Linas.P

I do understand why 😄

I think that is good choice! Good luck with your search!

Nice try, but I doubt it had anything to do with the cars thought... just people driving them. I think this comment would be fair for 911, especially 911 Turbo of old, but 3-Series was disappointingly mediocre and especially in 80s when many cars were RWD they were similar to any other premium car on the road.

Well done! Sounds fair... and I would have expected the outcome you got. Paying Lexus £181 was certainly not realistic, so everything they did sounds right. I am just surprised they haven't done that right away and let you go out with broken sensor at first.

Never had that issue with independent garages. Dealers and chains don't take parts from outside, but as far as I am concerned - all independent garages takes parts from outside, but then they say "warranty for work only" and that is fair. I have found plenty of monkeys working in Lexus as well. I can't say I was really impressed with any particular service with Lexus. It was alright, but nothing more. Courtesy car is nice and independent garages I use don't offer this at all, but if the difference is 60% in price, then I can deal with that. The problem with Lexus in particular is that there are very very few independents that know the cars, so normal service - oils and filters... fine, but anything more than that is trouble. I used to take Lexus only to Lexus, and I probably will still do this going forward. I mean I took my £1000 GS300 to Lexus last time and it was £280 for minor service, so not exactly good value... and service was alright. I mean sure I can afford it and I like convenience, but I can see how it is actually TERRIBLE value for money and why people would say "nah... I am good". Because here is the thing - once car is 10 years old, the dealer service adds no value. I have serviced my old IS250 in Lexus all the way to 200k (I think last service was 186,000) and when it got written-off I got it valued ~£4,000, it would have been £4,000 either way, with service history and in perfect condition or with no service history and in crap condition. Obviously, bear in mind - that was done back in the day when "Essential Case" was the thing, so I actually not spent anything extra, I would even doubt it was possible to get it done cheaper than what I paid at Lexus, but those times are long gone.

Do you mean just F-Sport or actual RC-F. Because yes even between say Luxury and F-Sport there is insurance category difference and to be fair there was bigger difference between RC300h F-Sport and Luxury, than it was between RC300h F-Sport and RC-F.

This is massively old thread, so much of the discussion is probably irrelevant anymore. But in terms of insurance it would cost me ~£600 to insure either RC-F or RC300h F-Sport. There may be £50 difference between them. So insurance category thing is really just 1 out of million criteria that impact your insurance premium.

Yes, but that was in 2021 on 2015 car, meaning it gives you Lexus Relax warranty. At that point I agree - it is totally worth it. This is on 2011 in 2024, no Lexus Relax included. In short it was £1,300 service plan on 6 years old car that is worth £12,000+warranty vs. £1,300 on 13 years old car worth £6,000 and no warranty. Honestly, the main problem is that Lexus discontinued Essential Care, because I remember having 2 year service plans for £500 (£180+£320). That makes perfect sense and in fact independent service probably would cost just as much. The service plan only makes sense when warranty is included in it, else it is certainly too expensive for cars over 10 years old. Also Lexus "approved" parts is questionable. Any parts are always at extra cost, except of things like air filters and oil filters, so yes they use Lexus parts, but you have to pay for them so I just can't see how is that benefit. You may as well buy the parts at 30% of the cost from US or UAE and bring them to your independent?

Any decent dashcam kit should have battery "protector"... It doesn't really matter what mileage you are doing, but if you don't drive at least for 15-20 minutes every other week, then battery will die eventually. Nothing really new - 3/4 weeks and they get low on charge and if you do it repeatedly then batteries ten to die. I wouldn't use S-mod or bother changing gears, you will get used to it. I was about to say you can downshift from D in facelift, but that is only on F-Sport if memory serves Advance does not have paddle-shifters (although they could be retrofitted). Also Toyota does not do service any cheaper than Lexus. Sadly nowadays there are no Essential Service and I see why people don't see value servicing 12 years old car in Lexus... as it is really too much when you don't get warranty included. As long as you service it once a year and ideally after no more than 5000-6000miles it should be fine.

Where did I say NHS or any other public services are good? No - what I am saying, people care about them, but not about the roads. Politicians knows this and at least they pretend to make them better. That does not make them better, but at least they have some fffed-up plan, they put it on manifesto, they promise something... at least there is some sort of discussion that maybe that needs to be done, maybe it is not good enough... roads... pfffff nothing, they are not even listed... "what roads... what about them... why are you even driving... are you not ashamed of yourself?!"... because you know it is popular to slag off driver, it is considered almost a "class" thing.... "those disgusting drivers, nothing good comes from them, just polluting and complaining all the time". Roads - be thankful you even allowed to still use them, actually being suitable for the amount of traffic or drivable... forget it! And yes you right - Tories are doing lip service for motorists at best, but Labour is openly hostile to the idea of personal transportation. that is why for roads to get better we need some sort of convoluted political situation... where Labour is in power, where Tories are in opposition and where Tories propose road rebuilding programme or some shaite they will never be able to complete because they are too corrupt... but then that move the polls significantly. To the point where Labour goes "OMG - that road promise may win the election, we must do something about it"... and by the way they would do something about it, they would set-up some publicly owned company, that would have sole purpose of doing nothing else, but surfacing the roads for 10 years and then would be useless and inefficient after that. That is Labour way - create something useful and then let it lose the purpose and become inefficient over the time, so that Tories can come in and sell it off to their mates. But I doubt it would ever happen, British people despite of still being dependant on the car (78% of all journeys in the country) are the most fundamentally anti-car culture people in Europe. I don't know why, bet individual transportation is for some reason are really looked at negatively here.

That we agree on...

I believe 2 of the 6 could be, rear blind, ASC... maybe one more option. Never all 6 of them. Remembering one more - windscreen heater!

On Lexus it is stored in the cluster. Not sure about all Lexus, but confident on 2014 IS and IS before that, also GS... it is only cluster. Also RC until at least 2018. Even A/B - Trip information is stored on cluster.

2011 will be SD card.

Just search for Lexus IS Android sat-nav - this is how they should look in principle https://www.u-buy.co.uk/product/4RKVED0IY-android-10-system-10-25-inch-1920x720-blue-ray-touch-screen-radio-8-core-4gb-64gb-gps-navigation-for-2013-2018-lexus-is250-is300-is300h-is350-is200t-f just shouldn't cost £800. Up-to £500 is the price range. Likely you will find best price on something like AliExpress or Alibaba. I can't recommend any particular one, but you need to compare specs and buy the one with best specs (they go something 2-8GB RAM, 32-256GB ROM 4-8 cores) and ideally with newest possible android version (Android 12+ would be a ideal, Android 10 is already obsolete). Also they are all made in china and all are of similar quality, so just get latest Android version with best spec. for as cheap as you can get it. Then you will also need to know which unit do you need - there are 6 versions in principle: 3 each Pre-FL and Post-FL - base radio with rotary dial, premium sat-nav with joystic, or premium sat-nav + ML. The seller will ask you which one you need and it is very unlikely they will even agree to sell anything to you until you confirm. Sometimes they even ask you to remove your unit and take pictures of how it looks, so getting wrong is quite unlikely. Installing it should be plug&play, but depends on your skills... for me it is like 30 min job max, so I would say easy. Just need some patience, tape to protect dash corners and few panel clip tools.

Just put aftermarket android unit, much nicer than table flopping around and probably even more functional. Also they look just like original FL screen, so nice upgrade for car. Having it integrated looks much better, also less likely to find windows smashed and cheap phone stolen, plus it integrates seamlessly with other car features. So I would definitely go with integrated unit.

#metoo for some reason I read them as centre caps, which would indeed be costly (£40 each). Lexus dust-caps for F-Sport (the nice shiny grey ones with logo) are like £2 from LPD. They would NEVER use their insurance for that. That insurance is reserved for worst of the worse cases, literally death of something similar, maybe a garage with 10 cars burn down, only then it would be worth claiming. Also business liability insurance, like most other insurance products have excess, which I assume probably be at least £10,000. If you start claiming £181 job mistake on business liability insurance, then you will be uninsurable business right away. No business owner would ever do that.

I am not sure, because in my mind that is all not worth it, considering how outdated the sat-nav is and how much better is to simply used google maps. That said I know there is some final year for updates, it may be 2020. So that sat-nav is officially EOL and can't be updated anymore past that point. If you using original disk meant for that unit, then no it should not brick it, and also if you put faulty DVD, then simply putting back the old one should resolve all the issue. The bricking is only the risk with newer HDD based sat-navs, not DVD ones.

Part number... yes now that looks right. No problem.

In which case you can change it all via menu, except ODO - that will stay KM. Also note your part number above and pictogram shows analog dash (note two dials). So if you looking for digital dash it is likely going to be different PN.

No - must be Japan thing. Also I think US cars only have MPH... so it is only British ones have dual measurement, because we technically metric country.

Really? Government raised £40bn (or there about - 37, 38, 39 in recent years) from motorists and only spent ~£4bn on the roads. So they already raising 10 times more taxes than they spend on the roads and solution is "more taxes"? NO... This is purely the prioritisation problem, they know they can shaite on roads and drivers, it is socially acceptable to do so, so that is where the cuts are made first. In countries where road quality is big deal and politicians are elected on the basis on how good the roads are they always find fund to fix the roads. That is not the case in UK, because their election does not rely on road quality, I would say in UK more voters are swinged on the basis of NHS funding, maybe policing reforms, pensions in particular, taxation etc. roads don't even come into top 10. And until that is going to be the case they will always be shaite. It is not lack of taxation, it is just matter of prioritising. Also let's just face it - there are no alternatives, Tories are already a party in favour of private transportation (consider fuel duty freezes), so the only alternative to them is Labour, who are strictly ANTI-motorists and would defund the roads even more and cancel all the road improvement projects (they say so in their manifesto). So there is simply no political pressures to do anything. Because let's say Labour would be in power now and Tories would say "if we get into the power we will rebuild British roads"... and somehow that would resonate with society and there would be noticeable uptick in polling... only then something would be done because it would look like that could be political matter. Now there is simply no reason, the alternative government, if anything, would be worse for roads and motoring overall. I guess what I am saying - it is almost beneficial to get Labour into next government and then let Tories to put pressure on them, that is politically probably quickest way to get attention. And yes I know many roads, especially local once are looked after by local authority, bet overall guidance still comes from national government, also overall voter trends... and currently there is no incentives. Fixing roads does not win the votes, so the roads are increasingly shaite. That is the reality.

The Odometer will stay in kilometres, but the rest should be possible to change to miles via menu option. Else - you should be able to replace whole thing to the cluster from IS300h or IS200t - they are identical. From the pictures it seems you don't have LFA style digital cluster? In which case you need to look for same analogy cluster. But UK cluster will work on your JDM car regardless, even if it is not from IS350. I think even US cluster should work, although I have not checked that.

Well... that is tricky situation... In theory they should be liable for everything, so it would be fair to get quote from Lexus for two missing centre caps and for TPMS sensor and send them kindly worded e-mail explaining the situation and asking for resolution. Most informant thing is to have it in writing. Then you can obviously follow-up via phone call or in speaking in person, and most importantly you should respond to your own e-mail with summary of what you have agreed and ask them to confirm that. Keeping records is important here. If they fail to fix it, then you can go to trading standards, but most likely outcome will be that you will have to sue them for damages. Suing is NOT really worth the effort - that is the short answer. So here you will rely heavily on their good will, I would still send the e-mail with quotes and explaining situation, but then I would be quite flexible on letting them to source replacement parts. There is no reason why wheel centre caps are missing, so they may be able to find those in the workshop, also TPMS does not cost £181, it costs more like £68... Also I would be surprised if they would not be able to program it themselves considering they are in the business of working on wheels and that sort of work should be routine for them. So I think the end result of this - if they play the ball, they get new TPMS, they find the centre caps and they program the sensor back. But it will require patience and being nice to them, because if they don't play ball then the only option is trading standards and court, which would be more painful than just spending the money. As for it being brittle from age - not really, but also removing TPMS valve has 50/50% chance of it not working anymore. So if it is broken in half that is more on them, but it may as easily just be in once piece but not working and then it is more on you and on the age of the thing. In short - you need to thread carefully on this one and be polite. They need to put it right, but you can't really leverage anything on them and if you burst in demanding "£181 in cash right now" I suspect you won't get far with it.

Insurance price estimates are meaningless... literally. It can say 5,000, 10,000, or 2,000, but what you get in case of accident is estimate after the accident based on their internal guide price. For example when I had IS250 long time ago I remember it starting £5,850 when I insured it, going down over 6 years I owned it to £1,600 or so... then it got written off and after some backwards and forwards valued at £4,485. The year before that I also got into accident and it was nearly written-off, but then I didn't agree with valuation and repair costs and it was repaired in the end, but it was only valued at £3,850. So just from this example alone... how does it make sense that car with 10,000 less miles and a year newer was valued ~£600 less, when year later same car with more miles and older was valued £600 more. I guess in the end it was same deal for me (as I kept the car), actually even slightly worse, because first time around they estimated residual value to be just £592 and second time £1320 if I remember right. So if I had accepted the settlement first time around and kept the car I would have received £3,258 and second time I only received £3,165. Well... partially that was because of claim management company mistake, because they told me "£4,485 and you can keep the car" at which point I said "yeah - I am happy with that (actually thinking - that is amazing deal, just don't show it!)", but then I only got paid £3,165 and what I asked why apparently they meant £4,485 - £1,320 + car, not just £4,485 + car. Tried to argue with them, even got to financial ombudsman, but not got anywhere. Basically, financial ombudsman concluded that despite their mistake explaining the settlement terms I still got fair settlement... which is true... I paid £4000 for the car 6 years earlier with 68,000 less miles! In short - I don't know what is the point of estimate given in comparison sites... it means nothing. I guess you can try playing with it to see if you can reduce the insurance price, but apart of that no other value. Apparently, if you car falls under certain value, let's say £1000, then some brokers will refuse your policy which can make it more expensive to insure... so sometimes it is worth to put something like £2500 there just in case.