Herbie

I think the difficulties mentioned are probably the reason why plant machinery like air compressors and suchlike have a time meter that displays the total amount of hours the engines have been running.

Our car is going into Lexus Preston on Friday for some warranty work. The DOME fuse that powers the cabin lights keeps blowing. They are providing a courtesy car (although I have no idea which model it will be) but if the fault isn't fixed by close of business on Friday I'm assuming I'll have the car until at least Monday. We had intended to go to visit family at the weekend but it would mean a round-trip of about 220 miles, which people have been telling my wife is beyond acceptable for a courtesy car and that no dealership would allow that. I've never needed a loan car from Lexus before so what's your experience of this?

Sorry Kenny, no idea. I just presented the card at the till at my local Halfords, they scanned it or pressed a few buttons and Hey Presto, I had my discount.

Lay down in the passenger footwell with your head looking up behind the glove box and I think you'll see the fuse box there.

In 1975 when I started driving 4-star petrol was as much as 75p per gallon!

E10 @ 131.7p per litre at our local Asda. I've never used anything other than basic, standard, supermarket unleaded petrol. Performance petrol for performance-tuned cars is a good idea and will get the best from that tuning, but it's just snake oil in a normal engine. I wonder how many of you folks who think performance petrol in a standard-tuned car makes a difference, also think Russ Andrews cables are worth it too

You been living on Mars or something Dan? There's plenty of evidence in the respective Ts & Cs but some that immediately come to mind are: Relax only covers up to 10 years old or 100k miles, whereas the 'proper' warranty was (with judicious planning) up to 12 years and (even without judicious planning) 140k miles Relax doesn't include breakdown cover or MOTs unlike the 'proper' warranty Relax doesn't cover multimedia head unit to name just three aspects.

If he did, that may well be his problem - but I rather suspect that he meant £40k+ for the car

That right there is your problem............^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ A conventional car will have a 12V battery rated at something like 75Ah, quite probably more, to supply 300A plus to the starter motor. Hybrids don't have a starter motor and only take about 20A to 'start' the car, ie, get it into READY mode. This was probably just one of the factors that drove Toyota/Lexus to fit lower capacity batteries of around 45Ah or even just 41Ah in their hybrids. When parked up and unused, there is still a current draw from the battery to feed the alarm, the clock, the radio presets and more. This is called the quiescent current and a figure of around 50mA is considered to be the norm. Plus, all batteries will self-discharge anyway, but we'll leave that out of the mix for now. I don't know what capacity your battery is but we'll use 45Ah for this example and we'll also assume that it's brand new and fully charged. 45Ah means that it can supply 45A for one hour or 22.5A for two hours and so on. 45Ah divided by 50mA (0.05A) = 900 hours or 37.5 days or 5.35 weeks between fully charged and fully discharged. Don't forget though, that for the purposes of starting the car, it will become useless and not be able to provide enough power long before becoming fully discharged. In reality we may be looking at getting 4 to 4.5 weeks maybe? I don't know, it may be even less. And that's for a brand new, fully charged battery. Look at one a couple of years old and the figures may be even lower. So, you either have to use it more or keep a trickle charger on it.

Ours did the same and it was replaced under warranty. I posted about it at the time so you should be able to find it through the search function, although I will say that the search facilities of this board are quite abysmal.

That should not have happened unless you had a service - Relax is triggered by having a service done. In March we bought our 2018 RX, which came with 12-months Lexus Warranty that covers us to March 2022. On the same day we picked up our car I also completed the paperwork and started monthly payments on a 2-year 'traditional' Lexus Extended Warranty that we've all been used to for a few years now, and that comes into effect when the dealer warranty expires in March 2022. So, between the dealer warranty and our 'traditional' Extended Warranty, we're covered until March 2024. I have not asked for a refund and I have no intention of giving up our 'proper' warranty in favour of Relax, which is a vastly inferior product. The screenshot below is from the Lexus UK official Facebook page:

Gear selector in Park and foot on brake?

Absolutely brilliant news Piers, welcome back my friend.

Just apply gentle brakes and the regen system will charge the traction battery to full quite quickly. Once the battery can accept no more charge the hybrid system will then use MG1 to spin the engine but without fuel or spark, so that it just becomes a big load for the motor to turn to use up the excess electricity. I suppose you can think of it as 'engine braking on steroids'.

Lay down with your head looking up behind the glove box in the passenger footwell. I'm almost certain it's there.

That's true, but if I needed to I would fight that tooth and nail under the 'Reasonable Expectation' clause that I believe gives us up to 6 years.

They do, for now. The government wanted a total changeover to DAB long before now and, if I remember correctly, they were going to turn off FM when something like 51% of the population had changed. I'm not sure what the figures stand at now but it's a typical government project that is questionable at best and very poorly implemented. As it stands, DAB is a very, very poor substitute for FM. It could be equal and even better than FM if the bitrate was sufficiently high but as usual, our penny-pinching government want to squeeze us until we squeak and they've divided the spectrum up into such small channels (so that they have more to sell) that sufficiently high bitrates can't be achieved. I hope FM will be around for quite some time, but who knows?

Yes, it's the Lexus Paradox. People are attracted to the brand in no small part due to their reputation for reliability, and then they buy a warranty because they worry if it'll be unreliable. I'm personally guilty of this, not so much because I'm worried about the reliability per se, but just because spare parts are so expensive if they're ever needed. For instance, if a LED or two fail in the headlamp unit they can't be individually replaced. The whole unit is sealed and has to be replaced as a whole unit, for around £1,000. A Multimedia head unit is about £3,000. Both of those items were covered under the previous 'Extended Warranty' but not under Relax, hence why folks are miffed, to say the least. Does anyone know if individual parts of a car qualify for the 'Reasonable Expectation' clause or whatever it may be, of the Sale of Goods Act (or again, whatever it might be)? What I mean is, taking LED headlamps as an example, LED life-span is measured in thousands of hours of continuous use, with 10,000 or 15,000 hours being documented as about 'the norm'. If we say they may be illuminated for 4-hours per day, that's a lifespan of 3,750 days or 10.27 years (using 15k hours as the ref). Hmm, that may not be a brilliant example after all but consider the multimedia head unit at £3,000. If I spent £3,000 on a TV I could have a reasonable expectation of it lasting for more than 6 years, irrespective of any warranty/extended warranty on it. Or maybe I'm just blabbering about something of which I have very little knowledge

Then prepare to be amazed at how much they charge for it!

Just sent you a PM that may help you Graham.

You just need to use a bit more force. It's a job that literally takes just a minute to do and batteries can be bought in strips of five for a fiver or less from places like http://cpc.co.uk

Hmm.... What if you lose the spare key and all you've then got is the key with the flat battery that's been waiting in the drawer until the car's ready to be serviced?

Are you sure the battery was charged? Usually the fast clicking is solenoid chatter. There's enough power in the battery to energise the solenoid coil but when the contacts pull in to pass power to the starter motor the battery voltage drops like a stone and the contacts drop out. As soon as the starter motor is disconnected the battery voltage climbs again and the whole process is repeated, hence the rapid clicking.

You are indeed sir, just like us. We never wanted kids at all, so we're doing our bit too

Not harsh at all my friend, and just my own personal opinion. However, it has been the societal norm for many, many years for the sequence to be - born > school > work > get married > have kids When I was born in 1958 world population was 2,925,686,705. Now in 2020 (latest figures) it's 7,794,798,739. Source We just cannot carry on like that because the planet has finite space and finite resources. I wouldn't worry about it. From what I've read it seems to me that it's not an immediate effect but a long-term thing that attacks the rubber hoses/seals rather than any direct effect on the engine. If you use half that tank and fill up again with proper stuff to dilute it, it should be fine - I think 🤞