Jon Evans

Steve is correct. There’s a uk.gov site to tell you what the duty is for each (very specific) category of item, but they are generally between 2 and 5 percent so if you calculate based on 5% then you probably won’t be surprised. I paid £30.45 admin fee. They have also made me pay a further £110 for special delivery because it’s over 30kg! Not too pleased about that. Delivery is expected next week.

No speaker wires - they are either behind the C pillar trims, or close to the subwoofer in the middle of the deck. The closest wire would be the solar sensor in the deck, the plug is just to the left of the right hand child seat attachment point, and the wire is attached to the deck lid as it routes to the sensor (left/right from the driver's point of view). I can't remember what exact route the cable took from the sensor to the plug. Note, you won't have much working space, you can't even remove the headrests so you'll have to work around them. Personally I think you stand a much better chance of doing a neat job if you take it all out and make your modifications outside of the car. Maybe you only need a small screwdriver sized hole for adjusting the shocks, in which case you could mark out and drill something like a 1 inch hole precisely centered over the shock, and fill the hole with a rubber panel plug. Yes, but it won't be for a few weeks. Everything is back in the car now. It's all got to come out again when my Amayama orders are delivered. I've checked my other photos and unfortunately I didn't take any of the underside of the deck. Next time it's out I'll take better pictures, and see if I can get precise dimensions for the location of the strut tops.

Hi CQ, For the rear center console: I would remove it, but don't worry, it's probably one of the easiest parts to remove out of the whole ordeal. Pop out the plastic cover in the rear of the large cubby hole and remove 4 bolts, then pop off the trim piece from the top and remove another two bolts. Then the whole thing just pulls forward and up, and there's just a single cable to unplug. The hard parts are: Jerking the seat bases free, if they've never been done before. Disconnecting all the plastic wire clips from the wires that come from the seat back to the seat base One tip would be that you shouldn't try to remove the plastic doorway trim that goes from the bottom of the rear doorways to the C pillar trim, unti AFTER you've removed the seat backs. A previous owner must have done that in mine. It just results in breaking off some plastic clips where it attaches to the C pillar trim. There is enough room to unplug all the seat back wires and remove the seat backs with that trim still in place, and in fact it makes it easier to line up the seat backs when you are reassembling it if that trim is already fitted. Once the seat backs are out, you can remove the door threshold covers at the bottom of the doorways, then the plastic trim that goes up the sides, then the C pillar trims. Cutting holes in the rear deck - it's your car I guess! Personally I wouldn't, but I get that it makes it a lot easier to adjust the struts. I would still remove the deck initially so that you can more accurately mark out where you're going to cut it.

I've just received the invoice for the VAT + Duty + admin fee: £639.38. So the total price for the 4 shocks is £3,351.20. They shipped from the UAE, they were cheaper from that warehouse than they were from the Japan warehouse when I placed the order.

Not cheap! But cheaper than Lexus in the UK (I hope). The initial price for the 4 shocks was £2,401. Postage was originally £567, but once they had the parts in stock they reduced that to £310. So I've paid Amayama £2,712 so far (they quickly refunded the delivery overpayment). I'm expecting to pay either 2% or 4% import duty, and VAT, but I haven't had that bill yet. My estimate fot the total cost is around £3,400, which is a lot, but about £1k cheaper than buying them locally. The additional nuts, bolts, anti roll bar bushes & links I ordered came to about £175. The 12v battery was £351. I'm annoyed at myself for not making a note of the exact mileage when I bought it, but I estimate 190,364 miles based on a photo I took of the dashboard the day after, and the approximate distance I would have driven it home. So I've done just over 7k miles since last October.

Hi all - I seem to have gone a bit quiet on this forum lately, but I've been doing a fair amount of work in the background so I thought it was time for an update post. First of all I'm happy to say it passed its MOT today with no advisories. It's on 197.5k miles. I took it for an oil change service at ITS Autos in Milton Keynes a couple of weeks ago. My first time there, and I can highly recommend them. They were very knowledgable and friendly. As well as the service, I asked them to give the car a general look over, and in particular see if they can work out where the front right rattle and the rear left tapping noises are coming from. For the front right they said all of the suspension arms look to be in great condition, so unfortunately it's probably the air suspension. The rear left they said there was nothing obvious but it sounded like it was coming from inside the car, not the suspension. I spent the next day stripping everything out the back of the car - seat backs & bases, seat mechanism, centre console (it's the 4 seat version), parcel shelf, rear blind, C-pillar trim, etc. With everything out, the noise was a lot louder. I set up a Gopro to see if it would help to narrow it down, and it seemed to be coming from the top of the left shock. I thought I'd fixed it TWICE: the shock actuator motor seemed a little bit loose on the metal clip, so i bent the metal slightly to eliminate the wobble. No joy. there was a plastic gearbox hanging off the side of the seatbelt reel, which had a little plastic pawl rattling around in it. It was the gears that implement the feature for child seats where if you pull the belt all the way out, it locks it into a mode where it will only retract and can't be pulled out again until it's fully retracted. I fixed it but the tapping noise was still present. Finally I worked out it was coming from the shock itself. I reassembled everything the next day. After considering the "Made In China" aftermarket copies, and going down the reconditioning route, I decided to order 4 new OEM Lexus air suspension struts from Amayama, I'm expecting delivery some time this week. I also ordered some sundry nuts and bolts, plus the anti roll bar links and new bushes for the anti roll bar. I don't think mine are particularly bad, it's just easy to do while I'm in there. The struts and sundries are two separate orders so the other bits might not be here for another couple of weeks. About a week after taking the rear seats out, I accidentally popped the boot open for no more than 2 or 3 hours while I was working in the house, and it flattened the 12v battery. I already suspected the battery is on its way out, I would hope it has enough power to run an LED interior light bulb for considerably longer than 2 hours. It let me down again a few days later, so the upshot is I bought one of those 12v lithium jump start packs from the local Halfords ready for the next emergency, and ordered a replacement OEM / Panasonic battery. I'm hoping that will arrive this week as well. I will attach some photos of the back of the car from when I took the seats out. Fixing the seat belt mechanism: The seat bases, C-pillar trim, door side threshold mouldings, air ducts from parcel shelf, rear table, rear DVD console, rear seat media and seat controls, and one of the seatbelts Parcel shelf and rear blind Rear centre console Sound deadening cloth and seat base mechanisms Seat back brackets (left seat has tilt motor) Seat backs and the piece of parcel shelf that goes between the rear blind and the window

If possible, remove them and see if they turn when you operate the switches.

Are you positive that both motors have seized? It could be the mechanism and the motors might be fine.

@Scribe maybe the problem lies somewhere else in the electrical system - one of the earth points, or corrosion in the fuse box(es)

Get yourself a cheap multimeter to definitively find out whether or not the battery is dead in the future. They are less than a tenner and will show you the actual voltage you're getting at the battery terminals. You could also look into getting a car battery tester, I bought a JDiag BT300 for about £35 from Amazon. This will give you an indication of battery capacity.

Feu Orange! That's a brand name I'd completely forgotten.

I fixed this yesterday and it only cost me £5.29 (but I also spent £53 on a pair of ramps and some wheel chocks).

I've just had the windscreen removed and refitted. It should hopefully fix a small water leak I had which was causing the A-pillar trim to get wet, and general dampness in the car. I asked the guys to let me know when the roof gutter rails were removed if there were any broken clips, and it turned out there were loads, and quite a few missing completely. When they finished they said they had spares so they replaced them all. Result! The windscreen adhesive primer had deteriorated and they could see loads of places where water was getting in - but also said it's not done too bad as they are currently refitting loads of screens on cars that are less than 3 years old. I had to agree to have the whole screen replaced if it got damaged during the work because they couldn't guarantee it (£624), however they managed to refit it without breaking it so it was only £216. So I still have a genuine Lexus screen. The only non-original part is the rubber seal at the top of the screen, but it looks like factory to me. I used Express Windscreens and I'm very happy with the service.

@chrali all of your images are broken for me. If I right-click and "open image in new tab" it takes me to a Google login, and if I log in I just get a grey no entry sign.

I fixed it this weekend. The top of that piece of plastic has two small clips which fit into a metal piece in the door. It looks like someone has been into the door before and they just pushed the trim piece in, which bent one of the clips. I was able to straighten it and it seems to work fine now. You do have to remove a lot of other door trim to get there though: Unclip the plastic behind the inside door release lever to reveal a screw prise out the window switch / ashtray to reveal another screw (unplug the switch) remove those two screws and one under the inside door handle pop out the door card - lots of plastic clips around the edge. Hope you have some spares! unscrew the screw in the round bumper on the plastic section on the side of the door and then remove that plastic (more clips) pop out two plastic clips and remove the plastic trim that goes all around the window frame Pull out the plastic piece near the b pillar - two clips into the door, double sided tape, and the two tiny clips on the top edge clean everything and remove the remains of the double sided tape from that part, and (for me) straighten the plastic clip on the top edge replace the double sided tape put the trim piece back, top edge first put everything else back in reverse order