RobinGBrown

It might be the bearings at the top of the struts. I had an RX300 with air suspension that made a similar sounding noise

Regarding the headlights, there's some totally wrong answers up above. You only need headlight beam adjusters if your headlights illuminate the left side of the road. From the RX400h onwards the headlights are 'flat' i.e. they do not light up the left side of the road any higher than than the front. Flat headlights do not need beam adjusters. 

There are more and more low emission zones every year, I've found the best advice on the AA website as they have very clear country specific advice like this and links to all the sites you need to buy lez stickers, vignettes, toll devices, etc: Driving in France and Monaco | AA (theaa.com)

My wife is from Slovakia so we've driven there every summer for the school holidays for the last decade or so (barring one pandemic year) so I have to do the research each year

Other gotchas - dashcams: Austria doesn't allow them at all. SatNavs: France doesn't allow speed camera data. Vignettes: many are available online nowadays. LEZ stickers: take a long time to arrive and don't always turn up - order early*

French tolls can be sped through with a device but getting one in the UK is a bit of a pain and you have to pay an annual fee even if you don't use it at all - you can pay with a contactless card which is as quick as you can get otherwise

Simplest advice: always check the regulations for each country before you go

*To avoid cluttering your windscreen with stickers buy some 3 inch/7.5cm round acrylic disks and attach the stickers to those then hang them on the window with clips:

Disks: XIWENQUKU 10Pcs Clear Acrylic Sheet 0.04 Inch Thick Acrylic Plastic Disc Transparent Round Acrylic Panel Circle Acrylic Sheets Sign for Picture Frame Painting DIY Crafts (3 inch / 7.5 cm) : Amazon.co.uk: Home & Kitchen

Clips: Wicked Chili 4x Parking Permit, Ticket and Note Holder for Car Windscreen, Clips with Removable Suction Cup, Avoid parking fine, Set of 4 (Made in Germany) transparent : Amazon.co.uk: Automotive

Just remember that any nutter can make a video and put it on youtube, that doesn't mean that it's at all factual

I'm venting here becasue I'm finding it annoyingly difficult to find some simple parts. All I want is a set of wiper blade refills for my 2008 RX400h. I managed to get them from the Lexus official eBay store last time but it seems not to have the passenger side blade anymore, and every other place on the entire flaming internet is only interested in selling my wiper blades by a variety of manufacturers I'm simply not interested in! and the last thing I want to do is take time off from work to go to the dealer parts desk only to be told that they're not in stock!

Aaargh!

I'm curious about legroom, especially rear legroom, and in particular economical rear legroom.

I'm assuming a second hand LS with the 'long' version has the most but they're also one of the most expensive, the long RX should alos be good but again, that's only a recent and costly option.

So which Lexus model(s) gives you the best rear legroom at the best value?

Local Shell is dry (Sutton) and as the reserve light just came on I'm now officially screwed unless they get a delivery overnight.

There's plenty of places that will respray the alloys for a few hundred quid - have you considered that?

Do you accidentally have the 'easy in/out' button pressed? It's located near the petrol cap release and has some sort of effect on the air suspension. I always had it switched off on mine but I think it's meant to keep the air suspension lower to make it easy to get in and out of the car.

I had the cunning idea of fitting silver rimblades (rim protectors) to the 18" wheels so that they would look like a lower profile!

On 7/1/2020 at 10:28 AM, royoftherovers said:

I thought they were the same William.

If you give me Toyotec address etc, I will add them to the list.

You can copy the details from here: http://www.toyotec.co.uk/contact_us.html

I can recommend Toyotec in Redhill, Surrey, I've been going there for years and always had good service and advice

I'm adding to this a bit late but are you sure you have your wing mirrors adjusted 'properly'? A lot of people set their wing mirrors to show the body of the car they are driving, but in so doing they create a larger 'blind spot'. Adjusting them so that you can't see the body of the car gives a much improved rear view, more than sufficient to do without the rear-view mirror.

See this article for some good illustrations: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15131074/how-to-adjust-your-mirrors-to-avoid-blind-spots/

Oh and one word of warning the leather armrests on the rear doors are very easy to tear  when putting stuff in so make sure to protect them in some way

On 4/2/2020 at 6:57 AM, m4rkw said:

I would highly recommend Russell Birch of Toyotec in Redhill - http://www.toyotec.co.uk

I had a bunch of MOT work that needed doing and he saved me well over £500 compared to what my local garage were going to charge, purely through better techniques and knowledge of the car. And he also diagnosed an engine bay rattle for me for free (it was my aftermarket cruise control unit).

I can recommend Russel too, I have been taking my 300 and 400 there for many years

Question re insurance.

If you fit a non-oem replacement do you have to report the vehicle as 'modified' when getting insurance?

and if you don't claim on the insurance are there any other problems later on?

Insurance question for the crowd mind/any experts out there:

If I don't claim on the insurance as the excess is really high and get the exhaust pipe fixed with a 'universal' replacement are there any downsides?

i.e. would I have to count the vehicle as 'modified' for any future insurance?

Any other drawbacks?

p.s. I've started nicknaming Boris 'Fluffer' as all he does is get a few members excited but then fails to follow through

Well here's another theft, my RX400's cat was stolen in Croydon this Wednesday from the office car park no less!

I am wondering wether it's worth informing the insurers at all? £800 excess and I can get a universal cat from Mr Exhaust in Reigate for £400 fitted - who apparently has had four other Lexus' call today with the same problem.

and thanks to police cuts from the tories there's no one to stop this crimewave!

I thin k the only real solution would be to have a panel(s) covering the entire underside of the car

As the owner of an '04 RX300 SE-L with 110K miles I wouldn't worry about the air suspension too much, it's just something that will either go or not and it's hard to say whether it's on age or mileage. Frankly once a car is over ten years old there's little you can do to predict what will wear out first, there's far too many variables involved.

e.g. The wiring loom that connects to the sensors on the cylinders perished last year, that was a pricy fix as they had to take the fuel injection system off to get at it. £50 part but tons of labour required

The compressor on mine can just about be heard when starting up or changing height.

Had a similar problem myself a few years back, AFAIK the air suspension struts on the 300 are not the same as those on the 450 and are one-piece items. Independent mechanic I spoke to said that they could grease it as with yours but not replace the top bearing separately.

I just wanted to add that for people quoting their personal MPG figures it would really help if you also posted your tyre size/brand/model and _most importantly_  your tyre pressure

For instance my RX400h has just come back from it's summer holiday to Slovakia and managed 31mpg over approx. 3000 miles, over half of which was motorway. Tyres are 18" Hankook whatevers on the front and Michelin Latitude Sport 3s on the rear at 35 psi.

Without the tyre information it's all fairly anecdotal

Also, sign up for Fuelly, it's a real help

I've got a 2004 RX300 in silver and the black paint has stripped off on the driver's door mirror mount (where an old style quarter-light would be) and I'm going to respray it myself - is there a specific paint code or type for this black paint or will a simple black gloss be suitable? Also does it have a clearcoat? i.e. Is it 'normal' body paint with clearcoat or is it something else? Thanks

6 hours ago, rayaans said:

XL basically means stiffer sidewall so you might notice the car crashes over bumps and ridges a bit more

Would personally have gone for Michelin Primacy 3 if economy was your primary concern

Interestingly when I look it up the Primacy 3 is only rated C for economy, the Primacy 4 on the other hand comes out at A but with less wet grip and noise.

Might change my order - there's simply too much choice!

I've just ordered some new tyres to be fitted on Friday and there are two versions with very slight differences and I wondered if anyone had compared them before?

Michelin Latitude Sport 3 V (99) versus Michelin Latitude Sport 3 XL V (104) Ref: https://www.michelin.co.uk/tyres/michelin-latitude-sport-3

The XL has a 104 load rating compared to 99 for the 'plain' one and also has a better economy rating but is listed as a special v*lv* fitment. The Michelin site above, rather helpfully, doesn't show any information about it's various 'specifications'.

I've gone for the XL as every little bit of economy helps but thought I'd better double check with the gurus here to see if there's any potential problem?

Thoughts?

Another point, and this is from driving my RX400h which is not quite the same: tyre pressures make a big difference

Recommended for the RX400H is 32 but I had to put it up to 35 on the Hankooks that came with it to get any form of decent mpg from it

As others have said, there's definitely an adjustment and learning period. Nowadays I find that when I switch back to my RX300 I have to really put my foot down to get it moving like the 400.

Having done this trip (UK to Slovakia) several times the DVD is good until you exit Austria.

However we use a Garmin all the way as the price of the DVDs is excessive even for Lexus and the Garmin just has much better features like easy to read speed, choice of kmh/mph, speed camera data, lifetime traffic, lifetime maps, etc.

I'd be very hesitant to use something that takes over the central screen - will it be compatible with all the basic features like aircon control, etc?

The GPS is very handy for your own reference and most dash cam viewing software will show you the route and how fast you were going on a map as well as the video, but yes if you're paranoid about your insurance company using it against you then avoid the GPS (or at least don't send them the raw dash cam files!)