james250

Wow. An amazing transformation. Do you not rest? 😴 Honestly I’m amazed it looks so good. Good point you mentioned that the 4IS didn’t come to UK which will make this design stay modern and unique for a while. Them headlights definitely compliment the look very well. Looking at the photo where you test fitted the unpainted bumper with original lights it just didn’t work as well as how it works with the new lights. Keep up the great work. Looking forward to seeing what you will wow us with next 🤔

Ok, so an update on this. I managed to change the cooling fan with the second hand unit. I tested the second hand unit first before starting the work by plugging 12v power directly to each motor. The drivers side one was spinning at first but I could see it tries to move. So then I went to move it by hand to see if it spins freely, but it seems a little stiff so I sprayed electrical cleaning spray and rotated it and spun it by hand until it started moving freely then tried again. And it was working well. With the fan replacement, I drained just under 1L of coolant from the bottom drain of the radiator while keeping the pressure cap open. After that I was able to disconnect the upper radiator hose which only had a tiny bit of coolant in it that I was able to catch with a cloth. After that the fan is relatively easy to take out but the PITA part of it is how tight around the corners it is. So sliding it up becomes an issue. So what I did was removed the entire airbox which gave me too to angle the radiator as I was lifting it out and it's just a matter of fishing it out. When it comes to putting the new fan in, the trick is to put it in an angle starting by putting the airbox side in first otherwise it just won't go down. So all done. One thing is that in the beginning when I was trying to take the fan out and figure out how to, a few times the fan housing scored and bent some fins on the inside of the radiator. Not that many but enough to look like an eyesore but luckily it's inside. I'm assuming bent fins don't cause leaks right? Considering my original OEM radiator had most of the fins bent and it never leaked there. But I think I'm just being a little paranoid

I've confirmed it is 100% the motor on the fan that's faulty. Fuses and relays are fine. I hooked up a 12v bulb to the connector of the non-working fan and that bulb lights up when fan is supposed to be on. I even tried supplying 12v directly from battery to the motor to see if it runs but no luck. Seeing as the thermostat will be closed when engine is cold, I would think whatever coolant comes out will be just from the top of the radiator. So I could potentially just drain a small amount of fluid from the bottom of the radiator to lower the level and then remove the hose. Will that work?

Fuses are fine. I need to still swap the relays around to see if problem follows. There are two grey colour relays in that rectangular fuse box for fans but for some reason the label on the fusebox says diesel in brackets. So it doesn't make sense. How do you remove these relays? Also, I've got a second hand fan assembly handy if I need to replace it. But seeing as I'm recently changed my radiator and did a entire coolant flush and change, I really don't want to drain the coolant if I can avoid it. In order to remove the fan unit, I have to remove the big upper radiator hose. Is this house full of coolant? If I was to disconnect that hose will coolant come gushing out? I want to really avoid losing coolant and having to put in new coolant considering how expensive the coolant is and I just recently changed it

I had a look at the fuse area. I removed that fuse box cover just below near the battery and the label printed inside shows that fan fuses should be above the relays but above the relays is the single big fuseable link so it doesn't make sense. My only guess would be that that entire fusable link has the fan fusing embedded into it. I did an active test via techstream to activate the fans and only the one on drivers side activates. I've ordered a second hand complete replacement of the fan unit so will see how that goes.

So it appears it could be the cooling fan as I can only see the one single fan activating. The fan directly under the overflow bottle doesn't seem to be activating at all. Can anyone kindly check their 250 and see with the AC off, does the fan on the right turn on once engine is hot? I'm referring to the ran on passenger side not driver side

With the recent hot weather, i was stuck in stationary traffic and noticed my temperature gauge start to climb above the half way mark. Turning A/C off seems to have stabalised it. I have a fairly new radiator and system was pressure tested to be ok after radiator change. The pressure cap is also new and my thermostat is a few years old and water pump was also changed a few years back. although I don't drive much. I checked coolant level in overflow bottle and it's at the correct level so not low on coolant. Could thermostat be bad again? I doubt it's the coolant temperature sensor because when i turn AC off it improves. So that will make me think sensor is reading correctly. Any advice? I'm beginning to think the overheating issue has never fully gone away and keeps coming back specially in hot weathers.

Noticed someone scuffed my bumper then upon reviewing CCTV noticed a car doing a stupid 3 point turn. It appears he came to the area looking for an address but didn't come out of the car and did a 3 point turn. I believe it could be a Yodel deliver driver in a car because car looks very similar to a yodel driver that delivered to me a few days before but unfortunately couldn't see his plates then. But in the footage where he hit my car I got his number plate which is clearly visible. Want some advice what I should do. I'm not fussed about the scuff I think I'm planning to replace the front bumper at some point but I'm really cheesed off how badly he reversed in and it can be clearly seen and heard on the camera and he clearly knows he hit but drove off. Should I contact Yodel and ask if any of their drivers have that number plate or is there a way I can report it to get him notified because I don't want a moron like that to think he can just do that and drive off. Otherwise he will keep doing it.

Can any IS300h owners tell if the is300h has a +12v cigarette socket in the boot? Most modern cars these days seem to have +12v power in the boot.

Out of curiosity where is the timing chain cover leak? I personally haven't heard of timing chain cover leak being a common issue like you say. I have a slight seeping of oil but mine appears to be from the valve cover on bank 2. It's not a big leak more of a stain and I clean it from time to time. I do want to at some point change the valve cover gasket. I'm just wondering if I've mis-diagnosed where it's coming from if you are saying timing chain cover. My leak is only seeping on one side on bank 2 and everything else is bone dry

when my is250 has been sitting for few days in the cold and go and start it. If I lower the drivers window for the first minute or 2 I can hear a strange scratching/rattling kind of noise. It's almost like something is catching something. It's not loud. Sounds like very thin metal being scratched. I think it's the headshield clips. One of the clip is badly corroded is loose. But if it is that it's strange that it doesn't rattle always. Can anyone suggest what kind of round jubilee clip or something that I can place over the shields?

Has anyone got any good experience with any good products to increase fuel quality and possibly reduce the effects of ethanol? I always use E5 but even with E5 I feel like maybe we should still use some sort of ethanol treatment and octane boosters? Is it even possible to use E10 and use a ethanol treatment for cars no suitable for E10?

I think it's not just issue of the extreme climate. My dash and door cards are definitely beginning to suffer and what I noticed is that it's related to heat and cold cycles too. Contraction and expansion eventually starts to cause the cracks to appear. Ive got a little crack appearing and I am having to treat it every 2 weeks if not even sooner in this cold weather. I'm currently using Armor All Protectant Gloss Finish. When I apply a good layer it temporarily solves the problem and the stickiness goes away for a week or two then I need to re-apply. And this is in cold winter. I'm wondering if I should try a different product ? Has anyone tried possibly applying leather dye over it?

That's a very good possibility. Being very steep, I'm having to rev up quite a bit. I'm assuming the reverse gear can handle this?

I'm out of town and last night parked facing downhill on a steep lane. This morning car was misty when I started up. Only way out is to reverse up the steep hill and then turn around. I warmed up the car a little for about 10mins but not enough for temp gauge to start rising. Anyway as I'm reverse I had to rev quiet a bit to get the power to reverse up but at the same time I had to do it slow because it was very narrow. As I was reversing, there was a lot more smoke than usual. And the smoke was blowing towards the front of the car. I had the window open and the smoke passed me but didn't smell or anything. Looked like the same cold start smoke but much much more of it. Just got me a little concerned. Then I drove up lots of steep incline roads and was looking at my mirrors and couldn't see any smoke at all. Just wondering can condensation smoke be worse like that if reversing with high revs ?

Yes sounded a bit like metal tapping. Happened twice when I was pressing brake to get pistons to go into correct position Yes the genuine Toyota red grease that costs a fortune lol. Anyone know what type of grease this is? Surely there should be some sort of aftermarket solution for good grease for slider pins?

On another note, I changed brake fluid. Before i started the car, the brake pedal was rock solid because of the slight pumping i did to get the fluid out. I changed the pads too, so pistons were retracted. When i started the car and pressed the brake pedal, it went soft again, so i pressed it a few times to allow the pistons to push the pads back. While I was pressing it a few times, twice i heared a really strange noise, sounded like a rattle or something but got me thinking if it's something with the brakes, because the noise only happened for few seconds when i pressed the brakes only twice out the many times. Took it for test drive and everything seems good. But just a little concerned what that noise was.

You are right, the actual hex bolt was what got freed and not the actual slider pin itself. Managed to get the bugger out eventually, spending the whole morning on it. As @Linas.P suggested, a lot of swearing at it helped lol. I ended up removing the bolts hold the caliper carrier then place entire thing on a spare axle stand just gave it lots of wacks, eventually the bugger started to move. Cleaned it all up with a wire brush attachment on a dremel and then regreased with the Genuine toyota stuff for the slider.

Went to grease my rear caliper sliders today. I usually regularly regrease the fronts and occasionally do the rears too. But upon removing the top slider bolt, I noticed I was not able to slide the caliper down. It just wasn't budging. So gave it some wacks with a hammer eventually got it to go down so now it is able to rotate up and down but the actual caliper doesn't go back and forth in the lower pin. I've tried wacking it many times with a hammer just hasn't budged. Ive heard that heat can help but problem is that there's lots of rubber parts there so using blow torch there seems very risky. Ive sprayed some penetrating fluid in the area and will attempt again tomorrow. Does anyone have any advice or tips please on how I can free this so that I can take it out to re-grease?

Great to hear. How did you install the resistors? How did you wire them up? Will probably be helpful for others in the future to know.

From what I've read, the blocked AC drain issue only causes water behind the front seat footwell and not under the dash. You mentioned that water is trickling under the dashboard so I'm thinking it may not be the blocked AC drain issue. But then you mention that the water is clear. If it's clear and not sticky and sweet smelling then it's unlikely to he coolant. There isn't really any other water in the car other than the AC water. Unless your car has clear water filled up instead of pink coolant. No chance of it being rain leaking in somehow? But you mentioned that you've had ac on cold so in which case I doubt it's been raining lol.

Yes I have a 250 but was looking at a CT for a friend of mine so just curious what the two seperate coolant tanks are for. So does the bottles actually pressurise on these instead of a dedicated pressure cap on a radiator or something like the petrol equivalent? So I'm assuming both coolant circuits need servicing at the same time?

Question CT owners, there looks like two coolant bottles in the engine bay on the CT. One on the right and one on the left. Both seem to have pressure warning lid. Can anyone explain what both these are please?

I changed my radiator with a new one, I dont think I have managed to 100% get rid of all the air yet as it took a long time for thermostat to open up because my inside heating was on MAX with A/C off. So i'm going to attempt to burp and bleed it with the funnel method again today. But I thought i would try out a pressure tester that I purchased a while back. I connected it all up and pumped the hand pump to pressurize to 15psi (i think it's supposed to be 16 psi, but i thought i'd play it safe) Actually it was on the right side of the 15 mark and then about 15minutes later i checked it, it was on the left side of the 15 mark, then i left it on there for another 35 minutes meaning a total of 50 minutes and it was still around the 15 mark on the left side of the mark. I would say that in the 50minutes it probably lost 0.8 psi and 90% of this drop happened in the first 15minutes, the remaining time it was rather steady. I have attached a picture illustration below of before and after. I cannot see any visible leaks on the radiator, the hoses or the water pump. Any advice? Is the pressure supposed to remain spot on the entire time? Could air in the system cause this? Also this was done with a cold engine with engine sat over night cooling down.

So I need to do a coolant change, draining the radiator with pressure cap open just barely drains under 5L (including syphoning out overlow bottle) Now I know that there are supposed to be two drain plugs on each side of the engine block, but getting to these are a right pain in the backside. I've drained just under 5L and filled up new coolant. If I run this until engine is warm then cool the car down and repeat the radiator drain again, will that be sufficient? idea is to try and dilute the remaining 4 or 5L that remains in the engine block. By running the car and letting it warm up the new fluid should mix with the fluid in the engine block and then there should be a diluted mix in the radiator. So draining the radiator again and re-filling another 4 or 5L will that work?