Don C

I’ve got a 350h Takumi ordered. Celestial Blue with black interior. No delivery date as far as I know but I’ll give them a ring. I notice the yanks are starting to get delivery dates on very small numbers of them.

It doesn’t matter what the problems are, it has to be done and setting targets pushes the manufacturers to get it sorted. I’m amazed that in COP26 they didn’t set targets for the scrapping of older more polluting cars, stop the American nonsense of using these big polluting engines in new cars, get Germany to cap autobahn speeds at the same as rest of Europe and ban the use of leather in car production.

The VWs had a heat exchanger surrounding the exhaust. What you’ve got to watch with measuring straight forward interior temperature is the effect of ambient temperature, sunshine, interior materials and how much moisture they hold and then how long you leave it until you measure it. It’s going to be a bit Heath Robinson to test any way other than fully instrumenting the car under strict laboratory conditions. My gut feeling is, there’s nothing different to Dylan’s car to most of ours.

I got the engine up to temperature and then ran it a good few minutes to make sure the bulk temperature of the engine and whatever other components that get hot did do. The outside temperature is 6C. I put the transmission in sport so i could see the rpm and set the heater to max on both sides and the direction from the face vents as shown - AC on. Full throttle produced 2500 rpm and after 90 seconds the temperature at the vent was hot to the touch. I must say that when I let my foot off, the engine shut down and and the temperature quickly fell to warm. It’s not very scientific but I measured the temperature at the vent at the hottest as shown too.

The engine will cut in if the heater can’t get to the desired temperature. Lexus go to a lot of trouble to stop you nodding off which avoids a lot of warm air around your head so it does hold back a bit. The system is quick to warm up but then it starts to mix fresh air in. I’ll have a fiddle with mine and see if I can get a setting which gives some meaningful comparisons.

I’ve sat in the new model and while attempting to wobble the centre console didn’t even occur to me, the interior is very sumptuous with high quality materials. The fit and finish is superb.

He’s got a pre production model there and in reality if it doesn’t wobble when you drive it why should it matter if it does when you force it. He says some daft things that are irrelevant like going on about false exhaust tips.

Then we must conclude that the US spec RAV4 Prime doesn’t have a GPF or the Toyota tech who’s seen it several times and me he are wrong. It seems the possibility of you being wrong isn’t in the options list.

He doesn’t but he does say that it won’t start the engine to keep it healthy. You used that to negate the PPF problems so I did too.

Hi Geoff. Your signature says you have an RX, your text says you’ve got an LX and you posted in the NX group. Never mind, the point is that your RX rotates the air mix door through 360 degrees and there is an air admittance flap which can emit the clunk once per cycle. Mention it when you go for service but I personally wouldn’t be concerned. There’s nothing in there to create a big problem.

This fella rambles a bit but he reckons otherwise;

Using a 450h+ on mainly battery power may be cheap but unless the PPF sees normal temperature for reasonable periods, it’s going to cause problems. Probably quite good on reasonable mileage journeys.

The 450h+ handbook is available. No 350h yet but it will pop up soon. https://www.lexus.co.uk/owners/about-my-lexus/manuals/#hero

Aye, fancy that. Only sports models to test.

I’ve removed the standard one in mine because it makes the boot unusable. It’s more of a pigeon hole than a boot with it in. The best ones in my opinion are Mazda because they go up (extend) with the back door when it goes up. That would be a cracking solution if you could make it fit.

The one at Sheffield was blue. Can you tell me if the white one was standard (not sport) seats? I want to test the standard seat.

Do you contradict everyone on everything they say? I’m on iOS 15 and it has auto connect.

I drive express passenger trains now. I’m a time served mechanic and I was European Technical Sales Manager for Ferodo Friction Materials before I decided to play trains. You can see what I do here;

On your phone, go into settings/bluetooth, find your phone and click on the little blue “i” symbol. Open it up and make sure auto connect is enabled.

Exactly. You won’t get a big enough improvement to justify the cost but certainly with diesel it might save thousands in repairs.

I’ll tell you tomorrow when I’ve got a bit more time.

Why do you ask Malc?

I got called a fuel snob the other day by somebody who doesn’t know a thing about me or my trade or my experience or how many engines I’ve repaired from carbon fouling because I mentioned that I would normally not use supermarket fuel so before I give my opinion, I really don’t care what anybody else uses and if it ruins your engine so be it. The usual arguments are “I’ve been using it for years in my old SAAB or my old Merc”, “all fuel meets BS**** so its all the same”, it isn’t the same by the time it gets to your car and that’s a fact. All these different fuel companies can’t have their own bulk storage terminal and if you sit outside one you’ll see all different brands go in. What is in those giant tanks is the same stuff, there’s no disputing that but the additive packages are added at the time of loading are not the same and the additive packages are expensive. Yes the base fuel meets BS**** but that standard is more about calorific values than additives so that will appear on every pump. In any case if we are talking Lexus then by the very nature of what goes on in the engine and the resultant carbon after burning fuel means that petrol is far less likely to cause problems than diesel and I would strongly recommend that supermarket diesel is avoided over branded standard and high grade fuels, this argument is far less relevant to us because the Lexus diesels have just about gone. That said, things are about to change and the new models just launched have to meet Euro6d and that is tough. The only ways that the A25A-FKS engine will meet that spec is with an exhaust filter rather like the DPF that causes all the expensive problems on diesel engines. The only saving grace is that as long as the engine gets to normal temperature it will self purge rather than needing a “regeneration” like the diesel does. Thats what causes the dilution problems which can be a nightmare along with major, carbon fouling. Your potential problems will come with the PHEV 450h+ which may not see those temperatures on lower mileage use. I have ordered the 350h to replace my 300h and I can tell you it will only be fed with high grade petrol. Not because of the ridiculous notion that I’m a snob but I know that the detergents that are double dosed in high grade fuel will make the self purging of that very, very, expensive filter so much less of a challenge. You please yourselves but to argue that it has always been OK to use fuel with a lessor additive package is coming to an end with petrols and came to an end with Euro 6 diesels from about 2017 - just google it to understand the extent of the problems. Don’t confuse Tesco high octane fuel with the likes of Shell V-POwer. The octane rating is about the burn rate of the fuel and not the additives. It’s not clear if Millennium has an enhanced additive package but your regular 95 is far more volatile (it goes goes “bang”) and the Millennium 99 burns at a controlled rate so is far easier for the engine management computer to work with. Luckily, I’ve got to go to work or you would get my long answer!

Those facts I know about. They’re not relevant to my comment.

Don’t forget that as a general rule everyone’s fuel consumption will go up as the weather gets colder. Every few degrees lower in ambient will see your cars lose another mpg even if there was no change in fuel whatsoever. The comparisons need doing at a stable temperature to be representative as the engine management will be demanding richer fuel for longer during each warm up period. Have another look late spring when you are getting back well into double figures and you’ll see it improve again. At the moment you can’t compare apples with apples.