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Absolutely I’ve since blacked the grill which is much better (just not a decent pic of that yet) Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Just A few Pics of the Lexus I am quite pleased really

And some fun pictures of the car:

It's certainly something I'll contemplate if/when sections need attention. I've had three full stainless steel systems on various older Japanese cars where it's been more cost-effective to do that than find replacement mild steel stuff (if they've even been available).

Update... I hope. Borrowed a reader from a colleague. The 1 code mentioned a Knock sensor. P0330 I think ... Car was still driving but in limp mode I think. ( Never happened to me before...! ) Having 'researched' on the internet, I tried a 'reset' by disconnecting the battery for a few minutes. Reconnected the battery ( found the battery strap that secures it very loose. ). No amber warning lights. Driving normally. On its first re-start I need to hold the throttle pedal down as it idled, but having now driven about 30 miles, it's all back to normal. Fingers crossed it is. Why? I DID go through a large flooded puddle too fast. Water ingress? Don't know. So fingers crossed. Limpness gone.

I had a day with a ES FSport Takumi pack yesterday whilst my IS was in having work done. Here are my thoughts, compared to my IS FSport Premier Pack MY17. Pros - Ride improved (19"s with AVS) compared to my IS (18"s with AVS) very smooth, noticeably so despite bigger wheels. NVH improvement too, road noise and tyre roar another step lower (was running Bridgestone tyres) and wind noise not really an issue, though there was some from the sunroof, which shutting the blind helped with. Braking feel is better, much more progressive, though can snatch a bit still. Seats are even more comfortable than those in my IS, supportive and pillowy soft. Amazing amount of leg room front and back, even with the front seats set right back. Despite being larger, it seemed easier to place on the road and to manoeuvre, which I put down to the design. In the IS you sit quite close to the centerline of the cabin and there is quite a wide door trim, then the outside of the door curves out and then the wheel wells sit out again. In the ES this is much less, so the wheels sit where you expect them to be based on what you can see and perceive out of the cabin. FSport dial stays in the position you select, doesn't reset every time you turn off! One of a number of things I wish my IS did. Can see actual tyre pressures! Another one I wish my IS did. ECO mode auto glide control makes progress and economy easy. Proper indicators and wiper stalks that physically move and return, rather than the one-touch ones on the IS. Cruise control buttons on the steering wheel now rather than the odd stalk at the 4pm position on the IS. HUD - weird, my first one I've used, but pretty good and found more and more things it showed up, like volume adjustment on radio, track listing on stereo etc. Easy to read and not too distracting . Though it shows the RPM meter which seems a bit of a waste, not sure if that can be changed. Kick sensor for the boot opening worked fine, you didn't have to stand and waggle dance to get it to work! Auto handbrake works well and is a good step forward from the foot brake in the IS. Climate auto options are good, including switching between outside/inside air, auto heated seats and even turning off the passenger temp control when no one in the seat. Parking sensors come on automatically and you can mute them with the OK button on the steering wheel if you get a bit close to the car in front in queue or at a McDonald drive through! Much easier than turning them off and forgetting in the IS. Cons - Performance is a bit anodyne. It picks up speed fine, but it is a complete non event. In the IS on full throttle in sport mode, you get the sensation of a mild push in the lower back, in the ES, nothing. There is no "Kick-down" point in the throttle travel ,which isn't really a con I guess and no fake engine note or control either. I tried the paddles and S+ mode too, but no fun to be had at all, something I can't say about my IS. Those who say you can't tell the difference front wheel drive to rear wheel drive, I'd say you definitely can. No mistake. Hustling the car along a B road, it is clear that is not its primary strength. Running at 70mph on the motorway or creeping through town is IMO. It is definitely a wafting car and it does that very well. Even with the AVS and sporting suspension improvements, I didn't find anything to suggest it should have an FSport badge. If it wasn't for the horrible "Wood" trim on the steering wheel in the ES and Takumi trims, I'd be going for those. Tried the Hold button to see what it did - what a pain in the backside, turned it off again after 2 junctions. Can't see the reason why anyone would want to use it! Equivalent specs between this ES FSport Takumi pack and my IS FSport Premier Pack, yet some glaring things missing. No ventilated seats, no leather trim (its fake leather), no Blind spot monitoring or rear traffic crossing alerting (only std on Takumi or with pack on ES, not available for some reason on the FSport even with Takumi pack). Additions were heated steering wheel, HUD, rear sun blind, card key and adaptive headlights. HUD and headlights the only things I could say I want. The extra safety equipment and real leather is unforgivable and smacks of price engineering to get it to a reasonable pricing level. Visibility out I found a problem from my driving position, as the B pillar and seat is just at the wrong position to see out of junctions etc. Rearwards visibility is pretty poor too over C pillars. Also the door mirrors seem very small in area compared to the IS. Rear view camera - don't know what Lexus are smoking, but I almost crashed it in the dealer car park trying to use it. For those who haven't seen it, it is now a fisheye lens and looks like it is about 0.5MP resolution from 2001. It only uses the centre portion of the lovely 12" screen too. So trying to place the car I found extremely difficult compared to the higher res wide angle one in the IS, as the corners are all rolled out in the image and the centre is all distorted. Just weird and wrong. Despite the seats being very comfy, i did struggle to get a good position. I thought I sat quite high in the car, despite the seat being all the way down. And I couldn't get the steering wheel to come towards me far enough. Head room with the sunroof is OK, but nothing more. In the rear loads of leg room, but little head room for anyone more than 5-11. Boot aperture for loading is no bigger or different i found to the IS and basically the boot being roughly similar volume and with no back seat drop, it is less practical overall, despite being far larger. I think they should have made it a hatch/fastback. the profile suits it, the C pillars are thick enough and the usability would have improved 100%. Overall its a fine car, but I won't be buying one. It's no fun when you want it to be, isn't practical enough for me and doesn't move on enough (in some cases steps back) from my IS. Search continues........

Not sure if anyone's into BMW's here but just got this at a very reasonable price,already got the full drivetrain package to swap it into M3 evolution spec with a 43000 mile engine! I'll be working on it most Sundays so can see it being a long project,I've got a thing for fast saloon cars and estates so this fits in with the ISF perfectly.

I had the message "System fault" with flashing tyre, and red exclamation mark appear today. Checking with Techstream produced D3 tyre sensor faulty with it's code number. The other three tyre pressures, and temperatures were shown, but this does not tell you which wheel the problem is on. With Techstream still connected I lowered the tyre pressures in each tyre noting which pressure altered (D1, D2, --, D4) marking the wheels accordingly. The tyre with the suspect transmitter was the rear NS. I had the transmitter removed by my local friendly tyre dealer, and a rubber valve put in it's place. I then went home with the offending item. Picture (1) I gently prised off the cover of the unit. This took about 30 seconds. Picture (2) Gently scraping off the soft sealant over the battery. This took about 2 minutes. Picture (3) I peeled off the tag connector. About 1 minute. Picture (4) Gently prised out the battery removing the underside tag. Again about 1 minute. Picture (5) The battery was a Panasonic BR2450 "Same as CR2450" reading 2.8 volts. Not having one of these to hand I replaced it temporarily with a CR2032 held in place with my fingers. I took it out to the car, and turned the car on. The system fault had disappeared, and was now showing a flat tyre obviously because I was holding the sensor without any air pressure. I have ordered 5 tagged BR2450 batteries at a cost of £3-22 pence. As soon as they arrive one will be soldered back to the OEM tags, and the valve refitted. The other batteries will be kept ready for failures of the other valves. The total cost per wheel with the charges from my tyre dealer for refitting, and balancing (£10) will be £10-65 pence. Plus 5 minutes work at my desk. These pressure units could easily be made with a compartment so that the batteries could be change readily, but I suppose the manufacturers are making to much profit for this to happen. John.

Hi, just information for owners. Last Saturday night my car was parked in a car park in Retford and an attempt was made to steal the catalytic converter from my car. An angle grinder was used to cut through the clips and then the front exhaust but they also cut through the pipe containing the engine cooling system. Quote from Lexus for new exhaust and catalytic converter was £3800, luckily my Lexus Independent garage managed to weld the exhaust and the coolant pipe at a cost of £336.

Hello all, I have recently purchased a 2001 GS300. This car is very much a project for me - and a venture in to Japanese cars from my principal hobby car brand of choice - BMW. I own a '98 BMW 740i which has been my main hobby to date, but have always hankered after a Lexus, from teenage years and onward. It was purchased using my usual rule of trying to find something interesting for under a grand... enter the car in question: It has pretty high miles - 184k and a complete lack of stamped service history, with the notable exception of a cambelt change at a Lexus main dealer at 160k miles. Engine oil is reasonably clean, transmission functions as intended - but I bought with my eyes well and truly open, which leads me to the discoveries... I have a pathological fear of rust, so first thing was to strip of all the sill covers and asses things down below. Here's a couple of shots of the rear jacking points as I found them: NSR: OSR: Given 17 years on the road and some likely abuse through being jacked improperly, I was happy to find that the corrosion is just surface stuff. I've hammered the pinch welds straight again, scrubbed everything down, and given the length of the affected areas a coating with POR-15 (https://www.por15.com/) and stonechip primer: I don't have pictures of the final product, but basically any grey area was covered with black stonechip - and with the colour coded sill covers on, this area isn't visible - so I'm not fussed about the difference in colour. I've scrubbed and treated all 4 jacking points onthe car, and any area on the length of the sill that looked like it was rusting. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said of the inner wheel wells, and I was able to push holes in them in the area where they meet the sill section – thankfully the rot doesn’t affect the sills– so I got the wheel wells inspected by a local underbody welder whom I trust – and repaired wherever rust was found: Looking from the hole down the sill (!): As before, the sill looks good, just the wheel wells not so much! I plan to get some waxoyl and a flexible applicator and thoroughly treat the inside of the sills once I have the car back from the body shop. I’ve also found some curious examples of previous owners/those in their employ attempting to hide faults – rather than fix them. Can you see what’s missing in this shot of the rear of the instrument cluster? Yes – the telltale bulbs for the VSC system have been removed. Putting replacement bulbs in immediately showed up that the system was deactivated and faulty, as was the ABS; I can only assume a PO did this to hide the faults and pass an MOT test. The other frustration was that the MIL light had been painted over with black nail varnish (!) – lightly removing this from the outside of the cluster (no I didn’t spot it on the test drive) of course revealed the MIL was illuminated. I’m thankful I was able to get codes using my OBDII reader – and the damage could have been worse – 2x separate lambda sensor faults. One traced to *really* poor workmanship on a presumed universal sensor installation: Fixed as (self amalgating tape added to the length of the repair afterward): That was fixed by remaking the wire joints with solder/heat shrink insulation. The other sensor needed to be replaced entirely and then the MIL light could be extinguished; an easy fix for the sake of some time with a soldering iron, and £50 for a new DENSO universal sensor. The VSC/ABS system was easily brought back to life with a trick for resetting zero point calibration using a paper clip that I found somewhere on a USA Lexus forum post – bingo, no more warnings on the dash. The plan for this car will be to give it a complete brakes and suspension renewal, and service everything I can, before making some subtle modifications. Broadly, I want to lower it, give it a slightly louder exhaust note (actually there has already been some work done as the silencer tips are not original to the car), and some nice deep dish wheels. I’ll post up my progress on here, mention any useful part numbers; if anything for my own records. I’m a keen DIY’er so largely I’ll be doing this in the garage/ driveway. First service item was to a drain/refill the ATF. I use a suction/syphon drain and got some Type 4 ATF from Toyota: Coming from BMWs it was great to have a dipstick to work with. Fluid removed was dark, but didn’t smell burned; I think I managed to put about 4 litres of fluid in to the box – definitely I put in more than I removed so I think the box was lower on fluid level than it should have been. I’ve also put a new radiator on the car, as the plastic cores on the old part appeared very brown and mottled – like you could touch them and they’d spring a leak. New part from Ad-Rad.co.uk, delivered next day – made by Koyorad; fitted in under an hour: Next up will be to replace the rocker cover gaskets, as there’s a fair old oil leak from the top of the engine. I’ll post on that when I have the car back from the body shop. I'm hoping this car will be some fun to work on - and broadly speaking a valuable learning experience on a vehicle that isn't German/ a Land Rover! Thanks, John

Had a good look around a lovely metallic Green with cream leather UX Takumi spec in Lexus Newcastle showroom this afternoon. Paint was lovely, cream leather a nightmare to keep clean for me. Nice to see the final production ones in the flesh, not too different to the pre-production ones seen last year. Boot probably still too small for me, but interested in how it drives. Test drives offered from next weekend.

I had a damaged wheel which I had replaced today with another, 2nd hand but better one sourced from eBay. It came with the TPMS sensor still attached and Lexus have swapped it for me as easier than recoding the sensor to the car. So I now have a spare sensor and a spare wheel! In case anyone was curious what they looked like or details on them, here it is. Looks completely non serviceable. Battery is sealed in.

Sub done. Working and sounds awesome. I actually had to turn the bass down one notch as it's actually a bit more efficient than the OEM sub. I had to cut away some of the plastic on the U pieces where the screws go through, and also had to grind away a bit of the rim of the speaker to be able to get the screws in to fit it all back together. Added some new draught excluder to finish the job off right. Both coils are wired in series giving 16ohm (measured with multimeter at 12.7ohm) so matches what the ML amp is expecting. Am very happy with that, but less happy with my parking sensor. I have one sensor that is duff (front left) but after an hour of faff getting it out and replacing it with a new one, still the same. It may be the next sensor in that is duff but that will need the whole damned bumper off so to that.

Intermittent electrical faults are the worst. The basics for me would be to check all the earth points. You've already checked the wiring around the ECU housing. How do the solder joints look on the ECU? I'd also check the wiring around the alternator and put one of those volt meters in the cigarette lighter and see if you have steady voltage whilst driving. I'd also examine the battery connectors for loose wires/ corrosion. Finally, I'd test voltage at the battery when cranking cold. Could be low voltage in a start from cold causing an ECU glitch.

Hope it's not because of the puddle because that means a likely exposed wire. I think the knock sensors are pretty hard to access on your engine so not easy to check connectors. I'd still do a bit more with the fuel filler cap. A clean around the filler neck can help too. Do check the rubber seal ring inside the cap as well. You never know.. Just be extra careful not to drop any dirt down the filler pipe. Hope it stays away. Gave me a scare when the dash lights lit up on my first real motorway run after buying the RX.

Are you certain it's a cat? What error code do you have? An oxygen sensor failure can also bring up cat inefficiency. Failing that, give Paul Frost a call, I'm sure he'll sort you out.

@Steve44 - Good review and matches some of my feelings after spending a day with an ES. For me, it's even harder to justify it as a replacement for a GS.

Changing the batteries in the sensors is easy with a little care. Fitting the battery with the wrong polarity is possibly the only thing you can do wrong. Even this is not catastrophic as fitting your 12 volt battery wrongly would be. Being able to handle a soldering iron is also useful. Having tried the swap to rubber valves after removing the sensors I had no problems with wheel balance vibration "the weight difference is minimal". As you say though this is only for a short period perhaps over a week end the thing is to make sure you have the new batteries ready to fit in the sensors. John.

Standard rubber valves can be fitted "if required" while you service the sensors allowing continued use of the car. The tyres do not need to be removed from the wheels to change the valves. Pressing the tyre outer wall from the rim on a tyre removal machine gives enough room to remove the sensors after undoing the outer holding nut. A rubber valve can the be fitted, and the tyre re-inflated. This means the tyre is not rotated on the rim, and does not need balancing. My local tyre fitter was happy to do this for £5 per tyre including re-fitting the sensors after battery replacement For those with cars over about 6 years old it would seem prudent to replace the batteries in the sensors when having new tyres fitted "initially fitting rubber valves to allow time for servicing the sensors". I am sure if asked most tyre fitters would be happy to then refit the sensors when serviced free of charge having sold you new tyres. John.

Unfortunately the first step with warning lamps is normally to check the logged fault codes and go from there so without an ODB reader it's a bit of a guess for the average DIY'er. Still well worth your time casting your eye around the engine bay wiring and components in case something is visually suspect. Hope fully it's something obvious (and cheap!) In some cases I think the VSC is tripped if the engine throws a fault so it should just be one initial fault rather than two separate issues.

Yes our site is lexuspartsdirect.co.uk if you send an enquiry on the site they will look up everything for you aswell.

Put a cardboard box/traffic cone/empty bucket (or something else that won't damage the car) on the driveway, and reverse up to it to the point where the red line on the display appears to be touching said object then get out and measure how far the car still has to travel before actually touching it. Alternatively, if you find it difficult to judge inches, get someone to tell you the moment you actually make contact and look at the screen to see how far beyond the red line you've gone. Either way, you'll soon get used to judging the point where you need to stop.

A bit too far south(west) for me unfortunately. In other news, I learnt where Wiltshire is.

£3800?!? Now I know why the dealer didn't want to replace the damaged one on the 2014 Advance I recently bought then exchanged........ Well done on getting it sorted for rather less, but sorry to hear you've had to go through this.

My neighbour had some cretin steal the catalytic converter of his 2002 Honda Civic a few months ago whist parked on his drive

This is the user manual I have........ https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/Lexus-Rx300-350-400h-LPA-800-Parking-Aid-Genuine-Pz464-k0425-00-Pz464-00421-ab/1515839625

Love it. Started track days with an E36 compact 2.5 swap, moved that on but always loved an E36 and estates so this is lovely. Have a 3.0H6 Legacy Wagon sat next to the ISF now Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Here are some hopefully better pictures of my refurbished wheels taken today. As rayaans pointed out the strip at the front of the car matches nicely.

Hang on, two minutes.......... ........... yep, enable/disable the front parking sensors. That solves that problem, I noticed the front parking sensors on the Autotrader picture before I bought it. Didn't realise that it was a dealer fitted option.

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/car-chat/898106-2019-lexus-rc-facelift.html

Sorry to hear it. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

iPod/iPhone use with system over USB isn't a bed of roses either. Frequently get "Getting data from device......" when trying to skip tracks and doesn't move on. Can be listening to a playlist happily, then turn car off, come back, iPod/iPhone defaults back to 1st track on device. Podcast listening can hang the iPhone or the media system requiring disconnection and reboot. Bluetooth is better form the phone, seems more reliable and not a big difference in quality, I also get the track restarts thing on Bluetooth. device is iPhone XS.

Not had this issue, sometimes there can be problems with larger USB sticks and I think they have to be formatted FAT32. I play music via Bluetooth from my phone. I have recently noticed that if I listen to music at home and stop half way through a track, in the car it will restart from the beginning of the track.

Mine has 113500 miles and it’s running well touch wood. Not sure if it makes a difference but since I have had my 2008 IS220d SE Multimedia i have always used shell vpower.

And some more pics - with kind permission from Lexus Liverpool for use of the forecourt. Sent from my SM-N960F using Tapatalk

Just had to post a couple of pictures to show present state of the car - clearly quite a jump on from last post, but lots has taken place and I need to find the time to update this thread! Sent from my SM-N960F using Tapatalk

That is not the way to do it. My car is at 1/2 tank now and I have done 230 miles - does it make it 35MPG?! No... it is around 23 actually. I know that with remaining "half" of tank I will be able to do 70 miles. What I found with IS (250 at least). First half of tank is ~75%, 3rd quarter is another 20% and last quarter is remaining 5% up until it says 0 miles range left. From there you can still make 30miles on reserve. What you need to do is to do it brim to brim, not necessary to do full tank, but it needs to be full to begin with. Fill it until it clicks, check the mileage or reset the trip, drive until you feel like refuelling, fill again until it clicks and see how much fuel you put in. That is going to 99.9% correct to what you used. Then check how many miles you did and that gives your actual accurate MPG. In terms of expensive fixes for IS220d they are well known and I would not associate them with mileage of the car. Actually, if the car has higher mileage because it spent most life on motorway you might be better off. The problem with IS220d and most of diesels is short journeys in the cities... If you find 12 years old IS220d with 50k miles - that is going to be money pit. Turbos, gaskets, ERGs, DPFs, Injectors, 5th Injector, Clutch and flywheel.... not only it could go wrong, there are plenty of thread of it going wrong. However, as said before it is not really a mileage thing, it is the way car was used - city and short journeys = dead. Looking into you travel I am not surprised you are fine (same was the case for @Shahpor) - doing 60 miles in a day and most of it on motorway gets your engine etc. up to temp and you should not get into most of the IS220d related issues. Although 32mpg is rather low for the journey which is mostly on motorway - even I in IS250 could achieve that (or at least I could before), I woudl expect your MPG to be higher. Well that is unless last 5 miles in the city are very very congested.

The solution to the corrosion on the rear knuckles? I simply purchsed parts from a 2005 car that was broken for spares ... in Texas! The parts & shipping were £280 - almost exactly what lexus wanted for one park brake backing plate alone! For that, I got 2x complete rust-free rear knuckles with 60k miles less distance on the rear bearings and what appear to be recently replaced rear ball joints pressed in to the knuckles. Condition on arrival: Backing plate edges got a bit clobbered during shipping - but bent back in to shape easily. There's not a spot of rust on the fittings and you can see the bracket in place under the parking brake cable. The knuckles are easily changed presuming your driveshafts cooperate. I had to use a hub puller on one side to get the driveshaft out the hub - other side cooperated nicely. I did have to use a picke fork on the ball joints on the top arms up in the wheel arch - luckily I had spare boots to put back on the arms, and those upper arm ball joints are still good - so I just cleaned them out of old grease and packed them with new lithium grease. Mounted to the car with a fresh lick of paint, these now really look the part: Yes - I know I won't see the rear face of the plates behind the discs - but to know they're rust free and clean - as if off a southern american state car - that's pretty cool! I've replaced the parking brake cables for new items - but the seller did send their parking brake cables - and they look in very good condition - given the atmosphere they were in of course. If anyone needs a very good condition set of used park brake cables, you can have the ones that were sent from USA - free of charge; just cover the shipping - please PM me. My new items were, again, First Line items: Fitting the park brake cables was self explanatory - but not much fun, as you're directly under the car to get at the connections at the driver's end so to speak. This would be fine if the car was on a lift, but under jacks and jack stands - it was uncomfortable... I was glad when it was done shall we say!

That, sir, is ____ing gorgeous. My favourite colour! The tailpipes aren't my thing, but that is a beauty. Hope you don't mind the off-topic soujourn in to BMW land... This was my dad's. 1996 in Calypso red, but with the 4.4 and 5-speed: Rear comfort seat package on the LWB was great - recline and 4-way lumbar, and so much legroom. I sold the car in summer of 2017 after he died, these are the pictures from after I'd prepped it for sale.