Herbie

I don't understand why you're asking the question because you can't have a better diagnostic result than that - something is obviously wrong with either the wiring or the connectors in the area that you're flexing. First of all, because it's easiest, cut back the ribbed conduit so you can get access to the individual wires and flex each of them one by one. If that doesn't reveal anything then you need to take a closer look at the connectors, starting with the plug (that pin at bottom left seems to be higher than the others so maybe it's not making a good contact with its mate in the socket) and progressing (if needs be) to the socket and wiring on that side.

Before throwing any more money and time at it I think I'd be getting Techstream on the job because it may just do things that you haven't. There may be a fellow club member near you who has it and who would be willing to help.

No problem Sharon, glad it's sorted.

Hopefully this will help. I think these diagrams are for left-hand drive cars so bear that in mind when looking:

I was wrong earlier - mine is 51Ah:

I'm not surprised Piers. It's almost three years since we traded in our RX300 but if I remember correctly the battery on that was about 75Ah capacity, whereas the battery on my RX450h is about 45Ah.

The key fobs work on a fequency of either 430MHz or 433MHz, I can't remember which, along with other things like some baby monitors, remote gate or garage openers and other stuff. It could be radio interference from any of those things, so try moving the car about 5 or 10m away and see if the fobs now work.

Yes, it would do the job. However, if you're a helpful sort of a person then I'd encourage you to get a bigger one with more capacity, closer to what I linked to above. You should never use a hybrid to jump start a conventional car (and the jury's out as to whether it's even alright to jump another hybrid) so if anyone was stranded and asked you for help, you would have to say no unless you had a bigger battery pack. I know I just wouldn't feel right if I had to refuse so I purposely got a much bigger one than I needed. Rather that than have it on my conscience that I turned someone away, but hey, that's just me - always been a soft touch

Hi Russell and welcome to the club. You are quite correct, the batteries are quite small but that's how the cars are designed and there's nothing wrong or any problem with anything. A conventional car has a starter motor that will draw more than 300A when it's cranking the engine so the battery has to be fairly big and beefy to cope with that. Our hybrids don't have starter motors as such and it only takes less than 20A to boot the computers, pressurise the brakes and get the hybrid system into READY mode, which is the equivalent of a conventional car having been started and just sitting there idling. This benefits the manufacturers in a couple of ways: The battery can be much smaller in both physical size and capacity so there's a cost saving there Smaller battery weighs less, which helps keep the overall weight of the car down, which helps to keep emissions down to the ever-lowering limits set by various governments To us as the owners of an individual car it doesn't make much difference, but when you scale it up to hundreds of thousands of cars, you begin to see the logic in their decision. The only downside to us is that small batteries will go flat quicker than a larger one would, so we just have to either use the car more or if you don't actually want to move it, Toyota's advice during the lockdown is to have it in READY mode and 'Park' for about 60 minutes per week while you sit in it reading the paper or whatever. As I said above this is the way the cars are designed, so quite a few of us on here carry one of these jump start battery packs or something similar in the car 'just in case' and they're well worth it for the peace of mind alone - they really do work superbly well. I decided to make a 'comfort' jump start point in the cabin so that if the weather was bad when I needed to do it, at least I'd be dry 😊

It's not really necessary to disconnect the battery as long as you're using a modern, intelligent charger with a clean regulated output. They have to put that warning in the manual just in case someone is going to use an old transformer-based charger that would have a dirty output, which could indeed damage the car's electronics. An example of a modern intelligent charger is the CTEK MXS 5 here, but others are available. As for the charging current, a charger like the CTEK will take care of that for you. Usually, the device being charged will determine the current draw but this is one reason why these are called 'intelligent' chargers. If you do disconnect the battery to charge it then yes, the windows and sunroof if there is one will probably need to be reset but you'll probably be able to find instructions on how to do that either in the owners manual if you have one, or a video on YouTube, or just a general googling.

You won't get OBD2 fault codes "on the dash" - you need an OBD2 code reader like any of these here or Techstream to find out what's going on. It may be that no codes have been generated anyway but if they have, that makes the job ten times easier because the codes are the first step to logically diagnosing what's wrong. Without a code as a starting point it's just complete guesswork.

This is the very reason (or at least one of the major reasons) why the MOT lighting regs were changed, because a huge proportion of blinding/dazzling was coming from cars with badly fitted HID/LED conversions into lighting units that were never designed to take such bulbs.

A full scrub how? Toothpaste? I'm afraid that just won't cut it. You're not just getting rid of road grime which would be on the surface of the lens, but rather actual damage to the lens caused by the UV radiation of the sun. You need something like the 3M or Meguiar's Headlight Restoration Kits that include cutting paste and sanding discs of various grit levels to cut through the yellowed (damaged) polycarbonate. Once they're clear and looking like new again it's very important to spray them with either some sort of UV-resistant clear coat or to give them a good coating of wax, otherwise the UV will start to yellow them again within as little as a month or two.

I love the interior colours of those two but don't like the Mesa red, far too brash and too much like the red of other marques. The maroon mentioned and seen above is a much more appropriate colour for the RX, much more stylish and classy. Of course, that's just my personal opinion if I was in the market to buy, but each to their own; it'd be a weird world if we all liked the same thing.

My 2005 RX300 had xenons and yes, easy enough to get in and out. If I remember correctly the passenger side is the easiest to get at so just take that one out to see what it is and then buy two of those. You don't have to replace both but it's best to do so because they do degrade over time.

Yes, but the OP is talking about the IS220d which everyone seems to thing is the worst car Lexus ever made. I didn't think a dirty old oil-burner would have something as refined as electric power steering

The hybrids have electric power steering but doesn't the IS220d have hydraulic?

I wouldn't let that put you off because almost all manufacturers of almost anything will always stipulate that very same condition. I bought a Dell monitor with three years warranty and had to have it replaced after six months, but although it's been replaced with exactly the same model I don't get another three-year warranty on the replacement, only the unused portion of the original, ie, 2.5 years. Over the years, a Bosch fridge and a Panasonic TV have all suffered the same fate - the replacement is never covered for as long as the original was.

I do know that a balanced battery is a good thing, but I'm not sure it's the only parameter that matters when talking of a "healthy" battery.

As far as I'm aware there are no hydraulics in the power steering of hybrids, it's all electric. Are there any OBD2 codes showing?

Can you just not find a different battery to fit the Gtech instead of buying from them? Or maybe fabricate a new battery box to acommodate a different size battery?

Thanks very much Steve.

You don't have to fit the official thing for that, there are any amount of single LEDs or even LED strips or whatever just crying out to be used in that situation. Simply wire your chosen solution into a suitable circuit and Robert is your mother's brother.

Absolutely! Driving a Lexus is a privilege to be enjoyed, not a chore, so get out there and drive it every chance you get - and if chances don't occur naturally, create them!

Just a quick reply because our tea is nearly ready 😊 The fact that it took so long to charge may be an indication that the 12V battery has a faulty cell or two. It may show the voltage as being alright but when put under load it just collapses and can't supply the current as it should. What happens if you monitor the voltage as you attempt to get the car into READY mode Kev? I would hazard a guess that it would drop quite noticably. Having said that, a conventional starter motor will pull more than 300A from the battery when cranking the engine, but our hybrids draw less than 20A so the volt drop may not be as dramatic. You really need to get jump leads on or use a jump start battery pack and see if it boots into READY mode then. If it does then it's new battery time. If you ever do anything like this again, make sure the car is in READY mode so that the petrol engine will fire up as and when necessary to keep that 12V battery charged up. EDIT: Just FYI: