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While I love the car and now understand 'lexus', and even upgraded my wife's Rav4 to an RX, Rattles seriously let it down, and are still the main annoyance that makes me want to swap the car Thought I'd share the rattles I've fixed in the hope of helping others and maybe getting some tips for the other rattles. Biggest Annoyance by far... Door seals. Took me about 18months to diagnose this, I was convinced it was the seat belt mech that was rattling. turns out it was the door seals, originally fixed this by cleaning the door seals in 'Nextzett Gummi Pflege Flege Car Rubber Stick Door Restorer'. However I have now put some felt tape around the door frame interface and achieved a perfect fix. Console Lower side panel front. This rattle sounded like it was coming from just behind the steering wheel, but the console side, right at the front of the console under the dash. I stuck some felt in this gap and the rattle has gone. Door window switches. more of a creak than a rattle, particularly on a hot day. fixed by pushing a small slither of bluetack into the gap around the bezel. Drivers side lower, knee airbag and lower trim panel. Stuffed this entire area with foam strips, not a 100% fix yet so need another go at it, but I think the source of the issue is the lower narrow panel, so going to try and build more tension in an isolate it a bit better. or maybe the airbag fixing. only rattles when cold, but it is a persistent one until the car warms up. I have another couple of rattles on the Dashboard, but have so far been unable to diagnose where they are coming from... Please note, I'm not OCD or anything, the only car I have had in the past that has had as many rattles as this car was a Rover 25! I've not been to the dealer about any as I don't have any close by... I didn't have one rattle on my last car (mazda 3), so not sure if it is because the cabin is so much better isolated and hence they are more audible / not drowned out by road / engine noise), or just been unlucky and got a poorly built one (maybe a build issue at plant and it was stripped down and rebuilt?). hope this is useful to someone.

Hey chaps, That time of the year once more and old faithful has passed yet again. Only advisory was for front tyres which I knew about beforehand. Tester commented on how clean and solid everything underneath looked (I have had the same comment every year) and the emissions barely registered. Not bad for a car that has managed 137k miles and 10 years of motoring. Lexus really do know how to build them well.

And see what they did to @Flytvr's coffee when he let on he liked cats. Lexus the pursuit of perfection... 👍

Well, I will wait to see the outcome but, as you obviously know, the LC is not a track machine. I know what I would prefer to drive on a long road trip.

Do the maths - 1. Best colour 2. Previous owner loved that car 3. FULL Lexus service history 4. Spanking new steering rack - so no need to worry about the IS-F steering rack design fault.

My old bus - probably the best silver one out there!

Shame that your first toe in the water so to speak was with ( in my opinion) the worst car that ever had the Lexus 'L' on it. shame also as if you had got the petroleum version I reckon you'd still be behind the wheel, and the bonnet hinges would Deffo had not been used as much as yours! just gotta say that my current car has got to be the best I have ever had. paul m.

Can not say i blame you. What were Lexus thinking of with these diesel engines. Will you buy a Lexus petrol or are you leaving the brand.

It is the topic... It is not me who is not Lexus target market - it is UK as a whole. The GS never sold in large number, because Lexus strategy was to be exclusive yet they pull it out of the market, because it doesn't sell. Sounds like perpetual loop for me.... FWD car never going to feel right and should have no place in Luxury market. GS250 and mk3 IS250 and 200t were just wrong engines for the wrong market - exactly what I said before. Lexus only sold subset of they selected models, which was wrong subset. If you check what models BMW sells, I am sure that is going to be by wast majority BMW 320d and 330d, because "coal" was a thing in UK for long time, BMW 525 are probably rarer then GS and BMW 325i and 330i are very niche as well. Actually, even after this "diesel gate" diesel cars still sells better than any hybrids and now with new UK laws "self charging" hybrids like 300h have no place either - well done government, by trying to cut down Co2 limits you again have shoot yourself in the foot and de-incentivised hybrids.... So the only type which still has a place are "plug-in" which Lexus does not have - well done Lexus, you have no single car which would be competitive in UK market. I am sure Lexus/Toyota has everything what it needs to release plug-in hybrids in UK, but by now market is too small for them to care. In summary Lexus has not single car in their line-up which is right for UK market: 300h and 200h meant to be boring compliance vehicles, but are no longer compliance with current tax law, 450h is actually great engine, but lacks suitable body ... like RC. And whereas in US it is considered as "green option" and is cool in UK we have different attitude. And then there are F-Marque and LC - all great cars, but no brand can survive on "halo" cars alone (Lexus, not exactly Maserati, or Porsche - even those to doing better with diesel options). So as I said before, either Lexus starts taking this market seriously and introduce every model with engines from 1.8 to 5.0L in 0.5L increments or it will forever be niche player, which it seems to want to be and just alienates some real brand followers. My only take is that I am sad to see GS450h to go as that was the only remaining reasonable platform on offer and with it goes away any hopes of seeing some other models using this engine. Now obviously, UX throws some twist into the mix... but it is building the on wrong substance - fighting Nissan Qashqai/Juke on school runs and football mums... who have no clue what makes a good car and SUV "just feels safer". That only means bad news for any actual cars enthusiast who wants good cars... like GS450h was

I always ask "by how much" and is it actually a significant difference i.e. p-values being less than 0.05. Funnily enough they never seem to have that data

If your happy with the performance of the 320D your find the IS300H is very similar in performance with better 50-70mph performance, I did a video of our IS300H when it was new. Just don't expect it perform like a 335i or similar, the drivetrain 100% has lag, and lots of it, ruins the car for me interms of dynamic response/fun. The chassis and suspension damping is fab, but the delay in throttle response makes it almost impossible to have any real fun out of corners as you simply cannot predict when/how much power is going to be delivered. But most of the time it's not an issue, in traffic/normal driving the drive train is fine, if your just looking for acceleration performance on M-ways etc than a bit of lag isn't an issue.

My dad had three punctures in one day once! One on the way to work, got that repaired at lunch time, and then two on the way home. Having used the repaired wheel for the second puncture he had to walk 2 miles home when he got the third. Before that day he hadn't had one for many years.

That is because Lexus has fully neglected UK market. How can you expect to sell well when you only have 300h and 450h as an option... Even more importantly majority of cars like BMW 5-series are sold on company leases and generally there are 2 types of buyers - the salary sacrifice buyers who needs low Co2 and company feel buyers for high miles, so say BMW and MB are covered BMW 530e eligible for salary sacrifice, 520d for high miles. Lexus covers neither of the niches and is not popular enough for people to buy them outright. Lexus would need to do more B2B to maybe get large quantities to say executive taxis, something like GS300h SE/Luxury and they need plug-in hybrid to meet current government law rules. It think the problem is long term strategy for the market e.g. in US Lexus have overall strategy and had it since beginning, hence the one of major Luxury brand there. In UK Lexus never had any strategy, just let the dealers do some selling of subset of their line-up which Lexus deemed suitable for UK market, but consistently got it wrong. Over the time UK became too small for them to care to adapt models to UK specific requirements, yet it is too small because they never really cared to have strategy. Imagine now if BMW would only sell BMW 118d, 320d, 520d, 730d, X1 2.0d, X3 2.0d, X5 3.0d and then M5 and M4... how long they would be major brand in UK without having any line-up in the middle? In short term 520d and 730d would sell well for B2B, X5 3.0d would be ok as SUV, M4 and M5 would find some enthusiast, but in long term the lack of middle ground would drive enough customers away to destroy them as a brand. Lexus was doing that from beginning so for me it is strange that they are even still around. GS and RX 450h are last remaining reasonable Lexus models in UK, except of high end performance like GS-F and RC-F and LC. if they going to introduce FWD ES, it is going just further diminish brand until it is going to ultimately vanish from UK. GS 450h may have been a bit of unicorn, but at least it was nice to drive and something to brag about, ES is doing to be outright awful.. why not Toyota Avensis then?

Hi John It's absolutely sod's law with punctures. It reminds me of when we had a Reliant Scimitar GTE (great car, but that's another story). We had had it for several years with no punctures but then drove down to Les Arcs for a skiing holiday. Halfway down through France the driver of a car behind began flashing his lights and gesticulating pointing to the back of our car. I pulled over to find that one of our rear tyres was half flat and was rapidly deflating. Changed the wheel for the spare tyre. (A great feature of the Scimitar was that the spare was kept under the bonnet in front of the engine so no need to unload all the luggage just to change the wheel!) Carried on to Les Arcs with no further problems and parked in a multi storey carpark. A couple of days later I found a garage in the village that said they could repair the puncture so went to fetch the car only to find the other rear wheel had picked up a nail and was as flat as a pancake! Luckily I had a foot pump so inflated the tyre and drove round to the garage where they repaired both punctures. At the end of the week on the drive home the car's handling started to feel a bit strange. Would you believe a THIRD puncture!!! Not one for years then three in one week!!!!! I do miss that car, though. JBP

The battery should probably be able to cope with what you were doing, but maybe its a bit low on charge at present due to the car sitting on a forecourt for a while? The illuminated sill plates just snap into place. Just grab it near the end with the inside edge and it should pop off with a bit of force. Failing that, you could try a prying tool between the body and the flat part of the plate. If using a screwdriver, tape it up first to avoid scratches.

It may look clean but don't assume it is. You would be surprised at how quickly an air filter can clog up with invisible dirt robbing you of valuable air. Air filters cost peanuts and are easy to replace (even I can do it) Well worth changing every year I say.

The water pump replaced under warranty I am pleased to say at no cost.

I would think you'd need Techstream to do it. You can get a miniVCI cable from eBay for about £20 and it will invariably have a copy of Techstream with it but it'll be a pirate copy, so it's upto your conscience whether you use it or not. You can legally download a copy of Techstream from Toyota and pay for a licence but you'll obviously still need the miniVCI cable to connect the car to the computer anyway.

There is an transmission oil cooler, housed within the bottom of the radiator. There have been several instances where the pipe coming from the cooler separates from the body allowing coolant and fluid to mix. When the engine is running the pressure from the transmission is greater than pressure in the cooling system and the fluid will go from the transmission into the coolant - which will overflow. This isn't too bad but once the engine is turned off there is the possibility for coolant to get back into the transmission. So you have a choice, spend £100 every 10 years on a new rad or run the risk of needing a new £3,000 transmission. This design is common on nearly all Toyota vehicles with an automatic transmission, however the LS430 seems to suffer more than most. Possibly vibration, tension on the pipes or something else, but either the welding gives way or corrosion sets in.

Rio is my name for my LS

Would really prefer not to deal with them, there are a couple of others that are preferred options at the moment.

Having recently dealt with EH with my daughter buying a mini I could not recommend them at all. Agree entirely with rayaans comments re sales pitch. Also only 3 months warranty so would buy Lexus extended if it met the criteria.

Glad to see you guys getting on well with that. Since I changed mine and created the post about the "bug in the exhaust" everything is fine. The new Polish exhaust on my LS will be 1yr old in June. The actual boxes are made on request and welded in Poland from sheets of alluminum coated steel imported from Germany. I do actually know the owner. I didn't have to cut anything, it all fitted perfectly straight from the box, and nothing is sticking out. What might have helped though, was that I measured the old boxes best as I could and sent that to them with a ton of pictures. Just a note that my LS has the end pipe straight, as opposed to the pre 2004 that is slightly bent downwards. Btw, I will have a few more questions about other stuff such as air suspension, so I'll start a separate topic soon. Hope I could get some more info/help.

+1 for the Goodyear’s. Got them on my GS300 and performed extremely well in the recent snow and ice. I’ve had rear wheel drive Lexus before and would of got no where in the recent conditions. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It has the same setup with an oil cooler within the radiator so certainly wouldn't hurt to replace it.

@Flytvr Dav stop worrying Ive made a pone call for you..............they're specialised in plastic fires 😂 Big Rat

Not sure what the weather is like in Skegness, but it’s chucking down in the Cotswolds and I doubt I’d notice anything anyway 😢 Of course Sean, personally I would always tell the truth and you would be one of the first to know if I spot a difference in my car.

Reminds me of the reg on my goldwing. It ended in BRE. Add that to the last 3 letters in HONDA - BRENDA! Sent from my GT-N7105 using Tapatalk

Their clay is very good. Best add a small amount of car shampoo with it as you can't have enough lubricant. Go slow and steady with it and don't rub hard just keep it moving. Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

See thats where the problem lies. You should have told them you were moving and they probably would have refunded you £92 lol