Herbie

I did indeed have a chuckle at that Well, speaking as someone who does enjoy pottering about with a spanner and such, I have to say that it did interest me from an engineering point of view, but they do strike me as the answer to a non-existent problem and being way OTT. But hey, who are we to say owt?

Think you're getting slightly confused there William. The car camera does the speed signs, auto-lighting and so on but it doesn't act as a dashcam, which is what 'Parking Mode' eludes to.

3M sticky pads

Almost certainly the gas struts, yes.

I firmly believe in a mechanic for mechanical things, auto electrician for electrical things, so I agree with Malcolm - get a second opinion from an auto electrician. Alternatively, find the corrosion and cut out the affected wires and splice in new ones if the corrosion is in the length. If the corrosion is at the connector, give it a good clean with an electrical contact cleaner such as one of these: https://cpc.farnell.com/search?st=electrical contact cleaner

Not on the RX, no. You have to use the mechanical key to open the door and then you can either crawl into the back to open the tailgate with the mechanical release (not likely) or pull the bonnet release and connect a jump pack/leads there.

That was my point - it isn't - certainly not in the 2013 RX I used to have and the 2018 RX I now have.

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/omega-1-is-a-game-changing-internal-combustion-engine-too-good-to-be-true-179507.html

The one that Peniole linked to is not intended to start the car, but rather to be left connected for, say, 20-25 minutes to push a charge into the flat car battery, which can then be used to start the car.

Again, I think it's a case of reading the manual. Certainly, none of the 12V power/cig lighter sockets in my 2018 RX will work with power off. The car must be in either ACC or READY for power to be available at these sockets, therefore no booster could be plugged into one and be expected to provide power into the car. I would assume the same to be true of all Lexus models/variants but who knows - that's something only an owners manual will tell you.

Well done Peniole sir The fourth post down on that page is exactly what I was talking about, so thanks for that my friend.

Gut feeling says that's bull**** I'm only a hobby mechanic but surely that can't be right?

Good point my friend, I'd forgotten about the EPB. I'm with you on this one, why change from manual parking brake? Nothing wrong with a manual one and I do wonder if the electronic ones are a case of technology just for the sake of it rather than it being a real improvement.

Fitting a Grom Vline 2 into the space under the centre console lift-out bin:

I suppose different models could be different, but my 2018 RX didn't need to be in ACC mode when I recently stripped out my centre console. In fact, the Power button was in the house so I couldn't have put it into ACC anyway

Dumb? I don't know but one of my pet hates is people who don't read their owners manual I'm assuming that your car is equipped with a 'shift lock' as all my RXs have been? All you needed to do was press it in and you could have moved the gear lever. In the photo below you just pry up that cap and press the shift lock button that it reveals:

You misunderstand me Vadim. Yes, there is a part number and any dealer can order that part for you, but when it arrives it will not be a brand new battery pack, just a reconditioned one. I'll try to find the original post where I read about this.

I don't think that's quite true. Someone on these forums has (I think) an IS300h that he uses as a taxi and he did a brilliant write-up of his DIY battery change. Of course, now that I want it I can't find it but I'm sure he said he paid about £2,500 but that was for a reconditioned battery pack. There is no catalogue listing for a brand new pack so you just can't get brand new, only recon. Of course recon units are like new anyway. The plastic casings can be reused, as can most of the metal parts too; the only things that need to be replaced are the chemicals within the cells.

Android 10 is being tested at the moment and should be available in the next two or three months. Overall I'm very happy with it. It does have one or two little quirks but I can live with them because they're minor annoyances rather than problems. For example, if I want to go back to the OEM screen all I have to do is to click on the Media button, but it doesn't take me back to where it was before. Having said that, it's only a couple of clicks to get there so no great problem. As far as I can tell, most things work as they should and yes, it is smooth. Originally, I could neither justify, nor did I want, to spend £510 for the Grom unit so I paid £200 for a Carlinkit Decoder 2.0 from AliExpress and it was awful. I never managed to get it working properly and there was very poor to non-existent support from China and also a lot of barriers to returning it, so I put it down to experience and got the Grom after all. I had a lot of initial problems with my Grom unit but I have to say that the UK distributor for Grom, Richard Heap from Carputer Shop in Ashby De La Zouch is very good to deal with and is very helpful. The only problem is that he is literally just a distributor and has no workshop or testing facilities. All technical help and support is done via Grom HQ in Texas, USA, and the time difference makes it very slow, literally just one message per day. If I sent a query on Monday the reply would come on Tuesday, so I'd try it and if I had to say that it was unsuccessful, they got that on Wednesday and a new suggestion would arrive on Thursday. And, of course, nothing gets done at the weekend. Although it was a bit of a faff they were very helpful and saw me through to a successful conclusion. In my case the Vline itself was perfect but the main harness they supplied with it was at fault and a new harness sorted it all out. I don't know if you've seen my topic below but if not, have a look and it may answer some of your questions that I haven't covered above:

Only a guess but maybe these are things that would generate 'Lexus-only' codes so a generic reader wouldn't be able to read them?

Hi Enrique and welcome to the club

This is what the workshop manual says about poor radio reception:

Now that is a frightening thought!

Right, I see what you mean now, fair enough, I didn't know such things existed. It's all a compromise though. People still break into banks and so on, and if they want it they'll take it - all we can do is try to deter them. The point is, if you can see the installation cables and/or the thing itself, then it's a very poor installation. My tracker is wired into the car supply but neither the tracker itself or its wiring are 'on show'. It's all hidden away and unless you had an electronic tracker finder (bug finder) then you could rip half the car apart and still not find it.

The tracker I've got (the Rewire Security DB2) can be placed anywhere in the car as long as there is a 12V supply to wire it to; could be in the roof lining, could be in the boot, could be in the spare wheel well and so on. It has an internal fuse for safety but, perhaps more importantly, it has an internal rechargeable battery that will keep the unit up and running if the car battery is disconnected or goes flat - you'll see the state of both car battery and tracker battery below. I've never seen a tracker that works on battery alone and I can't imagine it being much use really.