ubersonic

Well a couple of well known environmental differences are that in North America it's quite common for ISFs to suffer melting dashboards and eventually valley plate failures, in Europe both issues are virtually unseen.

https://www.lexus.co.uk/owners/about-my-lexus/vehicle-recall

There's no justice, my mate has a 600BHP Mazda RX7 with no cats that produces as much harmful emissions and noise as mount Krakatoa. But because it's a 1.3L car made before 2001 he pays £180 a year VED lol.

My point was basically that getting a "looks good enough" part form a scrapyard is not something an insurer would have done, so the repair may have been done on the cheap or even by the seller himself. However having seen the damage pictures that have since been added he must have taken it to a bodyshop as that's simply not the type of stuff you can fix in your garage. The first pic shows an ISF boot with a Nürburgring decal, I assume they fitted the replacement boot in the second pic before repairs were fully completed. Presumably to keep the rain out if it were moved outside. This also explains the lack of rear sensors in the earlier pic as they would have been obliterated by the impact. The added pictures actually offset some of my earlier reservations, however if I was going to bid on it I would want to behind the rear bumper (or pictures) for sure to make sure the rear of the car and the slam panel aren't still twisted.

That just screams red alert to me lol. Has the guy said it was insurance repaired or are we just assuming that? Because it looks like it's taken a rear end hit, somebody's sourced a used IS boot from a scrapyard and thought "same colour, it'l do", maybe had the bumper welded/resprayed but lost the parking sensors (seriously look at the pic they're not there), and then bodged on some bad boy tailpipes because it was cheaper than the backbox and floating tips. I say "looks like" of course, there may be an explanation for it all, but those pics do not instil me with confidence. Neither does the fact it's main dealer records stop 25k ago. But hey maybe he'll update it with an explanation (and some interior pics).

A cheaper option would be to order the RR Racing ECU flash, they have the option to remove the speed limiter and it adds performance.

The PS4S is the replacement for the PSS, for some reason Michelin decided not to just call them PSS2 as that would make too much sense and went with Pilot Sport 4 S instead. It was a stupid idea as many non car enthusiasts end up thinking the PS4 and PS4S are basically the same, or even worse than a PS5 is better than a PS4S.

You best option is the Michelin PS4S, it's their best tyre (excluding their track tyres, which you wouldn't want to run on a daily anyway). They're great tyres, I run them on my ISF for most of the year and switch to all weathers over winter. The reason for this is because Michelin have deals with numerous manufacturers where their dealers specify X tyre throughout Y cars life and in return Michelin give them a discount on the tyres, it's the reason Michelin still make older tyres like the Supersports.

I heard similar from my Supra while driving down an unlit road at night, at first I thought I'd obliterated a rabbit or something that was sitting in the road. Nope, blown shock.

Not going to lie I had quite literally forgotten the GS460 ever existed, but then as Lexus UK sold 0 in it's last 18 months on sale I wasn't the only one xD

I never really understood the idea of cars nicked to order in this country. I mean, if you're nicking a RHD vehicle to order then you're buyer is going to be in either the Australia/NZ area, Japan, South-East Africa, or India. At least two of those have the F cars as domestic models where they're a more common sight than in the UK so importing a nicked one with the wiper stalk on the wrong side seems a bit dense when you could just buy locally, then you have to factor in that nicking Japanese cars from Japan to use in Aus/NZ/India would save a load on shipping compared to UK. So the only real market would be South-East Africa. Which is weirder still as who in Africa has the money to pay for a crew to steal them a car and ship it halfway round the planet, but decided they absolutely must have a forty grand used Lexus GS with the engine from an RCF (I'm not trying to hate on the GSF, but there's a reason it's the worst selling car Lexus UK have ever offered without a V10, the market for potential buyers is tiny).

On the ISF it's an annual inspection and changed every 3 years, so maybe the RCF has better oil or diff 😄 Looks like the diff oil change is the same year on the schedule as the ATF inspection/replace.

How did you find that out? Oh, I just saw on the Lexus.eu site there's a recall on the ISF airbag, does that apply to UK too?

Anyone got any ideas if this will fit before I buy and hope? 🙂 Stock suspension/wheels.

So either ISF fuel pipes are made of sterner stuff, or Lexus CBA going back that far xD *EDIT* Wait, no, they issued a recall for the ISF pipe like 6-7 years ago, I'd forgotten about that haha.

The funny thing with the F cars TSB is the plastic guides in the F's can (and have) last for half a million miles, it's a mechanical metal part that fails. It's this little part for anyone wondering:

Hey all, as title will 255/40/19 fit on the rear wheels ok? Or will it cause rubbing issues? According to online calcs it will fill the arch 12.75mm more, and the speedo will be out by -3.71 (which isn't a problem as that is offset by the 3% it overreads anyway lol).

It's a guaranteed age/mileage related issue on all ISFs, and on RCFs/GSFs produced prior to May 2016. What age/mileage it arrives, nobody can really say.

The rounded prices for the work was: Labour 1120, tensioner assy 130, tensioner assy 110, 2x chain sub-assy 320, seal packing 85, which came to 1760 before VAT. I had both tensioners and chains replaced, because that's what everyone else does (and what the mechanics recommend) and for the added cost I didn't want to be the first guy to just replace the flawed tensioner and see what happens. That doesn't include gaskets, nuts, bolts, O-rings, brackets, which are shown separate and I can't tell how many are associated with the job as per the book and how many were needed to be changed due to my car being 13 years old and having covered 123,381 miles of UK roads. Oh I also had the water pump done as that was about due and was essentially labour free as it was fully accessible. The reason the exhaust had to be split between the manifolds/ centre sections was because by the book this is an engine out job. It can be done by removing the radiator/etc and attacking the engine from the front as per some DIY YouTube videos, but it seems most mechanics aren't satisfied with that cramped level of access (I think this may be why the time in the TSB is grossly lower than what the actual technicians take).

Hi Buddy, I had this work done last December at cost, first of all if you need a video of the issue in general to send to Lexus so they know what the issue/sound is there is a great one here: As for time, they are correct that 20 hours is more realistic than the time in the TSB (the master tech at my local dealer straight up said that the TSB time was impossible and must be a mistake). But they probably know that it can go even higher than that if they run into issues. I.E in my case they ran into age related issues reinstalling part of the exhaust which added time. I think one of the big problems you're running into here is that Toyota/Lexus never issued a recall for the issue, and only issued a TSB in Europe so that if a customer wanted the issue fixing at cost they wouldn't replace the tensioner with the same part. They may be dragging their heels over doing a £2k warranty job that they don't recognise as an actual fault, which is pretty lame on their part. His excuse of it not being as loud as others he has seen is terrible IMO. Of course it normally sounds louder, because people don't normally learn they have the issue until it's so loud somebody outside the vehicle mentions it. If you don't know about the issue and aren't actively checking for it then you're not going to hear it unless you're stopped with a cold engine, your windows down and radio off. I only found out I had the issue because a friend was parking the trolley as we were leaving Costco and he heard it from outside the car.

The 2UR-GSE engine had a design flaw with the left side (if you're sitting in the car not standing in front of it) cam chain tensioner, it was rectified for the 2016 model year when Lexus replaced that part with an updated one. Essentially the issue is that with high mileage (it usually arises some point past 100K) the tensioner will stop working properly until the engine oil is up to temp and the chain will run slack, so until you hit operating temp you will get an intermittent noise that sounds like a train clattering through a split in the tracks. This is pretty loud, I found out my car had developed it because my friend was behind me at a junction with his window down and heard it (in his fully decatted GTR, lol). Sadly it's one of those cases where by the time you hear it it's already time to get the cheque book out, and it's not a cheap repair as in addition to fitting the new spec tensioner any reputable garage will also want to replace the chains/etc (as the malfunctioning tensioner could have caused excess damage/wear) and probably the water pump if it's due so it takes a few hours, especially as if they're doing it by the book this is an engine out job. On the "plus" side, while the noise is super annoying and can be worrisome, there are Americans who have literally lived with it for hundreds of thousands of miles so it doesn't appear to be dangerous if you don't get it fixed. Lexus EU released a Service Bulletin to help dealers rectify the issue (attached) but no recall was ever issued. EG-0031L-0516.pdf

The valley plate issue affects pretty much all Toyota UR series engines not just the ISF or even just F cars, it's just the issue is much more common in North America than in Europe, due to their climate and the fact many mass produced UR cars (like the GX460) weren't sold here. On the plus side the GSF should be immune to the 2UR-GSE's cam guide design flaw as that was fixed for the 2016 model year when the GSF debuted.

Not really IMO, ISFs have been chronically underpriced over here for a number of years until recently which has made many of them appear to become overpriced but in reality it was more of a price correction. Whats driven this is that over the past couple of years YouTube has practically exploded with ISF channels as 2008s have finally dropped under $20k in the USA putting them in the hands of the type of enthusiasts that previously bought Supras and the like before they became too expensive, this means what was a quite unknown vehicle has now recieved a massive amount of global publicity with car enthusiasts which has in turn increased its popularity/awareness significantly. Back in 2019 I had car enthusiast friends straight up mock me for buying an ISF over something like an Evo-X or a 370z, but nobody would blink an eye at it today, back then I would go to Jap car shows and often be the only ISF but this year the was at least a dozen at some of them and people were actually stoping to look at them. This is why I can't see the prices ever going back down to what they were, because that would require the awareness and demand to drop too and that's unlikely to happen. With regards to that specific car I think the price may possible be a tad high but it's definitly in the ball park, a good basis for comparison would be to look at RCF prices. Because a 2012 ISF in one of the most sought after colours should fetch at least the same as a 2015 RCF with equal mileage.

No problems, well other than a slight reduction in power/acceleration but we're talking so negligible you'd never feel it, only something you'd notice on drag strip printouts. It's been done by many ISF owners over the years and many Honda Prelude owners (same airbox design), it's essentially a free noise upgrade.

If I remember right they say to change it at 100K as a mandatory, it's supposed to be inspected and topped/replaced if required every 20k/24 months (though I find they will usually inspect/top it as party of the 10k/12m service).