed, instead of writing it to volatile memory like RAM that will be lost when it powers down. As I said though, I really can't see it being that so Ocam's Razor says that you just didn't leave the battery disconnected long enough.

Disconnect the battery again for about 10 minutes to see if it was just a one-off transient thing.

Complete guess as I've never looked, is there not a filter behind the intakes at the foot of the seats?

Curiosity is good 😊

Then with the greatest of respect, you must be doing something wrong my friend. Thousands of people, including myself, have got it working perfectly but admittedly it isn't always plain sailing. It would be highly unlikely to be faulty hardware but there are many different versions of the cable driver software out there, as well as the other thing, so I'd suggest that you spend an afternoon on Google to see what you can find. Although I did finally get it working on Win 10 64-bit it did take two or three hours of faffing about; so much so that when it finally worked I can't remember which step or thing it was that made the difference. Given that, if I was doing it from scratch again I'd probably use VMWare or Oracle's VirtualBox on Win 10 and run Win 7 or even XP in the virtual machine. Stick with it, it does work.

The RX is bigger in both physical size and engine capacity (cc) so you'd think the NX would be better on fuel but from what I've read the difference is minimal and hardly worth bothering about. Unless you're a nervous driver and/or would have trouble with the larger size of the RX, for me it would be RX all day long.

As you rightly say, there are two sides to this - the Techstream software and the cable drivers. Because Techstream is pirated when obtained in this way the admin/mods don't allow any discussion of that so you'll just have to persevere by using Google if your conscience allows it. Again, Google is also your friend when it comes to installing the cable drivers but it is very worthwhile because once done, you could then legitimately buy a block of time to use Techstream from Lexus, eg, €5 + VAT for one day if you wanted to. Which version of Windows are you trying to install it on?

Good post Mike but I think it's only for the later versions. I know that for the RX at least, it's only applicable to the series 4, from 2015 onwards. Some models can even do it by pushing and holding the lock and unlock buttons on the key fob for a couple of seconds, or something like that. It doesn't apply to mine so I didn't pay too much attention to it.

Yeah, sorry, bad example, although someone must buy those 'off the shelf' cans of refrigerant from places like Halfords. Personally I'd take it to a proper aircon specialist.

They would if they researched it, would they not? Seriously though, maybe I'm just a one off but when you get something you've never had before, be it a car, a computer, a hifi system or whatever, are you not excited about it and eager to learn all you can about it? I am and that's what led me to join this owners club in the first place.

Very much looking forward to seeing this Jason, cheers mate.

This is the thing isn't it? Toy/Lex obviously don't consider it to be a problem or they would either warn us of it in the owners manual or take steps to stop it happening, as we found that Hyundai do on the Ioniq earlier in the topic. However, and I'm going to say it again, the lack of information or of a practical solution from the manufacturer does not preclude someone from doing their own research (preferably) before or even after buying the car. I don't recall any mention in the owners manual of having to use ND11 oil instead of PAG oil if the aircon needs to be topped up with refrigerant, but as I mentioned in the list above, if you don't, you could be left thousands of pounds out of pocket. If it happened to you, would you take responsibility for not finding out first or would you go to Lexus and say that it was their fault because they didn't tell you about it? This is why we have notices on bags of peanuts warning us that this bag may contain nuts!

I know you're only trying to be helpful and I thank you for that and I also applaud your public-spiritedness, I do, but I think we all need to think of safety. As you say above, "Covid trumps cat" - but personal safety also trumps cat. One of the 'cat theft' videos I saw on YouTube the other day showed one scrote jacking up the car while his mate was standing in full view, broad daylight, with a two-foot long machete in his hand, looking quite nonchalant and as though they had every right to be doing what they were. I have to say that, faced with a two-foot machete, they would indeed have the right to take mine. In reality there is so very little we can do; nowhere is safe to park and no amount of parking against walls or whatever will deter them.

The more I think about this, the more I disagree. You need to know that there is high voltage around and you definitely don't go ferreting about in places where you could be killed unless you have the specialist knowledge and equipment You need to know not to just buy any can of refrigerant off the shelf at Halfords if the aircon needs topped up. Using the wrong oil can cause thousands of pounds-worth of damage You may not need to know but it's perhaps a good idea if you do, that there is no alternator, no starter motor and that things like power steering are electric instead of hydraulic You need to know that you can't drive it for more than a mile or two on battery alone if you run out of petrol (some people seem to think that the battery is a substitute for the petrol engine) You need to know that running out of petrol is really a very bad thing to do You need to know that if you do run out of petrol then you need a minimum of 10 litres in the tank before it will restart You need to know that if you unsuccessfully try to restart it more than three times (if I recall correctly) then the hybrid system can lock you out and you have to call the dealer to reset it You need to know that if the traction battery goes flat, you need to call the dealer or some other specialist to get you going because the AA, RAC etc., certainly can't These are all things that will be completely new and unknown to you if you've only ever driven petrol-engined cars before and is why people need to do some research before buying. Oh, and you need to know that the 12V battery is undersized and can go flat rather quickly 🙂

It would definitely last longer but would still go flat eventually, so it's a bit of a workaround rather than a cure. I don't know where the 12V battery is located in your car but if you were thinking of doing this then the most important thing is to make sure that the bigger battery will physically fit in whatever space you have, whilst still allowing t to be clamped down securely. As for the battery itself and your slight confusion, I'll try to explain (but it is late and I've had a few beers ). For hybrids, the most important parameter is the capacity of the battery, measured in Amp Hours (Ah). As an example, a battery rated at 50Ah means that it could supply 50A for one hour or 25A for two hours and so on, before it fully discharges. Modern cars will always be pulling power from the battery in order to keep the clock at the right time; keep the radio presets in memory; keep the alarm activated and armed and so on, even when the car is locked up in the garage for the night and you're fast asleep in bed. This is called the quiescent current and official figures should be available from the manufacturers but I've never seen them if they are. As a general rule of thumb, a quiescent current of 50mA (0.05A) is considered to be about normal. So, we now have the capacity of the battery (the one on my RX450h is 51Ah, whereas the ones in my previous 'petrol only' cars have been 75Ah and above) and we know that, with nothing else on and no faults, the car should draw 50mA. If we assume that my battery is brand new and fully charged, the capacity divided by the drain will give us the time to full discharge, so 51Ah/0.05A = 1,020 hours (42.5 days or 6 weeks) from fully charged to fully discharged. However, for the purposes of starting the car, it will fail long before that full discharge at six weeks. Remember as well, that for the purpose of this discussion we assumed a brand new and fully charged battery, ie, 'perfect conditions' - if the battery isn't perfect then that will also reduce the time span. Let's say that a bigger battery will physically fit and that it has a capacity of 80Ah instead of the current one at 51Ah, the calculation now becomes 80Ah/0.05A = 1,600 hours (66.66 days or 9.52 weeks) under perfect conditions, but again, reality will be different. Right, I hope that's helped but I'm now off to bed 😊