Herbie

@steve2006 @ColinBarber @Bluesman When Lexus Preston opened last year I called in to have a quick word with the manager to see if he would mind someone from the club making contact to discuss the membership discount scheme. He seemed quite amenable to the idea, so I thanked him and posted his details 'FAO any Admins' and asking if someone could set the wheels in motion. Having looked in the Dealer Discount Area I see that Lexus Preston is not listed, so did anyone ever follow this up or did he change his mind in the end? The Centre Principal is Mr. James Hughes, but I've since lost his business card with his direct number on it.

If the car isn't a daily driver and you can spare a bit of off-road time, why not either repair the alternator yourself or send it away for repair so you don't need to mess about with part numbers and risking getting the wrong one? Ribblesdale Auto Electrics where I live in Preston are excellent for this very thing and well worth a call on 01772 796047

Just to put a bit of flesh on the bones of what Peter said above, the MOT Inspection Manual states that the light source and lamp unit must be compatable. In other words, if the headlamp fitting/unit/housing/whatever you want to call it is designed to take a halogen bulb, then it has to be halogen or it fails; if it's designed for Xenon and it has anything other than Xenon in there, it fails.

Service history may be missing but MOTs have been done and mileage recorded. Click this link for info The lack of service history isn't too concerning. Previous owner may have been good with spanners and a hobby mechanic and more than capable of servicing it themselves, or they could have a mate who's a mechanic and did it for 'mates rates'. Looking at the MOT history it's not done a great lot of miles each year so maybe the car battery went flat and wasn't noticed for a while, which means the central locking may just need reprogramming/resetting, or maybe it really is just as simple as needing a new fob battery.

Absolutely! We Live in Preston and bought from Lexus Teeside - only about 100 miles but a good couple of hours due to the roads. My mate round the corner bought from Lexus Milton Keynes and drove down in his old car, did the trade-in and drove back in the new one. Driving a Lexus is a pleasure, not a chore

The battery is only used for cranking the engine. Once it's running and the alternator is spinning it's the alternator that supplies all of the electrical demands and charges the battery back up, so first thought is the alternator is dying. Having said that, batteries do fail and/or wear out more often than alternators do. Without proper testing and diagnostics it's all a bit of a guessing game really. EDIT: Without any electrical test gear I'd go one further than Colin above - switch on headlights (main beam), heated rear window etc., etc., to give a heavy load. If the lights visibly brighten when revving the engine then it would be safe to assume the alternator is giving a good output.

True, but this test is for continuity of the 'antenna' tracks.

Depends which car his daughter has John. If I remember correctly our 2005 RX300 had a key barrel in the tailgate but our 2013 RX450h doesn't.

It's possible that there may be a high-resistance break in the track. This is for a 450h but should help:

There should be some datasheet somewhere (although I've never found one for my car) that tells you what current draw is acceptable under normal circumstances. Things like the alarm, the clock, radio presets and so on are designed to be active when other things are asleep and I think I remember reading somewhere that a modern car with all its electronics will have a quiescent draw of about 50 to 70mA, although even that could be classed as high for some cars. However, if it getting much above 70mA then most likely there's a fault somewhere and this is where patience and testing comes to the fore. The car needs to be locked because that, as you say, activates the alarm and will therefore draw some current however small, and you need to know what that is for an accurate reading.

Your technique is slightly wrong. That is your problem. The only thing you really need to disconnect is the ultrasonic movement sensor in the cabin if your alarm has one so that it can't detect you moving around and trigger the alarm. You need to open the doors so that you have access to anywhere you need, but you have to fool the car into thinking all doors are closed, locked, and alarm activated. On some cars you can do this by using a screwdriver to flip the lock mechanism to 'Locked'. Oh, and you also need to do whatever is necessary to switch off the internal courtesy lights too - if it's a pin switch, just put some tape over it so that the car thinks the door is closed. You then need to leave the car alone for at least an hour, two if possible, so that all systems that can and should go to sleep, will do. Crucially, this is where you should never pull fuses because you can and will wake up circuits and therefore you will not get true readings. There are plenty of vodeos on YouTube but the one below is a particular favourite of mine. It may be that you don't have the same fuses (the ones with the test points) in which case I would invest in changing them all over to that type. It may be a bit of a pain and expense, but well worth it in the long run.

Technically that is correct but it's written into the manual for one reason and one reason only, which is to cover themselves if someone is using an old, unregulated charger that's been covered in dust and spider webs at the back of the garage for the last 40-odd years and which anyone with a modicum of commonsense would not even contemplate using on a modern car filled with complex electronics. A more appropriate instruction would be If recharging with the 12-volt battery installed on the vehicle, do not use an old, unregulated charger. Only use an intelligent charger with a clean and regulated output. This is because the output of old chargers is often 'dirty' with the voltage itself fluctuating (often wildly) and not a true DC waveform.

All hybrids (or at least those from the Toyota/Lexus stable) suffer in the same way but it isn't a fault or a problem, it's by design. A conventional car has a starter motor that will pull more than 300A from the battery when cranking the engine so the battery has to be big and beefy to supply that. A hybrid doesn't have a conventional starter motor and it only takes 20A or less to 'start' the car, ie, boot the computers, pressurise the brakes and get the hybrid system into READY mode. Given that, it's obvious that the 12V battery doesn't have to be as big and beefy as in a conventional car, and this benefits the manufacturer in two ways: Smaller battery doesn't cost as much so there are cost savings there. Smaller battery weighs less, so helps in keeping the whole vehicle weight down, which helps to cut fuel consumption and helps to keep emissions down to meet the ever-lowering targets imposed by various governments. It doesn't matter to us as the owner of a single car but when multiplied up to hundreds of thousands you begin to see the logic of the manufacturer's decisions. The only downside for us as the owners is that a smaller battery goes flat more quickly than a larger one does, so we either have to use the car more to keep that 12V battery charged up or connect it to a trickle charger, or be prepared with jump leads or a jump start battery pack.

This is probably the thread you want but that's about as much as I can help:

The negative terminal (of the battery) is the earth and is connected to the entire car body, so the negative terminal of any jump leads or jump start pack can be either connected directly to the negative battery post* or any bare metal, screw, nut or bolt, either at the front or the back of the car. *The usual advice to connect the negative jump lead to some random bare metal away from the battery itself is to avoid any sparks igniting the hydrogen gas given off from the battery and has nothing whatsoever to do with the electrical operation of jump starting. Having said that, I have never seen, nor ever heard of, and don't know of anyone who ever has seen or heard of any explosion ocurring in more than 40 years of motoring and spannering. I'm not saying it can't happen, just that it seems to be a very unlikely event.

To quote from a post I made just a couple of days ago in a different thread that seems to apply partially to your case: I speak not as a Lexus technician or design engineer, nor in any official capacity whatsoever, but rather as a fully qualified, time-served electrician who, since completing my apprenticeship in 1978, has worked mostly in the maintenance and installation fields of both domestic and industrial electrics; spent most of my working career as a telephone engineer (cable jointer) on BT; and latterly self-employed doing computer repairs and bespoke builds, and whose hobbies include amateur radio (callsign G7IFM). In other words, most of my life has been spent dealing with electrical and electronics systems. I mean no disrespect to anyone but I really do think that a lot of people get hung up on this and overthink it to the nth degree, whereas it's really very simple. 12 Volts DC is 12 Volts DC in the UK, the USA, India, China and so on. 12 Volts DC is 12 Volts DC both at the back of the car (if the battery is in the boot) and also at the front of the car if you want to utilise the dedicated jump start post. 12 Volts DC is 12 Volts DC whether it comes from the car battery or a battery charger, or a trickle charger, or the car's own alternator or DC/DC converter. Jump leads or jump start battery packs can be used at the front or the back of the car because all you are doing is supplementing one dodgy 12 Volt source by piggybacking a good 12 Volt source onto it. Trickle chargers can be connected to the battery whilst it is still connected to the car. The clue is in the name, ie, trickle charger. It only supplies enough current to overcome the quiescent current draw of things like the clock, the radio presets, the alarm etc., and also the self-discharge rate of the battery. Add all that up and it comes to far less than the battery itself can supply so, in and of itself, a trickle charger cannot do any harm unless - and this is very important - it goes faulty in some way. I would imagine that most, if not all trickle chargers, will have some sort of fail-safe mechanism to avoid any damage either to itself or to the car, but if something goes wrong I can take no responsibility - you do this at your own risk. ***************************************** And just to add a further point, I do indeed have a very similar unit to the one John linked to above and they work brilliantly. I've not had to use it on my own car yet but I have started three or four 'conventional' cars for other people and it has always worked first time. I don't like getting cold and wet (Sod's Law usually dictates that it has to be bad weather when a battery fails ) so I decided to install a 'comfort' jump start point in the cabin of my RX450h:

Yorkshire man goes to the vet: "There's summat wrong wi' cat" "Is it a Tom?" "Nay, it's theer in't basket!"

Haha, yes, just got my mind on other things at the moment - having a patio awning fitted but it's not a straightforward job, so I'm just watching my mate working wonders 😊

I'm not really sure to be honest, John. For instance, there's lots of stuff (not just talking about battery chargers) out there without a kite mark or accreditation but it's very good and reliable. Maybe the source could be as important as the item itself. We have a shop here in Preston that sells batteries for cars, trucks, golf carts, and mobility scooters amongst other things, and they also sell chargers. They are a great business to deal with and they've been trading for a long time, so I would be happy buying any item that they sell because I know they don't sell bad stuff. Is everything in there kite marked or accredited? I doubt it, but I'd still buy from them. Like anything else from cookers to cars, TVs to fridges and beyond, you do the research and then 'you pays your money and you takes your chance', as the saying goes.

I speak not as a Lexus technician or design engineer, nor in any official capacity whatsoever, but rather as a fully qualified, time-served electrician who, since completing my apprenticeship in 1978, has worked mostly in the maintenance and installation fields of both domestic and industrial electrics; spent most of my working career as a telephone engineer (cable jointer) on BT; and latterly self-employed doing computer repairs and bespoke builds, and whose hobbies include amateur radio (callsign G7IFM). In other words, most of my life has been spent dealing with electrical and electronics systems. I mean no disrespect to anyone but I really do think that a lot of people get hung up on this and overthink it to the nth degree, whereas it's really very simple. 12 Volts DC is 12 Volts DC in the UK, the USA, India, China and so on. 12 Volts DC is 12 Volts DC both at the back of the car (if the battery is in the boot) and also at the front of the car if you want to utilise the dedicated jump start post. 12 Volts DC is 12 Volts DC whether it comes from the car battery or a battery charger, or a trickle charger, or the car's own alternator or DC/DC converter. Trickle chargers can be connected to the battery whilst it is still connected to the car. The clue is in the name, ie, trickle charger. It only supplies enough current to overcome the quiescent current draw of things like the clock, the radio presets, the alarm etc., and also the self-discharge rate of the battery. Add all that up and it comes to far less than the battery itself can supply so, in and of itself, a trickle charger cannot do any harm unless - and this is very important - it goes faulty in some way. I would imagine that most, if not all trickle chargers, will have some sort of fail-safe mechanism to avoid any damage either to itself or to the car, but if something goes wrong I can take no responsibility - you do this at your own risk. Just sayin'

I may be wrong but I don't think spot lights are standard fitment are they? You have fog lights, headlights and possibly daytime running lights as standard but spot lights are likely to have been added by the owner later, so your guess is as good as ours.

Well, as the saying goes, 'every day's a school day' - cheers folks

Not being funny but are you sure? I've never heard of any car in my 40-odd years of driving that can do this. Every car I've ever seen or owned, including my 3RX450h (2013) will stop mid-wipe if you turn off the ignition.

I appreciate that in these strange times 'every little helps' as Tesco are fond of saying but it's just not practical to micro-manage fuel consumption like that. It's a vehicle that weighs in at 2 tons and has a 3.3l V6 engine. Just enjoy the drive

With the greatest of respect Bob, there isn't anything to do incorrectly apart from reversing the polarity. As long as you put red to red and black to black (or any bare metal), or if you prefer + to + and - to - then that's it, job done correctly. All you're doing is supplementing a dodgy 12V source by piggybacking a good 12V source onto it.