Glyn Jennings

I have Work 2 piece Alloy wheels and the hole in the rim for the valve to fit is behind the centre of the wheel. They use a right angled extended valve to give access from the front of the wheel. This does mean you are never going to be able to refit the standard TPMS valves. As far as a a cordless air compressor is concerned I bought one of these when they were available which works very well and so far I have had to recharge it as it has a reasonable size battery https://www.aldi.co.uk/12v-cordless-mini-air-compressor/p/808783560995201 I run my 19" Michelin Sport 4s tyres at 33psi all round.

I ran my leads down to the bottom of the front bumper. I just tuck it into one of the slots under bumper when not in use. That way I can connect the CTEK charger without lifting the bonnet. This is handy as I am finding I need to top up the battery every week for a few hours to keep it fully charged. At the moment the CTEK seems to behaving itself otherwise I will have to buy a NOCO.

Just realised it is a scam as I have seen the same car in 4 different adverts in 4 different parts of the country. What a rubbish thing Facebook can be.

Hi Bob, I was browsing Facebook and I think I came across your new purchase. You certainly picked up a bargain unless I was looking at a scam clone advert. Well done if’s the same car you did well. I paid nearly that for just my wheels and tyres!

You see quite a few red interior trim bits on Buyee Yahoo Auctions for reasonable prices but the shipping is expensive.

Insane amount of money spent on those cars but they are very special. Yours Neil is the only one I have seen in the UK with a full body kit and if I didn’t need to preserve the originality of my car I would love to go down the same route you have gone although I do know you had quite a bit of fettling to get it all to fit. The body kits are not a bad price but the shipping is so expensive. My wheels came from Japan and if I didn’t want to wait for them to come by sea it would have been another £500 for airmail.

I think red is only on Japanese imports or American Pebble Beach Editions.

Let’s hope so but I am not holding much expectation. Seems winter has arrived and definitely going to be roof up for a while.

Today was a red letter day for me. As I previously have mentioned when I bought my car I always envisioned going on short drives or longer trips along with my wife. Sadly for the last two years that hasn't been possible due to hip and knee issues. It is now coming up 4 months now since she had her second hip replacement following a previous knee replacement and today she was able to get in and out of the SC without to much discomfort. Happy days 😊 Other news is I am not sure my replacement CTEK charger now 18 months old is on the blink. I may have to go with NOCO as a replacement. Also my car cover which I have also been using for the last 18 month is now leaving dirty marks on the car so it is staying off at the moment. It would seem because it is breathable the dirt in rain has worked it's way down it to the soft inner lining.

Interestingly there was a Lexigirl on the old Lexusworld forum which to be honest was a great source of information which helped me enormously when I first bought my car and some of those members are on this forum as well still giving help like Neil. I remember seeing her posts and she also spent a lot on her car i.e new wheels and a respray, brakes, suspension, etc. Unfortunately she also fell foul of a person whose name I won't mention who carried out the work.

Perhaps you should have bought a Delorean 😂

I have a 2004 and it is low mileage. I have not owned a late model so I can’t compare but l am so happy with mine as they were a great car from the start. They basically are all the same spec regardless of year with subtle differences. The main difference being the later ones have a 6 speed rather than 5 speed gearbox and better suspension although ditching the original run flat tyres improves things enormously. My advice would be to buy the best one you see regardless of age. Late models with low miles go for so much more than the rest but due to the SC not being most peoples cup of tea they can take months to sell so sellers may be open to lower offers. Good luck in your search, there are some really nice examples around.

So my new battery has now been on the car 7 days and not been driven and the normal predicted 1-1.5v % drop per day is evident so the battery drain on the car is normal. It started at 12.7v and today is 12.2v according to the battery monitor. However the SOC estimate is miles out as you can see in the attached photo. At 12.2v it should read 60% charge and not 31%. I guess this means I am going to need to connect the CTEK maintenance charger every week rather than every 2 to 3 weeks I had been doing to prolong the life of the new battery. This is a pain as I have to run an extension lead from an outside wall socket and put it under a cable cover across the pavement. I will have a look now to see if you can get perhaps a lithium battery charger that you can keep charged indoors and just connect to the car battery without all the cabling necessary with the CTEK.

Only joined the group on the day of his post so who knows.

I never set out to buy a low mileage example and if it had been what some low mileage examples go for I wouldn't have considered it. I do know of another one the same colour combination as mine with similar mileage owned by a chap near Bristol. I also saw one go through Mathewson's Auction with similar mileage which from memory I think was silver. So there are a few really low mileage ones around. For me I love the car and I will make every effort to keep it in as nice a condition as I can but I am not interested it treating it like a show queen or displaying it to win awards. That must have been someone else who described restoring the seats as apart from treating mine using a Gtechniq product I have done nothing to mine. I probably spent the first year doing all the mods I wanted to do although nothing drastic and am now at the point where there is little I would like to change on the car.

I was tentatively looking at buying an SC430 a couple of years ago and saw the car I now own and thought it was a good deal. It was one lady owner from new and had only 7400 miles. It had also just been in the main dealer to have the timing belt and other age related bits and pieces replaced. It therefore is in great condition but there is probably always one better. Even now it is still under 10,000 miles. Personally I wanted to update the car and make it my own so I have spent a lot of money on it as I intend to keep it long term but everything is easily returned to stock if I so wish. I did a build thread on this site so you can see pictures and a description of everything I have done there.

I don't think you can rely on the percentage charge (SOV) on any of the battery monitors to be accurate. Mine was !00% Monday, 87% yesterday and 67% today. The battery charge voltage level has been 12.71v, 12.53v and 12.41v which i the expected drop of roughly 1% voltage drop per day. The state of charge for a battery drops dramatically compared to voltage drop. 12.7v is 100% 12.32v is 70% and 12.03v is 50% according to what I have seen on line. If it drops below 10.5 V the battery will be ruined as it will have no charge at all and won't be able to be revived.

So I fitted the BM2 battery monitor yesterday afternoon on the new battery and it was reading 100% charge (SOV) and 12.71v. I have not driven the car and this morning it says 87% charge (SOV) and 12.53v. So it seems to me as I have read in some reviews the BM2 SOV estimates are way off. I have read that a daily drop in charge for a car battery is normally 1 - 1.5% drop depending on outside temperature so if my calculations are correct the drop in voltage of 0.18v (1.4%) for one day is about right considering I have a tracker fitted as well and the BM2. Is this about what others have experienced?

I’ve just bought one of these so hopefully now I can keep an eye on battery charge level. I don’t expect it to be 100% accurate but it’s better than nothing. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Battery-Monitor-Campervans-Compatible-bluetooth/dp/B08VHMJYXY

I keep a NOCO jump starter in the boot just in case I ever get stuck out and about

New battery now fitted and everything back to normal now. I did find that as soon as connected the new battery the horn was going off continuously until I hit the unlock button on the remote key fob. I guess this is because I unlocked the car using the key in the lock. My daughter has an Honda FRV and that does this same if you use the key in the door to unlock when the battery is playing up so perhaps it is a Japanese thing.

The lights all come on and I am pretty sure the CTEK is working OK as I used a different charger and got the same result. However I don't think CTEK chargers are as good as they used to be. I had one 10 years ago and it was faultless whereas this Time to Go model I now have packed up after a few months as well so I complained to CTEK which was not a very straightforward process and they sent me another one. !8 months on it is still going so hopefully it will be OK. I was fortunate as I bought it in Lidl reduced to half price so it was £30. One thing a CTEK doesn't seem to do is charge a battery when it is below a certain level of charge. The new battery arrives today and I will put the CTEK on it just to make sure it is fully charged before I put it in the car. I will update this thread then and hopefully all my issues will be sorted.

In the summer I was trying to do once a week. Now that winters here I try every two to three weeks normally. I am conscious cars don’t like not be used regularly.

I have had the battery on repair mode and trickle charge over the last few days but it seems to be deceased. So today I have ordered a new Yuasa YBX5096 battery which should be here in the next few days. I guess I will have to up my game and religiously connect the CTEK charger every two weeks and possibly live with fact I might have to buy a new battery every couple of years if that doesn’t work.

I will see how it is tomorrow. Unfortunately it is not practical to leave the CTEK permanently connected as the car is in the road and I have to run the mains cable across the pavement. I put it under a rubber cover but I could not leave it there all the time. I can’t use a solar charger either as I keep the car under a cover. It is odd the horn going off in that everything else seems to be dead ie door locks and all the instrument lights.