Paradroid

I use my car pretty much the same as you, short trips in the week (7 miles each way to work) and longer runs at the weekend. I just found this comment from an article on AutoExpress about the IS200 : But again my spark plugs are only a few weeks old so I can't see them being dirty already!

I've had two cars with the Rover VVC engine and they always started straight away. My IS200 also doesn't like starting, but very occasionally. The plugs have now been changed so it's not that. When I say occasionally I mean once or twice a month tops, almost always in damp weather. When it does happen, it needs cranking quite a bit, and when it does start it struggles for a second tops, then it's fine. It's so rare I live with it. I wonder if it's fuel starvation, but I can't how it could be happening. Interesting idea about the oil needing to get round, but with VVTi, wouldn't the system just reset when oil drains out?

My last car (an MG) I had from new, and after 3.5 years of washing by hand using a wash mitt and the two bucket system, it had hardly any marks at all. If I looked straight across the bonnet in very strong sunlight, I could see the odd very fine scratch, about 1 inch long each, but definitely no swirls. So washing by hand doing nothing fancy works well if you're careful, the two bucket trick makes a big difference. All you have to do is look at what you have in your second bucket when you're finished washing, there's the proof! My IS200 I think was more a workhorse of the previous owner rather than their pride and joy, but it seems pretty good, very little in the way of marks. Colour makes a difference of course, black is the worst :( My missus' Fiesta is black and that has all kinds of swirls, and shimmers from the poor job they did polishing it when it had an accident.

Well I live in Wigan and work a short distance away towards Bolton. I see a couple of IS200's every day, on top of the silver 54 plate IS200 (just like mine) I see every morning near my house, going in the opposite direction.

My car is on 61k, it's completely standard, but with WIM alignment, and Vredestien tyres at 38psi (they recommend it for the IS200 and it does work well), it's rock solid at any speed now, even at 100+ on the one occasion I've had chance to try it - on a private road of course :)

If you buy used you might not end up getting the retaining clips that come with them - so they wouldn't be any better than you have now.

Wheel balance problems quite often happen at about 80mph I've found, it sounds like that's the problem.

There's a few of those round my way, one is in a dark grey colour and looks very nice. Quick too! On the RX-8, they claimed to have sorted the rotor tip wear problem that affected the RX-7.

Are you using iTunes 8? That seems to have a new feature where if it detects a lot of music on the iPod that is not on the computer, it offers to upload to the computer.

Ah that's right - I remember now! When I got my key case off eBay it came with the blade and I had to get it cut. So I will have to do this again. What a pain. I might have a look and see if there's anything I can do to strengthen it as well.

That's not right is it, the blade is removeable, it is screwed into the key case with a small black screw. When I get my new key case off eBay, I plan to just fit my exisitng transponder and blade.

Right so it's not unheard of! Is that part of the reason why Lexus give you a small toolkit in the boot - those pliars came in handy I can tell you! Would have been really stuck without those. There does seem to be two different types of key case. My original set of keys has a gold logo painted onto the back. The second key case I bought off eBay was a geniune Denso part, and has a gold piece of metal embedded for the Lexus logo. The Denso part looks higher quality, but it's this one that snapped on me.

why is there 2 lights that warn you? i just thougt there was the orange light No there's just the one light (the orange one), that's the one I was on about.

Got 391 today on a long run, and filled up but the low fuel light hadn't come on at that point. I've heard of people getting quite a bit more than that, but don't think I could manage it.

My flipping key case just disintegrated today when I tried to start the car. The blade stuck in the barrel and the case came away, with the screw and a piece of plastic still connected to it. It's like the key case just snapped. I don't know if something might have weakened the key, or maybe the barrel stuck a bit, not sure really, but it caused me some hassle getting home from WIM, having to start the car with the blade and some plairs. But if course the fob still has to be near the ignition for the transponder to work! Anyway I'll be ordering a new key case off eBay, but I was wondering, is this a common problem?

Well it's been a strange day today, firstly I got a phone call at 8.15 this morning about a family member (they're ok though) so that held me up leaving, but the drive down was amazing, no traffic at all and the sun was shining. Made it down there in 3 hours. Tony got to work on the car, amazing to see how quickly he does his magic. ALso I was amazed at the quality of the display on that laser alignment machine, the user interface was like something off Star Trek! I was all done in an hour, so got on the road, but something didn't feel quite right, the car was pulling to the left a touch, and somehow felt a bit off over bumps. So I went back to WIM with the car, and they swapped my tyres round to eliminate that as a problem. Being not very knowledgeable I wasn't expecting it to make any difference but it changed everything! The pulling to the left is gone and the car feels spot on now. There might be a small balance issue as the wheel now shakes a tiny bit, but I'm getting new alloys fitted soon anyway so will sort it then. Only downside was getting away a bit later after that and hitting all the Friday traffic, plus my @%^"% key snapped when I left WIM for the second time, fair do's to WIM they tried to fix it for me with some glue and a bit of tape, but it broke again at the motorway services and I had to start the car with the blade and a pair of pliars :( Many thanks to Tony and WIM, great job and my car is now spot on to drive, for the first time since I got it in June :)

Nice car. Funny coincidence too, I'd not seen a Sportcross in a very long time, then last weekend I parked next to one in Wigan, and tonight there was one on Top Gear, Clarkson is stuck behind one in Japan when he's racing a bullet train with a nice Nissan GT-R.

Is it the Chevy LS1 engine? I've heard of them being used in a few conversions.

Excellent thanks fellas :) Just getting my directions now. 396 mile round trip. Got 70 litres of fuel in the tank, and managed to squeeze a full set of alloys in the boot. I think the back end probably looks lowered now!

I'm off there tomorrow, but where are they based now? The address on yellow pages doesn't match the web site. Is the Chesham address the current one? Cheers :)

I don't think there would be many! I find the tape deck a bonus, means you can se a tape adapter for the iPod, sound quality is excellent, better than an FM transmitter and cheaper.

Nice car Chris. I've not seen many in that colour, really suits it. That's more like the right sort of price for one of those. Nice cars, but nowhere near as sensible a buy as a GTI are they, they say the Audi TT 2.0T is a better car than the 3.2 and nearly as quick.

It does get hard to tell the late models apart, one way is to look at the steering wheel, if it's a Sport it will have grey pieces of leather near where you put your hands. Mine 54 plate is a Sport and it has this. Not sure why really because I guess it was designed to key in with the dashboard when it was two tone.

I wouldn't have thought the tax situation is any different between the IS200 and IS300, the 200 just creeps into the top tax bracket (well the top one for pre 2006 cars). Anything over 225g/km is in. I've never been in an IS300 but they do sound interesting, I guess they sound a bit meatier than the 200? Only possible downside I can think of to owning the IS300 is that they are not as easy to sell on as the 200, but the 200's are also getting harder to shift at the moment.

New car sounds very nice, watch kerbs though with those 18" rims, I've seen the design of them, they look very easy to scuff!