sorcerer

Should have contacted the police straight away and not mentioned the camera at all.

Ah yes, but, assuming we remove our dashcams at night to avoid some scrote breaking in to nick it, what happens if one day we forget to replace it and that's the day that we're involved in an accident. Having given us a discount on the basis of having a dashcam, what would happen when the camera wasn't there to record anything? Refuse to pay out? Pay a reduced amount equal to the discount applied? Make no difference?

My dashcam and I were witness to someone pulling out of a side street into the path of oncoming traffic so I supplied my dashcam footage to the guy he hit and it helped him to win his claim.

I absolutely would Piers. Along with taking the 'shades' or 'shrouds' out (instructions in the pdf file), they've made an incredible difference and no issues at all.

I now know that the engine in the 350 has a timing chain, not a belt, so just ignore what I said above as it's too late for me to edit it out. Found the pdf file: reversing lights.pdf I also fitted these Daytime Running Lights too. If you decide to do the same, you'll need to buy a couple of relays to wire them up properly - just give me a shout if you want full details but a bit more info (including a short video) can be found in the thread below (and yes, I know it looks a mess but that was just a temporary lashup ):

One thing to check is the cam belt, they should be changed at 100k miles or 10 years, whichever is sooner - you're not there on mileage but you are on time. If it's not been done, you should also have the idlers/tensioners and water pump changed at the same time because 90% of the work done to change the belt would have to be done again to get to the water pump if it was done at a different time, resulting in two big bills instead of just one. At least that's the case with the RX300 and the 1MZ-FE engine, so I'm assuming the 350 will be the same. The reversing lights on the RX300 are absolutely abysmal so again, if the 350 is the same you'll almost definitely be wanting to do the mod to change them to LEDs. These are the LEDs I got for the reverse lights. There's also a pdf file knocking about on the forum somewhere showing how to get the reverse light 'shrouds' out too.

I don't like cream interiors anyway but with two kids it's madness - go for that swap to black. Having said that, if it's only going to do about 5k/year it may not have time to get dirty - unless that 5k/year is doing the school run of course

I know what you're saying Piers and it may indeed work; at this point there's no harm in trying because the screw heads are already damaged. However, it was either the incorrect use of the proper tool or using an incorrect tool that got him in this mess to begin with - and a penknife tip has never been the proper tool to drive screws with, even if it is a Swiss Army one

I'm not sure if they're classed as "all season" or not but I can say that I'm extremely pleased with the Avon ZX7 tyres that I put on mine a while back; very good and highly recommended.

Only thing you can do then is to drill them out. I can't remember if they're self-tappers or not but you may have to replace with self-tappers anyway, unless you can drill all the way through and use machine screws and nuts to reassemble it.

Aha, now I understand

I think I must have the wrong end of the stick somewhere. I thought warranties were only available up to 10 years old but @PCM Piers' car is older than mine and yet it sounds like it's still warrantied - or maybe you meant that you got good value out of your warranty while it was active Piers?

I didn't know you could get a warranty on such an old car Piers, not that I'd be inclined to get one anyway but that's interesting to know.

I've not got a 400h so I may well be talking codswallop but, I know that the 400h is built on the same body shell as the 300 and I also know that all cars have brakes. I can't imagine that there would be anything more complex or different about the brakes on the 400h other than the regenerative braking system to charge the traction battery - the brake discs, pads, calipers and hydraulics should surely be the same as the 300 I would have thought? If I'm right then no special machinery would be required and any mechanic should be able to get the job done easily. If I'm wrong, just ignore me

Get a Dremel or similar tool and, using a drill bit the same size across as the screw head, carefully drill off the screw head. Open the case and there may just be enough of the screw shank left to grip with pliers to unscrew it but if not, drill out the shank too (but use a smaller drill bit).

Auto lights are the biggest pile of poo ever to leave the drawing board in my humble opinion and nothing will ever surpass the human brain, human eyes and common sense! All that switching on and off unnecessarily shortens the life of the ballasts on HID lamps and shortens the life of the bulbs. Worst of all though, are those numpties who haven't got the common sense to switch them off as they park up while they drop someone off or whatever. I know that happens even with manually operated lights as well but when I pointed it out to someone recently and asked them to turn their headlights off because they were dazzling oncoming drivers, the answer was, "They're automatic, I don't know how to"

Thanks for that info Denis, it's interesting but also disappointing in a way. They may be the best installers in the world but there will be times when the STAG system is not the best or most appropriate one for a given application, which is the exact situation I was finding (and trying to avoid) years ago. Given that, the OP may find that other companies / installers could indeed convert a 600h, I don't know.

I think it's worth mentioning the eBay system. I've bought and sold cars through eBay along with plenty of other stuff too and I'm not going to say that it's impossible to be scammed because it isn't. However, the guy selling this car has completed 351 transactions and has a 100% positive feedback score, so I reckon that there's no more risk attached to buying this car than any other, irrespective of whether he's selling it on behalf of a friend or not. If I was in the market for a car like this, I'd have no qualms whatsoever about buying this one, from this seller.

The Lexus Paradox - people are drawn to the brand, in part at least, because of their legendary reputation for reliability and then they spend hundreds, if not thousands, on warranties because they worry about the reliability Remember that a Lexus warranty requires you to have the car serviced at Lexus dealers at Lexus prices (I think it does anyway, but stand to be corrected if not) so you'll end up paying more than that £995 in the end. I suppose it depends on how much value is left in the car. My 2005 RX300 is too old to qualify for a warranty anyway, but it's also too old to buy brand new parts for unless I really have to. If it needs a new mirror (as per Les's example above) I'd get one from a breakers yard or eBay rather than pay Lexus prices.

It probably is in the long term but the title of this topic is "Electric cars? Practical in UK?" I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that we could tack on to the end of that, "in the context of the government target to do away with the manufacture of diesel and petrol engines by 2040" The calculations may be relevant by, say, 2080 or 2100 but certainly not by 2040 as we won't have anywhere near the infrastructure needed to deliver it by then. And there's also the question of the availability of enough raw materials and the production processes to take into account in order to produce the stuff to capture all that solar energy. But that's (yet) another discussion.

Interesting maths but not really relevant. Texas is almost 3 times bigger than the UK, we couldn't transport it from there to here, and it's mostly cloudy here anyway Seriously though, until a battery can be recharged in the same time as filling a tank of petrol and has the same range as a tankful of petrol, it's a non-starter. My wife and I take about 25 days holiday in summer to drive around Poland, Czech Republic and/or Slovakia. The way we usually do it is to leave Preston then perhaps first night in Ostend, Belgium; second night somewhere in the Rhine Valley region of Germany and third night, we are somewhere in our destination country of Czech. How long will that journey take in an electric vehicle? Could it even be done? Will there be charging points on the continent? The transmission network (the National Grid) is creaking at the seams with no spare capacity. There used to be redundancy built into the system but a lack of maintenance and spending has seen that backup plant brought into daily use to plug gaps that shouldn't really be there. We haven't got enough generating capacity anyway, even if the transmission network was up to it. Even now, not in the depths of winter, but just a few minutes ago, demand was fairly high: Add into that a load of electric vehicles recharging (can't ALL be done overnight) and it's a recipe for disaster. Not to mention the more 'local' infrastructure of cables from substations along the streets to the houses - they'll all need digging up and uprating as well as the Grid systems. And what about people who live in high-rise flats? Eventually, of course, oil and fossil fuels will run out and I've no doubt that electric vehicles will someday be the norm - I just think it's unrealistic in the government's timeframe.

Not sure that's correct according to this: No warranty at all? It is not illegal for a trader to sell a car without a warranty, and this is fairly common on very cheap used cars (less than a couple of thousand pounds). Unlike your statutory rights, a dealer can offer you a discount in return for waiving the warranty. However, you should be very wary of any dealer who makes this offer, as it is making you financially responsible for any fault which occurs in the car but is not significant enough to warrant rejection. The above text was copied from here.

Yes and no. LPG is unique in that most people pay for a conversion to an existing car rather than it being LPG-powered from the factory so there has to be a certain margin to make that viable. If the government slap too much tax on the gas they will kill the LPG industry stone dead in one fell swoop and I'm sure they would prefer getting some revenue in rather than none at all. If manufacturers started making cars with LPG engines in any significant numbers then yes, I'm sure they would raise the tax and duty on gas much higher, but I don't think they'll bother for now. As for electric vehicles, yes, electricity prices will shoot up sooner rather than later, probably under the justification of having to provide charging infrastructure, as well as generation and transmission costs. Oh, and don't forget the old 'Economy 7' tariff. Overnight electricity is only cheap at the moment because not much is used during that time period - once you have a nation of electric vehicles charging overnight, it won't be cheap anymore.

Do they only use Stag or do they use other systems too? I'm no expert by any means but when I was looking to have my first LPG conversion done many years ago, I literally spent months researching who and what was out there before entrusting my car and my hard-earned cash to an installer. It was very much a 'catch 22' situation in those days. You may find an installer with a brilliant reputation but they were only qualified to install one system and they could not guarantee that it was the best system for my car, or you found the complete opposite in that you found the best system for the car but the installer wasn't great. It took me six months before I was confident that I'd found the right combination of reputable installer who knew his stuff and could fit the best system to suit the car. However, much has changed in the last decade and now the technology exists to enable installers to 'mix and match' systems, picking the best individual components (say, a NEVO ECU, matched with an AEB reducer, matched with injectors from someone else as an example) to create a bespoke system that is best suited to any situation, rather than just a kit of parts from one manufacturer. Of course, it means that the installer must really be on the ball to ensure the best results but the LPG arena is very different now to when I first entered it. You still have to research things to make sure you're getting the best installation but very good places can be found (along with very bad ones too, of course, hence the need for research).

And if you want the technical explanation, here it is: Several firms make systems to convert DI engines including AEB (OMVL / Emer), AC(Stag), KME, Prins. Most of the systems are LPG port injection and very similar to LPG port injection systems we fit on petrol port injection engines, using the same injectors, reducer, etc, except the electronics are special... electronics have to be special to interpret DI injection pulses and emulate DI injectors. Port injectors are usually pulsed only once (sequential injection) or twice (group injection) per cylinder intake cycle but DI injectors may be pulsed several times per cylinder intake cycle and the various pulses per intake cycle can be of different lengths (hence 'interpret'). DI engines may even pulse injectors during the compression stroke. The LPG systems referred to so far involve fitting an LPG port injection system onto a petrol direct injection engine. DI engine cylinder heads are designed around the petrol DI injectors, we cannot fit a second set of DI injectors inside the cylinder head, the tips of DI injectors fire directly into the cylinder / combustion chamber. When we convert a port injected petrol engine we can fit the second set of injectors (the LPG injectors) very close to the factory petrol injectors and can achieve results that are indistinguishable from driving on petrol because the principals/methodology between port petrol injection and port LPG injection are much the same. But if we fit an LPG port injection system onto a petrol DI engine the principals/methodology isn't the same (port versus direct, single LPG injector pulse on the intake stroke versus multiple DI pulses that may occur during the intake and/or compression stroke) - So for example, the special LPG electronics have to add up the total duration of DI pulses per intake cycle to derive a pulse length for LPG port injectors / fitting port injection onto a DI engine means you lose any advantage that direct injection might give (local/pocketed correct mixture in the combustion chamber which allows di engines to run what would otherwise be a cylinder wide very lean burn) / the DI injectors must in any case still flow some fuel (petrol in this case) because the flow of fuel is what prevents the DI injectors being damaged by overheating (DI injector tips inside the combustion chamber) / so they don't run on 100% LPG even when running on LPG. Then there are fuel shunting type systems, where either petrol or LPG is fed to the vehicle's factory fitted petrol direct injectors. The greatest challenges for manufacturers of this type of system seem to be more plumbing related rather than calibration related - Two fuels both use the same set of injectors (the vehicle's original DI injectors), so there could be potential for backflow of one type of fuel into the other type of fuel's tank via the other tank's fuel lines etc. A bit of petrol finding its way into the LPG tank might not have ill effect but a bit of LPG flowing into the petrol tank via petrol lines could be disastrous, a petrol tank cannot take LPG pressure. Some vehicles with this type of system have cold start problems if the engine was turned off when running on LPG. Prins make both types of system (port injection and fuel shunting). Another manufacturer of the fuel shunting type system apparently went under a year or so ago, not many manufacturers make shunting systems. The above information was found on the LPG Forum website. In its original context, it was an answer to a question posed by another forum member - it is not my work and I claim no ownership of it but thought it of interest in this topic.