dougie175

If it makes you feel worse I love mine and use it every night to park bob on hehe

Great Thread, would be great if you could put some of the progress on a build thread here!

Yeah it will be a full dash out job! Nightmare job to be honest, not really to happy about having my dash taken out clips and plastic break very easily but want the car to be safe!

Just had a call from Lexus Carlisle, my parts were on order with Lexus but they have now been put on hold apparently as there have been so many orders from Lexus! She said the only way people are getting them done is by complaining to Lexus!

Lee I think you are right to put it on the left side even in the IS, as the black dot come down so far the F770 will be half way down the screen before the camera lens would be past the dots, sticking it just below the rain sensor on the left side should have it totally out of sight when driving like my Nextbase and look as OEM and safe as possible. Basically where I have my Nextbase installed at the moment. Had a measure up and it will easily fit on the right or the left though as its surprisingly small!

If the car feels the same 90% of the time there is probably no suspension damage but you just never know a wheel alignment will soon show any issues though. Wheels are virtually impossible to check, but providing it is has not gone out of balance, chances are the wheel is fine if the alloy is balanced up fine

The door and a pillar also want blending for colour match unless your car is a solid colour? Also a wheel alignment must be carried out in a senario like this without doubt. Any impact to a wheel justifies an alignment Just out of interest how are they checking the wheel a visual check i assume? As a bare minimum it need to be checked it isn't buckled but ideally it wants to be x rayed for cracks

Couple of photos of where I mean and the space available, I'm guessing the GS will be very similar in size and shape

@Farqui Lee Couple of quick questions on the F770, is there enough space to fit it to the right of the mirror mount and it function correctly pointing in the right direction? Also on all the reviews the thing never seems to shut up giving verbal warning about how many people have walked past your car in the night and everything, can all this be silenced? I want the unit to work in the background but do everything as and when I need it?

The problem any of the companies will face is it is not a "painted" finish as such so trying to achieve the finish by conventional painting is very difficult, also very time consuming. To replicate the urban cruiser, which was not as difficult finish as these Lexus wheels between spray out cards and technical experts around 30 hours labour were spent to match the colour, no garage is going to spend that sort of investment in time to replicate this one for him unfortunately

Ignore me I have mistakenly added lexusownersclub.co.uk emails to my blocked senders list when I wasn't paying attention!

Have people been getting email notification about new posts today? I haven't had one since last night, don't think I have changed any settings that should have caused this?

Yeah its pretty clear he hit you, think you'll get that one sorted providing they're insured!

Bad luck, is your footage good enough to locate the driver and get your car sorted?

Yes second hand parts would be preferred over none genuine or incorrectly repaired parts you are 100% right, providing the second hand parts are genuine and undamaged and installed with the correct torque settings there should be no adverse effects to the car at all from fitting them. Insurance companies can get involved with second hand parts and will because the liability is passed to the repairer so if the repairer is willing to use them the insurance company are willing to allow this is some cases to save the vehicle becoming BER (Beyond economical repair)

My point was you cant treat a body repair of your 85 year old car the same as a modern car

Read my reply above it was meant as tongue in cheek. I was the 1 explaining how important it is to repair the car correctly

Just a quick initial update on the G1 it is amazing on the rear screen and side glass, my last few cars have annoyed me not having a rear wiper and this stuff pretty much cures that issue after 2 seconds of driving above 45 mph. However as for the front screen yes it does sheet water very well and you can easily drive at 60mph and above without wipers even in very heavy rain like we have had here this evening, but do I prefer it to using the wipers? I'm not 100% sure at this point, even more strange to be is actually turning the wipers off when driving, I usually just leave them on auto and let them look after themselves!

Keep us updated Lee, love a good valeting product review!

Well done look great, well worth the effort!

My mate would have done it for £300

We had a similar issue with an Urban Cruiser alloys years ago, picture attached: We managed to replicate the finish after a visit from Glasurit and a new tinter on the scheme at the cost of over £700 per 250ml bottle! Basically the finish was achieved by a very dark undercoat and a special effect tinter over the top to give the very dark chrome/mirror finish. This will not be achieved with standard metallic paint no matter how hard they try, as to finding someone to replicate it for you I have no idea who to turn too other than find a bodyshop locally who use Glasurit and ask if their technical rep will come in to try and replicate the colour

Yeah think they have come down in price from when you last looked, hehe thanks I will let you know if I get one, the F50 is the front runner at the moment. Ideally the F770 would be the ideal setup for me just struggling to justify the cost but I know me Ill think and think about it then realise I want the best I can get and go buy a F770, may as well just do it now really!

Sorry that probably sounded like a rant at yourself but it wasn't supposed to be, just trying to highlight the potential dangers of repairing a car incorrectly. As a VDA we have to re-qualify every 3 years and the main point of our job is not to make the car look like it did before an accident but to make sure it performs the same after the accident, making it look good is just a by product. The repair method isnt chosen by an insurance engineer it is chosen by the VDA unless the engineer over rules the VDA and accepts the responsibility for this, but the liability stops with the VDA not the repairer. A lot of garages doing repairs are probably not even aware their chosen method could be very dangerous, unfortunately they are not regulated. Back in the good old days you could repair anything as long as it looked right it was right but both design and materials have moved on a long way and incorrectly repairing a modern vehicle can turn a safety feature into something very dangerous. Also just a bit more info on the video it was originally designed to show the issues of using replica parts like those available from ECP however it is widely used in the industry to educate insurance engineers and VDAs to the issues of increasing a panels mass (adding filler in the wrong areas or too much) or incorrectly torquing the car back together, every piece of a car is now a safety related item and designed to work in perfect harmony together and as time goes on cars will only get more advanced and complicated and these methods will become essential to be followed for everyone's safety, there are already several issues in court with ACC failure due to lack of calibration of the sensors after a bumper repair on a VWG cars.

I think you could do with reading what the responsibility of an insurance company is to the customer in the event of an accident as far as the repair go. for sure we could easily repair that wing but it is an insurance companies responsibility to ensure the vehicle performs in the same way after completing repairs as it would before the accident, filling a bolt on wing full of bog is not going to comply with these rules yes it will look the same but will it perform the same, in so much so that putting filler in bumpers and over or under tighening front wings and bonnet can be the difference between life and death. Please watch this video This could be someones head when an airbag fires 700 hundredths of a second too late and causes their neck to snap, a tiny difference in the airbag response rate could be down to something as simple as the wing bolts not being correctly torqued or a headlight bracket repaired because that helped keep the car on the road, the airbag system is designed to work with all the components from factory at the correct torque and not full of filler. VDAs have gone to court over people being killed at 30mph impacts because airbags have fired at the incorrect time because they chose the incorrect repair method outside of the manufacturers repair guidelines, I am unwilling to risk going to prison and have the guilt of someones life on my hands. Repairing something minor may seem trivial however without knowledge the ability to complete repairs can be very dangerous, I work with insurance companies 6 days a week and believe me if they could save money and repair a car safely they would the last thing they want to do is increase repair costs as all this does is cost them money. The laws are also set to change in the future with regards to people putting write offs back on the road, they have been written off for a reason, the reason being the cost to repair them correctly outweighs the value of the vehicle hence this opens up the potential issue of the repair cost has to be reduced for it to become financially viable to put the vehicle back on the road and the best way to achieve that in many cases is to complete the repairs without following the manufacturers recommendations and you end up with a car that looks great, drives great but how will it perform in the event of a future accident?