mike82

A friend told me what Lexus stands for: Luxury EXports to the United States Sounds plausable. Anyone else heard of this?

Has anyone put an aftermarket leather gear surround on an IS200? If so, what make was it?

Apparently only a third of our road tax actually goes towards road maintenence. It's true that our troops are suffering the lack of money put into the kit they use, if it's not boots that melt in the desert heat, it's helicopters that cant fly at night. The armed forces are still using archaic equipment, namely their radio kit which was designed and constructed in the 1950/60's. New, modern radios are in production but is having difficulties being integrated into tanks, Land Rovers etc. I feel that our policians still have an "old boy" mentality, thinking along the lines that were trodden many decades ago, when we DID have the best transport facilites in Europe for example, but now we have been overtaken massively by the likes of France and Germany in that area. The French have the right idea when it comes to their own affairs, in which they deal with internal issues (unemployment, immigrants, homelessness) before they think of things going on around the world. (Although they have had their fair share of problems in the recent years) England needs to sort out our own problems within our country, before we galavant off to cruddy corners of the world in the name of "Peace keeping"

Here we go: 2002 - MK 1 Nissan Micra 2003 - Vauxhall Nova 2004 - MK 1 Ford Mondeo 2005 - Peugeot 205 2006 - Lexus IS200 Quite a variety in such a short time!

Not surprising considering only women in the middle east have to take driving tests, men just get a car and off they go! Its when they are coming at you on you're side of the carrageway that things get really scary!

Nice one fellas, ill be going for a rummage round the engine bay soon i think!

Im looking to run cables from the battery to the interior, for switches, amp etc. Does anyone know of easy places to feed the cables through? I dont really want to have to drill any holes.

When I bought my IS it had a hands free kit installed too. Although the cars are different, Im sure theres a common ground on stereo removal. To do mine, I had to remove the vents from above the set, and a switch panel from below. This revealed 4 screws which held the stereo cradle in. Whether this can be applied to you're car, I dont know, but it cant harm to have a look see. On another note, I just cut the wires on my handsfree kit and stashed them away inside the centre console, and there have been no issues with it.

Heh, I guess it's just one of those things! Thanks for the info. I just got to keep on top of those cleaning chores!

This may be a bit of a silly question, but here goes. Ive owned my IS200 since Feb, and only this past week or so, my front wheels are absolutly caked in brake dust, to the point where its splattered across the doors, like if I had driven though muddy puddles. I had cleaned the front wheels and calipers a month or so ago, and they stayed fairly clean until now. Im wondering if this is a sign that I need to change the brake pads? It might be a stupid question to ask, but Ive never come across such dirt buildup on wheels so quickly before, so I thought i'd put the question out to the masses....

The quick and cheap way of solving this problem is to use a device which plugs into the headphone jack on the MP3 player, and transmits on usually 4 FM frequencies. You tune your 're radio into whichever frequency has the better quality reception. http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage...oduct_Id=263200 This is an example of the kind of thing that does the job. This one plugs into the cigarette lighter, but I own and prefer the battery powered versions. The only drawback to this piece of kit is the sound quality is not quite as good as a CD is.

How much BHP gain can I expect from Turbo conversion, and a Supercharger conversion?

Jesus, dont kids have any brains?? That girl has gotta be hurt bad after that one!

It wasnt! Think we've gone a bit off topic!

Yes, but think of it comparitvley. I spent about roughly £450 to get the Induction kit and Kazama muffler from Prolex, and got about +18bhp tops. (using ad77's figures) Thats a lot of money for very little gain. Superchargers and Turbos give huge increases, but you're looking at £2,500 - £5,500 for either of those. I never said those small upgrades didnt work, they do, and every little helps, I was merely pointing out that if you want big power, you need to shell out big money. (as we are all aware of anyway) I have those mods on my motor, and did notice a difference in performance once they were fitted.