LenT

Ignore me, James. It was not my intention to come between Man and Car. You’ve clearly taken a shine to each other.

I’m delighted for you both, James. But you’re a braver man than I! I shudder to think how the Detailer who spent four days on mine might react to a waterless wash. I’ve even been warned off car washes - and they use monsoon-like quantities of the stuff. True, their brushes will be more aggressive than your microfibre cloths. But even so….I can’t shrug off the feeling that it just goes against nature!

I wish I had known about Rufford Ford when I had the Citroen DS. Raising the suspension to its ‘ploughed field’ setting would have been like driving across on stilts. Much innocent merriment could have been had.

I’m sure you’ll not be disappointed William. But one thing to consider is that, excellent though they are, they are trickle chargers. So what do you do if you climb in one cold morning and the battery’s dead flat? Well one answer is to get a NOCO lithium battery power pack. They claim it’ll hold enough of a charge to jump start your car four times in a year. I have one that I have yet to use, But it’s reassuring to know that I have it.

I suggest you check out the small print. You may well find that the actual service is provided by The AA, for example. When you call the Lexus Helpline, that’s who you end up talking to. In which case you could also get a comparable quote from which ever motoring organisation it turns out to be. Now it may also be that the AA, for example, will offer other benefits - even if they cost a little extra. I’m thinking of such things as Joint Cover for a family member, Home Start, Key Insurance, better NCD, Overseas Travel, Household Cover and so on. The only obvious benefit of a Lexus version that I can see, unless price is a critical factor, is that any parts replaced must be, by definition, acceptable to Lexus.

I appreciate you may be referring to a specific model year, but my IS250 Premier, registered in Feb 2015, came with TPMS valves. I’ve had to replace one, which was broken by a well-meaning lad trying to remove the metal dust cap (nb: plastic dust caps don’t corrode on to the valve stem) which was done by a local tyre place for about £70. The reset button on mine is under the front of the dash, almost in line with the steering column. And no - it doesn’t reset itself. The batteries can last from 5 - 10 years, apparently.

Yes, just order the connectors with the eyelet terminals that are fitted permanently to the battery posts. The other end of the lead has a connector that plugs into the lead from the charger. Better still, get the Indicator eyelet version which has a traffic light array of leds. These give you an immediate indication of battery charge level at a glance.

On a more serious note - and getting this thread back to Lexus-related matters - there is a feature of my otherwise excellent Lexus that is a constant irritation. Of course it may possibly be a feature exclusive to my car. Every time I get into it, I am faced with an exhortation to ‘Depress the brake pedal’. Well, firstly, that sort of behaviour is not in my nature. Neither was I ever informed that they were so sensitive But mainly I am at a loss to know what to say to achieve the desired effect. Any suggestions?

Good grief, Piers. How long ago did you discover this? I am seriously concerned about the state of your health!

I may be mistaken, but doesn’t that suggest that with only having a choice of two ends to open, they got a 50:50 result? Now I don’t know how these packs are assembled, but I would have thought it’s a mechanised process. So the printed packs might be loaded into cassettes, say, normally all oriented the same way, and the folded leaflets would be matched up with the tablet foils and inserted into the opened packs. In other words the folded leaflet end would most likely be inserted into the opened pack from the same direction. In which case they only had to open the first pack in order to know in which direction that was. Is not the problem that tablet takers only open a new pack every 28 days, for example, and thus never remember which end that was? This is a particular problem if the tablets you’re taking are related to your dementia.

Oh dear! Sounds like the honeymoon period is over! 😐

What puzzles me, Peter, is what did this Lexus dealer do the second time that they had failed to do the first time? Tracking is not an arcane art so I wonder what the mechanic was diagnosing as the problem - if as Rayaan has just pointed out, it actually is related to the car anyway. I have presumed that the more obvious candidates; such as tyre pressures, tyre damage, for example, have already been eliminated.

Ah! But is it? You should consider it as being an investment akin to a burglar alarm system. Given sufficient privacy and the power tools, a determined thief would probably cut out the cats anyway. And not care about all the associated and expensive collateral damage in the process. So since that cost would far exceed the cost of a potentially effective deterrent, then the expense is only relative. The real consideration, I suggest, is how realistic is the possibility of such a criminal attack in the first place. If it gives you something less to worry about, then paying for the best you can afford is surely worthwhile. Just don’t think of it as wasted money if no-one ever tries to steal your cats!

Hello Andrew. I’m sure everyone here appreciates the sensitivity of your situation and will extend their condolences. As for the car, may I suggest that posting a few photographs and noting basic details, such as mileage, may be helpful for attracting potential interest. PS. Just realised you’d actually mentioned the mileage!

Now they tell you!! I think this is the kind of dealer add-on that’s offered as a ‘complimentary’ sales sweetener hidden away in the overall purchase price. And it’s probably applied on site by the lads who do the valeting. My Detailer used Modesta ceramic coatings which are of a different order of efficacy. Nevertheless, if you wanted even more in the way of scratch and chip protection, you’d have to go for the full wrap. Although a substantial investment, because the car has to be meticulously prepared, it is arguably even better when applied to a new vehicle. It can also be removed and replaced if it should suffer any surface damage.

I don’t have the Cosmos series, but I do have the Dawkins’ books - and I recall some very effective TV documentaries that he did. For many years I subscribed to his website when he was personally very active on it. I now see that it has relocated to America but this conversation has prompted me to subscribe again, hopefully to introduce me to whole new fields of disgruntlement. Another author and investigator who I felt made a valuable contribution to the science of rational thought was James Randi. He would demonstrate that many scientists were vulnerable to fraud because they don’t expect Nature to set out to trick them. And he was always very effective at exposing psychics. They never saw him coming!

Another excellent capture from the past, John. I can’t say I recall this specifically at this distance in time. But I certainly recall his Cosmos TV series that came out in the early 80s when I was in my mid-thirties. it was Sagan - and such as Richard Dawkins - who stood out from their Peers as being such influential communicators of a science-based reality that there was hope that they might lead to a diminishing role for superstition and conspiracy. Sadly, along comes the interweb and ‘social media’ and anyone with half a mind to do so can demonstrate that that’s really all it takes!

If there’s an identifiable moan here, Philip, I would suggest that it’s the presumption that every opinion is equally valid. It isn’t. And that everyone is equally capable of assessing the merits of opposing opinions. They’re not! So apart from what may be encountered on the interweb, it irks me when I hear a debate between an acknowledged ‘expert’ on a subject and a shouty interviewer who clearly isn’t. In such cases, one so often one hears interviewers demanding an unambiguous,‘clear’ yes/no answer to a question for which the scientist knows there is no such thing. But there are few things the media like better than an apparently evasive expert. On the other hand, I often feel some sympathy for Opposition spokespeople who are wheeled on to, well….oppose a Government position. Their job function is defined by their title. After all, there’s little future for a Member of the Opposition who has a tendency to say, ‘Well, we would have probably done much the same!”

The Curse of Confirmation Bias.

I can’t imagine anyone describing you - or anyone - as ‘homophonic’ Graham. Mainly because it’s a term that applies to a musical or choral construct. What you may be, Graham, is the innocent victim of the autocorrect software, of which I have moaned about in the past!

If possible it’s usually best to replace bulbs in pairs. Bulbs degrade in performance over time anyway and it’s usually more time and cost effective to do a preemptive strike on the remaining bulb, rather than wait for it to fail at a less convenient time..

Not a solution your battery problem, unfortunately. But some time ago I invested in a NOCO Power Pack just in case I was caught with a flat battery and no time to use the trickle charger. Knowing you have one in the boot will at least ensure that you’re never going to be stuck - provided, of course that it’s very occasionally recharged!

My sentiments entirely Ed. I have spent many a happy hour debating - if such it can be called - with conspiracists. But it’s akin to playing Wacka-mole. I would often ask participants to provide the ONE piece of ‘incontrovertible’ evidence by which their argument would stand or fall. Inevitably if that was discredited then up would pop an equally fallacious alternative - often contradicting the previous position. But the real danger of such thinking is that it discredits genuine conspiracies. Which is why the tobacco companies of the early 60s were able to suppress their own evidence of a causal link between smoking and lung cancer. And why that discredited crook, Andrew Wakefield, is now making a good living from gullible Americans by pandering to unsubstantiated fears about vaccines. I once complained (Ie moaned) to the local Education Authority about an evening class to be run by a homeopath. My complaint was that she was claiming to teach ‘cures’ that even her own Association would not support. They cancelled her class. I suggested they ran courses in Critical Thinking instead. It is astonishing that there are still people who will claim that the Moon Landings were faked despite practical evidence to the contrary. Or that the Twin Towers attack was a US plot. However, it is incumbent upon all of us to always remain receptive to claims that run counter to common experience. For example, I have long been cynical about claims of ‘intelligent life’ on other plants. But the reemergence of long-suppressed documentary evidence has caused me to rethink this possibility. I’ve examined it closely. It’s either a very clever piece of fakery - or it’s genuine. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok6CoIwcJ-E

Now there’s a thing to moan about! Who thought it was a good idea to align roads with low rising and setting sun? Is it some kind of Pagan devotional act, like Midsummer Boulevard in Milton Keynes? Some years ago, I was driving my Honda Prelude - a not inconsiderable lump of bright red metal - along one of MK’s dual carriageways when I was T-boned by a driver entering from a side road. He claimed he was so dazzled when looking left along the main road that he failed to see my car. While I have some sympathy for this reason, the result was that it landed him with a substantial repair bill and me with a great deal of inconvenience. No doubt this was less of a problem when the average method of locomotion was limited to one real horse. Thinking back to my horse. riding days, I suspect collisions involving people on horseback were relatively uncommon. But now that an ordinary driver can be in command of some hundreds of horsepowers, it is no longer an aspect of town planning that can be ignored.. So what, I demand to know, is the Town Council doing about it? (For younger readers, that was a reference to a broadcasting character called Fyfe Robertson, the like of whom we sadly see no more).

I wish!