MrShades

My 450h has provided great service to me in the 4 or 5 years that I've owned it so far - with hardly a problem at all. I bought it at 6000 miles and it's rapidly approaching 100,000 now. All has been well - and my last trip on Friday was a good longish journey from Surrey back to Wiltshire - with no problems at all. This afternoon my wife has borrowed it (she never drives it, and only did today as her car was v low on fuel) and within 5 minutes of pulling off the drive she called me: "Is it OK to drive with this flashing triangle, and these warning messages"..... errrr... what flashing triangle and warning messages? Bring it home again. So - now it starts OK (and runs and drives OK) but the display shows "Check VSC Check ECB" and then "Check PCS System" - and cycles round them. I've got yellow warning triangle flashing, Brake warning light, PCS warning light and ABS warning light on as well. Any ideas what may have caused this very sudden and seemingly multiple system effecting error? As I said, it apparently (I've not driven it again yet) drives OK with no loss of power or anything. My OBDII box doesn't seem to pick up any real errors, though has some "system readiness checks" that are marked as failed. I can see a trip to the local (Swindon) dealer coming on, and an unexpectedly high bill to go with it. Any help or advice or even suggestions or sympathy will be very gratefully received.

Great - thanks very much. You're in Glos with newly refurbed wheels aren't you? Nice job. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks - that sounds good. Any brief instructions would be very welcome. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I've managed to tear my glovebox lid, and have purchased a replacement, but before I dive in and start trying to work out what to do / set off airbags, etc. - I thought I'd ask here. It's a 2007 GS450h - and it's the foldy down lid that I'm trying to remove and replace, not the entire glovebox. Any help or hints'n'tips (or just "Good luck - I've tried and it's impossble" comments) gratefully received. Thanks!

450h is quicker

Lexus Swindon have a GS 460 for sale at the moment... £18995. Only 16 were ever sold in the UK. Shades

I've just put a set of Dunlop SP Sport Maxx TT's on my GS450h, and they seem very good and were a pretty good price. Whilst I have no idea of how many miles I'll get from them, based on current experience I'd recommend them.

Was the hifi working OK in the car in Cheltenham??? The same car was in Swindon on Monday night and the muppet salesman that was "demoing the wonderful Mark Levinson hifi" decided to crank it up to 55+ on the volume (may have been on MAX, I can't remember exactly) and play Fireflies (Owl City) on the demo disk. 10 seconds into it there was a "pop" and then silence... followed by some turning off/on and a 'technician' poking around. I left shortly afterwards after commenting that its visit to Bristol on Tuesday night was going to be a quiet one! As a current GS450h owner I was very surprised at the size of boot on the new one - at least twice the size of the current boot by the looks of it! No idea where the batteries and the hybrid system have gone though. The only thing I wasn't hugely keen on was the F Sport front end - very "Veilside". I think the Premier is better styled, and as your said, includes fog lights! With ACC/PCS+LKA only available on the Premier it's a no brainer. The current F Sport demo car appears to also have HUD, but I can't see any mention of that on the spec sheets and whether it's standard or optional on the F Sport and/or Premier. Anyone know?

Mine does that if I leave my iPhone in the central arm rest (not plugged in to anything) - and I think you'll find that rather than it being caused by a power drain, it's actually caused by the radio signals that are occasionally being transmitted by the phone affecting the car's sensitive anti-theft systems it's in close proximity. I'm not sure with the GS, but the centre armrest is almost the ideal place to put an interior microwave sensor (that are commonly used on high end alarms instead of interior ultrasonics) - and certainly any mobile phone has always affected the one in my Impreza in exactly the same way.

I think you might be wrong with the assumption that any pre-facelift SE-L has ACC/PCS. I'm pretty sure that when I was looking for my 450h (and also had ACC/PCS as an essential option) I went through MANY potential SE-L spec cars that didn't have it. If an SE-L spec car has a sunroof then I'm pretty certain it also has ACC/PCS (they were linked options) - but the only real way to check is to look for the 'distance control' button on the right hand side of the steering wheel. There's a post on here somewhere about it, that I replied to with steering wheel photos showing the difference between ACC equipped and non-ACC. Good luck in your hunt - the 450h is a great car, and ACC is a fantastic option that really makes cruise control usable in the UK, even on a busy motorway or A road. Shades

If you still have 2008 or 2009 map data then there will be an update available (well, there is if you're a Gen5 satnav using DVD!). If you have the HD based satnav, then the update process is pretty complicated - and dealer only by the looks of it - involving various security keys, etc. Get your wallet prepared and call your local dealer and see what they say. There's no easy "buy an update DVD from here" solution, sorry. Good luck! Shades

Excellent news Tony! Glad to hear that it's helped someone already. Concerning the "Lexus Medic" - I think, for the sake of my sanity and income, I'll stick to the day job! Interestingly, I do have an original Dyson DC-01 (that I use as my garage vac) that is still running sweetly (with a bit of fettling here and there) after I-don't-know-how-many years. The wife's DC-25 ball thing has lots of bells-and-whistles but just doesn't seem as solidly built. (Mk1 GS vs Mk3 GS!)

Well, it was -2c this morning with the car covered in ice - a condition that would previously have had creaks and noises coming from the dash within a few miles. However, this morning - even when bouncing over regular bumps/holes/rumble strips - the dash was as quiet as I would have expected. Now, with felt tape and felt to spare, I need to find another noise / creak / rattle to fix!

Having owned my 57 plate GS450h since it had around 6000 miles on the clock, initially - even through cold weather periods of the winter months - the car was rattle, squeak and creak free. However, over the last 6 months or so it has developed a couple of annoying creaks and noises from the dash area, namely: 1. Glovebox - intermittent creak, usually at speed - that stops when the glovebox lid is held / pushed more tightly closed. 2. Upper passenger side dashboard near the in-dash tweeter, creaking noise that became very bad in the cold mornings. Hopefully, as I hunted high and low on here and on the Club Lexus forum for help/advice before not finding much (other than complaints about noises) and fixing these issues myself, the following information will help anyone else with similar noises. Addressing each of these in turn: 1. Glovebox. I was initially convinced that the noise was coming from the upper part of the glovebox lid (mainly due to the fact that it sounded like it was coming from there, and pushing the top of the lid stopped it) - and was probably plastic-on-plastic contact from the catch mechanism. However, I soon found (by covering almost the entire catch mech with felt tape) that this wasn't the cause... far from it. After looking around for quite some time I found that, on my lid, the lower edge of the glovebox lid was actually VERY close to the trim beneath it - and actually, at the left hand edge (nearest the passenger door) was virtually touching the trim beneath. Using some self adhesive felt tape (bought from eBay very cheaply) I simply cut a small (about 1 square cm) piece of felt-tape and stuck it in the gap. It's virtually invisible (you'd notice it only with the door open, lid open and when looking for it) and has completely fixed the glovebox noise. You can just see the edge of the black felt tape in this image, showing the glovebox lid closed (though it may well just look like a trim gap - it'll become more obvious in the later images): With the glovebox lid open it's slightly more obvious: But a real closeup of it shows you exactly what's where: If the above helps just one other person, who thinks that his glovebox lid catch mech is worn and rattling (like I did) then this post is worth it. It annoyed the hell out of me (and take it from me, it's not easy driving along the M6 steering with one hand whilst hitting/holding the glovebox lid with the other!). 2. Upper passenger side dash - near the in-dash tweeter (speaker). This is the classic and quite common GS dash rattle. Fixed to a large extent in later models, and in earlier ones if you are willing to pay or catch it early enough and still in warranty, with the new "felt lined" dashboard clips. Lexus offered to pay for the parts if I paid for the labour for this - so circa £2 of parts vs about £500 to rip the entire dash out, fix and refit. No thanks. In my case this sounded like the odd creak / squeak - the wife didn't notice it, and thought I was bonkers - that typically happened on cold mornings and after a few miles of driving (or a good pothole or speedbump to unsettle things). I tried the "silicone spray" fix, found either here or on Club Lexus, whereby you remove the speaker grill and spray the offending dash clip with silicone lubricant. Made no difference at all in my case. I deluged the thing on two or three occasions and it still made no difference, the dash continued to creak. So - with it driving me up the wall (and if you're a regular Fosse Way driver you'll appreciate the rumblestrips, potholes, undulations along there really don't help) I needed to do something. I bought a square of standard black craft felt from a local craft shop. Here's a picture of it, along with the only "tool" that I needed (it's a plastic pallet knife that I 'borrowed' from the wife): I then cut it into four equal sized strips: ...but used only two of them for the 'fix'. I've included my Lexus keyfob in this one so that you can get an idea of scale: Taking each of the strips in turn, I folded each strip in half and then into thirds - so that when looked at side-on there were 6 thicknesses of felt, but the felt 'wad' was still a reasonably large size: Now - I placed each of these felt wads in the locations shown in the photo below (which are approximately where the dash-clips are): and by placing my flexible plastic pallet knife inside the folds and easing the felt firmly down into the gap between dash and windscreen/bulkhead (a credit card may do a similar job, but may not have the 'reach' required): I 'rammed' the felt down until it felt snug and wasnt visible from the normal seating poasitions inside the cabin. Here's the speaker felt installed (you can't see it, can you?): I've tweaked the levels in that photo so that you CAN see it (just): And the other one (again, effectively invisible but if you look hard you MAY be able to just make it out): Having inserted both of the above - THERE ARE NO MORE CREAKS! The dash feels more solid and quiet, and rumble-strips and potholes or speed-bumps don't cause any problems or noises at all. It really is fantastic and it's made a huge difference on these cold winter mornings. If any driver side creaks appear then rest assured that I've got two felt strips left over, and they'll be rammed in on the opposite side a bit sharpish! Anyway - hopefully this also helps anyone with the very annoying GS dash creak. Good luck! Shades

A photo of the steering wheel is the only sure way - as there's an extra button for the ACC distance control. It shows the outline of a vehicle facing left with 'radar waves' coming from the front of it: This GS doesn't have the extra button (below the DISP and 'voice command' buttons on the right hand side of the wheel) Whereas this one very clearly does: Certainly on the GS450h the easy way to tell is that the ACC/PCS option was only available with a sunroof - so if a GS450h has a sunroof then it also has ACC/PCS. Not sure if the same is true for the 300 though - so look for the button. HTH

Yes, I can help with that - I had exactly the same problem last year. Used to drive me up the wall... reaching over and holding the lid, hitting it in fury etc. In order to investigate and fault-find I bought some "self adhesive anti rattle felt tape" from eBay for about £2 - thin strips of self adhesive felt tape. Convinced it was the locking mechanism on the glove box I set about the plastic components (and anything that looked like plastic-on-plastic contact) in there with felt tape - only to test various combinations and find that the noise was still there. In the end I found that the actual problem was caused by the lower edge of the front of the glove box squeeking gently against the trim panel underneath it. I ran a short length (probably about 3 inches) of felt tape along the gap (where it looked to be closest to the lid when closed) and I've never had the noise again. IIRC opening the glove box lid makes the gap easy to get to. This year, the "GS rattle of choice" is the damn plastic dashboard clips on the bulkhead - and specifically the one by the passenger dash speaker. I've tried Silicone spray on it, and it's better - but I might have to get some felt out on that as well! Anyway, hope this is the same issue as yours - and that you manage to fix it as quickly and easily as I did. Shades

OK, I'll accept that if you hoof your foot to the floor then the CVT gearbox does ensure that the engine revs like the clappers - which can make a bit of a noise - but that's hardly "normal" driving. If I'm driving my 450h normally then the noise level and harshness inside the cabin is very similar to that inside my neighbours LS460, which ranks at number 5. Seeing as, in that 'quietest car' report, the GS350 comes so much further up the list than the 450h, the difference can only really be the CVT nature of the 450h and hence the way the car is driven. All interesting stuff...

A GS 450h? "Far too noisy, and far too harsh"???? Are you mad???? It's certainly the quietest car I've ever driven (you can't beat 'silent' really can you?), and even with the suspension set to Sport it's nowhere near 'harsh'. Now if you're talking about an IS diesel then I could possibly believe your comments - but surely Lexus don't make a car that is "noisy" or "harsh" in any respect? Very odd...

Well, I've just dropped off my 450h for the valve spring recall. Dealer has very kindly given me a brand new RX450h demonstrator (60 plate) and even popped out to put fuel in it for me as it was quite low. Can't complain so far, except it appears to be an SE rather than SE-L. The RX doesn't exactly appear to be frugal - driving in my normal style along the M4 this morning (about 80mph ish) it has been averaging around 26mpg. Not great - was expecting more... especially when the official combined figure is 44.8! Certainly no "Hybrid PWR" button to make life better! (the only options appear to be Eco or Snow). I went to see a CT200h at the weekend, and much like the RX it has an "EV mode" - which seems pretty pointless. It appears to allow battery-only driving (as long you're doing less than about 30mph). Above 30mph it wont switch to EV mode, and if you exceed 30mph it turns EV mode off. Waste of time IMHO, in the GS you just use light throttle below 30mph and it use battery anyway. Also - similar to the CT, it has the "mouse pointer" navigation, menus, etc. (Someone could have told me that before I sat in the CT and started stabbing my finger at the screen whilst it did nothing). Seems to work quite well, but not as quick/easy to use as full touch-screen display (though, whe the screen is as far away as it is in the RX and CT it makes sense!). Anyway, will hopefully get a (cleaner) GS450h back on Wednesday or Thursday this week - and interestingly (for LS owners, not that any will read this) the dealer (Swindon) told me that they now have special tools that mean that the valvespring replacement can now be performed on the LS without taking the engine out (special tools and all that!). As long as I get a clean car back, and some champagne in the post I'll be a happy chappy. Shades

Did you go and try one? What did you think?

Yes, "Holy Thread Resurection Batman", etc.

Just to add to this one, I was coming out of Swindon on the M4 this morning - just east of J15 - and spotted (sat on one of those humps/take-off ramps) a fully liveried up, yellow stickers, roof lights, the whole 9 yards Police GS450h. It's a black 09 plate, so I assume it's a 450h (couldn't see as I floated past in mine). I knew that Wiltshire previously had an unmarked 450h but didn't realise that they also now had a fully marked up one (although I've now Googled and found that they've also had an 08 plated marked one, also black). Nice to know that PC Plod is swanning around in 50K+ of Lexus luxury in these times of austerity. I bet that's the last one the budget stretches to for a while. Shades

Whilst the GS hybrid hasnt been available for a great length of time I was encouraged by the fact that it is similar technology (well, the batteries anyway!) as the Toyota Prius - and you dont hear of problems with the hybrid technology in the Prius. They've been selling the Prius in Europe since 2000 - so well over 10 years - and you don't hear of people having problems that require new batteries or electric motors. Whilst I've not seen a Prius with 200K+ miles, like your Merc, there are quite a few (for sale right now on Autotrader for example) with 100K+ If you do go to Lexus Swindon then don't be put off by the fact that they probably won't have an "Approved Used" 450h for sale (that said, I've just checked and they have a black 56 plate SE-L with 42000 for £20K!). When I was looking for one I asked them, and whilst they had a new one in the showroom they didnt seem to get many used at all (as Fish Bros own a single Lexus franchise - Swindon - they don't have a pool of other dealers to obtain stock from). I looked far and wide for mine, using Autotrader and Lexus used car search constantly - for days - until I found the car I wanted (right colour, spec, miles, age, etc.). I ended up taking the wife for a day trip to Lexus Derby to do a deal, which was well worth it. Lexus Swindon have been useful since then, but couldnt find me what I was looking for. If you do sit on the M4 a fair bit then an SE-L with ACC/PCS is worth finding (as the additional cost for the option on a used GS would be zero or negligible) - and the ACC/PCS option is only available with a sunroof, so you get a sunroof as well! Go and drive it - see what you think - but make sure you slide the centre arm rest back and hit that "Hybrid PWR" button. You'll be quite surprised by the acceleration and will feel your wallet cringing as you smile! On 3-4 year old models, check that they've had all recalls (including the latest - replacing the valve springs on some 06/07/08 cars) and have a solid service history but other than that I cant think of any 'common faults' (as it's a Lexus!). If I can help more - or if coming over to Abbeymeads to have a look/chat/ride or discuss further would help, then just ask. Shades

Yes, agree with all of the above - just go and get one! I live in Swindon and drive my 450h SE-L (with ACC/PCS - the adaptive cruise being fantastic) from Swindon to my office in Reading quite often. On a good M4 cruise you can approach 40mpg, though it depends on how spirited a drive you have (70mph gets closer to 40mpg, 85-90 gets closer to 30mpg). The performance is the best aspect, certainly when compared with its competition - that and the level of mod-cons/gadgets that it comes equipped with. It would take a huge amount of cash to compete with it from BMW, Merc or Jag. I must admit that I do enjoy the performance of the hybrid so don't really get the best MPG from it, though also often drive carefully so as to get pure electric running round town - just for fun and to scare people (as it's pretty silent!). I'll admit that I was a little nervous of the CVT gearbox prior to getting it, ideally preferring a 'normal' automatic - but now would prefer the Lexus CVT... it's great. Just constant power, no surges, no changes in gear (other than a bit of a change at about 55mpg, as the CVT changes to a higher ratio range). Let me know if there's any other questions or queries that I can help you with. Shades

You'll get similar consumption figures in the 450h. I guess I average around 370 miles to a tankful in mine, and when cruising on the motorway and driving with a light foot can get mid to late 30s, but typical consumption from a tankful is between 28-32 depending on how much motorway there's been. Concerning the battery - I think you'll be fine on batter life. They use NiMH batteries, the same as in the Prius, and there have been Priuses on the road for more than 10 years with no outcry over failing batteries. Lexus provide a 5 year Hybrid Drivetrain warranty, which includes the batteries, but that doesnt mean that they'll go up in a puff of smoke or lack performance once 6 years old. Anything else you'd like to know? Edited to comment on boot space - I dont care about boot space, as long as I can get a suitcase in and a briefcase, etc. as we have a couple of other cars with more space, bigger boots, etc. if we need to do Ikea or tip runs, etc. - so not an issue at all for me. Shades