Herbie

First of all, to Heather, I completely agree with what you've been told by the others. These jump start battery packs are excellent and work really well and they also hold their charge well too. After 6 months mine still had somewhere between 100 and 75% left - I don't know for sure as mine doesn't have a percentage readout, just four LEDs that were still all lit. Secondly, yes, a smaller, lower-power unit would be plenty good enough for use with hybrids so if you could find one, maybe you could save a bit of money. It's been a long time since I looked into this so I may well be wrong but, if I remember correctly, I looked at the discharge curves for a pack of 8 AA batteries and found that they should be able to supply approximately 28A for less than one minute. My RX450h takes less than 20A to attain READY mode so yes, in theory at least, you could even start the car with a pack of 8 AA batteries. However, speaking in general terms it really boils down to what sort of person you are I suppose - helpful or not. We know that you should never use a hybrid to try to jump start another car, but I would feel very uncomfortable in refusing to help someone who was stranded and in need, so I purposely didn't even look for a lower-powered battery pack so that I don't have to refuse anyone. I even installed a socket in the cabin so that if I need to use it myself on my own car I can do so from the comfort of the driver's seat. That entailed making a new lead for the pack but I still carry the leads with the big croc clips on the end to use on other vehicles.

Never really been into France very much except one year to visit my wife's sister who lived in La Croise de Breanche (or something like that) near Limoges. She now lives in Peyrat De Chateux (or, again, somewhere like that) but we have yet to visit there. Must admit that I'm not really a fan of France or the french people, but almost every one of the last 25 years we've sailed either the Dover-Calais or Dover-Dunkirk ferry and then immediately driven about an hour up the coast to Ostend in Belgium, which we use as our first and last stops on our holiday drives to places like Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Latvia and such places. I can say in all honesty that driving anywhere in Europe is always easier and less stressful than driving in this country - just don't get complacent. When you come off the ferry it's at the forefront of your mind that you must drive on the right etc., etc. It's when you've been there two or three weeks, got well into the stride of things, and then you miss a turning, so you look for somewhere to turn round and then come out driving on the left instead of the right! There's no big drama about driving on the continent, just relax and enjoy - you'll love it.

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Sorry Rhiannon, I haven't got a clue about that one. All I can say is that it should be there. I'd definitely take the unit out, maybe even take the bumper off, to see if the wires are somewhere in there but other than that I'm afraid I'm out of ideas.

Welcome to the club Dave. You'll find everything to interest you in the dedicated RX forum so be sure to have a look over there. Oh, and we like to see photos too so put a couple of your new beastie up in there when you feel like it.

Suspension height sensor faulty or linkage broken?

Have you actually removed the red unit from the right-hand side to see what it's like on the inside, because I'm sure it'll be like this one, ie, with a lampholder in there: This is from the owner's manual but it's for a LHD car - yours will be on the right.

Maybe this will help but if not, just try googling the phrase "how to use own image on Lexus startup screen" (without the quotes) because this was the first one that came up for me but there seems to be lots of other info too: https://www.clublexus.com/how-tos/a/lexus-3is-how-to-change-startup-screen-image-366743

Try turning them on to see what lights up. You'll find that the red lenses in the bumper are combined fog lights and reflectors. If there's no bulbs in them, maybe the previous owner took them out as a quick and dirty fix for some problem or other.

This may help:

Look for postings by Chris Kaye - I'm almost sure that his RX300 rear subframe rotted and he covered the process of replacement. EDIT: Just found one post but there may also be others:

If you look at the pdf file in this posting you'll see that Blind Spot Monitors were never specified in Series 3 cars:

Cheers John

There's nothing wrong with the turn signal mod or buying from China. I got my turn signal LEDs from China and they worked perfectly well for the nine months we had them before trading in the car - they may still be working yet for all I know. And to be honest, I think they are a better bet than the fog light option due to the extra height, which obviously makes them more noticeable.

Now I remember

Cheers @ColinBarber, thanks.

In all honesty my friend, I'm surprised that you say I've asked it before - I truly have no recollection of that All this Covid stuff is really messing with my head.

On Monday I'll be taking my car for the final service of a two-year service plan that will have covered three services. I know that having the car serviced at a Lexus Main Dealership is a condition of being able to have an Extended Warranty, so because I want the warranty I also intend to get another two-year service plan. My question is, when is the best time to apply for these things? The car will be having its 7-year/70k service next week, even though it's only done 50k, at which point my current service plan will expire. The next service won't be due until October 2021, so do I wait until then to buy a new service plan or do I sort it out next week while I'm there? Is there an optimum time or does it not matter? Similarly, my current extended warranty only expires on 31st January 2021 so again, do I wait until, say, mid-January to set up renewal or is it possible to do it next week while I'm there but only have it become active on 1st February?

Sorcerer used two relays but it's possible and even easier to use just one - here's a rough sketch of what you need: An ignition switched feed is taken to Pin 30 (common). Pin 87A is the 'normally closed' contact, which means that under normal conditions, when the ignition is switched on, power will flow from Pin 30 to Pin 87A and out to illuminate the DRLs. Because the DRLs must switch off when you switch the side/tail lights on, you need to tee into the positive feed to one of the sidelight bulbs and connect it to Pin 85. Pins 85 and 86 are the relay coil, so when Pin 85 goes positive as you switch on the sidelights, the coil energises and pulls the relay contact away from Pin 87A to Pin 87, therefore breaking the conductive path to the DRLs and switching them off. I can't remember which ignition switched fuse I used but you may be able to tell from the photo below - I think it was the one on the bottom row, which I think is IGCT No.5 on the drawing. Check it with a multimeter first.

Just be aware that as you travel around you may have to retune the frequency because FM stations only have a range of about 20 miles, so what may be an empty slot now may not be further up the road.

I honestly don't know as I've never needed to do it but I don't think you'll need to do that either. Just clean up the contacts in the bulb holder, clean and reseat the earths and if that hasn't cured the problem then it's multimeter out and fault-tracing time.

That's 100 flashes per second! Have you checked the earths? Don't just pull at the wire and think it's tight enough, undo the nut and clean up all the connectors and earth points. It's dropping a lot of voltage somewhere so it's just a matter of finding where by tracing the wiring and cleaning all connectors.

Aha! Now I understand it better, having seen that last diagram, so thanks @ColinBarber

Haha, fair enough Colin, every day's a school day

Good luck.