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Although our car is used daily my wife doesn't drive, so if I'm incapacitated for any reason I can see that the 12V battery may be flat before I'm able to drive again. Of course, Sod's Law dictates that it would be on a cold, rainy day and I'd have to empty the boot of all its contents or risk losing the little plastic clips if I were to remove the engine bay covers to get at that more convenient jump point, so I decided to avoid all that hassle and fit a socket in a convenient and easily accessible place in the boot. Jump leads are great if there's someone else around to provide a donor battery but that doesn't always happen, so a while ago I invested in a jump start battery pack something similar to this one but mine's an earlier model. The hybrids don't draw a lot of current on startup; you'll see from the photo below that my RX450h only draws 15.32A as opposed to the 300A+ of a traditional starter motor, which means that I can use a small, neat socket instead of something big enough to put the big crocodile clips on. I decided on a panel mount 2 pole Neutrik speakON socket and the corresponding plug. These are actually loudspeaker connectors but they're rated at 30A continuous, so plenty beefy enough to handle the current. Having chosen a location the first job was to pull out the light to make sure there was enough room behind the panel and that I wasn't going to damage anything with the drill. The wiring to the light looks dodgy but I'm just waiting for a new connector to arrive so it'll be all proper again shortly 😉 Next job was to make sure I could get the cable to the required location so I pushed a piece of old earth cable down from the top and left it in place to use as a draw wire later. Once that was in it was time to drill the hole using a step drill and test fit the socket. Next job was to get the wires into the conduit, tie the conduit on to the drawrope at the bottom and pull it up through the hole. Next was termination. My original idea was to use spade connectors but when I pushed the socket back into the hole the connectors came off, so I resorted to soldering them on instead (and forgot to take a photo of that). Next it was just a matter of routing the conduit round to the battery and using cable ties to fix it to the other conduits going across the car. Before connecting to the battery I used my Megger to check for short circuits positive to negative, positive to chassis and negative to chassis, in case anything unforseen had happened. All good, so time to connect to the battery. Finally, a test of it all and you can see the battery voltage. All I need to do now is to make up the lead with the speakON plug at one end and the Anderson SB50 connector that plugs into my jump start battery pack at the other end and, as we say up north, job's a good 'un 😊

Here's my old RX7 one of the best track day cars I've owned, 400BHP and turbine smooth. Engine re-builds were a given part of ownership but by God when it was running well it flew. Nearly bought an NSX but bought a V8 Esprit instead (bad move)

Definitely. The Japanese 90's Halo cars... R3x GTR Supra RX7 GTO & NSX Those were the days, although my experience of them at the time was on the original Gran Turismo on the PS1 🙂

When I were a boy and the roads were still clogged up with horses, the dipping control was to the left of the clutch pedal. It meant that at speed and at night (conditions when you really need to be in full control) you could dip or un-dip headlights by a simple foot press without having to use your hands. Now that automatics are so common, it would be sensible to re-introduce this .

Why? Lexus have had lukewarm reviews from the motoring press for ever. But we know better don't we? In a nutshell.

Dear Esteemed Peers, I have returned once more to the fold. I left when I sold M420HPC (Gary Lineker's old motor) and I sulked, moped and rued the day I sold it. I have another one, it hasn't quite the charm of the first but then it didn't cost £500 and I haven't V-maxed it on a french dual carriageway yet. It is all the things the old one was and more (some is good, some bad). It is brisker. It is better nailed together. The brakes aren't wobbly and by heck are they strong. It is rustier. It has brighter lights. It has touch screen satnav. However, in essence it is still the same fun car the old one was. The rust I am having sorted before it becomes a true pig. The inner rear arches are (I now know) prone to tin-mice and this one has had it bad. Paying someone to chase all the rust away, fabricate new panels, weld through primer everything he can reach behind the rust, weld the new panels in/on, seam seal, paint and then underseal. That will be the biggie done. I hit a pheasant at close to 3 figures on a private road the pther day and that obliterated a xenon headlight. £30 later, I had a spare one from ebay. I ran the restorer pads and compounds over it and it is as new. Will self-service it from here on. Won't be using it till the rust is treated but I am please to be back. Best, F

Hi all, This Sunday just gone I took a 500 mile round trip to Liverpool from Kent to view the F Sport attached in the photos. The road test was awesome and it has ML which totally blew me away when I cranked it up. I love the Fuji red and the options it has are bang on. I have been looking for the right package within my budget for about 9 months!! Of course it was a no brainer and I duly put a deposit on it and I will get the train back up to collect it on Saturday week. To say I am quite excited is an understatement, there are a few little cosmetic bits that will be done before collection as part of the deal. The sales guy, Richard, was great to deal with, no pressure sales and pretty much left me and the missus to it as we went over the car. He did say the previous owner was quite active on here. Not sure what his name is as I didn't take notice on the log book but the car was from the the Birmingham/Coventry area and Brighton prior to that from new. I was the proud owner of a mint 2001 IS200 that I had for almost 12 years but that finally threw in the towel Christmas 2017 with almost a quarter of a million miles on the clock with only a clutch being the most major thing replaced in the time I had it. The engine finally developed a fault which became too expensive to sort so it went to the great scrap yard in the sky..... sad times!! Fast forward to January 2019 and now I have the 300h as I am so so pleased with the reliabiity of the Lexus brand and I am looking forward to many miles of fun. I'm sure I will be lurking around on here as, no doubt, there will be questions I will have. Thanks for having me!! 😃 Cheers, Lee

I really don't want to show any discourtesy, but honestly, you'd have to be bonkers to consider a rebuild of this wreck/write-off except in purely theoretical terms. You wouldn't be able to resell it, insurance would be nuts expensive, safety of the shell/structure questionable, not taking into account the cost of a rebuild and getting engineering sign-off for it being roadworthy. Why??? Sorry mate, my candid tuppence worth.

Hi Vlad, Sorry to jump on your post, but I have to disagree with your quote here " Out pulls the RX on any revs" I am sure it makes more noise and that is why you think it is faster than the RX450h. Last week we had someone who could not see our RX450h and tried to park on our spot. My wife was in the car and the RX450h needed to go for a small scratch repair on the rear door. Churchill out insurance company surprised us with a up market curtsey car like this one : https://www.topgear.com/car-reviews/land-rover/discovery-sport/20-sd4-240-hse-5dr-auto/spec Very fast car my wife was saying( she drives the RX450h ) and I went to try how fast it is. Apart from very noisy diesel and turbo I did not find it faster than the RX450h. Our Lexus was ready after 3 days and my wife could not wait to get in the Lexus. We had the Discovery Sport for two extra days together with the Lexus and I can assure you, there were many tests between the two cars and even when my wife was in the Lexus, I could not beat it. I am almost sure if you have someone with Lexus RX450h near you, you can see how much faster it would be compare to the Mondeo. I know the speed is not that important, but this is something which is in abundance in the RX450h, especially the acceleration from standing still, how smooth it is and quiet and refined ( you can not hear the engine screaming inside the car even ) I can only agree with you on the economy. The ford will be more economical. I hope you have a trouble free motoring and watch out for RX450h on the traffic lights, they are very quick just over 7 seconds to 62 miles. The fastest Mondeo diesel with 207 bhp engine will need 7.9 seconds and a lot of engine screaming and noise to go to 62 miles

That's just a ferrite magnet Herbie which lessens the risk of EMI interference on things like DAB radio from the power cord.

Hey thanks. Sounds like the second quote might be fairly reasonable then given that the arms alone cost over £500 and it includes geometry.

Luckily, because of your posts Stuart and others on the USA Lex forum, I was well prepped to find the hidden glovebox nut and then give it a good pull to remove it. I agree... I was nervous about buying those ECU caps kits on ebay as I was aware of there being fakes around from the USA thread, indeed, I started a thread on here asking if anyone knew about the seller or if it was a forum member etc, but no replies, so i guess no one knew. I took a punt anyway and bought a kit. The seller on ebay is also selling some Lexus diff oil and the other items they have for sale make me think they are genuine. So I purchased a second kit of ECU caps for a 98-2000 LS just in case I changed my LS for another in the future. The second kit of ECU caps came in a small bag with some 'Digi-key' labelling which gave me comfort as this is the recommended USA outlet for buying the caps from. Lastly... I watched the guy take my ECU apart and remove the first capacitor and clean up so he knew how long it was going to take him in order to give me a quote.... he said come back in an hour, which I did, he had just finished and he had the old removed capacitors to show me. He knew his stuff and he was proud to show me his special flux which you can not buy anymore. He's obviously been doing this kind of work for decades. This was the outfit I used https://www.dieselecurepairs.co.uk/

Hi, It's those front suspension arms and bushes... they are an absolute pig to change. Even if you go for replacement arms (the easy option because the bushes need a hefty press to press them in),.... to remove the arm mounts you have to prop the engine up and drop the subframe. I've had polyurethane bushes fitted on my front arms and my mechanic said it was one of the worst jobs he's done. He propped the engine up as far as the engine mounts would allow and then undid the subframe mounting bolts until they were on their last few mm of thread. At that point he could just about remove the side engine mounts which cover the bolts holding the front arm mounts. to the subframe. The discrepancy could be due to one garage knowing you can just about get away with the skin of your teeth by doing what my mechanic did and the other garage going the whole hog and pulling the engine and/or subframe from the car and making an even bigger job of it. i.e. quoting for worst case scenario. Even doing what my mechanic did, it was the best part of a two-day job to get everything into the position he could remove the arms, remove the old bushes from the arms and fit the new ones in and then re-fit the arms. Luckily I got mates rates. :-)

Anyone interested. I have just purchased a 2005 Rx300 in excellent condition apart from severe corrosion on all wheels. Managed to negotiate a good.rebate on the purchase price because of this. Had them refurbished at Birkenhead Powder coatings at a cost of £250 for the four. An excellent job and transforms the car . I took the to them at 8.30am and it was ready at 1630pm theext day.

Should you need bushes, we offer a decent range of them for the IS250. Front control arm, lower inner bush kit is only £30

Well I'm waiting for someone like Chris Harris to test the car on track before saying anything. Lexus will have had to have done something really clever or even used black magic to get it to perform like or even better than its rivals from BMW and AMG. There are obviously potential customers out there who want a track focused car at the cost of a bit of comfort and good luck to them. Unless this car does better than its competitors I can't see who would buy one as the other two are a proven formula. From my point of view I have long held the belief that there are road cars and there are track cars. Road cars can do long journeys in comfort and are also fun along A roads when the rare opportunity arrises. Track cars have stiff suspension, sticky tyres etc etc. If I were wanting to do both and liked the RCF and was seriously considering one I am of the opinion that for the price of this car new you could buy a secondhand RCF and with the change buy a bloody good track day car. My logic is that when I first started doing track days at the dawn of time I came off on many occasions, now if you have a £20-30K track day car okay you live with it. Do it in a £70K+ car you're likely to break down and cry.

I had them on the latest model BMW mini and a spirited drive across the Yorkshire Moors nearly caused a disaster as I came out of a right hand bend with a stone wall which caused the lights to dip as I entered the unlit road beyond which of course was unfenced onto the Moor. I kept them off after that.

My little beauty a few years back.... loved it 4.0 V8 GT limited

They won't do 5. It's not German.

That was easy! I’ll send my bank details. Minimalist is sadly not on the wife’s shopping list.