Herbie

Yep, I think that should be easy enough to repair. If it was mine I'd certainly tackle the job.

If it was a conventional car you may be lucky but as it's a hybrid I doubt very much that there will be any source for these other than the main Lexus dealers or a breakers yard for a used one. Anything that would normally be driven by a belt, such as alternator, power steering and aircon compressor, has to be driven electrically on a hybrid car because the petrol engine doesn't run all the time. If I remember correctly, the aircon compressor is 500V variable frequency three phase AC, so I really can't see anyone else making them. When you say "one of the pins" has rotted, I take it you mean one of the electrical connector pins - is there no chance of repairing it? Perhaps an auto electrical place that refurbishes and rebuilds alternators or a commercial place that rewinds motors?

This should hopefully help you:

Probably the battery on it's way out. If you have a charger I'd put it on charge overnight and see what happens. Modern cars are very unforgiving of low batteries. If you have a multimeter this chart will help:

Longest pleasure road trip was almost 6,000 miles around Europe and was in a Nissan Maxima QX 3.0 on LPG and if I remember correctly the fuel worked out at the equivalent of about 35mpg. Drove from our house in Preston, Lancashire, through Belgium and Germany to Czech Republic and on to Poland (those two being our 'main' destinations), on to Lithuania, then back through Poland to Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Italy, then to France (Limoges, to visit family) and back home. If I can find the little notebook we used I'll post the places we stayed and mileages.

A cold engine will always run richer than a warm one. Even though we don't have to manually 'pull the choke out' the car still does it, just automatically. When the petrol engine needs to run, MG1 will spin it up to 1,000rpm before the system applies fuel and a spark to fire it.

I'm sure there's some truth in this but I'm not quite sure it's wholly true. When you disconnect the old battery the ECU will forget your driving style and will have to relearn it, so the apparent increase in MPG may be a 'settling in' period until it gets used to you again. Also, a conventional car will indeed run the engine more, and consequently the alternator, to try to charge the battery. However, our hybrids don't have an alternator and the engine doesn't run all the time. As soon as the hybrid system is in READY mode, our 12V batteries receive approximately 14.5V via a DC/DC converter, which is our equivalent of the alternator (but obviously not dependent on rotational speed for electrical output), and is powered by the traction battery. In other words, it's not the engine that charges our 12V battery but the traction battery, and that get's its charge from regenerative braking (which there will probably be a lot of around town), although the engine will sometimes cut in to charge it up if not enough braking is taking place.

Then this chart may help you decide:

I would imagine the only place would be Lexus dealers, but you do know that Lexus don't make the fluid, don't you? All they'll do is buy it in from Fred's Screenwash Company, rebadge it and charge you three times as much as Fred would.

Unfortunately this sort of thing will become more prevalent as time goes on. In amateur radio we have an abbreviation 'QRM' (from the days of Morse Code) which basically means 'Are you/I am being interfered with' and refers to man-made interference (as opposed to QRN which means naturally-occuring interference or 'atmospherics'). This interesting article here will explain a lot.

Do it now and just take the hit, it could be worth a lot less as the ULEZ takes its toll. Plus, you can do like I did - drive up in the old one and drive away in the new one, no hassle and all done and dusted in a very short space of time.

If the alternator's testing alright then it's got to be the belt needing tightening.

I think that would be caused by something else (although I have to admit that I don't know what) rather than deterioration of the precious metal catalysts themselves.

But realistically, how can we "be on guard"? There's absolutely nothing we can do in practical terms other than living and sleeping in the car, that would keep it 100% safe. The precious metals from any cat, from any car, will be just as good as any from a hybrid. A catalyst takes part in a chemical reaction (usually speeding it up) but is not part of that reaction itself and it remains unchanged by the reaction, ready to be used over and over again, ad infinitum.

That's because all the talk in the world can't solve the problem (at the moment). You've already answered your own question in that the scrotes can defeat almost anything. Ironically it's the rise in car ownership in places like India, Pakistan and around the world that's driving the need for the precious metals to produce cats and it probably won't stop until the petrol engine is phased out, or manufacturers can somehow position the cats in the engine bay where they'll be too dificult to access.

I'm not really sure I agree with factory fitted in general, let alone Lexus. At least aftermarket cameras are easy to install or move from car to car, easy to change if you like to keep up with the latest technology and are reasonably priced. Can you imagine the cost of replacing an inbuilt Lexus dashcam if the need arose?

Not really - the alarm system is integrated with the locking/entry/exit system rather than the immobiliser.

Not casting aspersions on Mark's advice above but he does say that it's general advice that covers a few different cars, whereas the advice in the topic below is written specifically for the RX300 and it was successful, so it may be worth giving this a try first:

I've just done this to get a pair of wires from the engine bay fuse box to the centre console. If you look upwards in the passenger footwell, on the left side just about where the carpet ends you'll see the big rubber grommet taking the main loom through the bulkhead. It was easy enough to cut a hole in the grommet to pass my conduit through. I know that you want to go through the bulkhead on the driver's side so I think I'm right in saying that you'll find a loom in approximately the same position but if not you may have to use the passenger one anyway and run from left to right inside. Post No.12 in the following topic shows where I went through:

Dear me Piers, not good at all. Hope you get it sorted or traded in quickly my friend.

When you type a post, just look down to the bottom of the text box and you'll see a paper clip with the words "Drag files here to attach, or choose files. Simply click on 'Choose files' and a new dialog box will open. All you then have to do is to navigate to the file you want to upload and double-click on it or click once to highlight and then click 'Open'.

Thanks Barry. Thankfully it's now back to what's 'normal' for me although the pain never goes away completely, not even with modern-day strong analgesics. That's a very good point Barry and one that I didn't consider to be honest. I assumed that the little housing on the positive lead contained something to protect the jump start pack electronics from the effects of an accidental reverse polarity connection. The plug and socket I've installed are keyed, therefore making reverse polarity impossible, so I didn't see the need to install any diodes for that reason. I didn't consider the fact that once the hybrid system achieves READY mode then approximately 14.5V will be coming from the converter and trying to get to the jump start pack, so I'll do some research and some tests, and get back to you when I know more about that. Yes. I made a silly schoolboy error and posted 'Part 2' of my little project in this topic, when it should, of course, have been tagged onto the end of 'Part 1'. I'm hoping that the mods or admin bods will be able to copy from here to there to preserve continuity of both topics, but for now here's a link to Part 1:

They're all really much of a muchness, they all work in the same way and the only real way they differ is just in capacity and how big an engine they will start. Our hybrids take very little to start them so a low-capacity unit, say like Keith's above that is suitable for a 2.0l engine, would be more than adequate. However, my own personal view is that I would be very upset with myself if I ever had to turn away someone who was in need of a jump start, so I went for a higher-capacity unit capable of jump starting up to a 6.0l petrol engine and it was only about £20 more. Other than that there's not really a lot to say about them.

Somebody must have rebooted your ISP's mail server and given it a kick up the bum recently because it must be at least 4 months, maybe even 6 months that it was changed from 10 years to 15 years

I don't know if the DC/DC converter has any overcurrent protection to prevent the recipient car from trying to draw too much current, but I would hope so. As I understand it, the 12V battery and the converter sort of work in tandem in this context and, in theory at least, everything should be alright as long as the donor battery is healthy and is up to the job. However, if it's not, then the shortfall will have to come from the converter and that opens up the possibility of big problems. I suppose one way around it may be, as you say, to not have the hybrid in READY mode so that the recipient car only draws from the hybrid's 12V battery. The problem then, of course, is that we know they aren't very big and so you may run the risk of flattening your own battery.