Herbie

I doubt very much that the speedo in any car would have no detectable error against a satnav - the below is taken from https://www.thecarexpert.co.uk/how-accurate-is-a-car-speedometer

Yep, all car speedos read on the high side. It's illegal for a car to be travelling faster than the indicated speed so manufacturers are allowed a margin of error. The above is taken from https://www.thecarexpert.co.uk/how-accurate-is-a-car-speedometer/

When going downhill and braking lightly it's the regenerative braking that's working to both slow the car and charge the battery. When the battery reaches a fully-charged state then nothing can be done with any electricity that is produced, so the 'normal' hydraulic brakes take over from the regenerative braking system. I would hazard a guess that the engine runs to enable the hydraulic brake servo to do its job and assist 'normal' braking. The engine probably continues to run for a short while when stopped and the battery is full to enable cooling of the inverter and hybrid system - just a guess but it sounds plausible to me

That's the thing - there is a list of 41 dealers who give discounts to Gold Club Members and also a list of 62 other "Gold Member Discounts" but neither list is viewable or available to us until we commit to being Gold Members and have paid our money. I would have thought that the way to encourage people to become Gold Members would be to give that information first so that we can make an informed decision.

Yeah, it's rather strange that almost no information that would make you want to become a Gold Member, is actually available until you've become a Gold Member!

There are many people on here who have bought a cable from eBay and used it successfully so I'd bet you've just done something wrong. Why, exactly, do you think it's useless?

Isn't that the same for everything? DAB radio is rubbish as it stands because our grabbing government want to squeeze as many channels in as possible to get as much money as possible. Allow it to run at a high bitrate and the sound quality becomes superb. The source is key - you can't have a great output if the input is rubbish. Mind you, my 60-year old ears have been pummeled by many years of live gigs of bands such as Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple etc., etc., so they ain't what they used to be

Why would you go to a main dealer for wipers? Many excellent brands are available from many excellent motor factors at prices far below main dealers, so why do it? If you really must do it, I found that buying through my local Toyota main dealer was also a lot cheaper. I needed the Toyota Super Long Life Pink coolant for my old RX300 and found it was about half the price of my nearest Lexus dealer who is about 30 miles away.

Because of the regenerative braking, Techstream has to be used when bleeding the brakes on a hybrid but not on 'normal' cars.

Tyre-wise I've got Goodyear Vector 4Seasons Gen 2s on mine and they are absolutely superb in all respects, and very quiet too. As for the DVD, remotes are very difficult to get so whenever it's come up before, most people have bought a new player - including remote - for about £25 from eBay. If you search these forums I'm sure you'll find the details somewhere.

Almost all miniVCI cables sold will come with a pirated copy of Techstream but, of course, piracy is not a good thing so I didn't want to be seen condoning it. Whatever you do, even if you decide to legitimately download from Toyota, you'll need a cable anyway but yes, you're almost certain to get a copy of Techstream with it.

Which probably means that they use Techstream to do it. @jdanielca - if you have a laptop you could buy one of these miniVCI cables from eBay, download Techstream from Toyota free of charge and pay two or three quid for a block of time to use it. Techstream is very useful for all sorts of things, so well worth doing it in my opinion.

But why take the time? Life's too short - as the old adage goes, 'you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear'. You'll never be able to input your own POIs no matter how much time you dedicate to it, or how good you think it is. You'll never be able to install a speedcam database and you'll never be able to do a whole host of other things that you could do easily with a TomTom, Garmin or other standalone satnav, or even a phone using Google Maps or some other map app. My TomTom sat in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, very unobtrusively, even the wire was hidden by being pushed into the door rubber. The inbuilt satnav was a great rolling screensaver but not very good as a navigation device.

I haven't got an RX300 anymore but I sincerely doubt that. Your eye-line is well above and you look down on the display, so I wouldn't think that there's any way the gear lever could block your view.

I'm getting a bit more used to mine but believe me, having come from LPG-powered cars to a hybrid, the amount of fuel it uses did bring a tear to my eye in the early days. The best I've managed is 41.3mpg if I remember correctly, certainly 41.something anyway, on a run, but my daily figure running around town is about 35.1mpg although that's gone down drastically recently with lots of short runs to the tip as we sort cupboards, the loft and the garage . Around town I keep it in ECO mode, accelerate quickly to speed and then just back my foot off slightly to maintain momentum and it seems to work well.

I've not looked but maybe Techstream can do it.

It sounds promising but it'll be years yet, if ever. One big thing is how to get the old liquid out and what to do with it. You can't just keep pumping it in forever and it won't be burnt to make room for more, like petrol is now, so there has to be a way of getting it out of the car and then either recycling or dumping it.

Yes, it is legal and no, they won't stop you from entering the country. However, using the UK as an example, the police will stop you and inspect the car if they think that the front windows are tinted so dark that they let in less than 70% light. I'm not sure if all police cars carry them but certainly traffic cars and the 'Interceptors' carry light meters to accurately measure the amount of light being let through by the tints and if it's less than 70% they could give you a ticket.

I seriously doubt that a remap would be possible and probably even less desirable, but someone with more knowledge than me will hopefully enlighten both of us. Hybrids get their best economy in town driving, where the hybrid side can do its job. On a long motorway run it really just becomes a 'normal' petrol-engined car dragging around a big heavy battery or at least that's been my experience up to now. Again, someone may come along and tell us otherwise and that's fair enough - I'm always willing to learn.

That is utter rubbish. The hybrid system has got nothing to do with the audio system whatsoever but the HV side can be completely isolated from the car anyway by pulling the plug and putting the hybrid system into service mode. They obviously either have too much money and don't need new customers or they haven't got a clue and it's perhaps better that they aren't let loose on the car anyway.

Because they cut out too much light when driving in actual darkness - two candles would be brighter!

I've got Goodyear Vector 4Seasons Gen 2s on my 2013 RX450h Advance and they are excellent. Definitely not cheap at about £180 each but really, REALLY good tyres.

Sorry Ian, I don't know about the sun/moonroof. I've never had a 400h so I never really researched into them very much. To be honest, although almost all of my cars have had a sun or moon roof, including our current one, I don't particularly like them and never use them, preferring instead to use the climate control all year round.

Good point Lee, you may well be right there.

Now I never knew that! Takes a bit of the fun out of it though doesn't it? When you figure things out for yourself and make a nice neat job of it, you've got a sense of achievement at the end of the job rather than just working Lego-like and putting things together