McShmoopy
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Posts posted by McShmoopy
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Some of the veterans can probably chime in far better than myself, but even the PRE 2009s are very reliable cars and the engines are generally bulletproof as long as the cars are well looked after. It is true that there were some issues with the PRE 2009s but regular servicing and oil changes can mitigate this from what I've researched. I can't remember who else stated this on another post but the best way to approach buying the IS250 is to look for a high mileage example as that is where you will find the most cost benefit and as long as the car was serviced yearly you're rarely going to run into many problems and get an amazing deal. One thing to take a note of is that spark plugs are due to be changed every 60k miles, water pumps can fail at 100k, and some of the alloys are susceptible to corrosion as well as a few other niggles but generally the car will have very few issues compared to the competition.
Spotted a white IS250 F Sport 2010 for you on Auto Trader, if you are after an F Sport spec 2010 is the best to go for as in 2011 onwards for the F sport spec they deleted the memory seats functionality and it addresses the issues that High Peak autos mentioned. I myself purchased a 135k black 2010 F sport with the Mark Levinson audio and aside from a punctured tyre Ive had 0 issues with the car so far.
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Quick update, managed to locate the multimedia interface and followed GROM's instructions but made no difference. Will be liaising further with them but appreciate the input from everyone!
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On 4/25/2021 at 3:25 AM, Superduner said:
I didn't have to access anything other than the back of the actual audio/display "boxes" when I installed my Vline.
The only fiddly bit was feeding the wires to the Vline unit in the glovebox.
Yeah this shouldn’t be necessary for most however I have a 2010 facelift model and the GROM Is quite temperamental with mine, it is working far better than it used to but the only way I can access it is select USB as an Audi source and putting my car into reverse gear.
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On 4/25/2021 at 12:37 AM, Texas said:
So after locating this module what exactly are you gonna do to it as regards to the aftermarket VL2 unit?
According to the guys at GROM I should try to disconnect some cables from the multimedia interface as this can help with the detection of the GROM Unit in my vehicle and make it more stable. I’ll be attempting this after work I did manage to get most of the trim around the glovebox off just have to take the actual thing off
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1 hour ago, ColinBarber said:
looks like the complete glovebox needs to come out
and disconnect the battery before touching the knee airbag.
Cheers mate I shall do, glovebox should be easy enough instead of dashboard!
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1 hour ago, ColinBarber said:
Here are LHD and RHD diagrams:
Thanks a bunch where were you able to locate these?
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Hi guys
I had purchased an aftermarket android unit known as the GROM VLINE2 to get modern functionality like apple carplay in my IS250. Initially it didn’t work and I returned it but after liaising with GROM audio a software update came out which addresses most of my issues with the unit and the functionality is far better. After speaking to a fellow user, he was advised to locate this particular module known as the Multimedia interface ECU as this can help with stability of the unit. for the life of me I wasn’t able to locate the unit in my vehicle despite being sent a diagram for the LHD vehicle. I tried to Google some vehicle diagrams but it’s not quite clear where this is located in a RHD vehicle as well as what the unit looks like via that eBay auction. If someone could help me locate this it would be greatly appreciated.
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1 hour ago, Johnlex said:
@scudneyYeah they are fine clean but I only have 2 on the front and the placement is terrible as they dont pick up or detect so want to add 2 more either side of the number plate
I've experienced the same with my front sensors, they do work but I believe from what I've read around the inter webs is that they're more intended for when you're turning as opposed to what is directly in front of you. I suppose we could try relocating them but it would be great if someone figured out how to add two more to work natively with LEXUS Park Assist!
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On 4/20/2021 at 6:59 PM, Goodspiritsuk said:
Hi All,
Thanks in advance for your feed back, input, suggestions and expletives. I am looking to buy first Lexus and would like some help. The model I'm looking at is the IS250 as I feel this will best cater for my needs. I have budget of £3k so have been looking at 2005 - 2007 online but would like some guidance as to the 'red flags' i should be looking out for.
I cannot see a selling page on the forum but if there is one could someone please direct me to it.
Thanks again and warm regards.
Vik
Hi bud and welcome to the forum, you will want to ideally go for a top trim level such as SE-L as that will come with the most toys and retain its value the most. Sunroofs are also only available for SE-L's so see if you can spot one of those as they're well worth it! The SE'L's comes with a NAVI and non NAVI option which only has parking sensors but try and go for the NAVI as that benefits from reverse camera, and usually a Mark Levinson stereo which is the best sounding I've heard in a car for a while as well as a fairly decent touch screen.
F Sport is a good option also but the ride is firmer with a sport suspension and you have bigger wheels so its down to whether you want comfort / a sportier ride. Don't let high miles necessarily put you off, just ensure its got full service history and maintenance records. I picked up a high mileage 2010 F Sport with 135k miles and no issues to report so far in my ownership.
Hopefully you're able to find something decent around that budget but it may be worth increasing it if the right car comes along!
All the Best
Bill
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On 4/7/2021 at 8:17 AM, zoricib said:
For anyone wanting to spend 30 minutes to install an adaptor into the back of the stereo I can't recommend this enough. It plugs in a spare cd magazine slot in the back of the stereo and allows you to use your steering controls too. only thing is that you have to be careful when removing the stereo not to damage the dashboard near the top air vent.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07JN9MD28/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
there are more details on this in the thread below
Nice suggestion there, my 2010 came with Bluetooth as standard but for anyone pre 2009 this should work nicely.
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On 4/5/2021 at 1:58 PM, Driver201 said:
Good afternoon, I was thinking of buying an 2005 rx300 but I'm a bit put off by the number of threads on here about water leaking into the car and rust.😟 My second choice was the 2010 IS250. So, is it possible to get a comfy ride in an IS250 given the nature of our roads these days and my back. I generally drive locally and few motorway type miles. And if so what would be the best set-up to look for. Or am I barking up the wrong tree. Many thanks in advance.🙂
I have an IS250 F sport 2010 and while I did appreciate the sportiness of it the ride was rather firm thanks to the sport suspension and 18” wheels. With the potholes and Road bumps next to my house I did want some comfort and I did change the tyres to 18” Continental eco contact 6’s all around and the ride quality (and economy) has improved while still being firm enough so alternative tyres could be a good shout. Otherwise if comfort is the aim of the game stick with an SE-L with 17 wheels and this can be further improved with comfort orientated tyres!
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I had this same dilemma myself when wanting to get an IS, unless you’re planning to do hundreds of thousands of miles the diesels are not worth it. Not only for the reliability issues, but the economy is not much better than the IS250 assuming there isn’t some issue drastically affecting the diesel economy and the gear changes are incredibly clunky.
it is true the is 200d made some slight improvements over the 220d but overall you’re better off with either an automatic IS250 petrol or the auto IS250. It is a thirsty car but on a run you can achieve 42mpg with cruise control at 70mph and a light foot can aid the town driving economy.
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7 hours ago, Mr Vlad said:
Hi Bilal. Wow you've been busy with all those posts posted at the same time. Bad luck with the prang and damage but glad it's sorted. I'm intrigued by you wanting the grom vline thing. To me it's got far too many negative reviews. I'm not informed about apple car play. Is it a form of Bluetooth music streaming? If so save about £480 and get a Bluetooth adapter plugged into the aux socket in the armrest cubby hole. I have that and my ML sounds outstanding. Hopefully below is my install
Note I've used a 90 degree cigarette socket adapter and a 2v cigarette power socket but a shallow one. Simple effective and out of the way.
Many thanks for the kind words Vlad, the funny thing is with the facelift 2009+ onwards you do get Bluetooth music and iPod / Iphone connectivity via usb which is extremely handy. And you are right even via Bluetooth the quality I’m getting is absolutely superb, definitely the best sounding car audio I’ve heard so far In a vehicle stock and that’s from a musicians perspective.
The idea of apple carplay is that the contents of your phone be that your music streaming, satellite navigation; phone calls and text messages are all populated on your infotainment in an intuitive discreet way which makes it quite safe while driving. I had it in my old corsa via a cheap double din unit and it was extremely handy and it’s hard to go back to not having it. Android auto would be the android equivalent of this and the GROM only appealed to me as you could achieve wireless apple carplay while retaining the audio quality and still keep things pretty much stock. The other solutions on the market do not provide this without other caveats.
Yes to be honest many people do have issues with the GROM but most of them are issues mainly with running android apps whereas my only concern was Carplay. And it’s a shame because when it did work it worked beautifully. To give you an idea there’s a YouTube video on a fellow Lexus owner from New Zealand who did show an excellent review of carplay in the IS gen 2.
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I noticed a few days after the health check the ride quality was drastically worse compared to when I first got the car, it turns out the driver side front tyre was damaged and eventually went flat. I took this opportunity to treat the car to a new set of Continental Eco Contact 6's all around. Managed to get 4 tyres and a wheel alignment done down the road via Asda Tyres and I used a discount code to get £50 so all in all it was around £420. Not something I wanted to do quite so early into owning the car, but I have to say the ride quality has improved dramatically.
The exact tyres I ended up with were the following.
FRONT: x2
Continental EcoContact 6 225/40R18 92Y XL
REAR: x2
Continental EcoContact 6 245/40R18 97Y XL MO
I did notice with my car the fronts were 225 40 R18 and the rears were 255 40 R18, when shopping around I noticed how astronomically priced the 255's were compared to the 225!
Thankfully there were quite a few tyre recommendation threads on the main forum and I noticed a member suggesting 245s instead of the 255s and they were thankfully a very similar price to the 225s.
At some point I'll get around to refurbing the alloys.
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A few weeks back I took my vehicle for an airbag recall to Lexus Nottingham, they gave me a nice CT200H for the day and went about the work. The experience I had with them was excellent and they did a health check for me as well as putting in half a tank of fuel for the inconvenience.
They did indicate to me the front tyres seem rather low and that there was some work that needing doing to the vehicle. These were things I was somewhat aware of when purchasing the vehicle but after making a previous post on it I was assured a lot of it wasn't anything major although to which I will link below as well as the health check video LEXUS provided me.
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One of the first mods I wanted to do to the car was definitely changing all the interior lighting to LED and to put a boot liner down. I managed to pick one up on eBay for fairly cheap and the quality seems great even though its not OEM, I do plan to make some cut outs to allow for the foldable hooks to be used without having to lift the liner.
Bought a set of the standard LED light kits on eBay, was a bit fiddly to install but with a trim removal kit from amazon I managed to persevere. All of the bulbs seem to work great, I may have inadvertently scammed the eBay seller as I told him one of the bulbs wasnt working but turns out it was a fuse that was damaged once I replaced all the lights worked wonderfully, I only realised this after he had sent me out two replacement bulbs, oops!
One thing I've seen quite common is how pitifully bright the boot light is even with an upgraded LED. Some people have suggesting using an LED strip instead but I never liked the look of this. After poking around the US owners club forum, I noticed one guy buy a multi LED Panel and wired that into the existing connector via an adapter and that produced a much more powerful and impressive light in the boot.
This was the product I bought, the install was fairly easy although I managed to trip the Dome light fuses TWICE while installing so keep some spare 10amp fuses handy incase you do that. The install without tripping fuses was fairly easy, the bulb is telescopic so you should be able to fit it into the existing housing by giving it a squeeze. The LED panel has an adhesive backing so I stuck this to the bottom of the existing cover to allow for the maximum light output. The cabling will have clearance to go the hole so you shouldnt have many issues installing.
I didn't take a before shot unfortunately but some of these shots were taken around 9pm but these should hopefully illustrate how bright they are and if anyone else who wants to improve their lighting. Hope anyone else finds the boot LED mod useful!
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After getting the car back from the garage, my first major mod was getting the Grom VLINE working. Being a massive technology nerd, apple Carplay was something I almost certainly wanted to have in my vehicle and the GROM Vline seemed to be the best way of going about it as it keeps the interior OEM and retains proper climate controls. Chinese android head units are an option but I do not know if they're fully compatible and theres a good chance they'd degrade the sound quality of the Mark Levinson audio and as a musician / audiophile the sound quality was a major thing for me.
Unfortunately due to the facelift version AISIN units not being fully compatible, we couldn't get it to work 100%. The long story short of it is that you can access the GROM interface but you cannot use it as the touch screen will freeze up and it requires a workaround with accessing the reverse gear to get into it.
After a major back and forth with GROM support for many weeks, I decided to throw in the towel. The good news in it is provisionally possible to get the GROM working but I'd rather not be a guniea pig with a £500 paper weight. I am in touch with people on a GROM VLINE support facebook group and when the GROM is eventually compatible with my car via a software update I plan on getting it once more!
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Hi guys, thought I'd make a dedicated thread to my ownership of the IS250 as its my 2nd car and first Lexus and I'm absolutely loving it so far! I picked her up as a high mileage example for just under £4500 around Christmas 2020 and I knew there may be some work needed but it was the exact spec I wanted (F Sport 2010 with the memory seats as well as the Mark Levinson Audio).
Plans with the vehicle were to add apple Carplay into the unit via a GROM VLine, do a few creature comfort upgrades to the interiors and update the look slightly by changing the tail lights and headlights to VLANDs or Facelift DRL headlights depending what I can get.
Unfortunately within 10 days of owning the vehicle, I very annoyingly had a minor accident with it! Thankfully the insurance company managed to fix it and the car wasn't written off and I was back on the road by early Feb.
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Decided Im going to make a dedicated thread for this car and all the stuff I do to it on, I'll pop a link to the thread shortly 🙂
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10 hours ago, Bongo said:
I have the VLAND rear lights, and my car has been through 2 MOT's since I fitted them, I think most owners that have fitted them, haven't had an issue either.
VLAND tail lights I know are good, just the headlights that have concerned me and I am a rather unlucky person so knowing my luck Im bound to get an MOT failure. Although I think I will take the plunge and go for them as my next major upgrade!
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On 3/23/2021 at 9:15 AM, zoricib said:
My IS250 came with the VLAND kit on it when I bought it in July and passed it's MOT with no issues. Previous owner didn't have any issues with it either.
are you sure the leveling works? On mine I had to adjust them manually via screws located on the headlights - to raise/ lower the level of the beam that is.
Cheers for that mate, quite reassuring to know then! Next major purchase will definitely be for the VLANDs
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12 hours ago, mk_lon said:
Do let us know how you get on, I'm tempted to upgrade mine too but given my recent mirror motor disaster I have to think twice before I go near the car
I wil do mate, the funny thing is I had an accident after not owning the car for even a week! Thankfully it was a very minor one and the insurance did a bang tidy job fixing her up, my insurance renewal quotes will not be cheap though
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On 3/23/2021 at 4:37 PM, drrn said:
The Vland lights will change your car for the better! Another thing that you could buy are new boot struts. Dependent on how well your current ones work at the moment?
Definitely will do, VLAND is definitely the way to go but the MOT side of things does have me concerned whether itll pass or not. Boot struts are on the to do list as I the current ones dont lift the boot without support and it can be painfully loud and clangy currently! I do have alot of things in mind to do to the car, subtle mods so Ill maybe make a post on the mod page 🙂
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8 minutes ago, mk_lon said:
It looks really impressive, great work on the lighting. I agree the boot lightning is pretty poor
Cheers mate, at some point I'd like to add some Merc style ambient lighting to the car via that electroluminescent light strips but main upgrades next are VLAND tail lights and headlights
Android auto
in Lexus IS 250 / Lexus IS 250C Club / Lexus IS 220D & IS 200D Club
Posted
Hi Steve
Depending on your region, spec and year of the vehicle, there are quite a few options to get apple CarPlay / Android Auto in the car. One very popular option with Pre facelift NAVI vehicles is the GROM VLINE2, its an android unit that hijacks the DVD / CD player / USB of your OEM infotainment and allows a full android experience while keeping the car completely stock for the most part. This is a good option as it retains the stock climate controls and other features of the vehicle while modernising it. The unit does come with Wireless apple CarPlay and Android Auto out of the box, I'm unsure if Android Auto is wireless. This is an especially expensive option, and GROM customer support is very hit and miss. If you have a facelift vehicle (Like mine 2009+) the GROM does work but Im experiencing many issues so I wouldn't recommend it just yet!
https://gromaudio.co.uk/lexus-toyota-2006-2009-grom-vline-infotainment-system-upgrade-video-interface-lex5vl2.html
Another option is the generic Chinese android units, these work amazingly if you don't already have a NAVI screen but caveats are they degrade the audio quality and the reliability can be a bit questionable, some people do have good results but if you already have a NAVI system its hard to integrate the existing reverse camera and other functions into it so I'd only recommend this if you have a non NAVI vehicle.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002002983968.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.36e632dfRF1qJ3&algo_pvid=e9338ce2-db74-4b65-9ccb-6bd9c47a411c&algo_expid=e9338ce2-db74-4b65-9ccb-6bd9c47a411c-0&btsid=0b0a050b16197235809666769e16ff&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32849728348.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.36e632dfRF1qJ3&algo_pvid=e9338ce2-db74-4b65-9ccb-6bd9c47a411c&algo_expid=e9338ce2-db74-4b65-9ccb-6bd9c47a411c-3&btsid=0b0a050b16197235809666769e16ff&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000011795471.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.36e632dfRF1qJ3&algo_pvid=e9338ce2-db74-4b65-9ccb-6bd9c47a411c&algo_expid=e9338ce2-db74-4b65-9ccb-6bd9c47a411c-5&btsid=0b0a050b16197235809666769e16ff&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_
One other alternative is to use a generic double din screen Android or otherwise with a fascia that retains climate control functions. I don't like this solution as the only I have seen put your screen WAY down and its not very useful as you have to take your eyes off the road to access it.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/252427614787
I'll provide some links for you to have a look and let me know If you need any further guidance!