Linas.P

Yes, I noted that in my post - the only difference is basically android versions which as I mentioned is borderline obsolete. + all the same issues still applies to the screen. The positives for the system you posted is that it has physical buttons for climate control, however I have watched review previously and some of the buttons does not work correctly.

I do not have experience with this particular screen, but I was looking at something similar: https://www.aliexpress.com/i/32923579168.html My first issue is low spec. for the price - I do appreciate this is specialty item.. but still screen resolution of 600x1024 is extremely low. I do think that android is far better than iOS, but not when it comes to cheap unlicensed Chinese copies. One thing I would be worried about is the version - most of them comes with android 7 at the moment, which is end-of-life and for chinese system you can be sure it will not be updated. The one you posted is Android 8, so you basically have one year lifespan in software. On top of that with 1 GB of ram and "quad core" CPU I would not imagine this thing to be very usable - I mean it would be very slow. For comparison Samsung Galaxy S3 had 1GB ram and Quad core, it was device launched 7 years ago with android 4 and if you would pick-up one now running Android 4.4 it would be so slow that you would hardly be able to launch anything on it. So issue 1 is hardware spec. being very low for the price. Issue 2 is limited lifespan, which for relatively expensive piece of equipment is an issue. 3rd - which applies to any touch screen system (including Lexus own navigation)... it is extremely hard to use when driving. On your current system I am sure you can adjust climate control without looking at it, on touch screen system you would needs to ask passenger to do it or even stop (or just accept that it is blowing 28C in the middle of the summer). These chinese kits will be even worse, because you will need to go into sub menu to actually do it. Add poor screen spec. which will have less than premium touch sensitivity and accuracy + likely poor brightness in sunlight and glare... whole propositions just becomes less practical. Now as I have said, I considered it myself and I do understand appeal - original system was practically useless when it comes to navigation and using the phone whilst driving is not ideal. If you have good experience with android phone it makes sense that you would like to have same experience in the car navigation system. Sad truth is that even mid range phone nowadays has FHD+ screen, Octa-Core with 4+GB ram and proper licensed system with at least 3 years manufacturer support. This system will have none of that - I feel you will be lucky if it turns on and at least half of features works. I considered it myself and just decided no to bother. Worst case - get new Tablet for £149 and some decent air-vent mount. After using put it in glove-box and it will be multi-functional and fully working premium device. Obviously, that is just my opinion and I know there are few people around here who have similar thing fitted and have first hand experience, so you may want to wait for their reviews.

I will go for Moonlight to get me through the winter and will probably go for CQ.UK in spring as a base coat and maybe mix it with Gyeon Skin as top coat. Finally, I could still use Moonlight as a maintenance top-up. So that is my plan in nutshell... unless some new products will come out and disturb what is currently available.

funny enough video just came out testing these products:

[for admins] sorry for off topic, but it seems related to car modification in sense of insurance implication of it. I would say generally, perhaps people should not look for legal advise in forums, but equally I hate to see people scared of exercising their legal rights against dishonest industry... like insurance. Perhaps good post to think about and research further (preferably with qualified lawyer). To start with - I do maintain the view that everyone should be always honest in their life, call it "best practice".... that is as long as other side in any relationship is equally honest (something I could not attribute to insurance companies in UK). When it comes to Fraud Act 2006 it has to be further interpreted and backed by case law. First of all, we need to understand that there are separate acts which specifically governs insurance contract law and Fraud Act 2006 may be altogether not applicable when it comes to motor insurance. Particularly, for the cases of insurance you are better of looking at following: The Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Act 2010 Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012 - (CIDRA) Consumer Rights Act 2015 It is as well important to follow the acts in sequence, because later acts often amends and replaces the articles in previous acts. If we want to look into Fraud Act 2006 in isolation I believe the key article for our discussion is article 3 below: "(3)Fraud by failing to disclose information A person is in breach of this section if he— (a)dishonestly fails to disclose to another person information which he is under a legal duty to disclose, and (b)intends, by failing to disclose the information— (i)to make a gain for himself or another, or (ii)to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss." First thing to ask here is to establish what you have to disclose to insurance "under a legal duty". This is covered in CIDRA 2012 and insurance disclosures are merely pre-contractual obligations and not a legal duty to disclose. So here straight away the argument falls apart. The questions which comes into your insurance quote are just totally made-up list of wishes insurance provider wants to know about you. They do state that "under contract terms" your contract will become invalid if you fail to disclose, but that is it - no other legal obligation. In fact this statement itself could be argued based on both Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Act 2010 and Consumer Rights Act 2015 where they states that failure to disclose does not necessarily void the contract as long as disclosure was made in "good-faith"... which itself if very difficult to prove or disprove. The next section which seems to apply for services is following: "(11) Obtaining services dishonestly (1)A person is guilty of an offence under this section if he obtains services for himself or another— (a)by a dishonest act, and (b)in breach of subsection (2). (2)A person obtains services in breach of this subsection if— (a)they are made available on the basis that payment has been, is being or will be made for or in respect of them, (b)he obtains them without any payment having been made for or in respect of them or without payment having been made in full, and (c)when he obtains them, he knows— (i)that they are being made available on the basis described in paragraph (a), or (ii)that they might be,but intends that payment will not be made, or will not be made in full. Ok - so here you need to follow the logic of the articles. First of all consider article (3) and whenever you were or were not under legal obligation and then subsections (2) of article (11). At first it seems to indicate that if you have obtained the services by dishonest act you are guilty of fraud. Not disclosing modification to your car which you were specifically asked to disclose seems like dishonest act, however alone that is not fraud, because act clearly states that conditions in subsection 2 must be met and as already established you were not under legal obligation to disclose anyway. Subsection 2 then relates to the payment for the services - in short this limits meaning of fraud in cases where you dishonestly promise to pay for something conditionally, knowing you will not be paying, or will not be paying in full. To illustrate that in examples: buying the car for £4000, paying £2500 when picking it up and promising to pay remaining balance later, but failing to do so - that is fraud. Or giving expired cheque or cheque to closed account which then fails to clear. Here you were under legal obligation to pay what was agreed and you have dishonestly promised to do so but failed - Fraudster! buying the a classic car promising that you will be restoring it when asked by seller and then simply scrapping it for metal would not be fraud - yes you have been dishonest, but that is not fraud. First of all, seller has no legal power to ask you what you will do with car when it is in your possession and you have no legal duty to answer. Straight away it is not fraud! Yes you have lied to seller, but you have paid the seller in full - dishonest? Maybe... but not fraudster. It would be ludicrous if it would be legally binding to disclose to insurance how many kids you have, what is your marital status or what is your profession. Yes legally and contractually they are not forbidden to ask (I think they should be!), but equally you not forbidden not to answer them - provided you understand your contract will be invalidated if proven wrong later. NOTE - as any act this needs to backed by case law in court. It seems that case law in such cases enforces my statement of non-disclosures not being illegal, but I cannot pretend to have looked to all case law - this is just not something I would like to spend 3 month studying without getting paid. If you want to find more information on the topic here is good article from Charted Insurance Institute : https://www.cii.co.uk/fact-files/law-and-regulation/recent-developments-in-insurance-contract-law/ NOTE 2 - I maintain that police does not know **** about the law and just slaps random acts which seems to sound similar. They are not trained to be legal experts and should not pretend they know what they talking about. NOTE 3 - although I have degree in law, I am not in any shape or form expert of insurance contract law - it is kind of specific area. And overall I am not practicing lawyer, so my judgement is just as good as anyone reading articles on the internet.

Do a right would be to boycott insurance in UK. This is not to say your argument is not correct, but insurance companies are really having too much power and abuses it too much here. My problem is that private capital companies have so much power in UK that they literally are trying to create laws. At the same time government is too lazy to create laws to protect us and we end-up in situation where not the government, but insurance companies decides if you can driver or not. I agree - pulling mapping card whilst trying to get warranty is stupid thing. This clearly voids it. However as for examining ECU, that not going to make you automatically culpable if the discovers it was mapped.

look - I didn't say you should or you shouldn't disclose the modifications. What I am saying is that fear of insurance companies are far overblown and people simply need to be realistic with disclosures.

It is not really surprising, considering that insurance in UK is government backed fraud scheme - therefore in defense they really like to stick fraud to everything, because that reflects on what they do. However, that said police are usually very poor in interpreting the law - don't forget that police is executive brand and not judiciary, so they neither create nor understand the law. What is legally insurance fraud, is actually when you make false claim e.g. that your car has been stolen, when actually you have sold it to Romanian friend who took it out of the country. That is legally actual fraud, what goes into insurance contract is just contractual terms. Yes, I agree with that, however what you are required to do is to disclose modification you know. It would be easy enough to say you never knew it was mapped and it would hard to prove otherwise. Obviously, if there is massive bench-like wing it would be harder to pretend you didn't know it is modification. Further, this usually only comes into effect when you are trying to claim damage to the modifications you have not disclosed e.g. gold plated wheels for £30,000. Here you certainly going to get rejection. I would imagine that it would ever come to effect if somebody could suspect that mods on your car have caused the accident. Which when it comes to ECU mapping is very unlikely.

I guess colour was more important in case if I would wax to top-up. My experience with older gen of consumer grade ceramics is that you can still get better water beading from natural waxes, so I am looking more for protection from ceramics and less of slickness/beading. I was under impression that market has moved nowadays and it is possible to do both with single ceramic application (I just don't know what that is - hence the thread). In short if there is a perfect product which can both protect and provide good self-cleaning/water beading properties - I would like to know what that is. If there are no such single product, then I would be looking at ceramic basecoat for protection and then whatever comes on top for self-cleaning/water beading. As for decontaminating before polishing - I always do that. Otherwise (depending how much contamination there are) you maybe be just swirling the point for sometime with the same contamination before actually getting to any results + will require cleaning the pads more than necessary. So decontaminating just saves time in long run and allows to achieve better results quicker + less consumables like pads and polishing compounds. Problem I have now - I kind of decided to go "quick polish + Moonlight" route until spring, but I cannot find moonlight for sale - out of stock everywhere or £50.

First of all, there are least of the risk when internet is used, because potential thief would not be able to know what needs to be intercepted and when. You are right to say that poorly implemented security would leave cars vulnerable... yes poorly implemented security would leave anything vulnerable. But this is same as saying that padlock is no good, because poorly protected key under flower pot could be accessed by anyone.. answer is - do not implement security poorly and do not leave your keys under flower pot! Explaining it in the simplest terms any digital authorisation nowadays is done by exchanging encrypted certificates and there are many ways to do it. Unless some bonehead mistakes are involved in design (like using VIN for countersigning) these certificates are very difficult to crack. In particular case you mentioned about Nissan - there are several (not one!) bonehead mistakes with the app: First of all app itself needs to be shielded - so no fiddlers or other crap can be connected, it is not that difficult I am running shielding on my apps which includes immediate shut down if any hookers, key-loggers, debuggers or screen readers are detected. Then the API has to end to end encrypted, one should not be able to connect to the car without first exchanging encryption certificates Third the connectivity should be encrypted end to end, so that JSON responses cannot be simply red in clear text and manipulated All above are basics of secure communication and all are achieved by off the shelve APIs and certificates, no development or think required. I am sure Nissan has moved since 2016, but I am still bit disappointed as above app would not even qualify for our internal testing. If the actual connectivity is concerned, then the internet is not even required, for example when you make contactless payments, there are no internet involved at all (in part of authentication), instead NCF is used, yet you authenticating money transactions. It could as well work over Bluetooth or wi-fi, in other words - local connectivity, in the end of the day it only needs to transfer encrypted key. Actually intercepting it would be very hard, furthermore because it is digital key it cannot be simply relayed, stored and replayed like radio signals used for keyless or remote keys, so even if intercepted it could not be decoded and used. It is correct - if you want to turn the heating on in the car whilst you in your office 15 miles away... yes internet will be required. In terms of what authentication keys should be required - I don't know if there is standard for the cars, but for banking application applies what is called "strong customer authentication", it is multi-factor security which is very difficult to breach.

Yes should be moved to mk3 forum Part you looking at is: GARNISH ASSY, CENTER PILLAR, RH PN 62410-53010 - cost is ~£100-150. There are multiple colour codes so you will need to get correct one ordered, I guess you one would be PN 62410-53010 C0 (F-sport black). Plenty in eBay US as alternative (works out ~£73 and I doubt you would need to pay duty): https://www.ebay.com/itm/2014-LEXUS-IS250-CENTER-B-PILLAR-GARNISH-LEFT-62410-53010-OEM-813-81-A-/303039482643

It is like saying internet banking is faf.... just get over it, sooner or later every car will have that... or alternatively you can switch off the grid. As a matter of fact most baking as we know it will change very soon - no more branches to visit.. even today 85% of banking is done online and the most successful and efficient banks like Starling don't even have physical pretense so it is better to get used to it. That said any security can be beaten, it is just a matter of reward vs. investment. I remember somebody here telling the story about RS6 Avant (I believe it was in stolen IS-F thread). Long story short - guy had his RS6 stolen twice because at some time they were very popular target and third time around he had bollards installed behind the car. Few weeks later he found himself in situation where 5 guys with petrol bombs and baseball bats knocked on the door at 2AM and he just handled over the keys - else they threatened to burn his family alive. So security is really just a thing of perspective... When you look into phone security you need to understand that you will not be going against Tesla security here, but rather Apple/Google. So it would be fair to say they know what they are doing when it comes to security, what Tesla needs to do is just to plug-in into standard API and it uses all latest encryption algorithms etc. Is it as secure as chip in a key? Probably yes, probably not... is it more secure than simple "keyless" entry - definitely yes. In the end of the day if thieves really wants your car they will come with council uniforms and will simply tow it away - don't even need to unlock it. I can go forever describing all the features and how they can be used and why they are better/worse, but there are always going to be technology and progress deniers who would rather secure their car by blocking it in with 200 ton boulders from all sides like in the stone age... Whenever Lexus could or could not implement it - we shall wait and see. Historically, they are very late adopters when it comes to infotainment - only just recently to Android/iOS car integration. Yet in some other aspects they are quite quick - e.g. keyless entry systems was one of the first to be fitted as standard in Lexus (I believe mk3 GS). The actual thing is relatively easy to do - as mentioned there are standard APIs for all these things from both google an apple, you just need to wrap it around with your design. In other hand Lexus owners tend to be older, so maybe it is measured decision to be a bit retarded when it comes to infotainment to cater for them.

Although, I am not suggesting to lie to insurance.... but how exactly would insurance know the car is mapped? Besides there is nothing legal nor illegal in telling or not telling it to insurance. People needs to understand that this is contractual agreement - there are no law to say you must tell it, it is just arbitrary imposed terms and conditions with which you do agree by signing. That said if they somehow finds out, they can refuse to pay out or could cancel your policy - not on the basis of you braking the law, but on the basis you braking their contract terms. P.S. That is ignoring the fact it is not exactly easy to map Lexus and even further - that OP would blow that poor diesel engine before he could ever had an accident. Just for reference @SamTheBro you have same revised engine from IS220d which Lexus has specifically down-tuned to avoid endless issues with reliability, these engines are not reliable as they are and you are looking to undo what Lexus have considered as a fix. Not exactly good idea... If you want more power - get another car even if it is BMW 330d (which can be mapped very succesfully as well).

Driving Prius for that much you would have died my now... not even joking... at very least would have back surgery. It is one thing spend whole day driving in luxury car in quiet and comfortable atmosphere and completely different thing on cheap and hard seats.

I think it is important to separate wheels when the pain bubble and peal by itself, from the cases where wheels has been kerbed and then starts bubbling/peeling around the damaged area. The pre-facelift wheels paint would just fail "almost" by itself and that is why they have very poor name for themselves. That said I had a set of wheels which were from face-lifted "advance" model and they were badly kerbed for over a year and did not peel at all, same for any powder coated wheels.. If you actually start picking around the damaged area after few month you can usually chip the coating away as it still get's loose, but because it is much thicker and harder is doesn't peel by itself like original factory paint.