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Hi All,

Ok I am a newbie to this site as my misses has now picked up her new lexus and she is like a kid with a new toy haha. I have always done my own work , currently my own car is a rover 600 which I fitted a prelude 2.2 vetc engine to so I know my way round an engine bay and pretty good twirling the old spanners lol so as I will be doing all the work and some of the driving (I hope) I guess I best introduce myself (jules) and hello to all

Ok we picked up the misses car the other day , earlier that originally invisage but her old rover 200 went terminal so needs be needs must. Anyway we have had the car now 2 days and last nite was the 1st opertunity we both had to got thru the car with a fine tooth pick. Obviously we checked the basics when we got the car but were were rushin round to sort stuff out so couldnt spend to loong looking over her.

Anyway before I forget the car is a "T" reg lexus is200 sport and has 117k on the clocks.

Ok to date this is what I have found so far .

1. Water in the boot, 2 inchs deep and was solid as it had turned to ice. Had a good look on the foroum and there was nothing conclusive to confirm if there is a common place were the water gets in.. Topics have mentioned boot seal,sunroof drain offs etc so when its daylight I will go thru these to see if we have any blockages etc . conclusion- will have a look on the weekend unless some one can give nme a difinative answer.

2.Petrol flap wouldnt lock properly, you had to lean against it to lock, conclusion - a sharp knife took the edge off the plastic locator for the stricker pin and now it works just by gently shutting it.

3. Gear knob scuffed and worn, guess I ewill have to get a replacemnt from the scrappy , does it just unscrew???

4. Head unit is the older version with the cd at the bottom. Omg it still works but it is very sensitive. When you go over any bumps in the road the cd stops and then restarts but so far works fine when its running so fingers crossed on that one . I am going to have to say this for lexus thou, most oem headunits are horrible but the lexus set is actually very very good . I have a kenwood modulator that attaches itself inline with the ariel feed so if the lexus cd fails I may just use the kenwood modulator as it allows for 10 disck multichange, aux in, and usb memeory stick to be pumped in thru the ariel feed and to a pretuned radio sation.

5. Ok I think the rear speakers have bin "pumped up" and are crackling ok not the end of the world but can someone please answer me this. What make are they supposed to be as there are sonys in there atm???? and they have 4 wires which appear to be the norm, did lexus use sony?????

6. Squeaky clutch pedal, misses has mentioned that its becoming annoying , guess this is just a lube job or should I be aware of any issues here???.

7. Wheels , well looking thru the foroum last nite with the search button well guess a rub down and lick of paint will have to suffice on that one.

8. One of the front fogs is doa pos bulb failed and drivers side headlight has condensation inside of it. Okay I will give this oven trick a go but is that the only way you can get the glass away from the housing then? Also is there any additional glue you can put with it when you reaseemble it?

9. I have hid's in my car so I will order some hb4's for the dipped beam for her as she likes my headlights.

OK now we in the engine bay. Over all not that bad actually, couple of pick isssues and possible some concerns but I mite just be being a bit anal so please for give me lol

10. Okay full lock to lock I can see the power steering pump stop starting so guess belt needs some adjustment.

11. Oil is nice and clean and has remained constant in the last two days so all good there.

12. Power steering fluid all level as is the brake/clutch fluid.

13. rad seems relatively new guess this may have been replaced as all the fins etc are all intact and the water level was full.

14. Right, Anal time , the expansion tank was empty, oh great !!! I did the search feature and tbh I know the signs to look for so had a good look round all the pipes and water pump. There is a residual sitting on top of the water pump near the bypas pipe, so will keep an eye on that over the next few days. We looked at several lexus some newer than what we finally got and they all seem to have had empty /half empty expansion tanks lol, not funny thou . Hopefully as the fluid has crystalized it may have sealed itself but will see over the next few days but as I said the rad was full to the top and the coolant was red in colour - hey what ever happened to blue coolant lol

15. The engine has been the quiestest we have heard so far , nice bonus and the tickover is nice and stable , but typical rocker cover leak .

16. Aircon works fine, no squeals or anything , fluid can be seen via the iinspection glass.

17. Tyres have plenty of tread all round inc the spare as well so they wont need replacing but one thing I noticed is that when I used the search feature, it apears that the lexus standard tracking is not up to it and that the car needs to be tracked on all four corners with companies like super tracker etc etc . There is one local to me but misses hasnt noticed anything adverse with the steering and it runs true but will keep an eye on the tyres over the next couple of months.

18. The plastics on top of the rocker cover have bin broken espeically near the oil filler, going to scrappy to find replacement parts as its unsightly.

Okay thats about it really, most of these issues are minor , car had mot the same day we bought it with 2 minors advisries, partially blocked washer jet and chip in windscreen. The two real worries for me is the coolant level , had many an experience over the last few years lol and this damn water leak in the boot as i dont do leaks .

Oh one question, does the radio have a code???? ie if I disconnect the batt will I have to enter a code to get the head unit to come back on??? If you do have to enter a code urm I dont have one , will lexus supply a code if they have proof of ownership/chassis vin etc.

Anyway sorry to go on but I have to say the misses has chose a nice car and its our 1st lexus so hopefully we will have happy motoring.

Thanks jules

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Welcome to the club Jules, :D

The water tank on both of our is200's has always been like yours, i top them up and it usually lasts a very long time? Most people dont realise that there is a seperate tank that needs to be filled, so maybe they just havnt kept it topped up over the time they have owne it??

The speakers sound like they have been changed in the past as lexus never fitted sony items?

The water in the boot sounds like the drain holes are blocked or the pipe has come off? Is the water in the side wells in the boot or in the wheel well?

On the rocker cover oil leak, check to see if the breather hoses are attached under the air filter box?

Lube the clutch pedal pivot point, did this on mine 2 years ago and hasnt squeeked since :)

The stereo doesnt have a code so you'll be ok if you remove it :)

The gear knob unscrew's and any you find in a breakers will probably be the same but depends on the last owner wearing rings so you might be better finding a nice aftermarket version?

The VVTi engine cover seems to rot over the years, mines done the same and around £60 from a dealer so breakers is a good option :)

Ohh and dont forget to put some pic's up mate :)

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The rear speakers will be crackling as the have been "upgraded". However as yours is a sport the amplifier is bi-wired for 4 speakers at the back rather than the 2 a standard 6x9 will give you, and this will be causing the crackling. You either need to get some oem ones back in or replace the headunit and bypass the amp.

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ok , hello all again, just been going thru the replies, many thanks to those who left some feed back for me to read. Guess i am going to be busy over the weekend then , but one thing that is still bugging me. Ok the coolant is the lexus long life coolant, well as i said in the post my expansion bottle was empty, well it was 10 pm last nite when i was going thu all the bits on the car so I have to admit that I had to add some Halfords coolant (blue).

have I just opened a can of worms and need to do a drain down asap or am I safe to leave it in there? I have mixed pink , green and blue coolants before with no worries but in the search of the red coolant from lexus people have expresed a bias in using the red stuff from lexus.

Some one want to put me out of my misery.

Thanks

Jules

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Welcome to LOC Jules :)

17. Tyres. Do a search for WIM (Wheels-InMotion). The OE Lexus settings are wrong and cause inner front tyre wear.

There are newer settings (courtesy of WIM's research & development) found to correct this issue and also make the

car handle, however a Supertracker machine won't do the job as the IS200 chassis is multi-adjustable, and needs a

specialised machine to set it up correctly. WIM use a Hunter Hawkeye 811 Pro Wheel Aligner which is stte of the art.

You may be sceptical, (as was I intially on joining LOC) but took the gamble tafter doing some reading as well over

300+ IS200 owners can't be wrong. The best money you will ever spend on your car, as anyone who has been WIM'd

will confirm.

Best of luck with your new car, & don't forget we like pics :D

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I've only limited knowledge on this but I believe that the Lexus coolant is important to use because it helps to prevent corrosion within the engine, it's designed also for that purpose. I have no idea what effect mixing some other coolant would have.

Like Wozza I was a bit sceptical about what sort of difference a geometry setup at WIM would have. I was absolutely amazed at what a huge, noticeable difference it made to the handling of the car. I would not have believed it if I had not experienced it for myself.

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Ok update, spent a few hours with my mate today tinkering with misse car whilst she was chilling and I managed to do a few things , some positive and negative.

1. okay power steering belt was loose, it was feeling well wholly, so upon insppection the belt was slipping on lock to lock and when cold. Okay quick tweak of the tensioning of the power steering pump and its fine now so easy fix.

2. Okay yep the rear speakers are sony but I will be honest the sound is good , plenty of clarity and bass. I dint know anyone near me who has a lexus is 200 sport so regreatbly I cannot do a comparison but in all honesty the sound is very good , better that a lot of new cars I have been in so will leave this for time being.

3. Okay, we pulled the boot apart and this isint too good. Okat you have the spare wheel well and then two small wells either side. The spare wheel well is dry as a bone. The wells either side as I said before have water in them I cleaned these out the other nite so as to allow me to see if they fill again. We had a good look around and as I was "in " the boot water was dripping on top of me. Under the parcell shelf , there was drops of water with a slow drip. This would explain why the boot carpet that sits on the spare wheel was damp I guess.

Oaky possible the rear window has a leak on the seams were it is bonded to the chasiss. has any one else had this???. Looking else were, there is silicon smeared over the rear lights , just were the plastic touches the chassis. I guess, one of the previous owners had a half hearted attempt to try and cure the leaks but obviously to no avail.

Going to have to look into this a bit further tomorrow but will have to wait and see. My mate is going to give me a hand pulling the enitre boot interior out and I get the job of laying inside it whilst he sprinkles the car with water lol. I might be barking up the wrong tree here but i have seen this before so I am finking worst atm.

I have another couple of questions but going to have a good old search before I ask.

jules

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Ok , had a good look, hmm, my question is on the gear box. Am I being so fussy here??????, misses is fine with gear changes, but the gear box feel notchy in all the gears ( to me anyway) I have no trouble selecting gears either up or down either.. Reading thru everyones posts on gear box notcyness , it seems to be some what normal. If this is the case, strange that such a quality motor has this feature, my rover has much softer gear selections so whilst its a general concensus that this is normal its still disappointing.

Guess I may just be a fussy sod

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Morning all, okay thanks for your reply about the gearbox notcyness, after much reading and searching I will just have to accept that is the way it is.

Any way after playing around sunday, I thought I would have a go at sorting out the foglight .It has filled up with water as some time and went green on the lense, not nice. Anyway, I read about heating the glass off so as both the head light and fog light seem to be suffering so I thought I would do the fog first as that would be easily replaceable if I messed up. Any way I got the fog out from the bumper, relatively easy tbh and set about getting my oven ready. Okay its gas, so I put it on a setting of "1" to start the ball rolling. Once the oven was heated I turned it down to "s" "slow" and put the fog light in there and went and had a cuppa and a bite to eat. Okay ten minutes later I got the unit out, gota be careful as its a tad hot.

Anjyway I pulled the plastic lens off with a small amount of effort and whilst it was warm I scraped all the glue out and rolled it into a ball. I had to do put the fog light assembley back in the oven a few times as the glue goes hard quite quickly so bit of perseverance and all done, the glue is removed. Any way. I then cleaned up the lens aseembly in the sink easily removing the green mould that was slowly growing at the bootom of the lens. Okay I used and air line to clear all the water off on all the parts and left it in the air to finish drying off. Ok once this was done I put the ball of glue back in the oven for 5 minutes and waited to it went very soft. I removed it and spread it out until after much going back into the oven and more teasing I ended up with a length of glue (string like) that would go round the whole assembly.

Okay Waited for the glue to go plyable and then laid it into the lens groove on the main unit and once this was done I put all the plastics back into the oven for 5-10 minutes. The units were then reteived and whilst very hot , I quickly reassembled the assembley and made sure the lens clipped to the main body. I had to give it a hard push thou as it was pushing against the glue via compression.

Any way I left it to dry for half an hour and hey presto, all sorted. Now I am good with the old tools and have many years undeerneath me but this is the 1st time I have ever done this and following the guidelines that have been posted I was quite pleased with how easy it was so there we go all done.

but I do have one question thou.

The fog light lens was slightly discoloured anyway so wasnt sure what impact the heat would do ie would it discolour it even more . The head light however bar the exception of bad condensition is nice and clear , will the heat it discolour thou, thats my worry.

Jules

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I've only limited knowledge on this but I believe that the Lexus coolant is important to use because it helps to prevent corrosion within the engine, it's designed also for that purpose. I have no idea what effect mixing some other coolant would have.

Where would one get lexus coolant from?

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The water tank on both of our is200's has always been like yours, i top them up and it usually lasts a very long time? Most people dont realise that there is a seperate tank that needs to be filled, so maybe they just havnt kept it topped up over the time they have owne it??

Spare tank? where is that? :question:

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Spare tank? where is that? :question:

I didn't realise either till someone told me. It's actually behind the radiator, you have to lean over and look behind the radiator to see it and to see the transparent section with the empty/full gauge on it.

and what goes in there water or coolant?

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