Herbie

At only 4000 miles a year you may have problems with the 12V battery going flat in the 400h as they don't take kindly to being stood around for any length of time. Probably best to go for a 300 instead.

Aren't they prone to the tranny fluid cooler in the radiator failing and so mixing water in with the ATF, leading to a knackered transmission? That seems to ring a bell so if it's correct then maybe it was just preventative?

Get it back to the dealer then and get it sorted under warranty.

If it's really bothering you so much, why not pay for an hour or two access to the workshop manual at https://www.lexus-tech.eu/ to see the whole exhaust system run.

I'd be very surprised if it had to be Lexus only - any DAB aerial should do.

Hi Mike and welcome to the club. I had a 2005 RX300 and I had it converted to run on LPG. It was a great car, very comfortable, great ride etc. I purposely avoided the SEL variant because that has air suspension and I really did not want that as it's so expensive to fix when it goes wrong, so mine was an SE-Nav. Is there anything specific you want to know?

Sorry Paul, only just seen this last post from you. That looks like a pre-formed olive but I'd imagine that you could buy the correct olive for the pipe rather than needing preformed.

I have no idea but mine is a November 2013 RX450h Advance and I've never had a card key. Not only that, there's nowhere to slot it in so I'm very intrigued by this - what model variant is yours?

Could be a loose/corroded/dirty connection at a common point so you'll need a wiring diagram and a multimeter to progress any further.

It doesn't matter what they say, it's illegal and will fail an MOT. The screenshot below is taken from the MOT Inspection Manual here

As far as I know, at least in this context, a pipe is a pipe, is a pipe. I don't think there's anything special about Lexus pipe. Is it just literally the pipe you need or do you need the fittings as well? Just Google air pressure pipe and fittings and I'm sure you'll come up with something suitable. You could even ask any Openreach engineer if he does gas pressure and if so he'll probably give you something with fittings. All the 'E- Side' cables that run from telephone exchanges to the green jointing cabinets you see on the street are pressurised with air to 9.0psi. This is so that if a cable is damaged, air coming out stops water getting in, and also the flow of air gives us an indication of where the damage may be.

Don't know if this will help you or not but.....

If you can see the cameras from within your home network but not when you're out and about you may need to set up a DDNS service, although I think that the hikconnect software may take care of that for you if I'm reading that hikconnect PDF file correctly. Basically, most internet service providers will allocate a dynamic IP address to you unless you ask for, and pay extra for, a static address. This is sort of the equivalent of moving house every few days. When you're out and about and you want to view your cameras, say, on your HTC Android phone, the software on the phone needs to know where to look for the cameras, so immediately after setting up the system it will have the correct address. However, a few days later your ISP may change that address and your phone won't be able to find the cameras. With a DDNS service you create an address (say for instance, herbiescctv.co.uk) that will always point at your CCTV cameras. Each time your ISP changes your IP address, the DDNS software automatically maps the new address to herbiescctv.co.uk so that the viewing software on your phone will always know where to find the cameras.

If that's an RX 450h then I don't think there is a battery under the bonnet is there - not on mine anyway? The 12V battery is under the boot floor so if your boot isn't full of stuff and access is easy enough, that's where I'd go. There is a more convenient jump start terminal under the bonnet in or by the fusebox but because I'm clumsy I would probably lose the little plastic fixing clips when removing the engine covers, which is why I'd be going for the battery in the boot.

I remember my dad buying his first ever brand new car. He lived in a terraced house with no garage, so it was just left parked in the street and I remember asking him if he was worried about it being hit or damaged by passing vehicles as it was a busy road. His reply was, "Yes and no. Yes because it's a very real possibility, no because I can't do anything about it. All I can do is get on with life and what will be, will be." If you really are worried enough to be "petrified" maybe you should leave it locked up in the garage at home and buy something like a 10 year old Mondeo to use as a car?

Exactly

There should be no confusion at all. All you're doing is supplimenting a dodgy 12V supply by piggy-backing a good 12V supply on it. Nothing complicated, nothing mysterious, and nothing dangerous. The reason for having the donor engine running is as I explained above and if a hybrid is the recipient then it absolutely, categorically, does not need the donor engine to be running. I'll own up straight away and say that I'm not a qualified auto electrician, but I am a time-served, qualified electrician by trade and learned my trade in a factory. When the factory closed down I got a job on BT and the vast majority of my working life has been spent as a telephone engineer with BT. After a back injury saw me retired early on ill-health grounds, I'm now self-employed doing computer repairs/builds and one of my hobbies means that I'm a fully-licenced radio ham. I'm not trying to be obnoxious or big-headed or anything, I'm just saying that almost my whole life has been spent in or around the electrical/electronics fields and, although I obviously don't know everything, nor would I ever claim to know everything, I'm confident in this particular topic.

I'd say it's got to be a loose connection somewhere.

I'm afraid it makes no difference whether keys are near or far away Luigi. The car will always be active looking for a signal from the key no matter where it is.

Try disconnecting the battery for 10 minutes to reset things.

Hi Scott, welcome back to the club!

The man from the AA, he know nothing. And I don't mean that in a nasty way but he is talking rubbish. There are no problems whatsoever in using a battery charger on a hybrid, and while we're at it I'll also say that there are no problems with giving a hybrid a jump start if needed. However, you should never use a hybrid to provide a jump start to something else. In normal cars the battery is only used to power the starter motor, which will draw 300A or more, to start the engine. When the engine is running and the alternator is spinning, it's the alternator that provides the energy to the car and also keeps the battery charged. When dealing with normal cars the procedure is to attach the jump leads then start the engine of the donor car before attempting to start the engine of the recipient car. This is done just in case the donor battery isn't up to scratch and to make sure it doesn't flatten itself while trying to get the other one going - the recipient car draws mainly from the donor alternator, not the donor battery. Hybrids don't have alternators; their 12V batteries are charged from the 288V battery via a DC/DC converter. They don't have starter motors either, and you'll see from the photo below that my RX450h only draws a current of 15.32A to get the car into the READY state. Given that it takes 300A or more to operate a starter motor but less than 20A to 'start' a hybrid, the DC/DC converter of a hybrid is not designed to provide 300A or more to the dead car and if you were to try it, you'll almost certainly find that the very expensive magic smoke inside the converter that makes it work will start to escape into the atmosphere and it'll cost a fortune to get some more put back in.

For what it's worth, and no offence to Wendle, but I've never heard of Arteck, whereas Suaoki and DB Power are quite established brands. Apart from going for known good brands, I'm not sure you can do anything else to minimise the risk and you just have to have faith and trust that it'll work when you need it to. I once saw a programme on the Discovery Channel about 'One Shot' things that only have one chance to do what they need to do and the science and technology behind them. Amongst them were items like the ring-pull on a fizzy drinks can; a car airbag; the ejector seat of a fighter plane and quite a few other devices - we just have to trust that they'll work when needed. Of course, a battery pack isn't as critical as an ejector seat but it still needs to work when needed. I don't know of any way of actually testing these small packs but, if you have a battery shop local to you, they'll have some sort of heavy discharge tester that they could hook it up to. Maybe even your local trusted mechanic/garage will have a battery tester and would do you a favour to test it.

What about the advertisement photos that the dealer used in the sale ad?

I doubt it as they aren't electronic brakes as such. Regen braking is done by the electric motor(s) actually turning in the opposite direction and working as generators and there is no physical braking involved until the car drops below a certain speed (3mph comes to mind but I may be wrong) or if the hybrid battery is fully charged and can accept no more. I think you may need to get Techstream on it to interrogate the ECUs and see if there's any codes stored.