Herbie

Do you have a make and model number for that please Steve? If you have another 12V source you can connect that to the battery cables before you undo the clamps and remove the battery so that you don't have all the hassle of resetting anything.

The trick is to not baby the car, which is exactly what I was doing when we first got ours. Accelerate briskly to the speed you want and then just back off slightly to just maintain that speed - you'll soon get the hang of it. The most I've ever managed with ours was a 50-mile journey that achieved 41.8mpg but I've never been able to replicate that, with my average being 31.5mpg. Above all else - enjoy!

I have no idea because I've got an RX450h No, it doesn't.

You are correct but it does bring into question what the design engineers were thinking. My understanding is that VSC is Vehicle Stability Control so how on earth does an oxygen sensor in the exhaust bring on the VSC light?

Not pretty but a good deterrent

+1 for a steering lock! As the old saying goes, prevention is better than cure. A kill switch, immobiliser or tracker only come into play once the scrotes are already in your pride and joy, but having a big yellow steering lock on that is visible from outside will hopefully make them think it's not worth the hassle and move to an easier target somewhere else. I use a Stoplock Pro Elite and in test reviews it took more than five minutes using hammers, chisels and saws to defeat it. The value is not in the steering lock itself but in the visible deterrent it provides.

I'll just leave this here 😊

I would have no qualms whatsoever in buying aftermarket exhausts, tyres, wipers and suchlike because we all know that Lexus don't make these things, but what you see is generally what you get with items like that. However, I always buy the "genuine" fluids. I know that Lexus don't make these things either but it's more what you can't see that makes me nervous about buying aftermarket fluids. Any system carrying fluids will usually have rubber (or other material) seals somewhere and the original fluids and seals are made to be chemically compatible. Yes, the other stuff may have "all the necessary ingredients" but if it has just one other chemical added, or if one of the "necessary ingredients" is an 'equivalent substitute' it may attack the seals and cause leaks and expensive damage - just not worth it in my opinion.

True, that is another way to solve the problem, but I've already got the jump start battery pack, I enjoy doing things like this and the whole job only took an hour to do so it kept a bit of boredom at bay for a little while.

I noticed that but I didn't need three poles and, weirdly, the power socket is rated at 20A but the one I used is rated at 30A. What really drove my decision though is that I already had a surplus socket in my junk box so I only needed to buy the plug 😊

Glad you got it sorted in the end Paul. Just curious - what's that box to the left of the suction cup?

Although our car is used daily my wife doesn't drive, so if I'm incapacitated for any reason I can see that the 12V battery may be flat before I'm able to drive again. Of course, Sod's Law dictates that it would be on a cold, rainy day and I'd have to empty the boot of all its contents or risk losing the little plastic clips if I were to remove the engine bay covers to get at that more convenient jump point, so I decided to avoid all that hassle and fit a socket in a convenient and easily accessible place in the boot. Jump leads are great if there's someone else around to provide a donor battery but that doesn't always happen, so a while ago I invested in a jump start battery pack something similar to this one but mine's an earlier model. The hybrids don't draw a lot of current on startup; you'll see from the photo below that my RX450h only draws 15.32A as opposed to the 300A+ of a traditional starter motor, which means that I can use a small, neat socket instead of something big enough to put the big crocodile clips on. I decided on a panel mount 2 pole Neutrik speakON socket and the corresponding plug. These are actually loudspeaker connectors but they're rated at 30A continuous, so plenty beefy enough to handle the current. Having chosen a location the first job was to pull out the light to make sure there was enough room behind the panel and that I wasn't going to damage anything with the drill. The wiring to the light looks dodgy but I'm just waiting for a new connector to arrive so it'll be all proper again shortly 😉 Next job was to make sure I could get the cable to the required location so I pushed a piece of old earth cable down from the top and left it in place to use as a draw wire later. Once that was in it was time to drill the hole using a step drill and test fit the socket. Next job was to get the wires into the conduit, tie the conduit on to the drawrope at the bottom and pull it up through the hole. Next was termination. My original idea was to use spade connectors but when I pushed the socket back into the hole the connectors came off, so I resorted to soldering them on instead (and forgot to take a photo of that). Next it was just a matter of routing the conduit round to the battery and using cable ties to fix it to the other conduits going across the car. Before connecting to the battery I used my Megger to check for short circuits positive to negative, positive to chassis and negative to chassis, in case anything unforseen had happened. All good, so time to connect to the battery. Finally, a test of it all and you can see the battery voltage. All I need to do now is to make up the lead with the speakON plug at one end and the Anderson SB50 connector that plugs into my jump start battery pack at the other end and, as we say up north, job's a good 'un 😊

For the last 14 years or so we've had our cars converted to LPG and when we changed to the hybrid it was one hell of a shock how much fuel it uses. I'd go back to LPG in a heartbeat but although it's technically possible to convert a hybrid I wouldn't be brave enough to have it done. The hybrid is such a complex car that I really don't see the point in adding another layer of complexity to it - it would be an absolute nightmare trying to sort out a non-start fault. If only Lexus did a petrol-only version of the RX450h - I'd have one in the blink of an eye and get it converted.

Depends how you drive it - I've often had 390-400 out of a tankful

No worries Lee, glad to help when I can

Why are you going to pay well over the odds for a "Lexus" camera? And why did you strip it all out? You've done all the hard work and I've never yet seen a dashcam that doesn't connect by MiniUSB - you could have left the wiring in situ and just changed the cam. Have a look at this review - a dual system, front and back, for about £110 or you can get just the front for about £80. Irrespective of the cost though, this guy likes it so much that he's now got one permanently in his own car, which is good enough for me because this guy reviews dozens and dozens of things.

Exactly what Paul says above. In rural areas a postcode can cover a couple of miles, whereas W3W is accurate to a parking space-sized area. Delivery companies are beginning to use it for that very reason.

We drive on the left, they drive on the right - I think you've answered your own question there. The seller probably hasn't heard anything because the cost to post back may put the buyers off from returning them.

I see your location is Lancashire so if you're anywhere near Preston, Ribblesdale Auto Electrics will either be able to supply an exchange or refurb your existing one for you. That sort of work is done at their Deepdale site so it's got to be worth giving them a ring on 01772 796047, or failing that, their main line number is 01772 555011.

Thankfully not Anthony - given the state of my brain I'd never manage to get anywhere 😁 All you do is open the What 3 Words app and search for the address you want to navigate to and the app will then give you the 3 words (there's a 'Favourites' facility to store frequently used addresses). The app actually has its own mapping software so you could just use that if you wanted but if, like me, you have a favourite (I use Waze) you simply tap on the 'Get Directions' button (shown by a red arrow in the picture below) and it then gives you the choice of whatever mapping software you've got on there. Below, I just searched for a random address of 39 Richmond Green, Carlisle and the app shows that its 3 word address is 'skip.stage.spot'. I then clicked on the 'Get Directions' button, chose to open Waze, and the final screenshot shows Waze plotting the route:

Great guide I, well done.

Erm... how do you think it gets from the shop to you?

With due respect John, I think you're getting confused a bit here. The jump start packs that we're talking about in this topic are the ones small enough to fit in the glove compartment and use LiPo batteries. This one will fit in the glove box (but not in its protective case - if it was in that it would have to be kept in the boot) and is capable of starting petrol engines up to 6.5 litre. To answer @Texas - I think 82% or 83% of reviews gave it 5 starts out of 5, so yes, there are faulty ones out there but like anything else, if you get one you're unlucky, as the vast majority are obviously happy with them. Whenever I buy anything with a rechargeable battery, whether that be a new laptop, cellphone, vacuum cleaner or whatever, I always put it on charge for at least 6 hours before attempting to use it because all batteries, irrespective of chemistry, will self-discharge with time and we have no idea how long any given device has been in the supply chain. I usually take it out of the car every three or four months to give it a 'refresher' charge but it's never been lower than 90% charge. I keep saying that I've not used mine yet but I forgot that I did use it once on someone else's car and it worked flawlessly, so I'm quite confident that if I ever do need it for my own car, it'll do the business with ease.

Yes indeed it can. The traction battery will only charge the 12V battery when the car is in the READY state. The 12V batteries in these cars aren't very big because they don't have to do much. You know how big the RX450h is, but the battery is only 51Ah, with CCA being about 300A if I remember correctly and, given that they are 'small' and that there is always a drain on them (for the alarm, radio memory etc) then the charge doesn't last long. It's not unusual for a hybrid car to have sat at the airport for about three weeks and need a jump start before it'll move. That's why I always carry one of these in the boot. They work brilliantly well, hold their charge superbly and, although I've not had to use mine (yet) there are plenty of videos on YouTube showing them in action. They are well worth every penny in peace of mind alone - highly recommended.

Although we have a 63-plate car the inbuilt satnav is still very clunky to use and not a patch on a stand-alone device like a Garmin or the TomTom that I have, but even the TomTom is now redundant. Like you @Anthony B, I now use my cellphone and I'm getting quite evangelical about an app for the phone called 'What 3 Words' because it's absolutely brilliant (I have no association with the company, just a satisfied user). It's completely free to download and use and can be used either with their own mapping app or in conjunction with your favourite one, say, Google Maps or the one I use, Waze. Basically, the company have divided the whole world into 3 metre x 3 metre squares and given each one of them a three word address, such as 'Bicycle.Door.Frog' or 'Glass.Pen.Speaker'. It's so accurate that the front door of your house will have a different three-word address to your back door. Because it's on your phone you can use it on foot too. For instance, when you park up somewhere you've never been before, as you leave the car park, get the three-word address for where you stand and you can then go exploring to your heart's content, knowing that you can wander anywhere and still easily get back to your car. I went on holiday with 8 other friends recently and one day we split into two groups and went off exploring different things. When it was time to meet up again, one group sent the 3-word address of the pub to the other group and it was supremely easy to get there and start enjoying the beer 😁