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Well, in anticipation of the creation of a giant 'F' section of the forum, and as a previous ISF owner; I thought I'd leave this here: I’ve gone and bought a GSF! I’d had my ISF for around two and a half years and after sorting out what was, in my opinion, a hilariously firm OEM suspension setup, it was smooth sailing all the way. I loved that car – great looks, biblical noise (thanks, H&S) and a real Jekyll and Hyde personality. The last bit was so important to me as the old ‘race car for the road’ adage gets pretty uncomfortable and wearing on a daily driver. I’d covered 12,000 miles, taken it to Le Mans, done a Silverstone track day and on one occasion discovered the speed limiter – yes, there is one and yes, it’s around 170mph… The trouble is, just after it was launched, my local Hedge End dealer had a black GSF in the showroom and ever since I’d sat in it – I’d wanted one. I’ll stop the preamble now with – I caved eventually; it’s around 16months old, it was previously owned by the area manager for Lexus, travelling the South West, and it has 17,500miles on the clock. What’s it like in the cabin? I’ll start with the seats – they are a vastly improved over the ISF, which weren’t bad at all! – they’re heated and ventilated. There’s a cornucopia of materials used all over the dashboard etc, which displeases some people. I like it. I love the alcantara topped dash, the bespoke clock and the carbon fibre detailing. There is a bewildering array of settings, both for the radio/sat nav and the dashboard hidden within menus and submenus, but thankfully the basic controls are simple and easy to use. The Mark Levinson stereo (is it still a stereo if it has a dozen speakers?) is excellent and Bluetooth integration is seamless. The screen is over a foot wide and makes the satnav look spectacular, where post code lookup is available! Driving? The engine sounds different to the ISF, despite being of very similar design and the noise in the cabin is a bit more aggressive on cold start. The rev limit is now 7300rpm and the gearbox seems identical to the ISF with slightly smoother shifts. There are 4 drive modes – eco, normal, sport and sport+. These progressively quicken gear changes, firm up the steering, sharpen throttle response and change the behaviour of the torque-vectoring differential (which I believe acts more like a traditional LSD than the e-diff on the early ISFs, which applied the brakes to the wheel struggling for grip). Sport and sport+ also introduce more engine noise to the cabin through first the rear speakers, then the fronts as well in sport+. The brakes are exceptional – grooved discs now rather than drilled. On the move, the ride is slightly softer but definitely more composed, and the car feels a lot more grown up over my local potholed roads. It’s bigger than the ISF (obviously) and more powerful, but I would guess the performance to be fairly similar. Initial journeys suggest it’s slightly more economical than the ISF too, perhaps 2/3mpg better on average. Other random musings… The boot is HUGE – utterly cavernous! I love the noise it makes – the over-flowery blips on the down change are still there! The headlights are the clearest/brightest I have ever seen. The carbon rear spoiler is extremely pretty. The carbon front splitter is a magnet for stone-chips. The steering wheel is pleasantly chunky. The high build quality is obvious immediately – it’s like the thing has been hewn out of granite. A head-up display makes me feel like a fighter pilot. The previous owner ought to be horrified that this car has lost £2/mile in depreciation alone. The amount of information you can display on the dashboard is enormous – amount of torque applied to each wheel – yup, G-force – of course, lap timer – no problem! So, there we have it. It might seem like I’ve only got positive things to say*, but I liked the ISF so much, and this is essentially a newer version with everything turned up to 120%. I’ve only had the car for a couple of days, but I shall keep this thread updated every once in a while. Happy to answer any questions…. *One negative. I had real trouble getting the headlights to switch to full beam. It turns out that there are TWO auto settings for the lights. One for switching them on automatically as it gets dark, and the other for auto full beam (switching back to dipped beam in the face of oncoming traffic and a few other parameters). Human Factors obviously has a day off when they put these two switches on opposite sides of the driving position! It’s all sorted now!

oh dear, tolerance is good ....... people on here are only trying to help chill out and accept the best of intentions, it makes for a much nicer life Malc

Your Lexus is a Toyota as you know. You might need to get beyond the reception desk to get this sorted as more than often than not they've only done a course in how the coffee machine works.

Gentle - as I drove my IS-F - that was gentle. At the other end of the scale, you'll need to talk to @Mark G and @Rusty Crobar OR take a look in the mirror

You can turn the wheel to get a look at the front sensor. You can see the rear by crawling under but its a bit tight. Putting one wheel up on the kerb can help. headlight aim Headlight_aim.pdf Mark out the grid on a board. Find the two adjusters on each headlight. The one at an angle almost under the wing is the hardest to find. Use a 150mm pozi 2 extension in a battery drill on slow speed. At least that's what i did. There are a couple of useful guides on the US forum.

Dav what does gentle mean ? 🐀

@FlytvrYes it's very sad, my previous part ex offer still stands........ you know the barrow alone is hard to resist 😐

Yep can totally understand Dav .

Having bashed on about good quality non OE ok but OE better...wallet was out in preparation for Christmas hols. My brake warning lights/messages are on and I’ve the accompanying grinding. Genuine front discs and pads plus VAT and postage were £195 from Lexus Birmingham. That’s cheaper than many quality non OE parts.

Only driven it 3 times. Too early to write anything meaningful. Still find myself looking at old videos of my IS-F Here you go.

White with red interior. Dav’s favourite colour.

@Warrington guy Ah well Dave us poor builder types will just have to satisfy ourselves with one of these, what colour for you matey........ http://dc.kyosho.com/en/banner/samurai-gs-f.html/ 🐀

@mike m Oi no you just behave 😂 🐀

Very nice congrats. All this car shuffling going on is giving me itchy feet lol

I've also seen this. I've also had main dealers tell me that the warranty wouldn't be invalidated as a result of exhaust work. I appreciate that without something in writing it means nothing. On the IS-F, it was worth the risk, on the RC-F........ not so confident.

@Flytvr You could be right been laying lovely oak flooring today, they will have to pay handsomely 🤑 🐀

£5k!!!!!!!!!!

Along with a similar one on the front suspension it monitors the car's attitude and adjusts the auto leveling for the headlamps?

Fitted my tow myself which was easy, apart from the electrics, one connection is above the roof lining and it's not easy identifying the correct wires as a lot of them are white so which one do you chose. When it came to running the 12v power to the rear I just put three wires, one for the fridge power and one for the permanent 12v and the other for the sense wire, down a black plastic conduit and went from the battery to the rear under the car and cable tied it on.

I'm about to hand my IS300h Fsport back at the end of it's lease. I've done just over 49,000 miles in that time. As it's a company car I kept a complete log of every fill and journey. The main trip I do is between home in Norfolk and our offices in Milton Keynes. 86 miles each way , around 20 of which are single carriageway the rest dual carriageway. Over 3 years my average fuel consumption was 44.81 MPG. Over the last year the average was 45.26 MPG - measured using fuel used. Best was 49.9 MPG for a full tank, best for the 85 mile trip was 54.2 MPG. My driving style is to use the cruise control as much as possible usually set to around 67 MPH. The cars MPG meter consistently overstated the consumption by 10%. i.e. it says 55 MPG when it was nearer 50 MPG. A few things I've noticed. Fuel consumption is better when there is heavier traffic as the slow traffic can be done on the electric motor - but not really bad traffic as then it gets much worse as the engine runs to recharge the batteries. Premium fuel - I tried this for 2000 miles and came to the conclusion that yes, you get 5% better fuel consumption but it costs 5% more so its cost neutral. Cost - as I also log the cost of the fuel i calculated that the fuel cost per mile averaged 10.9 pence per mile over 3 years - not bad. I've now got an NX and already noticed the drop in consumption!

Very welcome David. Look forward to hearing from you guys on how you find them. I certainly felt a big difference once these were fitted. Turn in seemed more precise, and I really notice it under hard braking or pushing on through the bends. A lot less vague and woolly than the OEM setup.

A very informative article, thanks for sharing this. Ed

Thank you!

That is a ridiculous quote I've seen whole engines going for 4k, I'm pretty sure there'll be an Indy Lexus garage which would be a lot less than that it'll just be a case of finding one that's confident in working on this engine.

No air suspension on 400h. However - you guys have brought back a 3 year old post from the grave!

I would avoid air suspension even on a new car let alone an old one. In my experience it confers no advantage whatsoever and can cost £1000 a corner [there are ride height sensors as well as the strut] when it goes wrong. Have had my RX350SE four years [no air struts] and hope to drive it forever. The 350 is faster and more economical than the 300 series and has a timing chain therefore no belt to change.

There are a lot of guys in the US who remove the central resonators which is obviously quite simple and cheap. May deliver what you're looking for.

If lines for your specific model then can find the dimensions to then source from a different model? A good brake supplier might be able to look into this for you. I've fitted braided lines to a couple of cars and barely felt any improvement. Long term it doesn't seem that they are a good option for a daily either, take a look at this;

Hey Big Rat, Indeed, my running costs will hardly change, may get an additional oil change each year for added peace of mind, but otherwise it’s bus as usual. The mechanical LSD and bigger wheels and tyres will certainly help get the power down, something this colder weather is highlighting as a weakness at present! The supercharger itself is only running at 0.5bar boost, hardly anything in other words. The added oil and gearbox coolers are keeping operating temperatures nice and low, so won’t have issues there either. Acceleration from around 70mph is incredible, honestly don’t think many cars would keep up. The fact my boost is instant versus the turbo cars means you just take off, literally! Lol.

Got the Car back from the body shop and they have done a remarkable job of the paintwork cant see any mismatch its just like new I am well pleased with the work