Mike_B

Fair enough, but OEM doesn't automatically preclude recon parts. Neither does it mean that your old one will go to produce another 'new' Lexus one - it may be repaired and sold for something else entirely. I guess it's possible, at least in theory, that it's not a Lexus UK sanctioned activity and the dealer itself makes use of it in another part of their overall business. These dealerships are only franchises, after all...

If, as it would appear, you are already convinced that OEM Lexus parts are a rip-off, I have to ask why you went there in the first place to discuss with them the price of a commodity item like a radiator? And why would a radiator cost less for an older model than for a new one? It's roughly the same size, shape and takes just as much in terms of materials and labour to make... It's the same everywhere though, a friend got asked for nearly £400 for a Peugeot 306 radiator (fitted); he went to an under-the-arches place and got a pattern part fitted for £150 all in. His brother has the car now and 4 years later it all works fine still. Some parts just aren't worth the cost of OEM.

Yeah i agreed with Ahmet something like a 600 is pefect for a first bike even tho they still go like **** off a shovel, a busa is something thats takes a while to get used to, there heavy dont handle as well and have soooooo much power If your small enough and dont want comfort i think the new triumph daytona 675 i think its the sexiest thing around at the moment, and has a bit more toruqe than the other 600's (also dont see them all the time unlike those common as muck R6 hehhe ) http://www.triumph.co.uk/uk/5839.aspx I think a 'busa would be a suicidal first bike to be honest. One advantage of the 600s is the relative lack of torque low down, which makes it much easier to ride in poor conditions. Bumpy wet roundabouts + cold tyres + great gobs of torque = pain + expense... unless you're careful and seriously skilled! The 600s have everything up the top half of the rev range so they go like a rocket if you rev it, but tootle about nicely if you don't. Good combination! (hence I've got an R6!!) Something like an SV650 makes a fantastic first bike too, easy to ride, more than fast enough for a first bike, and significantly cheaper than an R6-alike to insure and fix. It might sound like a pussy option, but 0-60 is less than 4 seconds and it'll do well over 130mph - and this from a bike I'm recommending for a new rider. Experience is king with biking. New riders don't like to hear that and I can understand why (having only ridden for 6 years myself), but it doesn't make it any less true. Start smaller and work up to a 'blade or a gixxer thou over a couple of years, you'll end up faster and safer. BTW, have you got any quotes for insurance yet? Have you got a garage? One reason I've got an R6 is because it's hard to insure a 1000 without a garage (ie it costs at least twice as much without one...)

You have PM... Mike

Well I've fitted it - and it's gone in very nicely even if I do say so myself!! I removed the ashtray, and clock/vent assembly from above the stereo, and then unbolted and removed the stereo and climate control unit.. One advantage to having separate amplifiers is that the head unit is much lighter than on an all-in-one unit, helpful when struggling to remove the cables from the back of it! After pulling out the plugs to the stereo and getting busy with the voltmeter, I quickly identified an earth, a permanent 12V, and a switched 12V supply. Handily, all 3 were on the same plug and all 3 had about 4 inches of individual wires before the plug, so chopping them and splicing in the 3 leads for the car kit was easy. Whilst the 3 components were out that central area of the dash, I fitted the leads for the car kit's display, microphone and speaker unit - the speaker is attached above the pedals, the mic at the top of the A-pillar and the display attached to the bottom right corner of the windscreen. Cabling them was easy - pushed gently into the gaps between the trim, and cable-tied up out the way above the pedals. Whilst the clock and vent unit was out, I noticed a couple of inches of space above the feeder pipes from the heater, so I managed to cable-tie al the excess wire up neatly and poke it in there, along with the box. It's a bit of a tight squeeze getting it all in but it's in there neatly, and the control box and cables are now invisible. The only bits of the kit showing are the screen, the mic and the little box with buttons to end call, access the phonebook etc - at the moment that's just sitting in the cup holder but I will purchase a dashmount bracket and put it on that, to neaten that up as well. I will probably purchase a leather dashmount bracket to put the phone itself in, they do look quite smart, and look almost 'OE' quality. All in all I'm very pleased with it, the bluetooth connection to the phone works fine (there is only a bit of plastic between it and the interior of the car) and the whole system seems to work quite nicely. Plus there are no scratches on the mint interior of my car, and no screwholes anywhere!! B)

Slip the coppers a few quid and find out the perps names and addresses. Then go and exact retribution...

Hi all, My company has kindly bought for me a proper car kit for my phone. With it comes an installation voucher, but I'd rather fit the thing myself than have some so-called professional come along and scratch hell out of the dash etc. Besides which, I work all over the country and it's hard to predict where I'll be in a week's time! I need to source a permanent live, an earth and a switched live power point for this kit - it has an inline fuse so I'm not worried about that, but what would be the best place to take the power? I'm thinking that the power lead that goes to the clock might be good for permanent power, and the cigarette lighter for switched power, but then the stereo might be a good place to look, as it has both switched and permanent power to it, plus an earth. But if I pull it out (I've found the instructions on here) what cables should I look to splice into? Has anyone done this before? Finally it has a mute lead you can use to quieten the stereo when the phone rings - my GS has the simpler style of stereo (as opposed to the touchscreen Navigator type). I think these just connect to a terminal marked suitably on the back of the stereo, but I don't know if the stereo supports this! cheers, Mike

Me too - had a brand spanking new Avensis turbodiesel at the time (just 8 miles on the clock) - the garage dropped it off for me where I worked at the time, but had forgotten to put the mats in. So I popped in on the way home, the attractive but terminally dim salesgirl fitted them in for me - badly. So driving out the garage the accelerator sticks under the edge of the mat and my brand-new engine is bouncing off the rev limiter with me trying to steer it round a hairpin bend and up to a T-junction!! :o :o Ever since I've always checked carefully when I know the mats have been out the footwell...

Excellent news - congrats! Sure you're gonna love it mate - mine's great!

I don't think so really. Planes basically balance and the centre of rotation is about where the main wings are. Planes with their engines at the back (MD11, BAC111 for example) have their wings further back along the fuselage so the extra weight of the engines at the rear is accounted for by extra mass in front of the wings. It is for this balancing reason that flights that are half empty still have passengers seated all along the length of the plane rather than in the nicer seats up front. Fuel is also pumped between tanks to maintain an even weight, and passenger luggage and cargo is carefully loaded to take account of the weight of each container. Some planes (the Tristar, and Trident 3 for example) have 3 engines, two under the wings and one mounted at the base of the tailfin, but these have got rarer since planes with only 2 engines were allowed to cross the Atlantic.* At the same time, modern turbofan engines have got massively more powerful, more fuel-efficient and quieter so most new aircraft only need 2 unless they are very large and heavy planes. One other point regarding the positioning of the engines on that plane (taking into account the military development model the fake was apparently based on) is that if you have the engines on top of the aircraft then the red-hot exhaust gas is a little less visible from the ground, helping to reduce the heat signature of the plane and thus visibility to heat-seeking missiles. The cold air rushing over the wings can be blended with the exhaust before it rushes over the back of the plane. * Technically this was to do with how far they were allowed to fly from land, rather than the Atlantic as such. Engine failures are now so rare this rule was relaxed.

The problem with the US and guns is that the genie is well out the bottle now. Both sides are right - the anti-control lobby is right, factually at least, when it says that if people were routinely armed then the killer would have been killed himself before he could have shot so many innocent people. But the pro-control lobby are also right when they say that there would, overall, be less shootings if everyone honest was forced to hand in their weapons. So do you allow people to defend themselves and their families against the possibility of armed robbers (and in the US, they almost always are), or do you remove that element of 'safety' and at the same time prevent the possibility of that same weapon being used in a drunken rage by a husband against an unfaithful wife and her lover? Tough call... The Swiss don't have this problem and many Swiss own guns, but then again, they're not Americans...

White carbon? Carbon fibre, by it's very nature, is black... Why would someone go to the effort of putting the weave effect onto something, and then make it patently obvious that it's not really carbon? I dunno... :duh:

That is exactly the same as what I said - *on average* you will always spend more on warranty payments than you would if you kept the money to pay for it yourself! And having just got a quote of about £500 for 12 months, I think I'd rather keep the money and spend it only if I have to...

My net personal allowance this year is minus £35 (i.e. I owe them £35 before I get any income), so yours must be really grim . . . . . . . . . . and those "services"? That'll be them waging war in Iraq on my behalf etc. . . . . . :) Still, I do get a free TV license . . . . . . :D Yes, well, I didn't say anything about the services being stuff you might find useful, did I?!! :) I had K codes for a few years when I had company cars with private fuel etc, they really rip into your take-home don't they?

On a related note, I didn't think the Nanny State would allow you to do electrical work in wet areas these days - are you planning to have the work inspected afterwards? You may run into trouble when you sell the house otherwise...

Is this front discs? They are not actually fixed on at all - you will need to completely remove the caliper and it's carrier (bolts behind, it's not difficult to do in principle, though the bolts themselves are often extremely tight!). The discs themselves are then only stuck on by their own rust, copper grease etc. Tap them with a rubber mallet, if they still won't come off - then make *absolutely sure* you have bought the correct replacement discs, and belt the old ones with a metal hammer until they see sense and come off... To put the new ones one, clean up the hub behind thoroughly, smear copper grease onto the surface, and pop the discs over the wheel studs. Use a couple of wheel nuts to hold it flat into place while you remount the carrier and caliper, then remove those two bolts and remount the wheel. When replacing the wheel, make sure to tighten the nuts in the correct order, which is bolt 1, 3, 5, 2, 4 (ie opposites) to make sure the disc stays flat against the hub - this avoids driving with the disc out-of-true which causes it to warp.

That's because you're in the fortunate position of still having an income big enough to qualify!! You're still using services supplied by taxpayers money, after all... And being a pensioner, you do get a much more generous personal allowance than us workers! :)

I'd save your money. Looked at logically, warranties are sold by commercial companies in order to make a profit. Therefore the price of the warranty is, on average, always going to cost more than the average cost of the repairs they cover. Overall you'll be quids in. Personally, I put £100 a month into a special savings account for the car, so when a bill does come in, it softens the blow... In the meantime I get to keep the interest earned, and in an emergency, I've still got the money if I really do need to spend it on something else. You can't cancel a warranty for credit halfway through the term!!

Personally, I think grey wheels just make it look like you've not cleaned the brake dust off in a while. Bright silver for me please!!

Yeah, Hamilton's good... he was good in GP2 and he's going to be great in F1 I think. Maybe the British media will shut up about that third-rate playboy now, Jenson Button. I notice that Barichello started from the pit lane and still managed to beat him!

There's 81 levels to this puzzle!! Got to 14, (with only one or two heavy hints from the internet on some levels!!), getting bored now though...

If it's all Lexus supplied (ie an equipment pack that would have been specified when new and fitted when the car was handed over to it's original owner) then no, you don't have to declare it. If it really comes to an argument then deny all knowledge, especially since it doesn't appear on the V5. Otherwise you'd legally have to declare every optional extra fitted - including a sunroof, carpet mats, cargo net, first aid kit etc etc. Which would just be ridiculous. I also find it really, really hard to believe an insurance assessor would spot it was a DHP model anyway... If he spotted it was lowered and looked closer, they'd only see Lexus or perhaps Toyota OEM markings on things anyway, and think it was just normal. Which it is, really...

Gritting, probably. The UK has three things against it - firstly a litigious culture where people sue if roads are not gritted when there is the slightest possible chance of ice; a climate which is cold enough to need some form of de-icer but not cold enough to prevent salt from working (salt water still freezes if you go too far below 0 degrees); and a local authority culture where cheapness is prized above quality and 'big-picture value', where less corrosive agents might be used in place of salt. The overall result is that almost uniquely we have our roads plastered in a corrosive de-icer from October to the end of March. The car companies know this, and have presumably worked out that it's cheaper to stomach one country's warranty claims than improve the protection of the world's wheels. If you think Lexus wheels are bad, try owning a sportsbike through the winter!! In winter time you can take a brand-new bike out the dealer, ride it home, and by next morning the aluminium exhaust can, fairing bolts, engine ancilliaries and engine casings all have a dusting of white aluminium oxide powder on them. And it goes downhill from there. I know this, cos I've got one parked outside that I picked up new on an icy morning in March a couple of years ago...

Most IS200s are half-leather, regardless of colour. The seat panels are actually a cloth called Escaine, though it does look and feel very much like suede. I think all the 300s are full leather, plus they are only about 2mpg worse and a good deal more refined than the 2 litre engine - and more refined again compared to the 4-cylinder Altezza RS models.

I doubt anyone was accessing the db that time of night. Just bounce the box - usually does the trick and sounds like it did this time too!!