SH20

No difference in the noise before and after fitting mud flaps but then again I couldn't tell the difference between my Lexus LS460 with a Mark Levinson audio and the next Lexus I owned a GS450h without a ML audio. I just don't have an ear for things like that. I still think that flaps suppress water etc and force the water down rather than up.

It's true that a car's CO2 level is influenced by air flow. e.g my wife once chose a Citroen C3 for her daily runabout and between the two models she considered there was a zero road fund licence fee on one model and a £30 road fund licence fee on the other. Why? it was down to one model having alloy wheels and the other had plastic hub caps and the salesman said it was all to do with air flow around the wheels impacting fuel economy, the plastic flush fitting hub caps being more streamlined than the more angular shaped alloy wheel. So fitting mud flaps may influence fuel economy. I will gladly put up with my average of 50.4 mpg with my flaps fitted which keep the body work a little cleaner than the benefit of 1 or 2 extra miles on the average.

OK now Peter, RTA off at last.

Must be an answer why a Chinese company can produce mud flaps that were obviously designed to fit an ES and Lexus won't or can't do same although if Lexus did offer them as an accessory they would cost an arm and a leg no doubt.

Thanks Pete, will try that.

Anyone tell me how to turn RTA off which drives me nuts. I've been into settings and audio but can't seem to find where there is an option to have it on or off.

Swissvax leather cleaner. Although not leather in a Premium Edition any cleaner that can be agitated to a foamy lather with a bristle brush and then wiped clean with a clean micro fibre cloth will remove all dirt.

Thank goodness for Lexus Relax if we assume all new ES owners will have their cars serviced by a dealer every year and subsequent owners do the same thereby having warranty available for up to 10 years. Massive help to Lexus owners and avoids those warranty extensions some members will have paid for in the past and rarely had need to use.

Hey Vince glad to see you still keep your eye on the forum's posts even though you changed allegiance to that huge luxury BMW 7 series. How is that going, you still have it? Love the detail regarding the grades of stainless steel, didn't know there were grade variations. Moreover stainless steel rusting if it gets scratched, real surprise. Are you still in the extrusion business? Steve

Why not check out GTechniq's website for authorised retailers who are near you. It's a Franchise operation but their stringent standards ensure that any aspect of detailing is to a high standard incl ceramic coatings. I know there are numerous ceramic coatings out there but GTech's crystal serum light is a great coating which I used on my first ES. If a professional detailer does the coating for you it is highly likely he will need to check your new car's paint surface for defects first. Factory fresh paint should never be coated without close examination as dealers prep new cars in a way that often inflicts micro damage to the top lacquer coat. Once ceramic coat is applied it will lock in any minor paint swirls, pig tails, holograms etc and all detailers who earn their living detailing cars know they would need to examine the surface first. Just for ease of quoting a real detailer's issues that are common place, go to Youtube and type in WhiteDetails who will blow you mind when you see what he needs to do prior to applying ceramic coatings even on new car preparation. GTechniq's own website gives video tutorials on ceramic coating applications. Worth knowing what applying CC entails.

The protector trim for an ES is metal for certain and is a £170 item to buy. I asked Lexus Leeds to supply one as I wanted to fit it myself. I expected to pay for it on collection back in January but somehow it got booked to the car internally and the salesman decided to waive the cost so it was a nice freebie. I would say it is stainless steel and my previous ES had one as part of a free protection pack Lexus Carlisle gave me in 2019 and after 2 and half years showed no signs of corrosion. Held in place by double sided tape, it even has an arrow in the middle of the trim to align it with the boot lid striker and once aligned you just peel off the grey protection tape. It looks more aesthetic than giving massive protection but the brushed effect to the metal and the Lexus name etched into it still makes it worth having I think.

Go for the premium pack which gets about 90% of a Takumi spec. I bought a premium edition but only to keep the purchase below £40K and the premium edition has good spec but nothing like a premium pack option. Leather, ventilated front seats, leg extension to driver's seat, seat memory, rear blinds on rear doors and rear screen, wood leather steering wheel, wood veneers, triple LED headlights to name some of the items not on a Premium Edition. My first ES was the base model with a Premium pack which was £3500 and still kept the cost below £40K back in 2019.

The word refurbished is often quoted with alloy wheels. Mobile wheel repair services or smart repair as quoted by EVA which dealers are known to use cannot refurbish a wheel in the truest sense as they don't powder coat the stripped down rim, they merely repair the affected area and repaint and lacquer the wheel. They cannot replicate the oven element of a refurbished wheel if they are a mobile service. Refurbished is when the wheel has the tyre and valve removed and all the surface coatings removed completely in an acid based bath literally down to the base alloy. The damaged area is then repaired before the process of dry powder coating the rim which is baked in an oven at high temperature and liquifies the powder coating into the final hard coating which then has a lacquer coat applied to seal the whole wheel. That's why they look brand new if done properly. Mobile services are cheaper per wheel but not that much compared to powder coating. Typically a set of four GS450h alloys I had done cost £280 incl vat and they looked like new rims when finished including the rebalancing of the wheel as all the weights were previously removed. Your photo looks like a breach of the lacquer coat which exposed the unprotected colour coat of the rim.

Best angle of an ES is three quarter from the rear when the sun is still casting shadow. Mesa Red looks very subtle in these conditions.

Extensive waiting times in D with the Hold function activated will ultimately bring up a warning on the dash about putting the transmission into Park. I think it was around 10 mins or less, not sure before it appeared when I pulled into a layby to take a phone call. I'm not sure why the car's software thought it prudent to suggest this but there must have been a reason. However as NemesisUK said never shift into N with the engine running. This from the manual If the shift lever is in N, the hybrid battery (traction battery) will not be charged even when the engine is running. Therefore, if the vehicle is left with the shift lever in N for a certain period of time, the hybrid battery (traction battery) will discharge, and this may result in the vehicle not being able to start

I'll keep this brief. It only takes one person to feel offended or irritated in some way and before you know it we have "Me Too" on our hands. I may decide to cancel myself tomorrow on my birthday. Ha Ha. I am OCD but I think anyone with an Engineering background will always do "Micro Detail". No real harm after all. I can assure you that when you beat Cancer there are no words on any forum that can bruise an ego. Thank you to members who saw past the OCD and were more supportive of the original idea. Appreciate it.

As far back as 2013 I designed some bespoke jacking plates for a 2007 Jaguar XK which was quite low to the ground by design and I wanted a better easily accessed jacking arrangement that would help me remove wheels but also make sure a dealer would raise the car on their two post lift correctly. A local Engineering shop turned my drawings into reality. The aim of this design was to ensure a dealer would locate the pads of the swing arms in the correct place and therefore remove the risk of damaging or bending the car's actual metal body sill pinch seam behind the plastic outer sill cover. I've seen many sill flanges twisted out of shape because of mechanics who couldn't be bothered to get the lift pad directly centred on the sill flange. I've been transferring these plates on to all my subsequent cars without any drilling of the sill flange, working on the principle of two sturdy stainless steel bolts that pull the body of the assembly to the sill flange. The circular 12mm thick yellow jacking plate then screws to the main body. The main issue I had was having to remove them and refurbish/repaint them every 6 months due to the harsh road conditions the weather/road salt etc would inflict on them. As they are made of steel and despite using Hammerite for protecting the surface it was never enough so finally I thought I would have them blasted and then powder coated to see if that helps. Time will tell if this will be a longer lasting form of protection. The option to have these parts made from stainless steel was very expensive at the time so I opted for mild steel, something I now regret because of the maintenance I have needed to do so far. I carry a small trolley jack in a carry case and use a slightly larger diameter dished 12mm plate firmly secured in the pivot point of the jack. This allows the yellow plate to sit inside it as the car is jacked up. This ensures the car is being lifted with a greater surface area that a scissor jack on a thin sill flange. The jacking plates transferred easily to the ES300 and the photos show how the trolley jack makes it easy for me to raise the car when I need to. The small holes you can see in the yellow plates either side of the centre stud are for a spanner which allows me to tighten the plates securely. It's a spanner that you get with a disc cutter for changing metal or stone cutting discs which I reversed engineered so the two pins in the spanner lined up with two holes I drilled in the plates. A large stainless steel spring washer sits between the black body and the yellow disc to ensure it never backs off.

Rear seats folding down would have been a real bonus like a lot of the competition. Must have been battery location that influenced no fold down seats I guess.

Rather eat a light bulb than pay any attention to motoring journalists who feel it is their duty (and how can we live without their wisdom on all things cars) and who trash products like Lexus and Toyota and any other manufacturer. They need to try a real job like folk whose contribution can be measured and counted in long hours in a factory, hospital or building things people need or people who volunteer to help others who are in desperate need and do so without reward. No we have to listen to journalists bemoan how things are just not quite right , not fast enough, too much over steer or under steer, blind you with things they read about or copied from a manufacturer's press release and say not good enough or have the wrong badge on the bonnet to give a car kudos. All hail to car designers, brilliant Engineers who improve products all day every day without us having to put up with people who can use a laptop and type 60 words of drivel a minute. They salivate over a MBW M3 or Audi S4 and tell us how great they are. This type of journalists wet dream become money pits after 4 or 5 years when they are out of warranty and cost thousands to fix. Take a look on Youtube and witness serious failures and defects on these sort of cars. Service your Lexus or Toyota every year and enjoy a 10 year warranty period with little or no warranty claims. You can only imagine the Board of BMW, Mercedes and Audi choking on their Bratwurst sausage at the thought of offering that on their overpriced model lineup Too much?

Ordered 26.10.21, drove car off the forecourt 7.1.22. Ten weeks 3 days. I think I might have received someone else's cancelled order.

Yes the flaps fit on a 2022 model as they did back in 2019. All panels are the same so I just transferred them to my new ES. No difference at all.

Hi Pete, yes you will be fine as the wheel is advertised for the GS range of Lexus models. All GS models of this era have the 5 hole wheel space saver and I bought mine off EBay for a similar price. Bear in mind if you bought one retail from a Lexus dealer you would be talking £200 minimum. So at £47 it's a bargain even though you have to pay postage. The 80 on the sticker is 80 kph equal to 50 mph maximum speed. Also check the pressure if you buy it as this needs to be around 60 psi a lot more of course than your ES tyre pressures. When I bought my second hand GS450h space saver I immediately fitted it on one of the front hubs and also on one of the rear hubs to check for clearance and on both hubs the wheel spins freely, no obstructions. Your existing wheel nuts fit as normal and the tightening torque is 82.5 lb/ft. Don't worry if you don't have a torque wrench, you'll have changed a wheel or two in the past so use the same leverage you would use by instinct like most people do. Your wheel nuts have a convex or rounded dome face and the wheel has corresponding concave or dished face holes and even though the space saver is a steel rim as opposed to your alloy wheels the wheel nuts fit both wheel types. Hope this helps, looks like you are on your way.

Not at all Pete, I firmly believe that all car Forums exist to assist or seek information by fellow enthusiasts. I was equally active in the LS460 and GS450 forums as well as Jaguar and Bentley forums too. I have learned so much from other contributors who strive to help with technical and non technical info. I'm already thinking 2-3 years ahead and think that a Takumi ES300h (Used I might add to limit the years I would have to pay £500 + road tax) is a likely choice.

Thanks Pete, the nylon wheel cover I used to cover the space saver when I carried it around in the boot is actually a small motor cycle wheel cover off EBay (again) and the Lexus logo was also sourced on EBay under a Lexus vinyl graphics/badge search. Very cheap and you get around 5 in a pack for a few pounds. Type in LEXUS CAR SEAT / HEADREST DECALS - Vinyl Stickers - Graphics Logo badge X5. The first seller comes up as cheeky_chappie_decals who I have used many times. Click on his visit shop link and you will be amazed at what you will see incl choice of colours.

Pete , all space savers need to be approx the same overall diameter but not imperative. The 18 inch wheels on a ES Premium Edition need a space saver that gets near the overall diameter of the wheel and tyre. That is why space savers look like the wheel itself has a smaller diameter but its the space saver tyre that has a deeper tyre wall section and so overall it gets near to the diameter of the wheel and tyre your car has. Bear in mind space savers are an emergency wheel restricted to a maximum speed of 50 mph but will have no impact on driving the car should you be thinking of gear ratios and/or wheels spinning at different speeds because they differ in overall diameter slightly. My ES has 18 inch rims with an overall diameter incl the tyre of 26 inches. My space saver is off a Lexus GS450h and is a genuine Lexus wheel with an overall diameter of 25 inches so the 1 inch difference will have no real effect while driving. Go to E Bay and type in Lexus spare wheel securing bolt. You will see the first offering at around £10, free delivery and would fit. The seller is IVparts . You can type in Toyota spare wheel securing bolt and you will see similar stuff. PS The photos of the rear LS460 winter mats are attached as are a couple of pics of the LS460 I had. Fabulous car. Cheers Steve