Do Not Sell My Personal Information Jump to content


Linas.P

Established Member
  • Posts

    8,500
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    129

 Content Type 

Profiles

Forums

Events

Store

Gallery

Tutorials

Lexus Owners Club

Gold Membership Discounts

Lexus Owners Club Video

News & Articles

Everything posted by Linas.P

  1. Regarding the damage - hard to say where they pulled the wires and where they looked for the tracker. I would assume it would be rather minimal in driver/passenger footwells... and I assume car would still be drivable as otherwise it is not good for them either. But hard to say without seeing it. That said car still be written off for damages as replacing wires, dash etc. may be very expensive, so this is what insurance will have to decide, but also obviously a lot depends on you - some people really want their car back and demand it to be repaired... considering it is relatively new car I believe it should be possible (to negotiate with insurance to repair it), other people don't want to take stolen car back, both for practical and emotional reasons and still demands for cash settlement. This is something you will need to negotiate with insurance. In principle all things related with logbook, recovery, keys etc. All these things the insurance will have to arrange and resolve. I understand that impound lot won't release the car without logbook, but also I am not sure there is any benefit for you picking it up with the damage, so just contact insurance and arrange for them to deal with recover. In mean time I cannot see any reason why you cannot go to impound lot and pick-up your personal items, police should allow this. Also if you decide to take cash settlement and leave the car for insurance to deal with, then you still have right to pick-up your personal items. Once you get the car back to you fixed, the normal things will apply - you will need to insure it (unless you still have remaining insurance on it and they continue to cover it), pay road tax if payable, do MOTs etc.
  2. These wheels are just alloy, no covers for them. Do you mean like "kerb protectors"? @H3XME maybe able to advise on those. Otherwise those wheels can be refurbished to look like new (powder coated), but there are no plastic covers for them.
  3. It does not affect NDC, but it is counted as any other claim on your policy, insurance company will never tell you how it would affect your policy. So you can simply go to make a quote, making 1 declaring claim and other one without and see the difference. The rule of thumb ~30% increase for next 3 years. Usually they include moulding around the windscreen, but it is questionable quality and not colour matched, just matte black plastic. As I had black car that was fine for me. As above - they usually do, most of the time mouldings break when they remove them and clips ALWAYS break, so it is kind of impossible to replace windscreen without replacing them. Water ingress and noise should be alright, they doing those windows every day, so I am sure they know what they are doing. In my case automatic wiper also worked just fine, but one thing that didn't work was windscreen heater. To be fair they gave lifetime warranty for work and guy came like year later to check it and told me that if I want I can book replacement, but to be honest I never bothered to replace screen again just because of windscreen heater.
  4. If it does... hopefully the access is below the water line!
  5. Well - at least description of any sort... options, mileage, condition... that sort of thing. Without it I can only say that 2006 GS300 SE (-A?-L?) is worth anywhere from £500 to perhaps £4000, unless there is something exceptional about the car. So not much of the guidance, but £500 for high miles car in poor shape, £4000 for car in amazing condition, perfect paint, less than 100,000 miles, no mechanical faults, full service history etc. Basically, perfect car + some reasonable wear and tear.
  6. Honestly, not much of achievement to beat LM on the looks... Even the actual Transit van in it's original form looks more classy!
  7. Indeed... I am a little bit confused about the question... although some alloy wheels have special covers, usually they have them on electric cars and newer hybrids for air resistance reasons. @Joolsd - if you looking for plastic wheel covers... then your wheels are not compatible with them, you can't fit plastic covers on alloy wheels, unless they are specifically designed for that.
  8. Sorry to hear that... Regarding Insurance - don't forget windscreen cover still counts as claim on your insurance, so it is worth doing some math to see if it is worth claiming it from insurance or just paying for it upfront.
  9. Yeah seen it... not a big fan of that extra scaffolding which seems to be afterthought, just kind of ruins the whole design (if I say so myself sitting at home in dirty sweatpants). I think original Marquis Yatch looks better without extra bits
  10. Yeah... that will be complicated. But you can look-up cars with similar size wheels and somewhat guestimate the ballpark. I can say ~40PSI sounds about right. For example Lexus RC runs 235/40R19 in the front and 35PSI, 225 will have lower load rating, so will require few more PSI, so yes ~40PSI should do. But really one can only provide you with educated guess at best. You will need to try it yourself, see what you like (too hard or too soft), check the tyre wear, to see if they wearing more in the middle (overinflated) or both sides (under inflated) and adjust from there. Basically, what I am saying - you can only do it by feel, trial and error. That is short answer. My guess would be something like 35-38 (front/rear). If you actually want to calculate the load, then there is calculator, but the problem is that it doesn't give you correct ratings most of the time https://tiresize.com/pressure-calculator/ e.g. standard IS250 R17 tyres have load rating of 90, but calculator only gives rating for 91 or 94, so your calculated rating and PSI will be also wrong e.g. in this case if you choose 91, it will say you need to inflate new tyres to 40PSI or if you choose 94, then it will say correct pressure for new tyre should be 38PSI As such you can also refer to Load inflation tables e.g. here https://www.toyotires.com/media/pxcjubjs/application_of_load_inflation_tables_20200723.pdf (p34 - it is in lbs, so divide by 2.2 for kg). To calculate the safe pressure you will need to know your tyre load rating, your car curb weight and weight distribution for your car (most of the times tyres have loads of headroom, to save you the headache, safe rating for IS250 would be 23PSI front and 22PSI rear). However, if you just want comparable pressure to OEM sizes, then you just take OEM load rating and PSI, check what it requires e.g. IS250 standard pressures for 225/45R17 is 36PSI, standard load rating is 90 and according to load table they expecting the tyre to hold 1179lbs, 225/40R19 has load rating of 93, meaning to match OEM you only need 33-34PSI. The rear is different story - IS250 has way way way overrated tyres for rear... 245/45R17 with 95 load rating and 38PSI, so if we go by what Lexus is suggesting, then you would need to match 1389lbs which would require 41PSI on 93 rated tyres.
  11. I am pretty sure all modern cars since late 90s have some for of protection, so yes IS250 definitely will have something. Doesn't mean you can't do it, but it will not be straight forward.
  12. That has nothing to do with key feature, although there is such feature on most Lexus cars since 2001 or so. However, I doubt you held unlock button for 5 seconds without noticing it, whilst also being withing ~50m from the car. This happens when your windows are not "initialised". Happened to me once, what was worse it was sunny summer day with about 30 minutes of freak heavy shower in the middle and windows opened exactly during that shower - just my luck! So the car was all wet. And also my master windows switch worked despite replacing battery, but it was definitely not properly initialised. Basically after batter is replaced, or disconnected and reconnected one has to re-initialise all windows. If this is not done then all windows can randomly open like that. Door should not unlock to be honest, but my bets are still on windows initialisation problem rather than somehow pressing unlock button for 5 seconds on the key. Below shows how you initialise all windows:
  13. T-cut is not a true polish, I think it is what detailers nowadays would call a "glaze", basically it can remove some water spotting and oxidation, but does not have any paint/stain removal capabilities. Putting the wax on top also does very little here. Not sure what to advise you here - you can try clay mitt maybe, it should remove stain, but not scratch paint too badly (like clay bars). Other option is to get some actual paint polish and triple-foam pad and polish that area, but the problem here - there will be shiny polished spot in that areas and the rest of the car still scratched, so it will stand out like sore thumb. And doing entire car by hand would be extremely hard. To be honest, it is kind of hard to tell what you dealing with here from the picture, if it is really just water stain you may be able to clean in off with MF towel and vinegar. If it is really residue from oxidating aluminium, then it may need to be mechanically polished with polish. If it is just rain moving dirt on the car and forming such shapes then it may be the case of just washing the car. It does seem like there is excessive amount of white residue, especially coming from mirror housing, but it is very hard to say what it is, @J Henderson maybe right here, maybe aluminium frame in mirror is oxidising inside, but nobody would be able to confirm it without taking mirror apart.
  14. T-cut (if you literally mean it) may be your problem here, you see - fake polishes don't actually remove much of the staining, they would just fill it with silicone and make it less noticeable, so when you wash the car, you wash the silicone and it seems like stain is back. If you would polish the stain properly and remove it, then it would not come back so quickly. Secondly, you don't need to wipe down it every week, that would just cause unnecessary scratching. What you need to do is to wash the car and blow the water from the mirror (as mentioned simply driving or accelerating few times can achieve it) and then clean the water than came out before it has time to dry on the paint and leave stains. So rather than every week, do it after very wash. Also I guess it may be normal - if your car is parked outside and very dirty, and then it rains, then there is not issue. Rain simply runs down the car, mirror base is kind of obstruction, so it runs around and then concentrates under, leaving kind of mark where it was running. As my car is kept inside I don't notice this perhaps. Generally speaking - if you dried and wiped the car clean after washing, there should be no stain on clean car under the mirror.
  15. Wow- that looks horrible! I had my disassembled my mirror in the past and I can't remember it looking that bad. That is what I ten to do as well, just blast around the block after washing the car and park it and walk around one more time... and there are usually some drip around certain places - 1. is at the end of driver door 2. is this one from the mirror 3. is from the boot when you open it drips on rear quarters 4. is from the fuel filler cap. There may be few more on IS. But basically I just walk around and dry what has come out before it could dry and leave water deposits.
  16. Honestly, Lexus would do absolutelly no preparation, I am not assuming I know. They would assume your car paint is "perfect", because the product is designed for new cars (even thought new car paint is usually nowhere near perfect) and their prep will involve washing the car (the part which I always ask them to skip during the service as they are just not good at it), then panel wipe (basically 70% isopropyl) and then application. They certainly are not hiring detailer to come over and polish the car, there is no way anyone would bother for £450. And when I said - they going to give it to their showroom cleaner... I was not joking either. This is literally what my local Lexus does - they have cleaning agency hired to clean the showroom, same guys wash cars, same guys would be applying the ceramic coating. No disrespect for cleaners, everyone have to do what they have to do, but car detailers they are not, even just washing the car they scratch it way more than even worse hand wash in my area. £1000 is a bit much to be honest, unless it is based on car inspection and your car is really rough. It used to be around £500 for "restoration detail", that is if your car was never detailed before. It would include few stages of polishing, the ceramic coating then costs £100-£200. Depending on area +/- £100. So we are talking ~£500-£800. If your paint is particularly bad, deep scratches all around, you are asking for stone chip removal etc. Yes they can price that on top, but usual price as I said should be around £650, then they wash your car and they may call you back and say "look here is the deal, now that we could see the car clean there are way more scratches etc. We can proceed with standard detail, but we may not able to take all the scratches in 2 stages, if you want to wet sand, and polish them out, then it will be extra X amount, else we do bet we could, but there may be some scratches left". My other guess - they may say "up-to £1000" as sort of the limit of how much it could cost without seeing the car, so ideally you should bring the car over to them for wash and then ask for estimate, because £1000 seems little bit arbitrary to me. P.S. - I have looked at few detailing places around me and it seems the price had climbed up a little bit since, so my estimates may be little bit 2019-ish. But even then I have found few places that would do 2-stages + ceramic coating for £600 on "Large" car. But seems generally prices have climbed ~£100, so you could say up-to £900 is realistic.
  17. Yes - as far as I know aluminium bonnet cannot be straightened past certain point, on top of that it is damaged in such place where it isn't even accessible from inside, also they must not use any filler, as that is where the lock is, so basically bonnet flexes there and any filler would crack. I cannot say it is 100% not fixable, but I am 80% sure any decent place would say it needs replacing. So I would just come back and insist that bonnet is replaced. Because the last thing you want is for them to lob inch of filler on the bonnet and next time you try to close it it cracks. Also it makes no sense to save on such part. Replacement bonnet is let's say maximum £200. The expensive part is painting and blending the repair, the bonnet will require painting and fender will require blending, so there is at least £600 worth of painting involved. So this would be just counter intuitive to save £200 and then compromise £600 worth of job in the future. As for delivery, I tried few couriers and price comes to ~£50. So £100 for the part and £50 for delivery, in theory it doesn't matter as it isn't you who is paying for the part. It also matches what people are asking for them on ebay ~£100 and majority are collection only, but I have seen few delivering for £50. Option two - ask for cash settlement i.e. whatever they looing to pay to their repair shop just take in in cash. Obviously as long as that isn't £500. Because that then allows you to have some control on the process and quality of repairs.
  18. Drying the car after washing usually is enough to avoid it. Obviously if there is water left in the mirror after washing and slowly drips from there and dries, then it will leave water marks. Rain water shouldn't do this, only ground water which is usually very hard in UK. In short - this is washing technique problem, I just wipe around mirror after washing and usually that is all it needs.
  19. It is quite difficult without pressure washer. Basically for cleaning you need two key tools to use for cleaning are pressure washer for exterior and vacuum cleaner for interior. You can get around the pressure washer somewhat if you have "jet wash" close to you, that is what I used to do. Go there is more quiet time, maybe early morning or late evening (most importantly not during the day, both because it is busy and because you down want to be in the sun when washing the car). Then I would spray car with APC (all purpose cleaner - that works well as TFR/traffic film remover), wait few minutes for it to mostly soak all the dirt and then pressure wash the car, sadly you have to be quick, they usually only give like 2 minutes, 3 minutes if you lucky. But that is enough to knock down most of lose dirt. Then if nobody is waiting in the queue I would spray wheels with "bleeding" wheel cleaner (basically it is acid that dissolves rust), brush the wheels, tyres and wheel arches, then go over the wheels again with APC, especially around callipers (the APC is usually base, so it nicely neutralises acid in the wheel cleaner), go over badges, grilles, window mouldings etc with detailing brush and APC... basically to knock all dirt that may be stuck in small gaps. And then go over with pressure washer again. It is not ideal as it costs something like £4-6, for just couple of minutes with pressure washer, but that is better than nothing. Just one tip - never use the brush in jet washes, remember the first rule, anything that ever touched the ground should never ouch the paint... and that brush has been on the ground more times than anyone could remember. And once you knocked all lose dirt you can come back home and just continue all the steps with two buckets as before. But even doing "2 buckets technique" without prewash it will just cause more scratches than hand wash around the corner. Then you will need to consider interior cleaning, you don't need to be as careful in interior and there are less steps, but they are important as well. It is decent product, the problem is that for ceramic coating 90% of work is in preparation and 10% is in applying it. The problem is that for £450 Lexus will be skipping that first part which is 90% of end result. So it isn't just ceramic spray, it is professional product, perhaps not the best in the market, but decent enough. Problem is that it will look shaite if not applied properly and Lexus just going to give it to their showroom cleaner to apply and it will never look right. I can put Gtechniq ceramic coating for £40 anytime on somewhat clean car (because that is how much C1 costs), that is really not complicated at all, but it will look shaite, because for ceramic coating (that cures and makes proper had coating) in particular car has to be applied on car which polished to perfection, otherwise any scratches or old waxes/coatings etc. left on pain would be highlighted and just look even worse if car isn't polished prior. So £1000 I assume is for at least 2 stages polish, Gtechniq coating is just last step in process.
  20. If still interested £100 posted. Washers with all hoses and clips, but no caps (they would be different on ISF anyway), parking sensors (2x in front) with all wiring.
  21. Would be best to move back to GS section. Can't even find B2621/B2287/B2289 in repair manual, B2785 just advises to check LIN line, if line is good, then it advises to replace all connected ECUs in sequence.
  22. This question really belongs in detailing section as there is not RC specific advice. Sonic Titanium is one of the easiest colours to clean, generally grey cars don't show dirt and scratches as much and metallic paints hide them even better (In this case almost pearlescent), so it should not be difficult to keep the car looking great. That said - I much appreciate your desire to take good care of your car, that is definitely good attitude to have, but I just want to warn you here. You can easily damage your car more than needed when detailing/cleaning if you do it wrong, it is very easy to cause so called "love marks". So the answer - unless you really want to dive deep into detailing, just regularly washing your car will be 90% as good as it gets. So to start with, you need to ask yourself a question - how much you really want to take care of it? You can certainly wash car yourself, but I can assure you that 80% of the owners would make more damage washing their car themselves than they would by just taking it to regular automatic or hand wash. In other words - for 80% of owners just taking the car to car wash every 2-4 weeks will be sufficient and the car will look good after 5 years of ownership. Will it have scratches - yes, washing = scratching, but that is just inevitable. If you really want to beat say handwash in terms of minimising scratches to the paint, then you need quite a lot of knowledge and experience. I would even say RC is probably wrong car to practice on... because it has a lot of small and trickly details, shapes and Lexus paint in general is very soft (so easy to scratch). Next question - do you own anything for washing at the moment e.g. pressure washer? How much you looking to invest int into the tools? and what you looking to achieve? Because my basic set-up would look something like this: Pressure washer, snow foam lance would be nice 2 buckets with grit guard 50 general purpose MF cloths 5 thick drying MF cloths 5 Window MF cloths 5 car wash mitts ideally MF or soft wool 3 wheel woollies 1 tyre brush Set of detailing brushes (usually like 6 in the set) 2 pressure sprayers Shampoo concentrate (Bilt Hamber has great concentrate, but others are aslo good Gyeon, Gtechniq, Koch Chemie etc.) 5L of APC, that is chemical that you can use basically for everything just adjust the concentration so just buy bulk and keep it (again Bilt Hamber Surfex HD or Koch Chemie GS are two of my favourites) Some protection - I would advise ceramic spray nowadays, unless you want to go into full ceramic, but that is next level-up (even something like Autoglym Rapid Ceramic would be fine for this, generally I avoid Autoglym and TrutleWax, but current generation ceramic sprays are really good) Glass cleaner (I use Koch Chemie spray, but Sonax is also good) Specialty items which you may need from time to time: bug remover (explanation in the name) glue and tar remover (explanation in the name) "bleeding" fall out spray (maybe useful twice a year to move have brake dust that APC can't remove) rust inhibitor (good product to prevent rusting, especially on brake callipers, but also suspension, requires application once every 3 years, but can be done annually) I get my detailing supplies mostly from https://www.in2detailing.co.uk (you can also use discount code DW10), but sometimes I find better price in Amazon, eBay, sometimes directly from Gyeon, Gtechniq or Dodo Juice (i2D does not sell their products). My cleaning routine would look something like this - pressure wash wheels and lose dirt from body if needed > spray wheels with APC using pressure sprayer > scrub wheels with woollies and tyre with brush > spray car with foam > spray with APC and agitate around badges and grilles with detailing brush of appropriate size > pressure wash the car again > then onto contact wash with 2 buckets (1 for shampoo and 1 for rinsing), dunk mitt into rinsing bucket, rinse well, dunk it into shampoo bucket and wash the car from the roof down. I like to use at least 3 mitts for this (1 for upper half, 1 for lower half, 1 around arches, bottom of the sills, bumpers etc) > pressure wash for third time > wait for few minutes for majority of water to run down spray panel with ceramic spray (most of them are formulated as drying aids and water spot removers), wipe with thick drying MF cloth then buff with MF cloth, go top to bottom and around the car doing panel by panel > clean the wheels same way with dedicated MF cloth for wheels Autoglym ceramic spray can be used on tyres, but you can also buy dedicated tyre dressing (something like Gtechniq Trim & Tyres, or Gyeon)> finally clean windows and mirrors inside and out. I would probably start with interior, but you have not asked about it and it requires separate explanation. As you can see - quite a few steps involved, but I would argue if you not doing at least that, then it is not worth even starting to wash car yourself. I guess the it is possible to buy just the ceramic spray (detailing spray) and after taking your car to hand wash finish some spots that they miss yourself, but then again you basically not washing your car, just finishing the details. Could it be done without pressure washer - yes, technically you can do it all with just 2 buckets, but then I reckon you will scratch car more than hand wash. When else... if anything that touches paint falls on ground, it goes to the bin, be it 80p MF cloth or £10 drying cloth or wash mitt, if you try to use it again you will scratch the paint all over. I tend to use MF cloths few times and the rotate them down (top half of the car first, then bottom of the car, then wheels and then maybe I keep it around just as a rag). Never wash car in direct sunlight (water spotting, dried chemicals etc. are not good).
  23. Autodoc is good for generic parts, like brake pads, discs, air filters, oils etc. But they don't have any Lexus specific parts at all.
  24. NO - that is opposite, you basically did washer delete, that is FINE. Because MOT does not know if your car suppose to have them or not. So if there are no washers they thing car came without them. However, if they are installed they have to work, because MOT will assume that is they are present then car should have them. So, they either need to be blanked out or even better is to just get the bumper without washers as you have. Involving your insurance was bad idea, now your insurance will go up by 30%, because you will have record of accident on your record (regardless whose fault it was). So you probably should consider that into your settlement. As for dealing with "trade" and claims, it is tricky. You have strong case there so they will pay, but if they stop cooperating (if they feel you asking too much, or quotes they themselves are getting are too much), then they may simply drag their heels for years and the only way to force them is court, which is years long headache. I assume you would ultimately win, but it is painful and also you can't claim legal fees (in small claims up-to 10,000), so effectively you have to handle it yourself and it is not at all straight forward. So it would be ideal to avoid it if possible.
×
×
  • Create New...