sorcerer

Don't suppose you've got a link to the item have you Mark?

Is it one motor that covers all directions through some complex gearing or is it two separate motors, one for up/down and one for left/right?

If it's two then I'd think it unusual for both to go faulty at the same time and would be looking for power/electrical problems such as blown fuse(s), bad connectors or broken wiring.

48 minutes ago, Odysseus said:

I then called my insurance company and was informed that while there's a discount for having a dash cam

I personally wouldn't bother about any discount. Maybe I'm being cynical but what happens if you're involved in a crash and the camera happens to be faulty and missed the action? Having given you a discount on the basis of having a camera to catch any incidents, they may reduce the payout or perhaps even refuse the claim altogether because you haven't kept your part of the bargain.

OK, I'm wearing my tin-foil hat while I'm typing this but we all know that insurance is legalised robbery and they'll do anything to avoid paying out if they can get away with it.

What a great job he's done there, excellent.

Yep, sticky pad and no issues so far.

This is the one I got and, because my back injury was playing up at the time I had it professionally installed at a local auto-electricians instead of doing it myself, cost £57 inc VAT.

Brilliant, cheers mate 

YES!! The passenger seatbelt in our old RX300 was exactly the same and drove my wife absolutely batty!

I never got round to doing anything about it to be honest but no idea how it got that way.

100 mile trip to Carlisle, cruise set to 80mph on the M6 up there, got me 30.4mpg

100 miles back but on the A6 with varying speeds got me 31.2mpg.

All in all, about £30 for a 200 mile journey. I still think a straight petrol with LPG conversion would do it much cheaper than the hybrid.

It seems to work very well. The video files it produces are good in both day and night conditions.

We got the car on 2nd February and I had the cam fitted about a week later (£57 inc VAT). Since then, I've taken the card out once a week and just chosen a couple of random files to check and all have been OK. Of course, I could just be missing any that haven't worked properly but I don't think so. I'm confident that it's all working as it should, so much so that I'll probably only check once a month now, maybe even once every couple of months.

Sod's Law says that when you need it, something may be wrong as in your example above with the Ford Edge, but I suppose that could happen with even the most expensive cameras. Because we can't see what it's doing or watch it while we drive, any camera has to be taken on faith and I'm happy that this is doing what it should, and doing it well.

First of all, do you think you've fixed the original problem of the CD not opening?

Secondly, it is possible to have ribbon cables made up so might be worth a try.

Mostly though, why don't you just send your unit for repair (or at least an estimate of cost) to an electronics repair company? It's got to be better than replacement cost or trying to get some third-party thing to integrate with an ML system.

A quick google came up with some in the Kent area, these being just two of them:

• https://www.rjelectronicskent.co.uk/
• https://www.scanelectronicservices.co.uk/

Looks excellent Carl, well done!

29 minutes ago, Dewillia said:

I was commenting on the install and forget not whether the thing will get nicked or not

That's the point - you can't install and forget a good number of them!

The OP specifically said "stealthy, set and forget".

In operation they are all 'set and forget' but not all of them are stealthy.

48 minutes ago, Dewillia said:

They are all pretty much install and forget

No they aren't. You can't leave something like a Nextbase 502G or a Transcend 200 in the car overnight or even just in a car park for the day, for fear of someone breaking in and stealing it as they are big and easily visible from outside.

Like Ray above, I have the A119S and that is very unobtrusive and is hardly visible from outside at all so I do leave it in permanently. As you can see, the lens just pokes out under the dotted rain sensor area:

51 minutes ago, Ala Larj said:

Right that's it. I'm off for a spin...................

Good man! 

Our car only cost £10k less than our house did and I've never spent anywhere near that amount of money on a car in my entire life before.

It is indeed my pride and joy and I love it to bits.

However, it is the only car we own so it just has to do everything - runs to the tip; runs to the shops; day trips out and right up to European holidays where it may cover 4 to 5,000 miles over our four-weeks of touring round.

It's a car - just use it.

Our RX300 had a sun roof, as does our RX450h but we never open them, preferring instead to use the climate control. However, I do know that this has been covered in the past, including the diagrams, so do a search of this forum and hopefully you should find the info you need.

Maybe a safety thing? Showing texts implies that they'll be read - not a good idea when moving. 

On the 3RX they can be read out to you automatically, maybe you've got that option somewhere?

THIS ^^^^^^^^^  Exactly what Malc said.

I remember an uncle who bought a brand new Hillman Minx. Spent all his time washing and polishing it as an ornament rather than using it as a car and did just 1,000 miles in the first full year if I remember correctly. He died a few months later so the next owner got all the pleasure of driving it, which is after all, what a car is for.

Dodo Juice Clearly Menthol Glass Cleaner - absolutely brilliant, no streaks whatsoever, great for inside or outside.

12 hours ago, Josswallace said:

In a few weeks I an going to Germany/Check Republil/Poland/Austria.......back to the UK. I think this will involve me in 3 disk changes, which means stopping by the road side and accessing the DVD player........I can't ascertain at he moment whether this involves disconnecting the battery.

My wife and I have been doing a very similar journey (taking in Belgium, Germany, Czech, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania and Austria at various times) every year since 1991 and we love it. However, I would hate to do that journey with just the Lexus satnav - being DVD-based makes it utterly clunky and totally impractical.

Either get a phone holder and use your phone on windscreen/dash, or for a couple of hundred quid or less, you could buy a TomTom/Garmin/whatever with lifetime map updates and the ability to input your own POIs, which you just can't do with DVD-based systems.

As an example, our RX300 ran on LPG and it was a trivial matter to get a POI file of every LPG filling station in all the countries we were touring round. If we were getting low on fuel, I simply told TomTom to navigate us to the nearest LPG filling station and that was it - sorted. You can't do that on a DVD-based system. You could also install the Pocket GPS World Speed Camera Database, which is just £19.99 per year, updated weekly, and also covers Europe too - again, you can't do that on a DVD-based system.

My TomTom sits in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen so it's unobtrusive but easy to see and I've hidden the wiring so there's nothing unsightly hanging around. It's a whole order of magnitude above and beyond anything the inbuilt system could ever be.

Like you, I like to have all four tyres as a matching set but when we bought our car at the beginning of February, there were Bridgestones on the front and Dunlops on the back, all of which were like new.

I got a puncture in one of the rears, a nail which was so close to the sidewall that it couldn't be repaired, so I took the opportunity to replace both rears with my preferred choice of Goodyear Vector 4 Seasons G2. Sadly, at £180 each I couldn't afford, nor justify, changing the Bridgestones at the same time; they'll just have to wait a few months yet.

So in answer to your question, I've had no problems whatsoever in wet, dry or snowy conditions, by having different tyre brands front and rear.

19 minutes ago, rich1068 said:

Thread from the dead!

These are still listed on eBay. 12 months down the line how are they? And does your 450 have the shield? If so did you remove it?

We traded the car in in February but yes, they were still as bright and good as the day I installed them, highly recommended. The 450h doesn't have the shields and I think they are LED anyway.

If you have no success, these people are good to deal with and very helpful.

3 hours ago, Lex loafer said:

Interesting, I regularly drive along in a 40mph zone (at 40mph) purely in ev mode for a few miles  really useful on stop start motorway traffic. Started using the lane assist with active radar, scarey but clever.

My battery icon only ever charges to 7/8, can’t seem to get that last bar .

 

We're comparing apples to oranges here Rob. You have a 4th Gen while the rest of us have 3rd Gen cars, so yours will always be better than anything we can manage.