McShmoopy

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!

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.

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.

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.

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. 53630939_LexusHealthCHeck.mp4

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. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lexus-Is250-Is220-2005-2013-On-Tailored-3MM-Rubber-Heavy-Duty-Car-Boot-Mat/362207666616?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 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! https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lexus-IS250-LED-INTERIOR-KIT-INTERIOR-LIGHTS-BULBS-LED-KIT/260863230811?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 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. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/T10-5050-24SMD-LED-Panel-Car-Interior-White-Light-Festoon-Dome-Lamp-Blub-UK/402552696370?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 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!

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! https://www.facebook.com/groups/696386090967018/

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.

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 🙂

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!

Cheers for that mate, quite reassuring to know then! Next major purchase will definitely be for the VLANDs

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

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 🙂

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

Ah fair enough mate, do let me know how you get on MOT wise and I may end up purchasing these instead of the OEM ones!

Was there any point in particular they stopped working? And is your car pre 2009 or after 2009?

Hi Guys 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. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lexus-Is250-Is220-2005-2013-On-Tailored-3MM-Rubber-Heavy-Duty-Car-Boot-Mat/362207666616?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 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. One of the passenger vanity light bulbs wasnt working so Im awaiting the replacement to come in the mail. (Excuse the boxes!) https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lexus-IS250-LED-INTERIOR-KIT-INTERIOR-LIGHTS-BULBS-LED-KIT/260863230811?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 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. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/T10-5050-24SMD-LED-Panel-Car-Interior-White-Light-Festoon-Dome-Lamp-Blub-UK/402552696370?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 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!

Thats fair enough mate, I hope you are right. Just for reference here is the post on the forum where they mentioned this issue with the VLANDS https://www.lexusownersclub.co.uk/forum/topic/117856-vland-headlights-before-we-take-the-plunge/?&page=3#comments

These look amazing! I'm planning on getting these myself on my Black IS250 F Sport, my only concern is the VLAND headlights aren't quite MOT compliant as the DRL is always on so it may fail an MOT. I believe one way around this was to plug the fuse into the "Front Brake Light" fuse or something to that effect, they would come on with the rear tail lights, but even this isnt 100% as the LED Driver is a fixed voltage so it will never dim down. For that reason I was considering the Facelift OEM style lights but I just love the look of the VLANDS so Im torn to be honest!

This seems like the most reasonable explanation, and honestly I fully agree about how terrible road bumps are. I live on a new build estate and I have several road bumps on my way out of the estate and at my workplace so have to contend with them on a daily basis. 🙄

Yeah I suppose it’s just a nice addition to provide to the customer, by no means an exhaustive check but it was a nice touch to be shown instead of told.

Cheers for the advice I’ll take that on board and it may be worth having an exhaust specialist also take a look to prevent any further leakage 👍🏼

Yes I was quite shocked they were wanting to charge that much considering I got the car for £4800 delivered! Rest assured I’ll be heading to an independent garage to get that work, overpricing aside I did atleast enjoy the experience of dealing with Lexus nottingham.

Thanks for the very thorough response! It’s reassuring to hear it’s not as drastic as Lexus made out. Definitely will be happy to change rear disc pads and the bushings when necessary as well as getting the exhaust welded. I will however get the brake lines inspected for good measure as I don’t want to leave that to chance.

Certainly quite odd but I'll definitely have it looked into, if its of any help here is the video they provided me showing all the recorded issues. Lexus Health CHeck.mp4