marjohn

Had mine cleaned a couple of months ago, what a difference. it was done locally through a garage arranged by Prestige car servicing, cost around £280. They had the car for a couple of days though. It's running really well at present, which after all the trouble I've had with it over the last eighteen months is great, but it only has to be good for a few more weeks, then it's adios Toyota/Lexus, .

It's quite a while since I posted anything, but I thought I'd throw my pennyworth into the mix. I bought my IS220d SE-L in 2006, new out of the box, a lovely car,what more could you ask for, and I really did like it. It had the usual stuff done under warranty, 5th injector new water pump etc. In February 2010, it had done 51000 miles, and was almost four years old when, hey presto I'm told the head gasket was leaking, fairly obvious really as the expansion tank was blowing pink foam!, I was also getting whitish smoke, not always, but on cold mornings until it warmed up. Fortunately, it was under a Lexus extended and they replaced the short block and all appeared well. As the car was four years old a few weeks later AND had just had an engine rebuild I did not extend the Lexus warranty again, but took out a Warranty Direct policy. Over the next two years, it went back to the dealer twice for smoking issues, they could find no problem and told me it was quite normal for them to smoke!! Anyway, to cut a long story short, earlier this year it went in for it's 90k service, and I informed them it was becoming a problem to start when warm, and was sometimes tricky when cold and smoked like a chimney! This they could not replicate, basically because they did not bother to get the engine warm. I then contacted WD and told them of my starting issues and smoking. With WD, you can pay more to have all work carried out at a main dealer or just use their network garages which is what I chose to do. In the car went to a local garage who did all the checks, even one of the mechs taking the car home with him to catch the problems, which he did! Further examination proved it to be low compression on cylinders 2 & 3 due to worn cylinders. Now, if that was a NEW short block that Lexus fitted in 2010 would you expect the cylinders to be worn? I emailed Lexus UK and was basically told, tough, we only guarantee parts for 12 months. To cut to the chase, a FULLY rebuilt tall engine ( that's the head and the block ) is in the process of being fitted and it's cost me £1500, less than our dear friends at Lexus would have charged and WD are picking up all of the labour costs and half of the parts, only half of the parts as the car is now seven years old, I think you can work that out, in total the repair bill will be around £5k+. My thanks to Warranty Direct. I hope to get another year out of the car after this, and then it will be chopped in. I will NEVER buy another Lexus, in fact I will never touch a Toyota either. I have tales of attempted rip-off's by another dealer and just generally shoddy standards and after-care. It's a great shame as the IS220d had so much potential, a real threat to the executive German diesels, but Toyota-Lexus really screwed it up. Years ago, I had a BMW 320 that had a problem with the aircon thermistor, there was a shortage of them said the dealer they are on back order and they would call me. after 3 weeks I had heard nothing and called the dealer, still on back order. I rang BMW and spoke to their customer services dept who told me there was no shortage. Within ten minutes of that call, the dealer was on the phone to me begging me to bring the car in that day to have the item replaced. They did not want to do it as it was a time consuming job, but BMW UK made them jump, THAT'S what I call customer service. I think Lexus should have a little latin added to their logo...'Caveat emptor'

I've had my 220d since 2006; new out of the box. It's now done 84k, and had the usual issues, including an engine rebuild at 52k. Over the last couple of years, and since it's warranty expired, I'be been seeing increasing amounts of whitish smoke as the engine temperature approached normal, and sometimes when the temp was normal. It didn't happen on every journey, bit seemed to be about every 12 miles or so, this corresponded with my daily grind through heavy traffic, rarely getting above 30. I did ask Lexus to take a look, and they tested it and could find nothing amiss, in fact commenting that it was running really well; it did, apart from the clouds of smoke! To cut to the,chase, two weeks ago I decided to clean the egr valve myself; I was shocked when Itook it off, the inlet.manifold aperture was probably less then half of what it should have been, and the egr itself had a high build-up of carbon. I cleaned this.as.best as I could, as I had forgotten to get some carb cleaner first! Result... No smoke since, and increased. Mpg by about 10%. Wish I'd done it sooner.

Hi Ahmed, What is the controller interface you fitted to start with?

My 2006 220d has just had its engine rebuilt, new short block, and various other bits. Result is that for the fist time since I had it, from new, I am now achieving decent figures. Driving in London traffic, constant stop start, it now does 35mpg, on a long motorway run, cruise control on, set at 80mph, it averages out at 43. However, whilst on the M4, running through the 50mph sections, I reset the AVG, set cruise on at 53mph (I know it was that coz I have a roadangel) flat road over a 3 mile stretch, it said 62mpg. Tank refill and calculated gave a tank distance of 570 miles. Whatever they did when they rebuilt it, Lexus should have done from the beginning, it's also a lot quieter now than it was when new. Give thanks to a decent dealer!! My 57 plate had the whole new engine thing at 55k miles and most of the other gubbins under the bonnet at various times and, as you say, was a marked improvement. However this was short lived as after the usual 5000ish miles it began misbehaving again and economy plummeted again. Lexus had it back, messed around with the turbo settings (badly) and cleaned the EGR valve again - better. Seems to me that the key to these things running properly is a clean EGR valve. Never found out if it cured it as it was sold off 4k miles later and replaced with a VAG diesel - now that is good!! Yes, we have several Audi A3's and A4's on the company fleet, they are economic. However, they have also suffered from nasty engine problems; Do some research on VAG diesels 2005 - 2006, you'll find a lot of very unhappy owners. Our's arn't that old, but we've had two with Head Gasket failures. The other thing is the IS220d's engine sounds like a bag of spanners when you start it, but quickly get's quitens down; the VAG diesel on the other hand, at least the two litre varient, continues to sound like a bag of spanners. That's not me saying that, that's the guys here who drive them. The best diesels out there are BMW's and Peugeot's, although in saying that, I had problems with a BMW 320d I had some years back, I think it was to do with EGR valve... strange thing that. :)

My 2006 220d has just had its engine rebuilt, new short block, and various other bits. Result is that for the fist time since I had it, from new, I am now achieving decent figures. Driving in London traffic, constant stop start, it now does 35mpg, on a long motorway run, cruise control on, set at 80mph, it averages out at 43. However, whilst on the M4, running through the 50mph sections, I reset the AVG, set cruise on at 53mph (I know it was that coz I have a roadangel) flat road over a 3 mile stretch, it said 62mpg. Tank refill and calculated gave a tank distance of 570 miles. Whatever they did when they rebuilt it, Lexus should have done from the beginning, it's also a lot quieter now than it was when new. Give thanks to a decent dealer!!

I bought one, didn't work. They are not genuine. I can assure you that www.lexus-mapupdates.eu sell genuine Toyota parts - I've bought 5 sets of discs from them over the last few years and they arrived sealed with toyota part number stickers on them. If your disc didn't work then you either ordered the wrong disc or there is a fault with your system. As a side note: another thing to remember is that DVD-R copies off places like eBay will more than likely not work as a firmware update a couple of years ago stopped the drives from reading DVD-R discs Sorry, speed reading again! Yeah, the site I bought from was not on ebay, but I should have known better!

Hi Darren, I am also new to the site and the lexus. Not even picked mine up yet. I have looked around for the best place for the map updates and most recommend here http://www.lexus-mapupdates.eu/ to purchase new map updates. I bought one, didn't work. They are not genuine.

YES the 220d is a heavy smoker... I have the same problem with my 3.5yo, 2006 IS 220D (55000KM). After my engine block and head-gasket, among many others, were changed under warranty my car started smoking heavily on the motorway on a regular basis, especially when mildly accelerating to overtake (most pronounced around 2500rpm in 4th gear). At night I can see in my RV-mirror huge clouds of smoke behind the car made even more dramatic by the headlights of the traffic behind me. My CAT has probably drowned in the thick smoke and is laying dead drunk somewhere on the side of the road. I am going to the dealer today for the n-th time with this car, totally fed up, believe me. I have reported a long list of problems that I had before and were fixed, partly : just do a search 4 mee name if u fancy seeing it. I got a 2 year extended warranty for the power train but I don't sleep better... Good luck! U (we) needed it...it's not science anymore with Lexus, but pure luck ... Adrian Mine's been in the dealership now for about 10 days having the engine seen to, looks like it's the head gasket, plus other bits. Mine's the same age as yours and has done 52000m. Sadly it seems that the 2.2 D4D engine is not the most reliable in the world, although the newer version with reduced emissions is said to be a vast improvement. Maybe they'll just decide to replace the engine with a nice shiny new one :) Then again... maybe not. :(

Depends where you are, suspect you'd be OK where you are. We haven't got Sat because we have better local radio and national radio than the they do. Also, how many people are going to subscribe to listen to radio in thier car? A run from NY to LA takes you through some places where radio hasn't been heard of yet! That's the advantage of Sat Radio. Driving from Liverpool to Brighton just isn't the same. ;)

Not sure, but it talks on a common bus, similar to the ipod interface, so in theory it should work. The Antennae is just a screen sticky, very similar to the Pure DAB unit I have at the moment... As for the new MM system, not much change out of £2000 would be my guess. I think most people will be disappointed with DAB in a car. The UK system was designed specifically for fixed installation and not for use on-the-move where poor coverage and complete drop-out with low signals stop it from being suitable as the only Radio source. On a technical point, the Codecs used provide significantly worse audio quality than FM, and are power-inefficient to transmit. For these reasons, it is strongly rumoured that it will be abandoned and replaced with a different, better but non-compatible system before FM is dropped. Being able to have a huge number of stations none of which you can reliably receive doesn't seem worth spending money on. As I have said, I have a Pure unit in the car, works fine, just thibk it's ugly! Signal Depends where you are, driving from NW London across to East London is fine, driving up the M4 and M40 is pretty good too. M5 south of Bristol tends to be poor. I want it specifically because I like to listen to 5 Live extra for football cricket etc. Not available on FM. Oh another thing slightly off topic, my IS220d is in having some TLC on the engine at present, and I have a GS450h on loan, very nice too... However, there's no long wave on a GS450h, but there is a cassette deck!!

Not sure, but it talks on a common bus, similar to the ipod interface, so in theory it should work. The Antennae is just a screen sticky, very similar to the Pure DAB unit I have at the moment... As for the new MM system, not much change out of £2000 would be my guess.

Just read the Installation manual, there's a 12 pin and an 8 pin connector, suspect it will work. Now... if I can just get one at a reasonable price..

I was quoted £600 to repair a 1.5 inch scratch on my wing, did it myself with a pen I got from the states, if you look VERY closely now, you might see it. If you are fully insured yes, but I hope you have no claims bonus protection.

Here's one for the super techies.... I have found there is a module for the Prius and other models, namely the PZ473-T0210-A0 DAB module. Question is, can this be fitted to the IS220/250? Simple as that.