ganzoom

Flow, same excess/cover as Direct Line.

Renewal from DirectLine was nearly 40% more than last year!!!

But 10 minutes online and we ended up with a quote CHEAPER than last year :)

Having owned a N54 powered BMW and tunned it to run at double the factory turbo boost pressure I fully appreciate the need for maintenance :).  The IS300H is on a different level interms of both mechanical stress and maintenance, we have no plans to sell the IS till it falls apart which I suspect will be never!! 

8 hours ago, ColinBarber said:

You don't change oil because it is getting low, you change it because it get contaminated and loses its protection properties over time/usage. 

I suspect our IS300H is unstressed there is probably no need to do an oil change even every 5 years :). It hasn't had annual oil changes now for the last 5 years, so I'm quite comfortable with extending to 3 yearly oil changes. 

Our IS300H has only covered 45k miles since taking delivery in March 2015, just passed another MOT with no issues. I only service it now every 2 years interms of oil change, the MOT station did pick up the 12V Battery needs replacing soon - not bad given its lasted 9 years now. Still on original factory installed brake pads (40% worn at the front, 20% at the back). 

By far the most reliable car I have every owned, including a string of Honda/Nissans. I’m tempted to extended oil changes to every 3 years next time, as even a 2 year intervals the oil level never changes!

I didn't realise cycling was seasonal. Google tells me I spent more time on my pedal bike yesterday getting around than the car. 

On 1/31/2024 at 8:34 PM, Newbie777 said:

I have a few phones at the moment which I rotate round including a Samsung galaxy fold (the brick). I can assure you, I will not be doing that now and will use this everywhere including in the car.  

Through circumstance I'm in a similar situation, using a Fold 4 and Honor Magic Pro 5. Samsung blows Honor out of the water on the software and stability front, however the Honor has a genuine all-day Battery life even when hot-spotting to the iPad and doing GPS tracking.

The V2 is too expensive and doesn't move the game on from the Fold....... I left the apple walled garden after moving away from the Iphone 5S to a Galaxy S7. However my iPad pro has been really impressive interms of functionality and am now saving up for V2.0 of this....... 

Bad weather, holidays etc have delayed some of the works, so running about 1 month late from predicted stage, but things are going at pace now. 

All the glazing is in now (a certain shade of grey :)). First fix electric and gas is all nearly done, flooring is next before plastering. It’s taken longer than expected to get to this stage, and we are already over the original build quote from pre-covid, but for me the results are worth every single penny. I’m really missing the garden now.

I wasn’t sure just how the front glazing was going to look, but quite surprised at how reflective the glass is from the outside and the clear view from the inside. The pace of work in the last few weeks have been amazing, hope it carries on at this rate, and who knows, maybe we’ll be in by Easter :).

Our IS300H is coming up to 9 years old now. I've gone to doing an oil service every two years (still doesn't use a drop of oil), on original brake pads+discs, and I've never owned any car thats needed differential or gear box oil changes and that includes cars with nearly three times BHP of the Is, so I'm not going to start doing that. 

For this year I might even move to 3 yearly engine oil/filter changes!!

On 12/28/2023 at 6:29 PM, Tech Dude said:

I have a RX450H daily driver and up until recently I owned a Ferrari F355 Spider F1 for 6 years. 

Aside from the F40, that's the only Ferrari I would want to own. Shame you sold it! 

I gate crashed a work colleagues leaving do(head hunted to go and work abroad) recently, got chatting to his two neighbours, one was a yacht dealer and other the manager of a Ferrari dealer, who's driven more Ferraris than I've had hot dinners. 

Some reality interesting stories, including been invited to Michael Suchmacers official retirement party as Monza where Michael ragged an Enzo around Monza. That really is priceless!!! 

What really amazed me though was which car brand the manager really admired the most..... The Chinese manufacturers that's coming, BYD, MG etc. His own car that he spends his money on, was a MG!!!!

Amazing how all of us normalise the prevailages we have every day and fantaisie about irrelevance of what others have. I also need go and have a word with our neighbours and understand why they aren't in line of selling yachts and Ferraris :). 

When the only 'worry' that comes about a use car is the 12V Battery it tells you everything you need to know about reliability:).

For balance, our 2015 IS300H which we've owned from new is still on its original 12V Battery, and has done less than 40k miles so spends lots of time sitting around, never trickle charged, and so far still no signs the 12V needs replacing!

7 hours ago, ALAW said:

Looking good Ganz well done. i bet you had some planning headaches.

Amazingly planning was fine, as we are literally just outside the boundary of a conservation area. 

The biggest 'risk' to the project by far was getting the steels installed, we needed 35 tons of worth split into about nearly 100 pieces. Both the builder and steels fabricators openly confessed half way through getting the structure up they hadn't realized how complicated the structure was and that it was the hardest domestic project they have done. I had serious worries one or both were just going drop the job due to the complexity, but we got there in the end, and the result is essentially the entire new section of the house doesn't require a single supporting wall, all the weight is carried on the steels, which opens up so many options for room placement etc.

It's a shame most of the steels will be hidden by insulation/plaster boards, but we will leave at least one bit on show. The construction of the front gable really was something I couldn't picture until it was in!!

Looking forwards to 2024 and seeing if we can move in before the summer :D.

Update before Xmas/end of 2023. 

We have some glazing, and pretty much water tight (still waiting for roof tiles though). 

The interior spaces are really taking shape, overall the house is now really taking shape. Hoping for a 2024 Easter moving in date :).

On 10/26/2023 at 11:59 AM, agent_dess said:

Yeah but you still wouldn't put a mud laden bike inside an SUV 😆

I use a tow bar mounted carrier on our SUV 2-3 times a week (I cycle to work by leaving the car at the school doing the school run). The bike also fits inside boot without having to drop the rear seats, but as you say I don’t want the inside of the car as dirty as the outside. 

Our IS300H sadly cannot compare to the SUV for practicality or the pedal bike for excitement. It is however more reliable than either, but where is the fun in life without some unexpected shenanigans 🙂

https://www.carscoops.com/2023/10/toyota-admits-mirai-has-not-been-successful-will-focus-on-hydrogen-commercial-vehicles/#Echobox=1698403435 This ‘news’ will make some people on this thread happy :).

20 hours ago, Malc1 said:

Damnably amazing that Society has got itself into a crackpot situation where the taxpayer, you and me, are paying stupid money to keep kids and others mental health in a state of stupor, from age 5 say, coz the crappy parents haven’t a clue how to bring up their families …….. bring back the olden times when deep analysis of kids affectations resulted in a simple and effective “ wallop “ and then forthwith all was amazingly Well ….. no cost outcomes eh ! 

Society has gone stark raving nuts  🥵

Malc 

I can only hope you are a nicer person in real life versus the internet persona :).

On 9/29/2023 at 10:05 AM, Boomer54 said:

First in on new tech always take the 'bath' for the rest of us who know how this stuff works. Everything from DVD, Microwave, to Mobile phones and so on. Electric cars are just the latest in a long line of such advances.

Indeed, even beyond that with higher interest rates the NPV of all assets is impacted.

The difference is we are in 2023, Nissan made the Leaf in 2011. Anyone who thinks EV are still 'new' tech needs to get out more 🙂

Our current EV is our 3rd, and despite being 6 years old seems to have more range and better technology than a brand new RZ. 

The problem isn't EVs, it's the RZ. It's about 10 years behind in technology compared to what everyone else is selling right now. You have to be a die hard Lexus/Toyota fan to buy one.

19 hours ago, John Adams said:

The RZ will be hard pushed to get anywhere near 3m/kwh at 70 mph. I tend to drive on the motorways at a steady 60mph to conserve range and the very best I have got was 3m/kwh in ideal conditions. Currently down to 2.8m/kwh with lower temperatures

Hope you don't need to go on any long trips when it's wet, cold, and windy!! With poor consumption like this the RZ is effective a very very expensive city only car. Sub 3 miles per kWh at 60mph in summer is unbelievable.

How did Toyota/Lexus get it so wrong? For a company that started the whole thing with the Priuis they seem to have forgotten how to innovate 😞

On 10/7/2023 at 10:44 AM, javadude said:

It's huge and not very aerodynamic so its no surprise. If you want efficency then a saloon would be better. It's a shame they're not doing an IS or RS EV. Apart from that its a very nice car. The interior is a nice place to be.

A Model X is larger, carries more people, and had higher performance motors. We did 160miles in torrential rain yesterday from Leicester to Cardiff and got 2.8 miles per kWh travelling at 70mph when possible in ours which has done 71k miles now and 7 years old soon! 

Even in near perfect test conditions the RZ cannot achieve better than 3 miles per kWh at 70mph. For essentially a brand new EV, the efficiency of the RZ is horrific.

A 2023 Model Y which is similar size to the RZ will hit 4 miles per kWh in perfect conditions nearly twice as efficient as the RZ.

14 hours ago, First_Lexus said:

The official version of events so far - from the Bedfordshire Fire Brigade - is that the fire started in a diesel vehicle.

That doesn’t rule out that it could have been a diesel / hybrid (although they’re not that common) or that the information could change with further investigation, but for now they seem to be sticking with ‘diesel.’

My question is on the second order impact with any EVs that subsequently caught fire.  Could that be why it spread so fast and was seemingly so intense? Or was that simply because of lots of petrol/diesel cars and fuel (not to mention interior materials etc.)

I love the echo chamber on here, a fire that starts in a diesel car in a car park full of fossil fuel cars but some how let's bend the logic to EVs. If you replaced the diesel and EV bit with ethnicity of people, this thread would actually be illegal by UK law 🙂

On 9/18/2023 at 2:07 PM, waquidvp said:

From the research I have done so far, I can’t find any cars from this production batch that has the PCS & DRCC option in the UK, so chances of it turning up at the breakers is near to zero.

We wanted DRCC on our IS300H when we ordered the car new in 2015. When the dealer checked on pre-reg stock they couldn't find a single one with that option fitted, so we had to a new order from the factory.

Good luck, the rear radar for cross traffic when parking is really useful.

We now have something approaching the start of a roof!! Load more work to do still, but deposit for the gable/door glazings have gone in today. 6 week lead time for materials than will need local construction and install, aiming to be water tight by Xmas :).

On 9/22/2023 at 9:17 PM, JamesIS220 said:

Put a load more insulation than what the building regs state and good airtightness. Certainly would add solar panels. If you get these right then no boiler/rads needed.

I like old properties, but have always wanted to build quite literally a house that's circular/ round out of brick or octagonal. Slate roof or thatch. All reclaimed materials but modern cavity wall etc.

James

Don’t just think about it, if you want to do/try something just get on with it. Life is short, and time goes before you know it. 

14 hours ago, Mr Vlad said:

hey look what I saw today on YouTube. 

Bye bye EV's lol  Hydrogen is coming oh yeah.

 

Hydrogen mass development is going really well....

https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/danish-taxi-company-seeks-help-to-fuel-its-100-stranded-hydrogen-vehicles-after-nation-s-h2-stations-closed/2-1-1521473

https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/analysis-it-is-now-almost-14-times-more-expensive-to-drive-a-toyota-hydrogen-car-in-california-than-a-comparable-tesla-ev/2-1-1519315

https://innovationorigins.com/en/first-shell-now-motive-hydrogen-fuel-station-closures-continue-in-the-uk/

Page 43 gives you BPs latest projections on hydrogen usage in personal transportation.....spoiler alert, BP doesn't seem to see a future in it.

https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/energy-outlook/bp-energy-outlook-2023.pdf

We now have the start of a roof, Velux windows are now on order and openings formed 🙂

Plenty more work to be done at the front still, and 2 more bits of steels to install next week. Builders is optimistic we’ll be water tight before winter hits, which would be very welcome.