Herbie

Not quite. 12.7V is fully charged and you'll never see anything as high as 14V unless the engine is running and the alternator is spinning, or in the case of hybrids like ours, the READY light is on.

I've also had the letter saying that they've added three months cover and mine isn't due to expire until October 2021.

Then get it out and use it more! I've posted in these forums in the past about my uncle who bought a brand new Hillman Minx and did less than 1,000 miles in the first 18 months I think it was. It even still had the factory-fitted protective seat covers on. And then he died and the new owner got all the pleasure out of it! We have one car that does everything from rubbish tip runs to supermarket runs to European driving holidays, and it gets used every day. Maybe it's because I've never been rich and could never afford a 'weekend toy' car, I don't know, but surely the pleasure in owning a nice car is to drive it around and maybe even enjoy the admiring (and possibly covetous) looks from other people? Rant over and sorry, honestly not having a pop at anyone, just genuinely can't understand the mentality and rationale of owning something so nice but never using it.

Oh well, we all make mistakes so don't beat yourself up about it. I know I've made a few doozies in my time. However, it does beg the question as to why you thought it a good idea to work on the AC when it needs specialist skills and equipment? The refridgerant gas, for instance, should be recovered and not just vented to air; you need equipment to pull a vaccuum and so on. Air conditioning systems really aren't for the average home mechanic.

Here's one for you from Justin Johnson. I've got some of his music in the car and all I can say is that this guy is cool; he's so cool that he was cool before cool was invented

Bit of a red herring I'm afraid Tara, and as Peter says above, the CCA rating is irrelevant. A traditional starter motor will draw more than 300A to crank the engine of a conventional car, but hybrids aren't conventional. They have no starter motor as such and all the 12V battery does is to boot the computers and get the car into the READY state. This takes a lot less than 300A and in fact, as you'll see from the photo below, my RX450h takes a maximum of 15.32A to get to READY. Even that 15.32A is only the inrush current and is only present for a fraction of a second - once the car is in READY mode the hybrid system powers the car and charges the battery. When the engine needs to run it's Motor Generator 1 (MG1) that starts it. If I remember correctly, the engine is actually spinning at about 1,000rpm before a spark is applied.

You don't say which version of RX you have but if it's a hybrid, that is definitely a good case to go to a proper aircon specialist rather than a mechanical garage. EDIT: Haha, the heading of your original post says it all, an RX300. I think this lockdown is messing with my head

Hmm... I think it may probably be toast but I'll let someone more knowledgeable than myself tell us if I'm right or not.

Or you could just temporarily connect a pair of wires from the new battery to the cables before disconnecting them from the existing battery, thereby keeping all settings alive during the changeover.

Depends on the cost of the tools and how often you'd use them against the labour costs. I notice that you talk of a "Toyota specialist" which sort of implies a labour charge less than a main dealer but higher than a non-specialist garage. It's the sort of job that doesn't need a specialist; a bread-and-butter job for any decent mechanic worth his salt, so labour may not be too bad at all.

Yes, I know, that's why I was agog with shock - you don't expect any other mechanic/garage to charge main dealer rates.

Aha, right, fair enough.

Wow, 175 Euro per hour labour! Not bad work if you can get it eh?

That seems unbelievable - any idea why?

I would imagine that, just like any other electronics, they should be repairable but access to spares and schematic diagrams may be the problem.

That's true, but I think they're old ones. I don't think you can buy them now without live parts exposed. It's also true that just pulling fuses can reset whatever is causing the problem which means you won't ever find it. Given that the fuses aren't all that expensive, I think I'd be replacing the ones that don't have live parts exposed with ones that do, if the first round of testing proves inconclusive.

Glad you got it sorted Damien but no, it's not just one of those weird things, it's how the cars are designed and almost all cars have mechanical steering wheel locks. The video below shows a Honda but same principle applies (I don't know why but sound only comes out of one channel):

I have a need to get a pair of wires from the engine bay and into the cabin of my series 3 RX450h (63-plate). Has anyone done this before? Are there any existing holes or grommets that I can utilise or will I have to drill a hole through the bulkhead firewall? While Googling for images and information about this I came across the following statement in a forum somewhere: That's not what I expected to be reading! Does anyone know anything about that? Should I be worried?

With the greatest of respect Steve, that's how it used to be done but it's not recommended now with modern electronics because pulling the fuse could reset the very thing that you're trying to find. I would also say that 80-100mA is a bit high. I would say about 35-50mA is more 'normal' although it obviously does depend on how many things need to be kept alive, so as manufacturers add equipment maybe I'm a bit behind the times and you're closer to the mark. The actual figure can sometimes be found in the specs for the car. Anyway, this video shows the preferred method of faulting a parasitic drain on modern cars:

As the old saying goes, 'prevention is better than cure', which is why I use a great big yellow Stoplock Pro Elite steering wheel lock. It's not pretty and it can be a bit of a pain to keep putting it on and taking it off, but the whole idea is to make the ne'r-do-wells take one look at the car, think that it's not worth the hassle, and move on to an easier target. And it works, as you'll see from the video below. I'm not soft but I'm not stupid either; if someone breaks into the house and comes barging into the bedroom for the keys, not only will I hand them over but I'll tie them up in a presentation bow as well if it stops either of us being attacked, but as I said, the whole idea is to deter the scrotes and make them move on. The reviews for the Stoplock I use said that it took more than five minutes of attacking the thing with hammers, chisels and saws before it was defeated - that's five minutes of noise and aggro that the scrotes don't want.

Maybe, but you can't just go and buy spare parts from any shops and they deliberately slow things down when they think they are too old and force you into upgrading, even though you don't need to. Many moons ago I had the misfortune to have to use an iPhone 4S and wanted to set up SMS messaging to get sent and delivered acknowledgements, only to discover that Apple don't allow you to do that (although I believe they now do allow it). Their argument was that there was no industry standard and that sent/delivered acknowledgements meant different things on different networks, so they refused to allow it. My point was that if I was aware of the drawbacks and wanted to set it up on my phone that I had bought with my money, then it was my decision to make, not theirs. The technology was already there, in their systems, but they refused to activate it, thinking that they knew best for me on my behalf.

You could install Oracle's VirtualBox https://www.virtualbox.org/ (just checked and it does run on Mac) and then run a version of Windows in there.

No, you don't need to do anything Geoff. Windows 10 is 'intelligent' in that it detects that you're installing your own antivirus and automatically turns off Windows Defender for you.

@bluenose1940 Geoff, just by coincidence I happened to see this article today. It may have nothing whatsoever to do with your current situation but if the rogue update is present on your machine, I'd be very tempted to uninstall it just in case: Linky

Wow! I can't see anything special about it to justify such an extortionate cost so I can only conclude that it's for those people who have far too much money for their own good. @steve2006 There's no getting around the fact that you'll have to buy or borrow an external optical drive, but your biggest stumbling block may be the software. I don't know about yours but the workshop manuals that I have only work properly when viewed with Internet Explorer - is that even available for a Mac? I hate anything Apple and won't give it house room. Technically good machines but morally bankrupt company forcing you into their own ecosystem and dictating what you can do with your own machine that you've spent your own money on. But that's a whole other thing so rant over