sorcerer

Bought our first ever Lexus, a 2005 RX300, about four weeks ago and it came with two keys, or more correctly, I suppose I could say one and a half - a grey one that works as it should and a black one with a broken plastic case that had been taped up very close to the blade and is completely useless. I found a key on Ebay for a couple of quid that had an empty case and an uncut blade, the idea being to transfer my own electronics into it from the broken key and then have the blade cut at my local locksmiths. It didn't cut very well and can take a bit of force to get it into the lock barrel so I won't be using it. It was worth a punt for a few quid but it's now a failed experiment. Just by chance I found a thread on here a couple of days ago about a guy on Ebay who supplies the blanks and cuts them to your own key code and/or by photograph, so I've ordered one from him. Anyway, on to my real problem. The LED on the broken black key wasn't lighting up when any button was pressed so I changed the battery and now, any button press will result in the LED indicator lighting up as it should. However, it doesn't do anything else - doesn't lock/unlock any of the doors or tailgate and won't start the car. Of course, the battery may have been dead for months, even years, but I thought the transponder was non-volatile, i.e., once the key was programmed it was programmed and would remain so until overwritten. Do you think there's a problem with the transponder or is it really just simply that the battery was dead for too long and the programming has been lost due to lack of power?

Cheers Chris, I'll bear that in mind.

Thanks Brian, that's good to know. Sadly, the price differential exists in most things that I've ever looked at, from computer parts to suitcases or whatever. It just seems that the entire business world thinks they can stick 20 or 30% on just to sell to us mugs here in the UK.

Thanks Chris, that may be an idea - and it also leads to another question This is the first Lexus I've ever owned and my nearest Lexus dealer is about 30 miles away. If I ever need any parts that can only be had from a main dealer, does it specifically have to be Lexus or will Toyota dealers also supply (my nearest one is less than 4 miles away)? And I should also say 'Sorry' to SteveTJ for hijacking his topic

Oh dear, I think I broke out the champagne a bit too soon because Alexis is still poorly Before fitting the new struts the tailgate would only raise successfully on about three out of every seven or eight attempts; the rest of the time would see the two beeps sound, then the door would raise about three inches and go back down to latch closed again. Since fitting the new struts the 'open three inches and go back down again' behaviour has only happened once in about 20 test open/close cycles, but what's happening now is that the tailgate is lifting to maybe two-thirds of the way open, giving one beep and then closing back down again. It's only giving a truly successful open/close about 20% of the time over 20 test cycles. Not sure if I could post a 92MB video file on here so I uploaded it to my Photobucket account and you can see it here The new struts have obviously made a difference but just not quite cured the problem. We only bought the car three weeks ago so I'm hoping that it may just need resetting somehow. Can anyone shed any light on this?

New struts arrived today as promised, and with my own painted brackets attached too. The tailgate now works like a dream

I'm just awaiting delivery of new struts for my 2005 RX300 from SGS Engineering. They should arrive on Tuesday and were just under £100 including VAT and delivery. Obviously I've not got them yet so can't say how good they are but they've been a helpful company to deal with.

I'm no mechanic so take from this what you will. A few weeks ago my Nissan Maxima QX 3.0 SE + Auto wouldn't start and, just like you, everything seemed to be right (fuel, spark etc). It turned out to be the Mass Air Flow Sensor, which was completely unexpected because, usually, if that goes the car still runs but lacks power, whereas ours was a complete non-runner. Got a brand new replacement from Ebay for £25 instead of the £303 that Nissan wanted and it fired up and ran like a dream after that.

I've got a 2005 RX300 and also need tailgate struts but couldn't find them at SGS. However, I saw this while looking on their website: A single Lexus RX300 1999-2003 SUV tailgate/boot gas strut manufactured in the UK with a 2 year warranty and new end fixings. Includes free printed & video mounting instructions. The struts on this particular vehicle are attached to the car using a bracket arrangement which is unique to the vehicle. It is only available from the vehicle manufacturer and is a part we cannot replicate. However we can transfer the brackets from your original struts onto a new set of struts. We would remove the brackets, refurbish them and paint treat them before attaching them to a new set of fixings. To do this we require are the original struts sending in to us. Because the gas struts would then be with us we could also inspect them (free of charge) for our re-gassing service. So I took both struts off and sent them to SGS for them to transfer the brackets. My new struts, complete with my existing brackets attached, should arrive on Tuesday