The Swede

Or runabout has proven its use again.

We live not far from Isola 2000 so I decided to put the Evo's (and even scoob's) old wintertyres on the Lexus again for our weekends out skiing.

Who needs 4WD? I've even switched the traction control off to climb this hill (pure ice). I dare you to do this with an RX300 on summertyres.

why not buy a set of coilovers?youll get a full set for £500.....also is200 shocks are the same no diff..

Well, I don't care whether they're the same as on the IS200, tbh. I just wanna find them somewhere without paying more for 4 shocks than for the bloody car

What's the advantage of using coilovers? Knowing the use we make of the car.

I want to replace the shocks on the lady's IS300 but Lexus' are rarer than hen's teeth here and buying a spare set will set me more than I actually paid for the car :duh:

So I want to find set in the UK and swap them myself locally. Any good suppliers?

Also, anyone who can help me with getting the right geometry settings for this car as I still find it pretty heavy in its reactions.

Thanks.

Is there any area on this forum where members put a thread about their car and update it regularly with pics and news on what is being done to the car as maintenance or modifications?

There's a modfication & tuning sub-section under the main IS200/IS300 section

And if you do not modify or tune your IS but simply want to keep an update of the car regularly?

Some fora have a "garage" section where you keep a thread of the car(s) you got. Hence my question.

We have a registry/garage here and also a gallery of various cars/meets etc which both can be found along the bottom of the main banner at the top of the page

That link doesn't seem to work anymore. Possible?

Looking for a set of IS300 alloys to put our wintertyres on. As the car is now used in Nice, using the wintertyres all the time is not practical (tyres are studded) so I want to be able to swap the wheels quickly when we go skiing at weekends.

Whether it's a similar setup on the GS I don't know but on the LS worn transmission mounts can cause this and the rubber coupling on the propshaft gives this effect.

Thanks for the info.

So is it easy to replace this rubber? or do you need to dismantle half the car?

Also, any risks if you do not replace this rubber?

Jesus - cant you import one?

No, I would have to pay the taxes to get a license plate on the car and I am not allowed as a danish citizen to drive in a car with foreign license plates in Denmark. :(

Finland has the same problem. Hence why I never registered myself there when we lived there. Just kept an address in UK. Worth every penny it cost me ;)

Never was a fan of these, especially in black.

They look way better in white, I must say. Yours looks really nice. Any chance of putting a sound clip on?

Would still have a C63 AMG instead. Although the price is higher.

Did you try the M3 saloon also? How did it compare?

Alloys on the van in the Summer, original old steel rims for the Winter tyres...

That is the ideal solution. Just never seen steelies for a Lexus

I've got them, bought them at the tyre dealer. Half the price of an ugly aloy.

Grtz, Philip!

That's interesting. Pics ?

20 years ago, Belgian thought about wintertyres like Brits now. Meanwhile, they're really popular.

Thanks for the responses.

Tony, the faint clunk I hear towards the back of the car occurs when my foot is on the brake so it sounds like it will need looking at.

Any ideas what it could be?

Thanks,

Dean

Dean,

I have the same with ours.

I am also really wondering what it is. I've tried to see if putting an additiv in the gearbox to smoothen gearchanges would help and it somehow did. But I've never had such clunk in any other car bar a RWD Ford Scorpio automatic.

Anyone any thoughts?

My car is auto and it has ~250k kms on the odometer. So far no problems and no signs of it starting to pack up, still going strong :) It was liek -20oC here today and it was perfectly fine also after some warming up. I have changed the oil few thousands kms ago. As per some advice from the garage, I didn't change the filter (it does filter only big particles so it doesn't get contaminated much).

Do you actually use a different oil than prescribed by Toyota?

On my Evo, I found that I was better off using a more liquid kind of oil for the diffs and gearbox when the car is in Finland than what is prescribed by Mitsi.

Where is the filter located?

And yes, mine had packed up also around 74000 miles. New gear box in it. It changes smoothly, but you always get a bit of a 'shock' when you engage D or R. Never got that with any of my Mercs.

Would this be the gearbox and diff mounts?

What is a "reputable" place to do this? Will the large branded outfits like kwik-fit do, or does it really need to be a Lexus stealer? I know changing the oil is not damn hard. It gets sucked out, a new filter is placed and new oil put in. But a dealer might charge you through the nose for this.

Alloys on the van in the Summer, original old steel rims for the Winter tyres...

That is the ideal solution. Just never seen steelies for a Lexus

dont boher mate, i have been saying it on here for many many years and each year the same old posts come up that people have crashed the car on ice/snow etc - tough! serves you right i say!

as u say many still think winter tyres are only for snow.. no sympathy from me if the car slides down the road and gets wrecked.

Do you have 2 sets of alloys, or do you actually change just the tyres?

This time I swapped the tyres (costed me 40 quid), but I plan to buy a cheap set of second hand alloys.

According to the article which you refer to the figures you are quoting above seem somewhat flawed. You state 3.5% of trucks on UK roads are foreign whereas the article states that 80% of trucks on UK roads are foreign. That would imply that around 40% of trucks on UK roads are unsafe AND foreign. Of the remaining 20% which are UK registered 37.5% are unsafe equating to 7.5% of the trucks on UK roads being unsafe AND UK registered.

These figures are heavily flawed however since they only relate to trucks which were checked and these will normally be as a result of the vehicle being pulled for a specific reason such as looking overweight,badly loaded, being involved in RTA, faulty lights, speeding etc etc. so poorly maintained vehicles are far more likely to be checked.

,

I don't know what the author of the article has been smoking, but it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that that number of 80% is a 'tad wrong'. Drive around, check the lorries (that is the tractors, not their trailers) and check if 4 out of 5 lorries in England are indeed foreign registered.

I took my numbers from the follow-up article that came in AutoExpress. 3-4% of all lorries driving around on the roads being foreign, sounds fairly plausible.

TBH, it's more their qualities to deal with standing water that convinces me.

Snow is indeed rare and one anyway slows down when it's icey. But how often are you not surprised by a sudden heavy downpoor or by standing water? Even brand-new summertyres cannot cope with that in the same way as wintertyres.

Gearboxes an issue?

I know mine received a new gearbox at 70000 miles

Ok, but to make the roads a safe environment, the vast majority of road users would need to invest in Winter tyres. This will not ever happen. You could put winter tyres on if you like, then have some maniac careering out of control into you who didn't.

Everyone has them in Germany, Denmark, Czech Republic, etc. In Belgium, Holland etc they are not compulsory, but many people run thme anyway... None of these countries are really more affluent or colder than the UK.

Anyway, with your logic, we shouldn't stick to speed limits, bother about not drink driving or any other rules as there will always be another person to point the finger at.

Not my logic mate, it's called a market dynamic; You said yourself, everyone has them in Germany, Denmark, Czech Repubic etc. What you're asking is that an entire country suddenly purchases a second set of tyres? Do you really think that would happen?

In Germany, they made them compulsory few years ago. So it's wintertyres or the bus.

When I look at the mayhem on the roads here every time there is a bit of snow and the cost of this, then I think a similar rule should be put in place. As said, it's not any more expensive to run two sets of tyres as you'll run them twice as long.

Mind you, as Transporter points out, common sense never seems to have been a strong point on this island...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/polit...ks-1776680.html

There has been quite some debate about this in the UK. It seems nearly half the foreign trucks on our roads do not pass the safety tests required.

MPs making their point, 2 hour debate on LBC a few weeks ago, etcetc...

I have not heard ANYONE however say a word about the 37.5% British trucks not being safe.

As foreign trucks make up a whopping 3.5% of all trucks on our roads, it means 1.7% of trucks on our roads are unsafe and foreign registered and more than 36% of trucks are unsafe and... British...

First of all, it makes a mockery of the entire MOT system. And one does wonder how stupid people are to all go for this "let's nail the foreign lorry-driver"-thing.

Opinions ?

Ok, but to make the roads a safe environment, the vast majority of road users would need to invest in Winter tyres. This will not ever happen. You could put winter tyres on if you like, then have some maniac careering out of control into you who didn't.

Everyone has them in Germany, Denmark, Czech Republic, etc. In Belgium, Holland etc they are not compulsory, but many people run thme anyway... None of these countries are really more affluent or colder than the UK.

Anyway, with your logic, we shouldn't stick to speed limits, bother about not drink driving or any other rules as there will always be another person to point the finger at.

dont boher mate, i have been saying it on here for many many years and each year the same old posts come up that people have crashed the car on ice/snow etc - tough! serves you right i say!

as u say many still think winter tyres are only for snow.. no sympathy from me if the car slides down the road and gets wrecked.

well.. I have some opposite reflections regarding the strength of the car... unluckily, a few days ago my car was also hit while left standing by some guy reversing. I realize that the impact shouldn't have been big, but the doors lost their primary shape still don't know, if the garage will be able to restore the same door or if I will have to look for the new ones. on the other side, happily only the doors were damaged during the accident, so the repair works will definitely be easier.

Sorry to hear this, mate.

I do assume this accident did not happen because it was slippery and the other driver had an ill-equipped car. Lithuanians are generally using wintertyres.

The engines should be equally reliable.

The running gear is identical.

Some jobs are more difficult on the V8 (e.g. starter motor).

The V8 has two more of some things. :)

I think the main thing I'd worry about would be the early GS300 master cylinder, but that's easy to avoid.

There are very few GS430s for sale.

If you don't want the extra 60 bhp you might as well buy a GS300.

What is an 'early' GS300 ? Should I also be worried of the one on my 51-plate IS300?

How do you then avoid it?

Seen a few GS's with orange rear indicators and some have red ones (in a completely red rear cluster). Different modelyears?

Coming back to the original question, were the springs originally supposed to open the boot half-way?

On the struts, are they not making the closure of the boot more difficult? On a hatchback, you got the weight helping you but here you'll have to overcome the resistance of the struts every time you close the lid.

We don't have all these problems on the LS400s the front wheels face the direction of travel and the rear wheels follow the fronts simples!!

Only girls don't get their car sideways

Just to explain.... LOC asked wim several years ago to investigate the alarming front tyre wear issues with the IS200/300/SC, we addressed this and gave the club the final settings for all "in gold" to see/use.

The real problem with the cars is not the camber but the non-adjustable castor and it's relationship with the camber on the corner. The procedure we evolved indirectly adjusts the castor and solves the wear problem without replacing suspension components.

Does it also solve 'heaviness' ? Or might the fact i find ours not very agile be caused by a tw@t doing the geometry. I sure don't see any negative camber on ours.