Herbie

More trouble than they're worth. Condensation, scratches and more besides - far better with just a good wax or ceramic coating.

Just so you don't think you're being ignored, I'll say that I don't know

Maybe getting a hybrid wasn't the best choice then because they're very electrically/electronically complicated. First of all, do what Andrew suggests and look for any OBD codes. Hybrids don't have a starter motor (or alternator) so the startup sequence is very different to a conventional car. The 12V battery boots the computers, pressurises the brakes and gets the hybrid system up and running (as shown by the READY light). Everything else is driven by the high voltage traction battery (288V for the RX but varies by car model). So, you get in, press your foot on the brakes and then press the power button. If everything is working as it should, a few seconds later you'll hear a beep and you'll see the READY light. At that point you can drive away on traction battery alone, but the petrol engine will soon kick in, probably in less than a hundred metres. When the hybrid system wants to run the petrol engine it will energise MG1 (motor/generator 1) and use that to spin the engine up to 1,000rpm, at which point it will open the injectors to supply the fuel and also apply a spark to fire it.

PM just sent to you Phil.

Doesn't matter my friend. If it was on but then reset itself, any codes will still be stored as 'Historic'.

It's the same software diagnostics program that Lexus techs use in the dealer workshops, so it can do anything that they would need to do. As hobby or DIY mechanics we'll probably not need most of what it does but it's nice to have, just in case. If you look at Post No. 14 in this thread, I still reckon the best thing about it is that it gives sub-codes when/where needed as well as main codes.

Wow, thanks for such a detailed reply Paul, much appreciated. And yes, sorry for the off topic post folks.

Ooh, ooh, I need you Paul Sorry to hijack the thread folks but a quick question if I may... I bought one of these little stereo amplifiers and it arrived yesterday. I listen to a lot of varied stuff but my main love is classic rock, with bands such as Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, AC/DC, The Who, Deep Purple and so on, along with a lot of Blues from Joe Bonamassa, B.B. King, Elles Bailey etc. I'm no audiophile by any means and the manual says the amp will drive any speakers from 3 to 8Ω so my question is, is there a "best" impedance to go with? I have a couple of KEF HTS-2001 'Egg' speakers like the ones below and the label states 10-100W 8Ω. Will these work and be good, bad or indifferent? Or should I get a couple of speakers with a different impedance? TIA

It's either (or possibly even both in one unit) the rain sensor for the auto wipers and/or the camera for the auto headlamps/road sign recognition.

You're talking of two different things here Vlad, one of them being self-discharge. All batteries of any chemistry will self-discharge but, as you can see by the fact that your old one has been out of the car for a year and only lost a volt, the self-discharge rate is very small and it happens very slowly. When a battery is in the car and connected up there will still be that element of self-discharge, but the rate of discharge is exacerbated by a process called 'quiescent current draw'. This is current drawn from the battery to keep certain systems alive and working, such as the alarm, the radio presets, the seat memory and so on, when the car is parked up doing nothing. It should be possible to get the actual specification for the amount of current draw from the manufacturer of the car, but I've never personally seen it written down anywhere. As a general rule of thumb, it's accepted that a current draw of about 50 to 60 milliamps (0.05 to 0.06A) is considered 'normal' but anything from about 70mA upwards points towards a possible parasitic drain problem and needs to be investigated. This is where the laws of physics come into play. Battery capacity is measured in Ampere-hours (Ah). A 60Ah battery can supply 60A for one hour, or 30A for two hours, 20A for three hours and so on. Given that it's 40 minutes past midnight I'm not going out to check, but I think my RX has a 51Ah battery fitted. We'll assume that it's brand new and fully charged for this example. 51Ah divided by the quiescent current draw of 50mA means that the battery will take 1,020 hours to go from fully charged to fully discharged. That's 42.5 days, or 6.07 weeks absolute maximum time available from that battery. And remember that it will not be able to start the car long before it reaches the fully discharged state, so for the practical purpose of starting the car, you may only have, say, 35 useable days instead of 42.5. Laws of physics.

These are the dates, ie, first one is any model up to September 2008. Second one is September 2008 to November 2008 and so on. I think something went wrong with the last ones though

This has been addressed many, many times but the problem is, it's a design fault rather than a 'genuine warrantable/fixable' fault, and the only way to address it is for the dealers to point it out. Even the very best of car manufacturers cannot beat, or even bend, the laws of physics and this is the perfect example of the old addage 'Information is power'. Toyota/Lexus made a conscious decision to use small 12V batteries and it's hardly rocket science to realise that a small battery can't hold as much charge, and will deplete whatever charge it has, quicker than a larger battery. There is just no getting away from that fact.

Measure the impedance (in this case resistance will do) and just buy a generic one that fits the physical space.

I can highly recommend HikVision CCTV systems, with a Network Video Recorder (so that you can access and view from anywhere) and ColorVu cameras. We've had ours in for about 3 or 4 years now so the equipment has most likely been superceded by now, but this is how they look in both daylight and darkness:

Not sure where you get that price from. All that's needed is one of these cables from eBay and a Windows laptop. Even a cheap old Windows XP laptop from a charity shop or Freegle will do the job, so that's less than £100. The cables from eBay come with a pirated copy of Techstream. I'm not going to go into the legalities of right/wrong (that's for each individual and their conscience), but even if someone doesn't want to use that, the legitimate software can be downloaded from Lexus and costs something like €5/day or €10/week.

That's not guaranteed to work - it purely depends how low the 12V battery is. If there's enough power to operate the brake pump then it may work if it can recover enough charge but often, it can't. A better example of what's happening is 'solenoid chatter' in a car with a conventional starter motor. When you turn the key there's enough power in the battery to pull in the contacts of the starter solenoid and send power to the starter motor, but not enough power to actually spin the motor and crank the engine. Battery voltage falls right down to the point where it can no longer hold the solenoid contacts in and they release, at which point battery voltage rises and the solenoid is operated again. The guy in the video is working on the same principle - that there's enough power to operate the brake pump and once the system is up to pressure the pump stops and battery voltage can climb back up enough to initiate the hybrid start sequence.

Intermittent working is often the bulb itself (or lamp, as we electricians call them - bulbs grow, lamps glow) and as John says, if HIDs then replace both at the same time. High Intensity Discharge (HID) lamps light up using a plasma arc rather than a filament, which is why a ballast is required. It takes about 20-25,000V to strike the arc and about 80V to maintain it, so switch the lights off and wait about 10 minutes for any residual charge to drain away before handling them.

Yep, check the 12V battery. You should be able to go to any car accessory shop that sells batteries, or most garages, or even somewhere like Halfords <cough> and ask them to load test it. It's usually done free of charge because it only takes a couple of minutes. If you use a standard multimeter it will only show you the 'standing' or 'off-load' voltage and it may look good, but once a load is applied that voltage may drop like a stone, for instance if there's a bad cell.

No idea to be honest but what I can say is that, not using a car enough can create greater problems than you find with high-milers. An average of around 2,500 miles/year is not doing the car any favours at all, so get out there and enjoy driving it

But surely you'd have to be logged in to post something anyway, so why would anyone try to download it without being logged in?

I sincerely wish you good luck and I hope they find the problem quickly for you. I have to say though, if it had been me, I would have gone to a proper auto electrician because they are a trade/specialist in their own field. Mechanic for mechanical issues, body shop for body work, electrician for electrical work. I doubt very much that Lexus will have their own specialist auto electrician on staff; I can't imagine them having enough work to employ a guy for 37.5 hours/week.

Now it all becomes clear You originally wrote: It's not an infotainment licence (which would imply that the whole infotainment system would stop working if you didn't renew the licence) but merely a licence for the map updates. As mentioned earlier, my advice would be to ditch the Lexus maps anyway.

It's especially cheeky knowing that the Lexus navigation is horrible, clunky, outdated and outmoded. To the OP - either use Google Maps, Waze, Sygic or something else on your phone, or if the infotainment system will take Android Auto or Apple Carplay, install that and use Google/Waze/Sygic through that. I'm not sure about Sygic but certainly Google Maps and Waze are freely and frequently updated at no cost. Waze is my personal favourite and not only are the maps updated very frequently, other 'Wazers' can, and do, upload live updates about roadworks, traffic jams, and other problems or hazards. For example, if someone sees a roadworks site just being set up, they can have that information uploaded and live on the map within a couple of minutes.

Link works perfectly - just downloaded the PDF no problem.