Wass

I think that there were just a few tricks missed when designing the CT storage spaces. However Colin makes a good point in that hardly any car seems to have a space which is specifically designed to house owners documentation. Home makes sense.

Sorry Gerry, my car has the most basic sound system and no sat nav and I have to admit to not noticing differing sound levels between radio/cd/usb appart from listening to five live on AM and I guess that this is down to poor AM reception.

Hi Sorry for the tardy reply, I have been on holiday to a computerless environment with no mobile phone cover. A cottage in Sennen, near to Lands End. Cornish stone built cottages and computers/mobiles seem an unlikely match! The part numbers which I ended up buying are: E42611-21290 Wheel disc E51931-76010 Carrier, spare E64993-76030 Box, Deck Floo Q125/70R17conti Tyres conti CST17 I have copied these part numbers and descriptions directly off the invoice. Wheel disc is the steel space saver bare wheel Carrier, spare is the spare wheel screw down holder Box deck floo is the boot insert box which fits over the top of the space saver and is made of expanded polystyrene. Conti tyres is the space saver tyre and I am guessing that the part code on this is a Lexus Hatfield reference rather than a Lexus part number. The part I didnt bother with was the new load space cover and of course i dont have that part number since I didnt ask Hatfield Lexus to order one. My own experience of goo in tyres has been restricted to use in two wheelers on two occasions neither of which were in the least part successful. The most recent debacle was when a pal of mine turned up on my drive with a can of goo and a flat. It took ages to remove the goo from my drive and it still didnt fix his flat tyre! We took his wheel off and I ran him to his local dealer who were able to fit a new tyre. The dealer charged extra to clean up the mess which was made of my friends wheel. Lexus Hatfield were very good in all this and i can recommend them, not only because they provided a solution with the minimum of fuss but also because of their close proximity to the A1.

I have to admit that I am a bit of a tradfitionalist in that I dont like space saver spare tyres very much. A spare wheel should be a spare wheel. UK CTs come with less than a space saver, its a portable compressor complete with goo=> I liked that idea even less . Having read through the owners manual and looked at the american Lexus CT forum, I realised that a space saver tyre was indeed available for the CT since a lot of our cousins across the pond have them. Finding the space saver idea to be more acceptable than a compressor and goo, I enquired of the trusted dealership in Hatfield as to whether they might be able to supply me with a space saver set up to replace the compressor etc. One very helpful parts manager ( Antony Wilson) not only ordered in the parts but also trialed them in one of their cars to ensure a good fit and e mailed me photos. We discovered that the carpet cover would be diferent to the UK spec item and that the complete set up is indeed available BUT costs a lot of money due to the number of diferent parts required. In order to keep my costs down I ordered the wheel . tyre, securing bracket and boot insert all of which cost exceeded £300. I asked myself the question: how much was I willing to pay for peace of mind. So now I have a Lexus CT200 with a spare tyre. thanks in no small part to the dilligence of Antony Wilson at Lexus Hatfield. Finally I can drive without the worry of what to do with a flat tyre, I am back on familiar ground , I can change the wheel just like any one of my past cars.

I am still going to replace the locking wheel nuts with conventional nuts since I park my car in a garage and i reeason that anyone deturmined enough to carry a jack around with them will almost certainly carry the wherewithall to swipe some wheels and tyreslocking nuts or not. I found out today that the small piece of paper which comes with the locking wheel nut set has a 3 figure code on it which identifies the key.

I was rotating the wheels on our Prius and was just tightening the security nut and the key sheared off in the nut. I have now been left with a key with no spare and am unable to remove the wheels. I have always tightened the nuts by hand and used a torque wrench to finish off. The ease with which the key sheared off indicated a stress fracture meaning that the keys are susceptible to work hardening and are therefore likely to shear off with regular use or (suffer the thought ) impact wrenching. My previous Volvos, Audi and Honda all had spare keys and therefore wouldnt have been a problem. The Toyota doesnt have a spare key and the universal removal tools do not work on the Toyota design of nut. Luckily I have a nut which I hadnt yet fitted and I have the old key. Once I remove the nuts I will be replacing them with conventional wheel nuts since I am sure that at some time in the cars past someone has "gunned" the key nuts leading to the key failiure. That someone would, without any shaddow of doubt, refer to him or herself as a trained professional since amatures tend not to have access to impact guns. I am tempted to mig weld a nut onto the ends of these locking nuts but will bide my time while the dealers try to get a key for me. My Lexus uses exactly the same type of locking wheel nuts and the box has the same part number on it. and so I compared the keys to find that each key has a letter stamped onto the top of it. My broken prius key is a J whilst my Lexus key is an X. I assume that this is the factory ident which is worth making a note of.

There is a recall on all CT200 models in America relating to an exhaust gas valve fault. I wonder why this recall doesnt appear to be happening in UK or Canada?

You are missing nothing Tony but clearly the CT range is! There is quite a lot about the CT which is missing compaired to a similarly priced Prius. However, there are also some nice advantages such as internal and external styling and enhanced performance of drivetrain and braking systems. From my limited experience of Lexus, the CT does not seem to be a typical Lexus. There seem to be a lot of exclusions throughout the CT range( which I would expect to find with other marques) which are not typical of other Lexus models.

Hadnt seen a mini USB before but now own and use one to great effect thanks to your photo Brian.

I googled the scan gauge II and it looks to be a worthwhile piece of kit. Having never had any experience of such a device, does it come with an idiots guide? I have had dealings with OBD sockets before but only on those simple reset tools they used on systems they used to fit on BMW and Audi service lights. I would welcome your views on the scan gauge and its ease of use since its cost seems to justify its use since it has the potential to pay back its own value at the dealers in approximately two hours or less ( not including my own time in travelling to the dealers). :D

A smart move! Yes you're right! The USB port is a very useful thing but its annoying that I have to faff about connecting/disconnecting the I pod everytime I decide to start/stop the car..

If memory serves right, Habu, youve been through the winter with your car havent you? I would suspect a dragging brake caliper due to a build up of winter grime rather than a wheel bearing. By all means a trip to the service bay is a given necessity but I would doubt a wheel bearing issue since modern bearings are one of the most well engineered components on any car and QA on bearings is at its highest.

By way of a contrast, I am 6'2" and there really isnt very much room at all behind my seat for any passenger other than a child up to 5 years of age. I also used to have an Audi 2 litre TDI and I do notice the diference at motorway speeds. I travel only 20.000 miles a year on a daily commute on non motorway roads and the CT200 is in its own world, its comfortable, economical, responsive to throttle input at speeds below 60mph. Handling on the 16" tyres is good enough to cause embarrassment to other road users and so I can only imagine that 17"tyres would be better in the dry and worse in the wet. If my 20,000 miles took me along motorways, I would be headed back to a diesel if I were to be honest. Oh the brakes! In an emergency situation, the brakes are ace! The hard CT200 suspension settings compliment the braking performance perfectly its almost as if they designed the CT200 to stop in any given situation in much the same way as it can be made to go ( my car is the SE-i base model and so doesnt suffer from traction control which , from what I can surmise, is a right pain if my wifes prius spirit is anything to go by) Otherwise, I agree with GJD in many respects.

The dirtiness of the car is compensated by that wonderful ultra blue colour . The sills look terrific regardless of a bit of muck! I was surprised that they didnt take the feed to the sills from the interior light since my footwell lights are on all of the time like running lights.

This is the same as a lot of reports really, auto express have gone to the trouble of producung a report about an eco car without reporting the fuel consumption they actually were able to achieve. Instead, the supporting written information regurgitates the factory information which is derived from driving the car in very favourable conditions... mostly downhill with a following wind with the air conditioning turned off. :D Very few car reports comment on the issues which would involve the tester actually putting the car through its paces and reporting accurate findings. For example, the journalist points out how many air bags he has managed to count ( counting is hardly a specialist skill) but neglects to comment upon the excellent behaviour of the braking and chassis in the event of a simulated emergency scenario; which is something I believe is a very important issue that I would expect professional objective reports to include. The short report tells me very little more than the Lexus sales brochure and some of what it does mention isnt very specific.IE the harsh ride which may be encountered on some roads ......what is missing is: "has been designed into the car to allow it to act in a very predictable, safe and controlled manner when the ABS cuts in," On the positive side, the report actually does highlight some of the reasons which persuaded me to buy the car. :D

I assume from the tone of your write up that it was a Lexus dealer who fitted the non Lexus parts for you. Can you let me know which dealer I should avoid?It hardly seems a fair deal to me.

There is a current sales gimick of offering nitrogen in place of air to fill tyres. This is something which the track boys started because it gives slightly more stability to the tyre pressures. Air is only about 78% nitrogen with the rest being mostly oxygen . I have to admit to being curious and so I asked a friend who regularly attends track days in his caterham and is one of the quicker guys ( and is far quicker than me). His reply was that his lap times werent noticeably affected......... nuff said. Nitrogen tyre fills arent for me!... (Another useful and money saving tip from the Prius site). Prices for nitrogen can vary but I seem to remember somebody mentioned £1 per tyre. :D

There really isnt much of a secret behind those MPG figures. I am not an elf, I am an overweight 6'2" engineer.... ( nearly the same thing!) I stumbled upon th method of obtaining good fuel consumption more or less by accident. My route on the 37.6 mile commute to work takes me along single carriageway A roads with lots of tractors, daft 20mph speed limits where they wouldnt be needed if they had just enforced the old 30mph limit properly, 40mph articulated lorries and hardly any straights in which to overtake. The result of all this is an hour long run into work with an average speed of...... you guessed it 37 or 38 mph. Sleepy Pete informs that the optimum operational speed for the hybrid system is 40-45 mph so, in other words I must be running in faily similar conditions to the original design brief specification for the vehicle. There are hills along my route, however, they seem to even each other out since I use more fuel to get to work ( because its colder in the morning and over the entire distance it is uphill) and I use less fuel to go home ( warmer and downhill overall). You ask about the wheels/tyres: I was given the option of those or the 17" and I chose the 16" options because they have a narrower foot print which gives better road holding in snow and wet roads ( this is why rally cars use narrower tyres in slippery conditions), they give less rolling resistance therefore use less fuel as you suggest, they help to soften the slightly choppy ride characteristic of the CT and the tyres cost a lot less to replace. The downside is that they dont look quite so good and I lose a bit of dry weather handling ability. Another trick I learnt from the prius forum is to routinely check tyre pressures to ensure good economy.

Our other car is a Prius and some time ago I mentioned the subject of radiator blind on their forum and it turned out that some of the members routinely used them in the cooler weather to allow the car to warm up more quickly and run at a temperature which would be closer to the optimum design temperature. The consensus appeared to be that to blank off all of the lower grille and half of the upper grille was perfectly accepteble in cold weather. One of the forum actually reckoned that this would be ok up to ambient temperatures of 15 degrees centigrade. I suppose when you consider that these car will run quite happily in ambient temperatures of above 40 degrees centigrade, you can see the sense in this supposition. I decided that i didnt want to get quite so radical as blanking off any of the upper grille but I did blank off the lower grille with a piece of 2 mm UPVC sheet which I made from taking a cardbord template off the lower grille while it was dirty and wet. ( I pressed the cardboard up to the grille and got a mucky wet outline of the grille printed onto it). I then bought a small Lexus transfer and applied it on the top left corner and hold the blind onto the grille with white tie wraps. Initially , the car looks a bit odd but it does work so to my mind its a worthwhile modification. I have run with this in ambients up to 18 degrees centigrade with no trouble at all. I still havent heard the cooling fans cut in yet so it seems that the design parameters of the Lexus arent being stretched. I would estimate that fuel consumption improvement is around 10% with my latest fill up acheiving 68.2 mpg (real mpg, the dashboard was telling me 73 ish mpg) I have attached a picture of my home made blind on the car. As you can see, it helps to have a white car too! :D

I have now covered 2800 miles in my CT200H and am still discovering some of the driving techniques. How to use the mode selector, How to feather the throttle, how to judge the right place to ease off the accelerator so that the car slows itself down to legal speed without using the brakes when entering 30mph zones. My fuel consumption has improved over 8 tank fills from low 50s to 67 mpg at the last fill. I am very chuffed with this car. I think that the car is well suited to the 38 mile route I drive to and from work which explains the excellent fuel consumption figures I'm getting out of it. The car seems to be less fuel efficient on dual carriageways and motorways which is , I suspect where a lot of people expect it to be in its element. The fuel consumption is passable on motorways and dual carriageways and the throttle response is well up to the job but the roads which seem to suit the car best are those single lane A roads where you inevitably end up following a Sainsburys lorry in a queue at a steady 40mph! ;) Theres plenty of room for my overweight 6'2" frame and I really like the sound system. The controls are well thought out and easy to reach and i am still really glad that I bought this car. There are cars which are faster and there are cars which are more economic there are also cars which are more comfortable. There are cars which are more pleasing to the eye. The CT200H does all these things quite well which is what makes it a very very good car ( in my opinion)

Kylie obviously isnt cutting it. I'd be interested to find out exactly which CT versions are being offered and at what cost and where is this dealer?