dazed

On 9/29/2021 at 4:00 PM, PGarner528 said:

Hi,

I am looking to buy an IS250 as my daily driver, though with working from home this means driving a couple of times per week and a total annual mileage of around 3k. I have seen a 12 plate with 160k miles and 16 Lexus & specialist service stamps. Its a bit of a way to go to see the car in person, but I would be interested to hear if people think this could be a reasonable buy.

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202109237720147

From what I have read, reliability of the IS is great but 160k is a little off-putting.

Thanks

£6K is too high in my opinion and I say that as the most recent owner. I owned it for 7 years and 150,000 of those miles. While there's nothing wrong with the vehicle, you could do better for that money.

It was well looked after - the independent who serviced it from 100K was a Lexus specialist and knew his stuff. In my experience he was more competent (and better value) then the Lexus dealers I've dealt with.

Apart from the usual consumables, everything is original - and therein lies the dilemma for any potential buyer. I'm thinking exhaust, shock absorbers, water pump etc. One or more of them are likely to need replacement in the not too distant future and this should be factored into any offer.

20 hours ago, Herbie said:

Almost definitely radio interference from something like a baby monitor, remote gate opener or other things like that.

It may work if you move the car a few feet/few metres either way but I'd say someone has got something new.

Agreed. I've tried moving the car around on the driveway (which is quite large) but to no avail.

20 hours ago, madasahatter said:

Different cars can interfere with the signal, when my brother in law owned a toyota i could not get in my car till he had left.

Peugeots interfere with Audis for some strange reason. Are there any new radio masks or the like been installed .

Does the fobs work away from your house? 

Interesting. The neighbours have had a different car in their driveway for the past few days - most likely a visitor. Will wait until the car goes and see if I can eliminate it from my enquiries.

There are no radio masts near me (I'm right out in the sticks) - just getting a 2G mobile signal is a challenge. The fobs work perfectly away from my home.

I can see that this sort of issue has the potential to cause much friction between neighbours, particularly on modern style housing estates where a dozen or more cars might be in signal range of each other.

I was hoping that it might be possible to have the car and fob shifted to a different frequency if necessary, but I suspect these systems use frequency hopping trickery like Bluetooth to avoid interference (ha ha) and for security.

After 8 years and 160,000 miles I've suddenly found I'm unable to lock/unlock my IS250 (MY2012) on my driveway. This has happened in the last couple of days and is a full on problem.

I can get in the manual way (setting the alarm off in the process) but it's not a particularly convenient workaround.

Both my fobs have new batteries in and the car locks/unlocks perfectly everywhere else - it's just my driveway where the problem is occurring.

As an experiment I turned off my mains at the fuse box and powered off all Battery powered portable devices in the house but it failed to solve the problem.

Is there anything I can do to try and rectify the problem without resorting to knocking on neighbours doors and asking if they've recently bought any new gadgets?

Thanks in advance.

On 2/2/2021 at 1:28 PM, CRAZYHOS said:

What would be a better car ? 

It depends how much space you want. NX is a larger vehicle with a decent boot. UX is a smaller vehicle with very little boot space.

Your requirements will determine which is the best for you.

4 hours ago, Damer said:

Agree with the comment about the boot. First World Problem, but Waitrose shopping bags don't fit under the parcel shelf.

Exactly. Didn’t Lexus think to measure a box of Cornflakes (14 inches) when designing the car. if it can’t even handle the weekly shopping run what’s the point of it? 🙂 

Rolling back the cover every time I want to use the boot doesn’t seem like a very good start when evaluating a potential replacement car, particularly when my wife’s car (a small supermini) has 18 inches of clearance.

Is the cat located in a particularly vulnerable position on the CT or are other cars similarly affected? I had always assumed that the cat is located as close to the manifold as possible where the gasses are hottest.

3 hours ago, Linas.P said:

The techpack includes premium sat-nav and 10 speakers audio, the standard one has sat-nav from 2003 and 6 speaker stereo which is just awful. That said £2000 is hefty price to pay, but if you at all care about the music then it is necessary, if however you only listen to the radio in the car probably not so much of an issue.

Separately, I don't want to talk you out of CT ownership but model is EOD, it is 9 years old and clearly have been replaced by UX in Lexus view. When you go from CT to UX it is like day and night, UX has all the latest tech and feels much never car. Just to weeks ago I had both as courtesy cars (long story with the RC brakes) and there is no comparison between the two. e.g. both have LSS, but only UX have full speed cruise and full stop, on CT is older system which disengages below ~30MPH. Overall, ~£3k difference between CT and UX is well worth it, much more than £2k for tech-pack.

If SUV is not for you (although UX is hardly an SUV and feels about the same size when driving as CT, just much better by being fundamentally much newer), then my suggestion would be to go for Toyota Corolla or used Auris, rather than CT.

I do care about music, but not in a car.

I don't need talking out of CT ownership - I've already decided it's not for me. The fact that it's EOD is neither here nor there to me. Old models have their upsides - no nasty surprises and attractively priced deals. The UX just left me totally stumped. Much more expensive, less economical, an even smaller boot (despite not even having a spare wheel). Definitely not for me.

I did look at the Corolla, but the 1.8 seemed under powered and the whole interior felt a little Fisher-Price to me. The touch screen was also very sluggish to the point of being unusable (IMHO). The 2.0 version was better bet powerwise, but the boot was too compromised by the Battery to make it useful, plus I felt it was too expensive.

Just an update from me, the original poster.

I took a look at a CT with the tech pack and wasn't impressed with the user interface or the method of controlling it. The software had obviously been designed and written from the perspective of it being used in a touch screen environment. Lexus had then bolted on an Atari style joystick (in terms of capability - not appearance!) to navigate this interface. Scrolling down a list was awful. Once you had reached the bottom visible item you had to move the highlighted control to the down icon on the list box and 'touch' that to continue scrolling. Controlling it was hard enough in a showroom. I couldn't imagine using it while driving.

The final decision to rule out the CT was the boot. Although the volume was reasonable, the height (at just 13 inches) without releasing the parcel shelf was insufficient for my day to day needs.

Sadly, Lexus don't seem to have a car to suit my wishes or needs - it's SUV or bust with them now.

After 14 years I think a Mazda 3 beckons. It isn't perfect, but it does tick more boxes for me than anything else . Failing that a mk7 Golf.

BTW if anyone is thinking of buying a new CT, then my advice is haggle and haggle hard. They clearly intend to shift the remaining UK stock ASAP.

Thanks for all your responses. I'd be looking at second hand, about a year old - don't see the point in paying the new car premium.

I'm thinking of switching to a CT and have noticed that cars with the Tech Pack seem to command a fairly hefty premium (up to £2K). Bearing in mind it seems to mainly consist of a slightly larger screen and LED headlights (neither of which will make much of a difference to my overall ownership experience) would I be best off ignoring them - or am I missing something significant about the package.

I don't mind paying extra, but I need convincing that it more than just clever marketing.

Any input from owners would be much appreciated.

On 10/8/2020 at 1:28 PM, Poundy said:

Sadly, it appears when current UK stocks are sold no more CT200h will be made available over here.

I was thinking of upgrading ours but feel it may be an unwise investment now. Thoughts?

Well, I've never thought of a car as an investment - they always seem to depreciate in my experience 😞. But in the case of the CT200h I would have thought the lack of an equivalent replacement model (with even more questionable bells and whistles and perhaps a slightly better ride/handlng/economy) would actually help slow the depreciation of the existing cars.

Misting from a shock absorber is obviously very subjective. Four years ago my local Lexus dealer noted it as an advisory on my MOT, but the following three tests carried out by independents didn’t note it despite me having taken no action. Couldn’t help feeling that Lexus were just looking for work.

Well, my Lexus IS250 (auto) 2012 has over 150,000 miles on it and it's still perfectly sound mechanically, and utterly reliable.

It was serviced and MOT'd last week. No problems, clean as a whistle - as usual. The chap who services it for me (an independent Toyota/Lexus specialist) says it runs as though it only has 50K on the clock.

Basically, if a high mileage IS250 has a full service history and MOT, hasn't been through too many hands and looks clean, then I'd say go for it.

Realistically, mine's only worth £3,000 now, and if I sold it the buyer would be getting an absolute bargain and a gem of a car.

On 4/4/2020 at 10:44 AM, johnatg said:

You should connect +ve first (and disconnect it last) in case you accidentally touch the body with the spanner. Harmless if - ve not connected.
 

New Battery fitted successfully and everything working as it should be.

I didn't realise the old Battery lived inside a plastic "cover" that housed the temperature sensor until I took it out. Obviously very important that only the correct Battery is used as I doubt the cover would have fitted any other Battery.

The acid in the old Battery was down to the minimum level indicator. It had provided good service though - 8 years and 160,000 miles. New Battery is the Bosch one recommended on here by various posters.

Thanks for the quick response John - obviously much appreciated on this occasion.

Hi everyone, I am now working from home and the lack of driving has revealed that my 8 year old Battery needs replacing. I shall fit a new 068 Battery, but one question - is there a recommended order for reconnecting the terminals. My gut feeling is -ve first, but that’s not a good basis for this kind of decision. Thanks,

My auto transmission fluid was accidentally changed (well, some of it was) at the last service by an over eager technician. I wasn't charged as it wasn't requested, but I suppose it qualifies me to throw in my two cents.

My car is a MY2012 and has now covered over £140K miles without any problems. The gear shift was perfectly smooth before the service and to be honest is still just as smooth after the service. The garage owner said the old fluid was black (not surprising) and after apologising said I might notice smoother shifts - but I don't think he necessarily expected it.

If I try really hard to spot/imagine a difference I might be inclined to say that the shifts are a little smoother when the engine is cold, but that might just be the placebo effect.

To summarise, I wouldn't bother spending money on this sort of work unless I suspected a problem.

136,000 miles and counting (IS250 auto 2012). Picked it up in 2014 for £17K with 6,000 miles on the clock (and absolute steal IMHO).

It hasn't missed a beat so far. Apart from routine servicing and tyres the only additional costs I've incurred are new discs and pads at 90K miles and a couple of windscreen excesses.

I'm now rapidly heading towards a depreciation cost of 10p a mile - compared with around £2 a mile for the original owner!

I had been pondering about changing to something newer next year but I'm beginning to think the smart move might be to just keep on going until I'm faced with a bill I can't stomach (probably the exhaust in a couple of years time). I might even make it to 200,000 miles before that happens.

Hard to believe that the car has been (the equivalent of) round the world nearly 6 times without any mechanical problem whatsoever. A remarkable piece of engineering.

It looks like a good example. Feels a little pricey, but perhaps the dealer's expecting you to haggle it down a bit. However, without seeing the state of the tyres, brakes, exhaust etc. it's hard to put an accurate price on it.

Assuming the service history checks out ok, the main thing that would probably concern me about a car of that age would be state of the exhaust and the shock absorbers. Also, see if there's any record of the water pump being replaced. They often typically failed after about 60-70k on the early examples.

But don't let me put you off - my current IS250 is now on 120k miles and still going strong without a single problem so far (I've had it since 5k miles). I've never even had to top the oil up between services - and I check the dipstick every couple of weeks (I don't wait for the light to come on).

I must be the luckiest guy on the forum as I've had a couple of IS250s over the last 12 years and have never encountered this problem despite covering 250K miles.

Is it possible that my high mileage actually helps reduce the likelihood of the problem occurring?

On ‎25‎/‎02‎/‎2018 at 5:32 PM, mk_lon said:

I took the car on the a406 today for a spin for about 45mins, when I got back and turned the engine off I noticed a small amount of smoke coming from the left exhaust......

 

It might just have been the final moist exhaust gases wafting out - more likely to be visible in cold weather.

6 hours ago, Ben1001 said:

It’s an SD card, I have a Gen 3 IS.

It sounds like an electrical whirling noise, I don’t have a CD in the drive.

Probably worth posting on the gen 3 forum if you haven't already.

I've never bought an extended warranty for anything in my life and I suspect I've saved a small fortune over the years.

If you've got the discipline to put some money to one side each month (it used to be known as 'saving' in the old days) then just "pay as you go" and cut out the middleman.

Both of my mk2 ISes (2007 and 2012) had/have steel exhausts.

On 2017-7-1 at 5:01 PM, Linas.P said:

Surely, I can do that exactly that... but Lexus not going to become better by virtue of the fact people going to abandon them and complain less. 

We won't have any productive discussion if some of us not going to admit Lexus not really trying nowadays... 

Lexus aren't going to build a car just because Linas knows what he wants.

Move on and buy what you really want. There's a world of choice out there.