Quince99

Just to follow this up: I emailed Kevin Green and he arranged an appointment for the following week - he was, quite understandably, very busy in the heatwave with artics, tractors etc. that were in need of cold a/c by professional drivers. After a thorough examination, on a very expensive piece of equipment, the system was cleaned, lubricated and CORRECTLY regassed. The temperate at the vents was something Arctic like 6 deg C and in short order the car was like a walk-in freezer. There were no leaks in the system and he could only suppose that the a/c had only had a partial regas before and, quite likely, using the high pressure valve as the low pressure one (the one you should use) was at the back of the engine bay and hard to reach. Since then I've had a small hole in the centre section exhaust welded up - £1700 for a section was a bit much! - and the 'sports' exhaust is back to being quiet once more.

In the display the AC light goes on and off when the touch screen is pressed but I can't hear anything engaging - this may be that it's relatively quiet compared to my previous car. ATS said that the clutch was engaging although I'm not sure how they worked that out, so hopefully not the compressor itself. If it becomes too complex/expensive or not possible to determine the fault, I'll simply change cars. Once the cost of repairs starts to represent a significant percentage of car value it's time to bite the bullet sadly. jackcramerr - have never coped with heat well, get migraines with weather this hot - 20C is great for me!

Thank you both for advice - ATS fine for a simple regas (especially as good price with Groupon!) but yes, anything more in-depth and they're sadly out of their depth. Have emailed Kevin Green as they're local to me - thanks for that - and about 40mins drive away. Will await reply and see what happens.

Suffering badly with the heat this summer - isn't everybody? - I took the IS250 in for what I thought it needed, i.e. a re-gas, as it wasn't blowing particularly cold. This was done and was cold on drive home but after that it suddenly became far less cold and it was more effective to open the window. Took it back to ATS to run vacuum test, basic check for leaks and nothing found to be leaking. What they also said was that when switching on AC the high pressure side of things was not activating, hence no cold air. Was told this could be anything from a sensor/switch to the compressor itself. Without spending hundreds of pounds at Lexus in investigative work, do other owners have experience of this issue, i.e. is it commonplace, or is it time to look for another car?

Thanks Shahpor - I have this installed as well then! :D

Jensen was lovely but, as I discovered after selling it to the guys who owned the garage that recovered it (after forward drive plates had been lunched) it had no sills! They'd found the stainless steel sill covers loose so took them off to remount them and there was no metal behind there! Of course I'd bought and driven it and it never occurred to me to look behind the covers! I always remember the acronym for Lotus: Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious. A guy at work had two Elises, one in respectable dark blue the next one in lairy orange and black. That one could apparently shift extremely well! I noticed the IS200 has a cult following and some are highly enhanced and modified. I went for the newer model to get a nice set of toys that can see of my wife's brand new Q3. :D The camera on the Lexus is far better than the German one - even though it dates from more than a decade ago. Likewise the sat nav in the Audi is a nightmare to set up and takes ages and it doesn't have the cooled seats or rear blind. What does the 'mm' signify in your model description?

Yes - I wondered that too. I think also the instrument panel lighting dimmer doesn't illuminate either - ironically!

Thanks for that TigerFish - will wait till it gets dark and see if the disable windows button has been pressed and reply with result!

Title pretty much says it all: on the driver's side switch panel, it seems fairly dark. There's the locking button that's lit and one of the window switches. Should the other 3 window switches in that block light up too and likewise mirror controls? Presumably these are all LEDs so would need to take it somewhere to get done.

My IS250 (2006) has an extremely reluctant windscreen washer jet on the driver's side. The passenger side has two jets in a V-shaped arc that seem to be vaguely effective whilst the driver's side has a single stream that doesn't hit the centre of its intended area. I've had the jets off, flushed them with water, agitated and removed a small amount of debris and attempted to re-align the jet with a pin and cocktail stick! I've also checked water flow from the tubes and that seems consistent on both sides. I'm probably looking at replacing them with new versions of the same type but is there a washer jet from a later model IS that fits but has a different spray pattern, does anyone know? There is pretty much nothing on ebay and the one IS for breaking that I saw had already had the washer jets removed!

My first Japanese car - Lexus IS 250 SE-L in Brechin Slate, 71K miles, 3 owners on a 55 plate. Extremely good condition, refurbed alloys and not a stonechip that I could find on the front end. Have detailed the boot and interior (front) so far and cut and polished woodwork; rear at the weekend and under bonnet - not much to do - and then proper exterior wash, clay (if needed), polish and wax. Of course that depends on the weather in Lincolnshire cooperating. We've had sun nearly all this week so when I want to wash the car it's bound to rain. Anyway, some amusing reading - my car history to date: Morris Ital - my first car, from my uncle who worked at BL. At just over 3 years old when I got it, it was already pre-rusted.Opel Manta - in... GOLD!!! Talk about bling in the 1980s!Jensen Interceptor - stunning car - about two lamp posts to the gallon and was costing me £5 a day to commute 20 miles in 1987! Shame when the auto box died - would only drive in reverse! Ford Capris - black 2.0S; beige 3.0S - whatever possessed me?! - then two blue 2.8i models. Lovely but one was nicked and used to hold up a petrol station in Leighton Buzzard. The police found it before I had realised it was gone - minus alloys - which they recovered from a barn near Luton six months later. Got alloys back, shame no car!Porsche 924 - nice in blue, mingy brown upholstery and intermittent horn which cost me two MoT failures! Oh, and the pop-up lights generously melted the switch with the result that occasionally one would pop up and wink. Not a lot of night driving done there...Fiesta XR2 - nice but within a week it was half-inched by some chavs in the so-called respectable town of Berkhamsted. Reported it, claimed insurance, never heard anything more.Vauxhall Cavalier Convertible - Harsh drive - maybe just my particular car - roof didn't leak much... honest! Nice with top down, couldn't see out of back window when hood up.Daimler Vanden Plas - Gorgeous sage green with cream leather, healthy appetite for 4-star (in those days!) and only offloaded this beauty when inboard rear brakes proved too much for me. Ford Granada Scorpio - couple of these - both in dark green, lack of imagination or what? - both comfortable and swift. Both autoboxes died... not much luck here with autos!Jaguar 3.2S - lovely shade of Kingfisher. Added numerous original Jaguar options and had all leather out and refinished. Boot carpet better than those in the house! Sold for £300 profit! Ford Cougar V6 - Kept for 5 years - longest period of ownership - in mint condition, never been through car wash (no swirls or scratches), rarely taken into a public car park unless early morning or dead of night to avoid rampaging trolleys and careless door-openers. Fabulous drive and performance, only thing missing was the comfort of the Granada's "armchairs". After than an Omega 3.0 Elite - more of a stopgap than anything else. Comfortable but a barge to maneuver and park. Went back to another V6 Cougar after that and only reluctantly got rid of that when it appeared that the head gasket was on the way out. Not quite as nice as the previous Cougar, and that always niggled me. That was replaced by a very swift - but lairy - Volvo S60 T5 in Maya Yellow Pearl! Lovely car, VERY quick with manual box and only reluctantly traded in when starting to exhibit electronic gremlins. Replaced with a Chrysler 300C CRD that had been pimped - removed a lot of that back to stock - but for a diesel, badly uneconomical and parking a pain. Did a lot of walking in car parks as it was usually left at the furthest possible point from the shops to avoid trolley dents and door dings. Then had a new shape S60 T4 but never really bonded with that as I had to buy a car (any car) in a hurry for work and it was black. Hated cleaning it as it invariably gathered dust by the following day and the previous owner obviously had a season ticket at the local car wash as it was swirled to death. Didn't want to spend money correcting that so offloaded the car. After that spent a few months researching suitable options - the usual German candidates - but many were pricey and finding the right options was a nightmare. People pay all that money for, say, a BMW 7 series and they're too tight to put heated seats on the options list?! Anyway, Lexus cropped up on my AutoTrader/eBay list of watched items and after deciding that the LS was something you didn't park but had to dock, left that off. Went to see a GS450H on which the batteries (hybrid AND regular) had been allowed to go flat by a well-known dealership chain. It was more the dealership that put me off that particular car but they were proving pricey (i.e. hold their value well) and the GS300s more often than not fell into the punitive £500+ road tax bracket. Hence looking at the smaller, nimble and extremely well-equipped IS series. Once I've cleaned and polished I'll hopefully have time to put pictures up in another thread. Hoping Brechin Slate polishes up well as there's tons of metal flake in it!