Linas.P

Paint protection of any sort only lasts 2-3 years at best. Sure best in business ceramic coatings claim they can last 5-10 years if cared for properly, but because you buying used car and you don't know how it was cared for I would just assume it does not have it, or if it had it, then it is long past it's best to use date. That said - I do not recommend dealer applied protection, they just not good at it, product is good, but their application is bad. Ceramic coating in particular require proper preparation, basically all car polished and cleaned carefully, and that is just not in average dealers capability, they most likely will send their "best" cleaner to do it (and I am not even joking! literally the guy from agency on minimal wage who cleans the floor). So my recommendation - buy the car and find detailer you trust (in my case that is only myself) and get pain protection properly applied.

I think this may be true with older (i.e. not modern) cars, where tolerances and compression is low. But if you do it on modern engine, chances are your rod will upgrade themselves to wireless functionality. Basically it is same as hydro locking, oil cannot be compressed, tolerances are tight so what gives... pins, rods, maybe even rings, something will. Now I said that myself - I had overfilled this engine just slightly and it was okey, how much tolerance of overfilling could it tolerate... I doubt anyone knows. If it would be myself who overfilled it I may think about options, but as it was dealer - I would let them handle it, they have to, answer "it will be okey" is not okey, because if you come back with blown engine I doubt they will say "oopsie we will cover it".

I would take it back to the dealer and request them check level and if needed to replace oil again. Not even sure how you would go about "draining some", I guess you can try to suck some out, but you need special pump. Overfilled oil could cause catastrophic damage to the engine and it being dealership - there is absolutelly no excuse for overfilling. I have slightly overfilled the oil, because IS250 is annoying to check the level. You have to check it on the warm engine, but at the same time oil need like 15 minutes to drain back to sump after engine is stopped. So ideally you should have long-ish drive to really heat the engine-up well, then park and set 10-15 minutes timer (if it is not very cold 15 min is enough for oil to drain, but not enough to cool), then check level. What I did was checking oil level maybe 2 minutes after stopping the engine, the level looked low, so I filled 0.5L, checked again next day and it was just over the max. Something like that: Because that car used to burn a little bit of oil I left it as it is and nothing really happened, but I was maybe 0.3-0.4L over. Based on your dips stick I would assume it is like 1L over, which is quite a lot for the car that takes ~6L of oil. I can't say if it will or will not cause damage, but again - last people who have any excuse to overfill are the dealers. So get them to sort it out for you. Let them check the level, maybe they going to find explanation as to why it shows wrong on the dipstick and if they can prove that level is right, then fine, else is their responsibility to resolve it. To be fair I don't even understand how this could have happened and I don't want to start conspiracy theories, but maybe they forgotten to replace oil filter or something like that, really not confidence inspiring work. Not to mention checking oil level after service is one of the checks, so not only they should have filled it correctly, but as well they should have double-checked the level. Other theory - they sucked the oil rather than drained it via drain plug, I never liked this method, but many dealers does it as it is quicker, maybe they failed to suck all the oil and that resulted in some remaining and then causing overfill. Who know... but they now need to put it right. Their service is £300-600, so they better do it right at this cost!

205hp is realistic, but whenever that is beneficial is questionable. The key is where the power is achieved. If it get's 205hp at 4800rpm, then you won't feel much in normal driving, if at 1500rpm, then it would be huge... but only mapping may not be enough to achieve it. Other issue - you should have done baseline before mapping... because let's say your car was down on power (due to age, wear other faults), say 160hp, you now run dyno and get 180hp and assume tuner who programmed the ECU did bad job, but it is not necessarily the case if the car was already down on power. So all the gains are always relative to where you started from, as you don't know where yous started from it will be hard to tell it either way. Other problem could be measuring BHP vs. WHP, so IS220d supposedly makes 177 BHP, that will be less at the wheels and will wary wildly based on how each dyno is adjusted. That is why ideally you run car before and after tuning and measure difference, not the absolute power.

You asking wrong people wrong questions. Nobody here know what is on your chip, nobody knows what was programmed in your "stage 1". If the engine could handle more power, then why not just put it into ECU and forget about the chip? Again - what you chip does? Is it set for stock engine (chips usually ship with set map/maps)? If so then yes - you will blow your engine, because you have ECU map which puts more fuel into it, and then on top you going to put chip which going to put even more fuel into it... best case scenario - you will run rich, will be down on power and be "coal rolling", worse case scenario - your engine will rapidly disassemble. Basically you will double apply the mapping change. You should say "supposedly" has 205hp, because unless there is dyno run to prove before/after it is pretty much means nothing. Could IS220d make 205hp - yes it could, it can even make 240hp, but not for long. Go and ask people that know what they are doing and do the car specific map with before/after dyno for validation... that said anyone who really knows what they are doing probably won't touch IS220d, because it minimal gain and maximum liability game. Sorry if I sound dismissive of entire affair, but you should have done research before getting IS220d, what car it is, what engine it is, can it be tuned, what it can achieve, who can do it... just getting TD and assuming it could get 30% extra power because it is TD is just looking for trouble. Yes there are cars who are really good with this, Lexus IS220d isn't one of them. Now you just throwing good money after bad basically.

Who is everybody? What is "stage 1"? What your chip box does? IS220d engine is beyond harming, it can't keep-up even with stock power nevermind tuning, so I am not sure what is your goal here - to blow it up... sure doable. The actual answer why remap vs chip tuning - that is because it is basically the same thing, you need to control your fuel, you can either remap the ECU or you can add the chip which captures and interferes with signals to achieve the same thing. Whichever way you want to achieve it - it is up to you, but at least in theory you don't need both, you just need one of them to do the job. Lexus ECUs were uncracked for long time, so chip was the only way, nowadays I believe it has already been cracked for diesel engine and thus it could be mapped without the chip, but perhaps the ECU can't hold more complicated mapping or multiple maps, in which case it may be supplemented by chip. The real solution here would be aftermarket ECU, but the car is not worth it, the engine is not worth it and it would be waste of money. 2AD-FHV is junk engine, weak heads, weak internals, weak injectors - it is work engine, not race engine... and even then it is unreliable at that. Toyota had solution for it - 2AD-FTV, improved head gasket and detuned to 150HP, that is what this engine needs to run properly, more power is just asking for trouble really. That is correct for NA IS250 (or any NA car overall). Chipping/Mapping works well on Turbo diesel and can unlock 20-30% of extra power, VAG, BMW, MB engines are known to be conservatively tuned and can hold good power. As for Toyota diesel - they are already too hot out of the factory, unreliable etc. So they can still get the 20% power boost, but they can't handle it so it is quite pointless.

Yes autotrader is main site in UK. No problem, just something I experienced myself - I was excited to move to UK, because cars were cheap - then my dreams were shattered when the first insurance quote I got was £36,000 😄

I would not advise it - first of all, because car is already registered in Bulgaria you would likely have to pay duties on importing and registering it in UK. If that is originally UK car it may or may not be cheaper to reimport, but expect 10-20% tax on it. So if you planning to come to UK, then why not to buy the car in UK once you arrive? Besides prices in UK will be betted, 86,000 miles car for £3,600 is not horrible, but it is not great either. I guess depends on overall condition, but I am quite confident you can get better car in UK for that money and without weirdness going on at the rear. Secondly, I have almost no doubt you won't be able to insure it in UK. Not sure how old are you and what license you have (none of my business), but insurance in UK will be exceptionally expensive compared to Bulgaria. You much better of driving it for up-to 6 months in UK on Bulgarian insurance. So the only reason to buy car registered in Bulgaria would be to keep Bulgarian insurance at least for some time, because it would be significantly cheaper (with caveats). Just as example - when I was 24 and I already had license for 8 years I paid £2400 for my first insurance in UK on IS250 and that was like 10 years ago. So I would not be surprised if your insurance in UK could be £10,000 or more.

That was my initial guess - IS220d badged as IS250 to look more "cool". Because exhaust tips are as well very black (although picture is not amazing quality so hard to say). But being automatic it can't be diesel, so it is definitely petrol (unless it is incorrectly marked as automatic). Unless somebody really hated dual exhaust for some reason and gone trough the trouble of replacing both bumper and the exhaust to make it single dual tip exhaust... seems so unnecessary and minor. Besides it is usually other way around - diesel guys getting petrol bumper and making it dual exhaust for symmetry. Equally if the car was in rear shunt, the difference between getting IS250 bumper and IS220d bumper is negligible, in fact I think exactly the same cost. Unless maybe wrong bumper was ordered and then to accommodate that mistake the exhaust was changed as well... obviously just speculating here. This is weird one! I probably walk away at this point... unless price is somehow amazing, or there is something else extremely special about it to warranty the risk.

Probably magnitude of times as well and IS-F would still be way superior, reliable, purpose built car and have some sale value afterwards, whereas custom built IS430 would cost fortune to make and in case of selling - pretty much worthless. OP has not specified if he plans to use automatic or manual car for build, manual would have it's own set of pitfalls, but at least gearbox management would not be an issue.

I don't believe anyone did, or that it would be particularly easy thing to do, or that it is particularly good idea. Your best shot would be to get 2GR-FSE (from IS/GS350) because it would be direct fit without any modification (although A960E gearbox is too weak and you may consider A760E, so better get the engine together with gearbox). Why 2GR and not 3UZ - that is because 2GR has more power (slightly less torque), is much smaller, lighter and fuel efficient engine... and it is direct fit. Obviously you can somehow adapt gearbox to 3UZ, but only the adaptation of gearbox will cost more time and money than whole 2GR swap and this is before you approach elephant in the room - Lexus/Toyota ECU. They are not programable and there is no ECU that could run your combined 3UZ and A960E, alternatively you can use GS430 gearbox (A650E), but there are loads of problem with it - it is 5 speed, extremely outdated and lazy slushbox and it won't fit in IS transmission tunnel. So... you will need aftermarket ECU and high-end one for that to be able to run everything, and as well knowledge how to program it or money to pay for somebody to do that for you. I would guess only your ECU question will end-up being £3000 worth of "question". Obviously the easiest swap and the one I was actually thinking to do my self (I have bot IS250 and GS300 for parts) was to swap 3GR into IS250, I understand this may not rock your boat as 40 extra HP is nothing to write back home about, but GS300 are plentiful and cheap, all parts are compatible and to be honest in my opinion 40hp is just about as much as IS250 needed to be enjoyable to drive (otherwise being just borderline slow). It gets much larger and heavier GS300 to 60 in 7.2s and same engine in US spec. IS300 does respectable 6.8s. Obviously both 3GR and 2GR swaps are not real "swaps", they are more of retrofits, because IS300 and IS350 were the models in Lexus line-up outside of UK, so there is no surprise everything is plug and play. Obviously, I understand that 3UZ swap is V8 and thus it is almost mini-IS-F and there is charm in that, but it is a lot of work and you are much better of simply getting IS-F or importing IS350 from Japan, by "better-off" I mean it would be significantly cheaper overall than making 3UZ swap to work. Other alternative - 1UR from GS/LS460, together with AA80E, they would fit in IS chassis... not quite the engine, for engine you would need custom mounts and modified subframe, but gearbox would fit... and that is not surprise - IS-F mule car was developed from the basis of 1UR prototype. GS460 are unicorns, but LS460s could be found. And the challenge of fitting 1UR is half of that of 3UZ + it is way more powerful, economical and modern engine and at that point you really only a hair behind IS-F. In summary - there is loads of problems which may occur and for most part 3UZ is simply not worth the amount of work required to fit it... hence it is not a popular swap (or that anyone has done as far as I know).

Yeah - not much surprise here. Especially for 10+ years, that is where Lexus/Toyota literally abolishes any competition.

Same here every time, I guess my target is little bit higher - 2-3 years and ~30k miles. I know that for average brand that is well worn, but all the Lexus cars I had were pretty much as good as new. In current crazy market such deals have dried-up, but pre-pandemic one could expect 50% off for such car returning after it's first lease. As for scratches, smell and fingerprints - I have far higher level of expectation than any new car ever, all cars comes with small scratches, all even thought cleaned before delivery will have some smear or fingerprint, so I am really not fussed. I know that any car I will get will be detailed by myself anyway and to the level exceeding any mainstream dealer delivered new car. And perhaps I safe my health not breathing in the new plastic gassing out the chemicals for first few months (although that may be myth from the past, I assume modern and decent cars like Lexus don't use some horrible volatile chemicals anymore). Talking about smell specifically, once you get even 30k miles Lexus clean and if you don't use any excessively smelling cleaners and assuming previous owner was not smoking, spilling milkshakes or doing some other crazy stuff in the car then it will smell like brand new car every time. This one would be able to check before buying - obviously never buy the car if you suspect somebody was smoking in it, as that smell is pretty much impossible to remove, I have done it, but then car does not smell like new anymore anyway . When I sold my last RC I think it already had 54k miles and it still smelled like a new car. So it is just a matter of knowing what to use to clean it and what to clean.

Yeah sadly it was US centric view, I believe UK numbers were ~ 20% of sales and ~4% of total car park, but all the rest of the issues would be similar to US - lack of infrastructure to generate the electricity, lack of infrastructure to charge. This is by the way even worse in UK as unlike US majority of people don't have off-street parking, nor garages and overall US infrastructure would be much easier adapted to BEVs as they have generally more car centric infrastructure. So in US it is challenge to convert/upgrade the infrastructure, in UK is challenge of creating it from scratch. In other hand UK probably benefits from being smaller, more urbanised and therefore range issues are much less relevant here than in US... and climate is much milder, compared to at least half of US getting proper winters and snow. All in all, challenges in UK are more comparable to that of the state of California which has done quite well for BEVs, but even they have a limit and rely on extremal inputs to support the growth. Unlike California however, UK is not as tightly integrated with EU and is taking active steps to distance itself, which will only hurt BEV adaption (for better or worse).

Interesting take from kind of unusual source, but I think the take is more or less correct:

I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic, it is just how long it takes. If they have one car being delivered that week, I am sure they can wrap it up in few days, if they got 20 cars that they received it will take longer. Anything more than 2 weeks I would say would be unreasonable. There is actually Lexus instructions on what exactly dealer needs to do before handling over the car to customer, it includes multiple checks, cleaning, removal of packaging material etc. As well if car has some shipping damage, scratches, or it is dirty it may take additional time to polish the scratches, clean the car etc. Car as well may have dealer installed options, like protection pack, ceramic coating, rubber mats, muds flaps etc. etc. again extra time should be allowed if you opted for those. Still I would expect that to be done within less then 2 weeks, unless something is missing or went wrong. Again I have not bought brand new made to order car from Lexus specifically, so I am not really talking from experience, but I have seen the instructions of what takes place before it could be handed over and it is not as simple as just scheduling appointment. As well what needs to be considered - cars are not perfect "off the ship", or from the factory. I think that latter is less of an issue with Lexus as Lexus is known to be factory inspected before shipping, but other makes are not so good. Still for example if car took long time to ship it could be the case that starter battery is dead on brand new car and has to be replaced.

Not that I have personal experience, but from what I have heard it is 1-2 weeks usually. Perhaps depends on how busy they are.

I don't think that is quite the same as with new car - for new car it is sentimental thing, for repair it is more of "fair use vs. abuse" i.e. expectation is that technician won't use your car to go get drive-trough burger, pick-up kids from school after shift and commute into work next day, picking-up some penalty points on the way.

Rust one what? Not the A/C coolant line? They are aluminium, so they can't rust, maybe you mean "oxidised"? As well noticed type in my previous comment.

Yeah totally understand that, although as long as there is 1 mile on it it kind of defeats the point. As I said I understand the sentiment and I would like to see cars "zeroed" at the point of pick-up, especially more premium nicer cars. That would be nice touch and give the owner that "unboxing" experience. I know Lexus removes all the packaging before deliver, but to be fair I would even like to have an option for them to leave it, so that owner could do it, it is after all experience in itself. That said we all know cars travels thousands of miles to get to us, not necessarily driven, but they go trough rough transport... hence new car detailing is a thing - they are technically new, but they been in the ships, driven by dock workers, trough the rough seas, trough the storms and quite often are already scratched in places. I guess the only way to get real 0 miles car is to get in front of the Tahara plant gate in Japan and pick it off production line. And the reason I am labouring "0 miles" is because then the argument becomes kind of irrelevant, what is acceptable/unacceptable etc. where to draw the line... I am not sure really, would I make an issue with car having 91 miles if it was made to order rather than off the floor? To be honest I doubt it... but I am in no risk of finding out as I honestly have no plans to buy brand new car ever, even if I would be billionaire I can't see myself doing it as can't handle depreciation - in this context I am much less sensitive to find miles on "new car" and much more sensitive knowing that the minute I drive trough the showroom door (figuratively speaking) and add 2000 miles on that car it just lost literally 30% of it's value. Now I guess that kind of makes it important to get new car with as little miles as possible, because the difference between 22 miles and 2000 miles is that 30% extra cost to get it new, and if the car you getting has say 200 miles, then perhaps it should be severely discounted. That is valid point. Hence I kind of grouped them in up-to 100, 100-1000 and over 1000. In perfect world first group would be exactly 0 and second group 0-1000, but sadly we are not in ideal world.

My one and only new Lexus I had was 147km on the day of pick-up (so ~91 mile), but I picked it up "from the floor", so potentially it had few test drives in it, but it wasn't an official demo car either i.e. it was not registered before I bought it. I was totally not bothered, because it was 2012 IS250 F-Sport + "Premium pack" (whatever that means, as there is no such thing officially, but dealer said it was limited edition to close off mk2 production run) and I paid equivalent to about £20,000 for it (so ~£10,000 off the list), as it was sitting on the floor for few good months by then. The only difference from F-Sport in UK was that it had full dark rose leather F-Sport seats and no shaitecantara, but again outside of UK shaitcantara was an option for F-Sport anyway and not the only way like in UK, so the dealer may have been not entirely honest about it being "special". I would say anything below 100miles is acceptable, between 100-1000 it becomes demo in my view, past 1000 - just simply used. But all this is purely psychological obviously, these cars are not collectables that sit on the museum floor, so whenever it is 100 or a 1000 it will be irrelevant after couple of months. That said I would appreciate if there would be literally like pull tab on the dash, where they only pull it when they deliver new car and it is irreversible and car starts for you at exactly 0 miles i.e. "technically brand new". Or more realistic - may some sort of code they can run to "zero" it to give this sentimental feeling of newness. If it is not exactly 0 - then it kind of doesn't matter, if it is 5, 10, 25, or 147.

I think Assym 6s beaten 5s on all metrics, perheps depends on size, but both are excellent tyres. I would replace tyres first, then do all 4 wheels alignment, always do that when fit new tyres, because I see tyres as long term investment basically, they should last 30k miles after all, so giving them best chance to work is when you fit them. And only then I would start looking for problems with suspension, I know it may sound slightly counter intuitive as alignment will be required once you fix the suspension, but how are you planning to isolate the issue if you have poor tyres and poor alignment. So I would say first set the car "straight" and see if the issue remains as otherwise it will be very hard to identify what is actually wrong. The other possibility if you doing everything at the same time, and could get obvious things inspected on suspension, then do that before fitting tyres and alignment, things like worn out ball-joints, or wheel bearing, check that wheels don't have play in them etc. and only then replace tyres. But to be fair it is very hard to identify issue with suspension unless something is very obviously lose and worn out to the level where wheel have a noticeable play in them.

Yeah Dunlops - RT and RT2 had crabbing, so does Uniroyal RainSport 3, so does all the tyres excellent in terms of aquaplaning. I am not sure if there is a tyre today which is focused so much on good wet performance, basically everything is compromise on tyre and to get excellent aquaplaning resistance one has to accept crabbing. Simply said they have deep and distinct ribs as a thread pattern which is excellent for pushing the water out, but as a downside when turning the wheels when stationary they could be crabbing, especially on colder morning. As technically one should not turn the wheels on stationary car (I know theory is quite far from practical in real life) and I knew what is causing the crabbing, that never concerned me, but some people can't live with it... even replaced perfectly good tyres just for that.

Few review mentioned that this tyre in particular caused them to think alignment wasn't right, car was wondering on the road and that bearing was worn out... surely as I said, take a bucket of salt before reading reviews, but may that have something to do with your suspicion of something being wrong in suspension?

Didn't quite realised how old is this tyre - the Autobild tested it in 2014 against such competitors like literally ancient Uniroyal RainSport 2 (that is before Michelin acquired them and made excellent RainSport 3) and Dunlop RT, not even RT2... and still it was 48th out of 50... ouch.