James Marks

It is about the magnitude of variation in torque, particularly in proportion to the total output, and not just the total torque output. You will also notice that the springs in the clutch plate protect the drivetrain from the clutchplate onwards, and in anycase, they are purely sprung, and not damped. The DMF, as well as furthering the efforts of the clutch plate springs, is also able to protect the crankshaft by reducing the fluctuating torsional loadings that would be incurred if the crank was just connected directly to a heavy flywheel. The DMF also has a damping element, to stop the sprung part of the flywheel from getting into resonance, and also allows the various resonant frequencies of the crank to be tuned away from the operating speeds of the engine. And yes, a torquey engine will probably have a higher magnitude of torque variation, particularly diesels which tend to produce more torque and so must have pistons pushing down onto the crank with more force, but this is not a given. A low power engine (particularly the current crop of three cylinder units about today) can still have a relatively large variation, especially when you take it into proportion against the total output, and so they will benefit from a DMF. At the end of the day, DMFs mainly came about with an aim to improving NVH levels, irrespective of engine power.

Power and torque is nothing to do with needing a dual mass flywheel - in any case you wouldn't want one on a really powerful engine because you would just rip it apart. It is just there to damp out vibrations from the crank shaft to make for smoother progress. The IS does definitely have one just incase anyone is still in doubt...

Might be a slow central locking motor/gunged up mechanism - it's possible that the car only flashes the lights once it has sensed that the lock mechanism has fully unlocked. This is purely conjecture though, but worth a look - see which, if any doors can be opened a few seconds after you hear the click and before the lights flash - if one is noticeably slower it may be the culprit..

There is actually a hole in the bottom engine cover under the tap, which I noticed after I removed it!!! At least removing the cover made it easier to get to the tap handle to open it anyway...

Of course fil can't be wrong, he's been a mechanic for 20 years as he says on pretty much every single post (though I'm sure there's one or two that say 25 years?). The Eagle F1 is a good tyre, certainly not the best but better than most. They're not overly expensive and seem to last well too. Perhaps fil just has an old Eagle F1 running against a newer tyre - good tyres always get worse as they age and wear, and can often end up worse than a brand new budget tyre!

Fair play for apologising, and for what it's worth I do agree with the points you were making - there is a lot of bad advice out there, and you're certainly right in saying if you need to ask how to do jobs like this then you probably shouldn't be doing them yourself :D

Wow, someone's angry... And why would putting a breaker bar on the crank pulley cause piston/valve contact? Yes, it's not an ideal method for undoing the pulley bolt, but it's not exactly the crime of the century and it gets the job done. And also, as you seem to be calling everyone a bunch of idiots, I thought I'd point out that the timing belt interval was not always 60,000 miles with people just muddling up the conversion for km, it really was 100,000 MILES but Lexus reduced it. Sorry to have to post this, but I seem to be seeing more and more people just leaving insulting and condescending messages (which I guess is a criticism you could level at this message if I'm honest) and it's not right.

Please DO check your timing belt while you're servicing the car. Yes, in most cars it's probably a waste of time, because it's difficult to see if a belt is going to have a catastrophic failure, BUT, on the IS200 engine it is very common for the belts to walk forward on the pulleys and wear the fronts of them off, and by the time some people come to change them, they get a shock to find a belt that's now only about 10mm wide (assuming it hasn't already gone). There are plenty of pictures of this on the forum. It is easy enough to check the belt - there is a small cover down low that looks like it clips off, but it's probably easier to remove the top part of the timing cover which is just held on by 4 or 5 10mm bolts. For something this easy to do, it's worth the 15minutes it will take just to check nothing silly is going on in there, if not just for peace of mind.

I've had exactly the same problem, as I'm sure many IS200 owners have, which was cured by cleaning up the hub faces before fitting the discs. In reference to the post above, as a mechanic, you should always, always be cleaning hub faces before fitting discs!, and it certainly can cause problems if you don't with corrosion, and indeed various bits of dirt and gunge which will have been caught there and disturbed during the removal of the old discs, not allowing the discs to sit flat against them. It is also common (but not always done) to put a light smear of copper grease on there as well (very light coating and smeared around to stop the grease itself holding the disc away too much!) to stop the discs from becoming corroded to the hub! Not trying to start an argument or anything here, honestly :)

The bulbs are just 12volt 3mm grain of wheat bulbs available off ebay for pennies, nothing special about them - eg ebay item number 400078371958 Just take the bulb holders out of the switches (I think they take a 1/4 turn and then they pull out - you may need some small pliers or similar to help lever them out - but they don't require much force so don't pull too hard!). You can then unwrap the legs of the existing bulbs from the holder, and fit a new one, trimming the legs to suit. The Lexus workshop manuals actually suggest replacing whole switches to rectify blown bulbs!, but this is definitely not necessary! The bulbs are available from places like maplins, and at dealers, but it is far, far cheaper just to buy a bag of 50 or so off ebay! And that way, when the other illumination bulbs go (which they inevitably will start doing once one does!) you'll have plenty in stock. You'll probably pay about as much for a bag off ebay as you would for 1 or 2 from maplins - and that's not to knock maplins as I do use them now and again!

Not a problem! You're not the first and certainly won't be the last! Glad you got it working. James

Have you got the air conditioning on?, because that will make one of the cooling fans kick in on many cars if it's not moving much - can't remember if the IS is like that though. Get your mechanic to check for exhaust gas in the coolant (I think there's a chemical you can add that does this) before definitely splashing all that cash out on an unconfirmed head gasket failure as well. And yes, IS's do produce a lot of steam from the exhaust anyway, especially now that mornings are starting to get colder and damper.

I think the 'power lock' button refers to the one on the driver's door that you can use to lock and unlock all the doors with, I know you do have to fiddle around with it at some point in the procedure. Hope this helps and good luck - for most people it takes several attempts to get the timing of everything right so don't give up hope straight away! James

Yes the mileage is stored in the cluster, and yes it will change if you swap the clusters. This is not uncommon, and its only really in recent years that manufacturers have started trying to get around this by storing the mileage in different ECU's - normally in several which the car then compares on start up. However, the IS200 is a relatively old car so there is nothing this clever in it. For those in the know, the mileage is stored in a 93c46 EEPROM microchip soldered onto the back of the cluster - it is relatively easy to unsolder this and connect it to your computer if you have the confidence! With the right piece of software to tell you what data to change on this chip, and an EEPROM programmer, you can program whatever mileage you want into it. This in itself is not illegal, as long as you are not trying to misrepresent the mileage to an unsuspecting buyer! For older second hand cars where the clusters may break, this can be useful to reset the mileage to what it should be when you fit a new/second-hand cluster. There are various companies on the internet (many UK based) that can do this work for you. Believe it or not, I'm not trying to advertise changing your mileage, its just that I've upgraded the instruments in the girlfriend's old Micra and I'm in the process of resetting the mileage to what it should be, and just thought I might as well clear up this issue!