Herbie

That was indeed the conclusion in that topic above from 2015 - turned out to be the fuel pump relay.

The conclusion to the topic below may be of some help:

What's the state of the 12V battery? They have been known to light up the dash with all sorts of lights when they fail or are on their way out.

@Nickyt211 Something just randomly plopped into my head - if it's literally just the poor fuel economy that's causing concern but you like the rest of the car, it may make sense to have it converted to LPG. I'll see if I can find my figures to back this up but I remember doing a comparison a long time ago (we traded in the 300 almost 3 years ago). You don't get as many miles per gallon with LPG so you have to fill up more often but because it's cheaper you come out winning. Because of this anomaly it's better to talk in terms of 'cost per mile' when comparing LPG to petrol and if I remember correctly, my comparison showed that a straightforward petrol RX300 like yours was the most expensive, coming in at about 26p/mile. Next was the RX400h (note 400h - I didn't look at 450h) which returned about 19p/mile, and finally my LPG RX300 at about 13p/mile. LPG is definitely better for the engine, better for the environment and better on the wallet/purse and I think the conversion cost was about £1,300 at the time.

CDs are soooo yesterday I never had a 400h but I'm almost sure that they have the facility to play music via a USB pen drive, but I stand to be corrected if I'm wrong.

I've never let mine get that low. I never let it get less than 1/4 full and it's only been that low twice in my almost three years of ownership.

Not quite sure I'd agree with that. It's a bit difficult to get a photo of the screen in the car but I reckon that the reversing camera does quite a good job in the dark - this is reversing into my driveway with no illumination except for the reversing lights:

I would never, ever, use any fluid other than OEM. These fluids have a complex chemical makeup that has been formulated to live happily with all the rubber seals and anything else in the system that might be damaged by different chemicals. Maybe it doesn't even have to be different chemicals. Say one particular chemical has a 10% concentration in the OEM formula but 20% in some 'equivalent' - who knows what damage that may cause? I certainly wouldn't take the risk.

No, it doesn't need to be left on but in reality there's not much point in turning it off either because the car is equipped with climate control, not 'just' aircon. Simply set the temperature you want the cabin to be and the system will mix hot and cold conditioned air to achieve it for you.

Not accurate enough I'm afraid. You need to open all doors so that you have access to anywhere you need but you have to trick the car into thinking that they are closed and locked so that no internal lights come on etc., but the alarm goes into 'armed' mode. After that, you need to leave the car alone and do nothing whatsoever to it for about an hour, so that all systems that can go to sleep do so and only then will you get a true reading of the quiescent current draw for the alarm, radio presets etc., etc. Also, when looking for the fault don't take out any fuses because this (or replacing them) could wake up other systems and again you'll have false readings.

So there is John, good job you were looking

Not sure it compares to your prospective purchase but I went from a 2005 RX300 to a November 2013 RX450h Advance with 30k on the clock that averages about 32mpg over the year in 'normal' mode - ECO mode really doesn't do much at all except annoy me. As long as the battery passes a hybrid health check (£59) then Lexus will warranty it for 12 months. This can be repeated every year until the battery is 15 years old with no mileage limit.

It's going to be a very long time before electric cars become properly viable. We all know that manufacturers 'fiddle' the petrol consumption figures and that there isn't a cat in hell's chance of achieving what they state, so I assume the mileage range of EVs will suffer similarly, with stated figures referring to a nice sunny day with no equipment activated. I'll bet they drop to half that in winter when you need lights, heater, rear screen heater and suchlike switched on. As for the infrastructure, as already mentioned above, the grid is creaking at the seams now. Any improvements to the grid are quickly nullified by new estates and new demand. Overnight electricity is only cheap because of low use - when everyone starts to charge their EVs overnight that will be wiped out; people who live in high-rise flats or terraced houses with no facility to charge etc. No, EVs can only ever be a stop-gap to something else.

A couple of hundred quid minimum for each one is a decent incentive if you happen to be of a criminal persuasion. They contain Platinum, Palladium and Rhodium, current spot prices of which are £654, £1,727, and £10,406 per ounce respectively. Ironically, it's the motor manufacturing industry in India, China and such places, and the environmental polices that their governments are initiating (like requiring vehicles to have catalytic converters), that are amongst the major forces driving up the prices of these metals.

I don't know what planet you're living on Linas but round here there are some numpties who have such big systems in their cars and wound up so loud that you can hear them from two streets away and as they pass the house, our windows shake! You cannot possibly be telling me that if he was about to reverse into something or someone, that he would hear a car horn trying to warn him of the danger are you?

I would never stop anyone from listening to music in their car. I listen to the bands I mentioned above, in my car. My point was that a standard non-ML system can provide volume levels high enough, even too high, for listening in a car. The volume control in my RX goes to 99 but it's plenty loud enough, even for my loud tastes, at 35 or less. No need for hundreds of Watts or extra subwoofers, and at 35 or less I can still hear car horns outside but it's loud enough inside to overcome the road noise.

To be honest I'm surprised that things like this are legal. I was brought up on, and still happily listen to some of the world's loudest bands such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC and so on and when our next-door neighbours are out I crank up the hifi to ear-bleeding volumes, so I'm no stranger to loud music. However, the cabin of a car is not the place for such things. How would you hear the warning blast of a car horn alerting you to some imminent danger?

I would think that it's possible but hardly worth it. I don't know how many speakers are in a CT but I seem to remember reading that the standard system in the RX has about 11 but the Levinson system has about 17. You can almost guarantee that any wiring looms needed will not be there so you'll have to dismantle half the car to get speakers and wiring installed, plus any other interconnects. Like you, I don't see the point of a sunroof with climate control but if you really wanted the Levinson system, why didn't you just get the sunroof and not use it?

Like Phil, I'm not quite sure what your question is or what information you're looking for? Does the compressor work? If it does, given the fact that you've stripped out the air shocks then I assume you've now got open-ended air pipes? If so, plug the ends of the pipes and run the compressor to pressurise the system. Mix up some fairy liquid and water in a jam jar and brush said solution along the whole length of the pipes and over any/all joints. If there are any leaks you'll see bubbles form at that location. Other than that, I'm at a loss.

I should keep it in a Word document so that I can just copy and paste

I'm not sure about that, especially given the state of the National Grid but, even if it is correct, it won't happen for a very long time. Electricity is more expensive than gas because it's a 'secondary' fuel. In other words, some other fuel, a 'primary' fuel such as gas, has to be used in order to generate the electricity.

Short answer, yes, they do (Toy/Lex anyway) - but it's not a 'problem' or something wrong, it's by design. A conventional car has a starter motor that will draw 300A or more when it's cranking the engine. A hybrid doesn't have a starter motor and it only takes less than 20A to boot the computers and get the hybrid system into READY mode. Given the above, there's no need to have a hulking great 12V battery in the car, which benefits the manufacturer in two ways. Firstly, it's obviously cheaper to provide smaller 12V batteries so there's a cost saving. Secondly, being lower capacity also means it weighs less than its larger brothers, which helps to keep down the overall weight of the car, which lowers the emissions, which helps to meet the strict criteria set by various governments. Neither aspect means much to us as individual car owners (apart from the inconvenience of a small battery going flat sooner than a larger one would), but when taken over hundreds of thousands of cars you begin to see the logic behind their decision. All we have to do as the drivers and owners of hybrid cars is to be aware of the situation and either use the car more or at the very least, keep a jump start battery pack such as this one in the car ready for such times as needed. EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to answer your question as to how long you can leave the car, say at the airport. Given that it's a brand new battery, possibly three or four weeks? Not really sure to be honest, which is why I have one of the jump start battery packs. If you can find out the quiescent current draw of the car (that's the current that supplies the alarm, radio presets, clock and suchlike when the rest of the car is asleep) you can actually calculate a reasonably accurate answer. However, it would be subject to change so you couldn't really rely on it anyway, so just buy a battery pack for peace of mind.

Relieved? I didn't even know he'd been stressed about anything John

Ah, the wasteland beyond the Pennines eh

I don't know where that bloke is taking his car but Lexus labour charges are about £135+VAT per hour, whereas the local garages around here are considered expensive if they're £60 per hour.