Linas.P

Same here - great lifespan, but they are little bit on the "sportier" side. Not harsh, or noise, just not "soft" either. Funny enough I have replaced Dunlops SportMaxx RT2 with Michelin PS4 and Michelins were noticeably less soft/comfortable. Now to big part is was because I went from 17" to 18", but still Michelins where noticeably more "high performance" tyre. For example driving Dunlop RT2 on cold morning would not be a big deal, but Michelin PS4 in cold morning (and by cold I mean 4-8C maybe) would be very sketchy, they felt literally like race tyres which you have to bring "up-to temperature" before they start gripping. So by that I reckon PS4 had much harder compound which in colder temperatures really suffered and was just too stiff. That said - once PS4 were "up-to temp" they they gripped like a train, point the car into direction and it goes there like on the rails, both mechanical grip and compound itself was phenomenal. Sadly, Dunlop has not released any tyres for nearly decade now, everything that is made is all obsolete OEM junk. Dunlop/Goodyear is the same company, so if you looking competitive replacement for Dunlop, then you need to look at Goodyear Asymmetric 6 now.

To be honest I would keep them as it is. As long and you have matching tyres on each axle they should be good enough. That is unless they are badly mismatched e.g. if your fronts are Michelin PS4s (UUHP tyre) and rears are Bridgestone Turanza (touring tyre) then they are not well matched (it goes as follows Eco > Touring > UHP > UUHP > Race). But if fronts are Michelin Primacy (Touring) and rears and Bridgestone Turanza (also Touring), then I would just leave them as they are and just replace them with 4 new tyres once they get to ~2.5-3mm. The reason for this - for example UUHP will grip a lot better in hot and dry than Touring, but a lot worse on cold morning, so you get this disbalance and unpredictable handling between axles, but as long as they similar "grade" tyres they should be alright.

I have Maxxis on one set and Falken FK510 on the other now. Both are made by Sumitomo Rubber Corp. Also Sumitomo now has their own branded tyres. They are by no means premium, but they are reputable mid-range (Sumitomo and Maxxis that is). Falken are considered premium nowadays, but I reckon they are a step short from real premium tyres like Goodyear, Continental and Michelin. Although they are very compelling against Pirelli and Bridgestone. So yeah - if one is looking to save money I think Maxxis and Sumitomo are safe bets (they are not dangerous chinesium tyres, they are fairly decent). Other ones worth - Uniroyal, Sava, Debica, Cooper... but they don't have much "penetaration" into British market and often price does not make sense. But they are decent tyres made by Michelin/Goodyear under different names.

That is hard question with many answers. I would right away discount budget tyres - they are just not good. For summer tyres some of budgets are "alright", but they simply fail on longevity and that kind of defeats the purpose of "budget" tyres. So let's say on Michelin one can drive 36,000miles, on budget tyres one can drive 12,000 miles, therefore if Michelin costs £300 and budget costs £100 they costs THE SAME. However, most of the time budgets are only 30-50% cheaper, so as paradoxical as it sounds - it is cheaper to buy premium tyres. Winter tyres in my opinion are more difficult to get right, so if budget brands can't make summer tyres, they have no chance of making winter tyres. Second hand tyres are also complicated topic, I did calculations and they just don't work out when it comes to cost. The problem is purely miles/£, so let's say new tyre is £100, used tyre is £50... new tyre comes at 8.8mm thread, used tyre had 4.5mm. On the surface looks like fair deal, but that is ignoring the fact that you need 2-2.5mm of thread before replacing the tyre. So 4.5mm is not 50%, it is more like 25% and even at that we know that worn tyre perform worse than new, so last 50% of the thread is not as good as first 50% of the thread. As such if new tyre at 8.8mm is worth £100, then used tyre at 4.5mm should only be worth maybe £20. Yet I can see Michelin PS4s and CC2s with 4-6mm thread left selling for £90, which is just ridiculous and makes no sense. I believe CC2 depending on side comes with ~9.3mm thread, so by the time it is 5mm, it is 70% worn. So if new tyre is £150, then how comes 70% worn tyre still costs £90?! So it seems budgets and used tyres are not an option... this leaves just just new and premium or mid-range tyres. For winters I would advise to look at Nokian, Hankook and Gislaved tyres (they are not known in UK, but they are strong in winter tyre sector), or indeed premium brands. All the premium brands are fine as well.

People in UK indeed struggle to drive in winter, but that has nothing to do with driving wheels. Brits simply don't know how to drive on slippery roads... sorry that is just a fact. And I am not saying British drivers are worse than drivers in other countries, however in UK you simply don't have "winters". Yes some snow drops for few days in few places, but that is not a winter, so simply said average British driver does not have an opportunity to develop skills and experience driving in winter conditions. It always causes me hysterical laugh when two snowflakes drops and there is carnage outside, as if it some sort of end of the world. And also - I am not saying there are no good British drivers who are million times better than me on the snow, however they likely learned those skills outside of UK, or in other ways (like being rally drivers, off-roading etc.) And secondly - I am not convinced tyres actually helps in this situation, they kind of do, but skill absence can make it worse as well. First of all we need to understand what type of situations you are likely to encounter in UK - sludge, black ice, packed snow and generally wet roads. Deep snow (and no - 2 inches isn't a deep snow) is not consideration in UK, nor is "dry" ice. You generally can drive on summer tyres on sludge and wet roads just fine, it is a matter of experience, but that does not require special tyres. Yes summer tyres start losing their properties below 6C and are useless below 0C. But if you have sludge or water that means 100% it is above 0C. All-season tyres by virtue of their softer compound and by deeper grooves have slight advantage below 6C, but here is where everyone get it wrong. All-season are NOT winter tyres and below 0C there is absolutelly no difference whenever you have summer or all-season. So let's say outside is -2C and there is packed snow, you can drive on that in neither summer, nor All-seasons. Even more common example - black ice, that is you have puddle, temperature drops to -1C and usually on the bridges black ice forms... no tyres will help you with this (not even true winter tyres), so one just has to be mindful of this and be prepared to deal with it. There are spiked winter tyres, but they generally are designed for "dry ice", that is when temps drops to say -10C and stays for a long time, then you may get strong ice forming and you need spiked tyres to drive on it, in UK there are simply never such circumstances and metal spikes falls out as soon as you hit the dry asphalt, I don't know if they are even legal to drive in UK. So what usually happens in UK - people fit All-Season tyres and they think they are invincible, because they have "winter tyres", they hit black ice and the only difference tyres makes is that they are going at much higher speed completely oblivious to their predicament. Also - driving wheels makes absolutelly no difference, all the same rules applies whenever you driving RWD car in dry or wet or slippery conditions. So if you know how to handle oversteer in dry, then you will know how to handle it in slippery conditions as well. It is a matter of skill and experience, not driving wheels and not tyres. At least not in UK. There are countries that regularly has REAL winter and generally those countries have mandatory winter tyre regulations and conditions there means it is matter of tyres and not matter of skill, in UK there are no winters. If you look statistically, then you will be surprised that majority of crashes in "winter" happens to SUVs which most of the time are FWD or even AWD, so to say that RWD struggles is not really true. People just don't know how to drive in winter, do not choose safe speed for conditions and lose control, and tyres are not silver bullet either. Now to be fair UK is very wet country and roads here are horrible, all year round, dirty, covered in mud and leaves, surface rough etc. So it does make sense to use All-Season tyres, or what I usually do - I use A-Rated for Wet summer tyres. In UK honestly the wet rating is the most important and I never had issues with them in 14 years, I never change to winter tyres, but if I need to replace tyres then I try to do it in autumn. Anything below 3mm is asking for trouble. I know this post sounds passive aggressive, if not outright condescending, but I have grown-up and learned to drive in country with 3 months of actual winter where temperatures below -10C are common for months and even few weeks with -20C even few days as low as -35C, so I cringe every time when temps get to single digits in UK (positive single digits) and people struggle with driving. Yet I would be completely useless driving in desert dunes probably and Arabs would cringe looking at me driving, so it is just a matter of skill and conditions that enables certain skills to develop. In summary - to drive safely in winter one needs to develop skills and have experience for it, predict dangers and drive appropriately, this is not skill one can acquire in UK. Tyres helps, but only to certain degree, weather in UK does not get too bad to actually need any special tyres, but All Seasons will help a little bit assuming one has basic understanding of what they are doing and what are the risk.

I don't even understand how this counts as driving "without due care and attention". I mean for first accident, yeah that would be applicable, but once he crashed first time and he continue to drive (actually tries to flee) and crash again that is already "dangerous driving". So in principle - he has crashed, he is in the vehicle which is no longer road worthy (presumably) and he is trying to flee the accident and then causes another accident, this is 100% "dangerous driving". "Without due care" means "accident", something that one didn't plan to do and it was just lapse of attention, but once person is fleeing the crash that cannot be called "without due care", his actions are deliberate. I would drop "preventing course of justice" on him as well. So driving ban - 100%, but I reckon it could have been much more than driving ban. But I guess in this case they were lenient because of "no previous convictions" and similar stuff. Needless to say very light punishment and most people do no get such treatment in UK.

Yeah - that is good point - driving ban should have come without a question, even before considering potential criminality of his actions.

Seems to be at least £10k more than similar cars were selling for last few years (even considering that last few years were absolutelly highest prices for used cars probably ever).

Yeah - escaped lightly because he is TV persona, other person would have gone to jail for that. Multiple counts of dangerous driving, hit and run and finally... he must have been high on something to do this. Alcohol, medicine, maybe both... There is no way somebody crashes as bad as he did and then continues to drive swiping other cars. So dangerous driving under influence is like 5 year jail. Perhaps some leniency considering his age, but should be at least suspended term.

Indeed, but now there is new trend of woke rural hotels to charge some arbitrary fee, like £5-10. It is almost like "pollution charge" and I don't play that game.

Even worst Chinese unit still going to be better than what Lexus was putting out in 2012. The sat-nav controls and features were never strong part of Lexus. For 2012 model you will indeed have to find compatible unit, but in principle the price will be in the same ballpark. - The steering buttons definitely works, this is never an issue with these replacement units. - the CD changer should work as it is still used as "slave" interface with AMP in most cases, although once you have android unit I am not sure how important is the feature of CD player?! - the stock camera may or may not work, this needs to be confirmed for a specific unit. The ones that replace non-sat-nav units usually does not have interface for camera and use generic USB camera, the ones that are properly designed to replace sat-nav often have "plug&play" integration for all features. All these questions would be answered by the seller. In my experience sellers even refuse to sell you the unit unless you provide them with specific model you have and some even asks you to remove headunit and show the pictures of the connectors to make sure they send you the compatible one (I guess last thing they want is to deal with returns). So again - from my experience it seems almost as if you need to convince them to sell one, than the other way around.

It "was" SEL - so yes. Not sure about front section, but I can do whole unit for £25. Unfortunate timing on your black interior swap as I have complete black interior including everything for sale now.

I had an issue where it wouldn't always close if I tried to close it with reasonable force, so I had to slam it all the time like an animal... couldn't live long enough with the car for that to become an issue that needed a solution, so sadly can't advise how to resolve it. One guess - how about "bumpers" adjustment, maybe they got lose and it doesn't close far enough to trigger the locking mechanism, they can be simply adjusted by screwing them in or out (in your case probably in). I just can't associate electrical issue with Lexus (they are just not known for failing in such way), unless the rear of the car was previously damaged and poorly repaired.

As above - I don't believe there are any "good" or "bad" providers... it is just how much they can get away with. Been with BT, with O2, with TalkTalk, with Sky... and currently with Hyperoptic. If anything in terms of customer service the TalkTalk was best, but that is ignoring the fact that I probably had to call them the most... so their product was kind of shaite. Now I am with Hyperoptic, not because their customer service is good, but only because they are the only ones that provide 1000Mbps downloads/uploads... and they know it! Meaning they are dismissive of any issues whatsoever. For example in summer they had scheduled like 4 maintenance windows... "2 hours between 8AM and 8PM" in middle of the working day. Meaning that if you are working from home, you internet may disconnect at literally any time for 2 hours Each time I send them polite e-mail stating that "best practice" would be to schedule the work in "more suitable" time like maybe "1AM to 5AM?" and if they have to do it during the day, then they should have tighter window for maintenance and shorter downtime e.g. "15 minutes between 10AM and 11AM". Also I pointed out that if anything were to happen, their timing meant that they would impact literally every users they have. Obviously that got ignored. First time was alright - maybe 10 minutes downtime at 10AM, second time similar... maybe 20-30min at 10AM... third time they disconnected the internet at 9:10 and it didn't work until 8PM... "they run into unpredictable issues outside of their control"... And that was kind of enough for me... so complain got escalated and they ended-up refunding £100 "as good will measure" and sending and apology (which is kind of mild and I found Ofcom lacking balls in this case, which wasn't entirely unpredictable). Now sure - I would be long gone considering rather awful service, but I know that they know that I know that everyone knows that my next best option is typical Openreach bunch with woefully obsolete FTTC connection, which is £20 more expensive and offer 86/20Mbps. I have heard same story about Virgin fibre (500Mbps) in nearby apartment, where they are also sole provider of decent internet. So it seems they are only as nice as they have to be...

I reckon it would be cheaper to just get whole GS (I know that for sure, as I just shifted one GS for £1000, which I thought I would use exactly for this exercise, I just couldn't get the place to work on that, so had to abandon this plan), with dressed engine and not bother with swapping everything over, but in principle yes - you can do that, most of the ancillaries are identical. Also I, if I do swap of 3GR I would prefer to do it with A760e, because it is much stronger box. Well obviously unless converting to manual. As for ECUs - I tend to believe it is identical hardware for most GR series engines, only the programming is different, but that is the my question - what are those companies, I have not heard of one that can work on Petrol Lexus ECUs. They were rumoured, especially on US forums, but I haven't come across one yet.

On automatic car you don't need to map anything, just use GS300 (3GR-FSE) ECU. Obviously, I understand you having manual car that was not an option as there was never manual XX300. That said - how do you get IS205 ECU mapped, or you run aftermarket ECU?

Can't answer for more specific questions, but whatever you do you first need to check that head gasket issue, because if you have head gasket issues then there is no point doing anything else. If engine has overheated is it scrap, theoretically it can be fixed, but it is uneconomical fix, it is cheaper to replace the engine than fix it... and as it seems from your thinking about - you would get rid of the car if it turns out to have head gasket issue (which I can't blame you for).

I am not even sure what is the argument here - they can charge what they want for I can pay what I want for... it is all self-explanatory. I just don't want to pay for parking, never paid for parking and never will. As for US - that is separate topic, I just don't like the country overall. That they get $2 that is kind of their problem not mine, customer shouldn't pay their wage, their employer has to do it. Find another job. On the last sentence I partially agree - just looking at the bottom line is bad idea. But parking is not bottom line for me, honestly cost of parking would make no difference financially for me, but that is principle.

I am talking about leisure as well. When I drive for work I don't care - work pays, even then I haven't seen many hotels charging for parking, most of the time when I drive for work I use hotels that happens not to have parking at all. Like Grand in Birmingham... and then NCP with ***** on every corner cost £36/day.

Just personal preferences and priorities... I actually prefer hotels little bit out of town - you can find real gems! Overall, I can't remember EVER staying in hotel where I had to pay for hotel parking, I have stayed in few hotels where they did not have parking at all and parked car in public car park - yes that happened! But never hotel where they charge for parking. And they were never too remote, too expensive (value for money is kind of my thing) or bad in any shape or form in comparison. I cannot say I lose sleep over it - if I am driving to the hotel I usually just check where I am going to park or if hotel advises anything about car parking. In my experience most of the time it is FREE on site parking, but in few occasions I found hotel which does not have parking, in which case I just look for alternatives and usually find another hotel that does have parking... overall I have not seen many hotels that charge for parking, maybe I am not visiting right places? But indeed - if I was told parking at the hotel will cost me (price mostly irrelevant) I would be surprised.

Who said it is objective? Yes people choose hotels based on what they like and value or need that day. If I am not driving then I would not care if car park is paid or not paid, or even exists. But when I drive I would not use hotel that does not offer free parking (unless there are extremely compelling reasons). Overtime, I build preference to certain hotels, so perhaps if hotel offers free parking when I have car and I like their service, next time I will stay there even if I don't drive. It is just personal priorities so it is mostly subjective. I am not speculating here - I know it does. I know that local councils puts certain restrictions on parking... and when it comes to absolutelly anything related to their approval they will put parking as bargaining chip. As I said "if you don't make that parking paid, wont allow you to refurbish". Also now there are woke people in management and workforce and some hotels started charging for parking as they think it is "environmentally friendly to punish guests who drive". So it is both personal politics and world view and sometimes just politics. That is why I don't go to US... actually many more reasons, like I just generally don't find US attractive or interesting destination. Also I don't tip and remove "suggested" tip or service charge, unless I really like service (like if they really go above and beyond). I said that also - if it adds value (and valet parking does add value) then I don't mind paying for it. I simply don't see being allowed to self park next to sign that I am doing it at "my own risk" as "value add". For example if there was free car park and somebody wants to make me pay for it, then they have to offer the actual service. Parking the car is not a service... they either have to do valet, or have to clean it, or have to guarantee it's security. That is a service and I happy to pay for it. Finally, I have noticed the trend of hotels turning car parks that used to be free and can be free to paid ones... because of all reason above. So some common sense has to be applied - yes we know some hotels charge for parking, because they always charged for parking, because they have very limited space and are in area where it is hard to expand that space. Yet there is now new trend (of last 20 years probably) where car parking is becomes paid for no reason e.g. quiet family run hotel in country side where car park is basically just a field with virtually unlimited space. In the past they just said "yeah park in that field just around the corner", now they say "we offer car park for a £5 fee". The field cost nothing for them to maintain, does not add any value, but they now decided to add arbitrary charge. So in such case I vote with my valet and go to stay elsewhere and instead of making £5 out of me they lose customer who pays maybe £100 for a night. They have a principle and I have a principle.

Sorry mate, just to manage your expectations - these original wheels are not worth much. I have several sets of 17" wheels, be it for IS250 and people would not take them for free. So their cost is really symbolic. I can see them going around all year long on facebook market place for £50-100 and it doesn't seem like there is any interest. My speculation would be - these cars are coming to the end of their life and gets scrapped, typical things that get recycled are wheels so there is shortage of cars and surplus of wheels. On older cars where alloys where optional people would replace steel wheels to alloys, but because ALL IS200 came with these alloys as standard there is simply no market for them. So it is not like I want to drive your price or anything, or saying that they shouldn't be worth the money, it is just had multiple sets of Lexus wheels and I know they are unsellable. There are exceptions of course - 18" F-Sport from IS300h is £1000 any day of the week, IS-F wheels, GS-F wheels, all the "upgraded options", so if car had standard 17" and there was optional 18", those 18" will be worth something. But 17" are just not the wheels that sell.

I think also relevant to the topic - should you pay extra to find 255, or downsize to 245, or even square set-up for 225. I have long argued that for winter conditions the narrower tyres is better and testing seems to support it. So no need to be hanged-up for keeping the factory 255s... at least no for winter. Obviously if you keep the tyres all year round, then extra width is beneficial in the dry.

Not necessarily, it is only extra cost if hotel legitimately has shortage of parking and has to prioritise or rent additional parking spaces. However, that is very unlikely to be the case in British country side. Also it is matter of prioritisation... you could argue that having toilet in your hotel room is also not free, but it is generally accepted that having toilet is not optional. For me having free guest parking is also not optional. So I expect that anyone who decided to run the hotel looked at all the things they had and included sufficient parking spaces before opening it. Also, sometimes it is just hidden within costs of hotel as per your contract comparison, but sometimes there are two hotels for the same price, offering same service, just one has free parking and other doesn't. Same comparison can be used for any other service that hotel has, for example I may not use hotel pool, but that pool is included in my hotel price regardless... or sometimes hotels charge separately for the pool. Now as I don't care about hotel pool and for me that is optional, I may ignore the charge for the pool and still say in that hotel, but parking when I am driving is not optional for me, so I will choose hotel that has free parking. The other problem I see - many hotels used to have free parking, and they generally have plenty of parking spaces, but because of politics and being woke, they now started charging for parking in their car parks "because they are on the mission to fix injustice in the world and punish people that they consider should be punished"... no thank you - I don't want politics to be included with my hotel room at an extra cost. To be fair some hotels and many public institutions are nowadays literally FORCED to charge for parking, for this political reason, else they would not get planning permissions for extension or renovation. But because there is no way for me to know that I just pass on using them, even if sometimes the charge is not their fault.

Cracking exhaust manifold seems like a QC issue on exhaust supplier. I know IS-F had, does this still exist on RC-F? I would have thought Lexus should have resolved that by the time LC launched... that said in grand scheme of things it isn't complicated issue to fix, I know it can get expensive and involved as many things have to get removed to access the cracks, but it is not like engine bearing issues, or something more fundamental with engine design. Exhaust manifold is either leaking or it is not leaking, it is pretty binary and fix is obvious. As for 1UZ tuning, yes I agree that in form of LS400 it wasn't highly tuned from factory, but it is tuneable. If I am not mistaken - when Lexus raced SC back in 2000s, they used 1UZ as the basis and not 3UZ, although that would be semantics anyway. By that I mean - the design of these engines is fundamentally good and capable of making power and revving out, they just didn't came in that state of tune in limousine (which makes sense). Still in case of LS400 I am sure that most of perceived laziness comes from gearbox, but attach same engine to manual gearbox and it is quite happy to rev and responsive. Not that it is comparable to 2UR, or needs to be.