The Transporter

They don't look too bad and they do appear to be a bit more robust than the originals.... I'm just about to have my wheels stripped and powder coated but the centres are pretty grotty looking so I'm in the same boat as Billnick

......Sainsbury's.

It is an 05 car so those tyres are 8 years old.... It is UV light that causes the compound to decompose and indeed the surface is fairly cracked but the structure of the tyre is still sound and have been very pleased with the tyres... I have a new set of Avons in the garage that I'll pop on when I have time to strip the old tyres off and take the rims to be stripped and powder coated... The one good remaining tyre can go as a spare, it is still in very good condition and will last a long time in the darkness of the boot.

Well folks, the Lex went for its MOT yesterday and passed as usual.... Had 3 advisories, two for the two front tyres that are approaching needing to be replaced.... These are the same two tyres that the car left the factory with and are starting to look a little shabby... Interestingly the third svisory was for the rear NS tyre that was fitted at the same time as the other rear tyre..... The OS tyre was the original Michelin Pilot spare and the NS was a Pilot Exalto (I couldn't get what had originally had been fitted).. The OS tyre had very little wear indeed, yet the newer rubber was almost down to the wear bars, clearly the later tyre has a much softer compound than the originals...

I have it in my PD Diesel van, been in for 10k and the van still works.. Unless you are prepared to send the old oil off to a lab for analysis then it is impossible for joe soap to tell a good oil from a not so good oil.... If it meets the spec that your car requires then the oil will be fine

You'll need to follow the trickle of oil, as said it could be a leaky sump gasket or drain plug but if it is coming from the rear of the gearbox it could be the shaft seal where the prop joins the gearbox or if you are unlucky from the front of the box and it is leaking inside the bell housing where there are more seals that can fail.. but these re a gearbox off job..Wipe off the oil from the box and try to trace back to were the oil is coming from

Most jobs on an IS are a breeze compaired to working on a modern Audi.... The timing belt is a very straight forward job.

Now you're talking my language......

Never buy the first of any new car, wait 'till they've been out in the real world for a while.... Anyone who bought an early IS220d will tell you that.

the new engines have timing chains which don't need replacing hence the N/A in the pricing matrix They do need changing, just not as often and so are not regarded as a service item. The links and tensioners wear resulting in the EML warning light to come on...

Nice one! Picking up passengers from Rotherham on the way? I like it there! Didn't make it to the meet. Carries grandad just died before..... We'll have to meet up for a beer another time again mate. I'm sorry for your loss Ray.. We'll be starting off from Bradfordistan so will be going past Rotherham, if you can find space in the car after Tanya has packed it then you are welcome to come with us.....It's funny how a bloke can go away for two weeks with a wallet, mobile phone, a pen and a small flight bag yet the car will be packed to the gunnels with stuff.....Most of which the average bloke couldn't even begin to identify..

wow thats far! by Croatia isnt it? Nahh, not as far south as Croatia..... We're off to a village about 100km outside Prague but I'm not too sure which one, my beloved hasn't told me yet.. We'll be taking a steady drive down through Germany and visiting a few places on the way... It'll be a rare treat for me to be able to stop off and have a good look round as whenever I used to visit that area I was against the clock, delivering stuff for the Army in Split (Croatia) and last time the Lex was in Germany we were driving down to a funeral so not a fun trip but I did discover that the IS200 would redline in sixth gear

I managed to get 25mpg out of my four litre Jeep on a run out to the BMW meet.....Problem was it took me so long to get there everyone else had gone home... We're taking the IS on a road trip to the Czech Republic in September so I might give it a wash..

Thick Fit used to do a no fix no pay thing on aircon recharges.... Not sure if they still do..

Niet!!!..... The little sensor down by your knee controls the blend flaps which divert the air through the evaporator/ heater matrix depending on what it wants to do (Taking into account information recieved from the solar sensor and the set temperature) The compressor will cycle on and off depending on the temperature of the air coming directly off the evaporator.... Set it to manual and its coldest setting then prettymuch all of the air will be directed through the evaporator and will bypass the heater matrix but the "Air off" sensor will still cycle the compressor on and off if the air temperature is around the cut off point...... Even in the winter the compressor will run irrespective of what setting you have on the dial, provided that the aircon is switched on.... It will cycle quite rapidly but it will still run and cool the air.... unless the ambient temperature drops below about 4 or 5 degrees where the vapour pressure of the refrigerant will drop below around 30 psi and the system pressure switch will shut down the compressor untill the ambient air temperature increases or the vapour pressure of the refrigerant exceeds 30 psi..... so if the evaporator is warm due to being inside the car then the system can run when the ambient air temp is below 5 but only once the car has warmed up... I used to love those top up cans, they made me lots of money from wrecked compressors....... to correctly charge a system you must first apply a vacuum... if you leave air in the system then it doesn't condense like the refrigerant and when the heat is on your compressor is working harder and using more fuel to cool you than it should..... it also puts a lot of strain and undue pressures on the components.... Also some of these top up cans contain a lot of lubricant and other stuff.... too much lubricant reduces the efficiency of the cooling sysem and also if you really overdo it then you can have a situation where the compressor gets slugged with great gobs of liquid lube which cannot be compressed and will damage the compressor....

If I was to put on my pedantic head, then I would say that no car has climate cotrol as the system does not actually control the humidity other than simply reducing humidity....Even air conditionig is the wrong term but hey ho..... by turning on and off, I'm guessing that you are referring to the compressor cycling on and off... This is normal. on cars like the IS200, the compressor is a simple fixed displacement compressor...... it is either working at 100% or it is off. this is controlled by a temperature sensor in the air strean near to the evaporator (Cold radiator) in the heater box... when the air temperature coming out of the evaporator reaches a certain temperature usually between 2 and 5 centigrade, then the temp sensor will turn off the compressor then when it rises again then the compressor will re engage.... the warmer or more humid the air entering the ventillation unit the longer the compressor will run and the shorter the of time will be...... If the compressor didn't cycle off then the evaportor would get colder and colder, the humidity in the air would freeze on the evaporator, reducing air flow.... eventually to zero, the refrigerant wouldn't evaporate properly in the evaporator and liquid refrigerant would return back to the compressor would pop the valves in the compressor...... On one particularly humid afternoon, I managed to get snow blowing out of the vents of an old Range Rover just for fun

Ha! Thanks for the tip but there is no way that I would ever mask off the trim to keep the wax off it.... I'll just be a bit more carefull. Yeah the autoglym does seem to last well.... I did use meguires once but it is a natural wax and really didn't last long at all. By the way, now that the Winter is over it will pay for you all to wash the underside of your cars to rmove mud and salt from round the wheelarches, suspension points and anywhere where this clag has accumulated..... also it will pay to gently run plenty of fresh clean water through the aircon condenser and raditor to remove salt and to slow down corrosion

You're not having much luck with that car..... As you say not a biggie to put right but a pain in the butt to have to do it. You may have to give your car away to one of us...

I have used autoglym in the past and although the finish was very nice it did tend to leave white residue on rubber seals and plastic trim that was a devil to remove.... not a good look on a black car

They may have revised their settings as my 05 IS has done over 50k and is still on the original front tyres though they are almost down to the wear bars

In which case, pop the belt off and see if the squeek goes.... Aircon compressor noises usually change in tone or go away as you switch it on or off..... Assuming that it works at all.... When on the centre section of the compressor should rotate and be stationary when off..

Are you sure that it isn't just the drive belts squeeking? Try spraying a bit of water on the belts with a hose with the engine running.... If it goes away then it is the belts. Does the squeek happen with the air con off?.....

Just out of curiosity, has anyone else noticed that more and more people tend to drive well below the speed limit these days....And it ain't old gits like me but younger people... I assume that either they are trying to drive economically or are too incompetant to even drive at the speed limit.....If you had driven like that whilst taking th HGV test then you would never have been given a licence... Some of us have places to go to.

Not sure I would want to tune any car that handles like a greased baked bean but lift it up a few inches and fit some 31 or 33 inch diameter mud tyres and a couple of locking diffs and they are great and at the prices that they are you don't get too upset if you roll them onto their roof

Mmmmm V8 Grand Cherry...... I likeee You can pick a nice one for peanuts these days but make sure that it has LPG with flashlube as the V8s need the extra lubricant... The 4 litre isn't so fussy.... If I drive responsibly I can get around 17mpg but that rarely happens