waveydavey

Looking at getting some of these after last years dodgy weather. Living in a hilly city like Sheffield i was unable to even get the car off my side road a few times last year, (Wasn't an IS though). A colleague at work got some last year and he said they made the world of difference on his IS200. The day before it took him over an hour to get about a quarter of a mile down the road and back again but a couple of minutes the following day with the autosocks on when the roads were actually worse.

They may look daft but if it means me being able to get to work and back in the car rather than having to use my holidays or take an hour to two hour train journey and walk, (again like i had to do a couple of times last year), they'll do for me!!!!

Cheers

Dave.

Given the choice of driving a quarter of a mile and back in over an hour and that the average walking speed is 4 MPH I would have left the car and walked it quicker.

lol I know i told him that but he was adamant he didn't want to leave his car on the road and wanted it back at home off the road.

Cheers

Dave.

do you have part number Ormi

I had a bit of free time this afternoon whilst waiting to pick the wife up from work so i called in at the local Toyota dealer.

The part number for the IQ stubby aerial is 86309-42080 and it's £23.93+vat.

Think i'm gonna have a go at filing the end of my S2000/CTR aerial thread off first as it's the correct size thread but just slightly too long and it doesn't sit flush with the base when fully screwed on.

Hope this is helpful to somebody.

Cheers

Dave.

How did you find the reception on the S2000 antenna ? i got one the weekend fitted it(from ebay) & yes it is slightly too long so i gonna try filing it abit. As i havent driven the car due to the snow living in the cul de sac(no gritters road turned to a ice rink practically :( ) & a hilly road so no good for a RWD car! I tested the radio channels well 2 of them and they sounded fine but maybe is another matter if the cars moving ?

I've never had any issues with it and it's works great and actually better, i found, than the VAG OEM aerial. I've had it fitted to my previous car, (Fabia vRS), from new and we have one on our other car at present, (Also a Fabia vRS). We had a fault at one point on the other cars radio and the local dealer said it was due to me fitting a different aerial. I tried to tell them it was actually a better aerial than the OEM one and he wouldn't believe me until i pointed out that we had Lincs FM programmed on one of the radio memories and that it picked it up no problems, (This was in North Sheffield!!!), and challenged him to find another car in the dealership that could pick up that station..... Needless to say they changed their mind about it being an aerial fault when they failed to get a single car to pick up that radio station and replaced the HU. :P

There are a few copies out there but as long as it's an original Honda aerial you should be fine with it. :winky:

Cheers

Dave.

Thanks for that matey.... I think i'll go ahead and order a luxury drivers side mat for mine then. :winky:

Cheers

Dave.

Thanks for that. And let us know what you think of it when it arrives.

Cheers

Dave.

I've just found a website which sells the mats individually , so vpive ordered a driver side luxury mat only in black £13!

Www.matscar.co.UK

I'll wait and see what the quality and fit it like and let you all know.

Cheers.

Hi Craig,

Have you received your drivers side mat yet?? Just been on the site and noticed they say delivery is within a couple of days so wondered how you'd gone on. Do they have the holes in so as to use the hooks fitted to the car floor? And what is the quality of the luxury mat compared to the Lexus mats?

Cheers

Dave.

Hi just looking at getting a couple of the LOC window stickers but wondered if someone could confirm how big they actually are??

It's THESE ones i'm talking about.

Cheers

Dave.

Just spent days trying to find a link to the LOC club shop so wondered would it be an idea to have a link to the shop on the main page along the top with the other shortcuts / links.

I know my other car club sites i use have similar links to their club shop pages.

Cheers

Dave.

Mine's called Ellie..... Cos it's an LE. :)

Cheers

Dave.

do you have part number Ormi

I had a bit of free time this afternoon whilst waiting to pick the wife up from work so i called in at the local Toyota dealer.

The part number for the IQ stubby aerial is 86309-42080 and it's £23.93+vat.

Think i'm gonna have a go at filing the end of my S2000/CTR aerial thread off first as it's the correct size thread but just slightly too long and it doesn't sit flush with the base when fully screwed on.

Hope this is helpful to somebody.

Cheers

Dave.

The sport also comes with rear privacy glass and rear spoiler.

Cheers

Dave.

Hi guys,

Well after all that we made it in the end.

We ended up getting up at 4:30am yesterday and walking to the local station. We got the train into Sheffield station and then managed to get a train down to St Pancras International. We arrived there about 3 hours earlier than need be which is a good job as all but three of the Brussels trains had been cancelled and ours was one of the three still running.

We checked in three hours early and were moved from our booked coach/seats into another coach and then sat waiting. Our train was announced and was said to be leaving roughly on time..... then another announcement to say it had a fault and we would have to wait for it to be replaced with another train. it should have departed at 12:57 but we finally got on the train at 14:30 before leaving just after. We ended up losing our booked little two seat table in first class for two airline style first class seats but ended up being upgraded to business premier with a full three course meal and free wine so can't complain. We finally walked into the hotel at around 7:30pm last night rather than the planned 4:30pm. So around 15 hours in total!!!

Just had a walk round the shops this afternoon and come back to the hotel bar where i'm typing this on the biggest mac i've ever seen!!!

Cheers

Dave (In a very very chilly Brussels).

Must admit i'm after the same. I picked up the IS a couple of weeks ago and it came with all OEM mats except the drivers one which was missing. The other three are all in good nick so don't really want to shell out on OEM one's for just one mat.

Personally would prefer something that uses the hooks etc.. that secure the OEM mat in place.

Cheers

Dave.

I've had the short aerial off the CTR / S2000 on our cars for a while. I tried the one i had got for my old car on the IS and it's the right size thread but doesn't sit flush. I'm toying with getting the hacksaw out and just taking a little bit off the end of the thread so it then fits flush when screwed in place.

Just had a look on eBay and found a few of the Altezza aerials in the US and HK all seem to be around the £10-15 mark plus postage so the version off the IQ etc... may be an option depending on price. Anybody have an idea on what the IQ aerial costs from the dealers. Think i paid about £20 for the S2000 ones a few years ago.

Cheers

Dave.

Would if we could.... If we could get either car out we'd drive into Sheffield and leave the car in the station car park but it's just getting the car into Sheffield never mind London. :( It's just been on the news that it's the worst recorded snowfall in Sheffield for 30 years!!!

I'm starting to feel like just walking round to the local and getting pished instead.

Cheers

Dave.

We were meant to be going away to Brussels for a break tomorrow through till Sunday but looks like it's all off now with the weather. Had nearly a foot of snow overnight on top of the 4 or 5 inches we already had and with no trains, buses or taxis in the area due to the weather it's looking like we've no way of getting to Sheffield station in the morning to get our train to London for the Eurostar.

Spoken to the Eurostar people and they will be able to refund or change dates etc... as long as we contact them over an hour before the train is meant to leave so that's ok... Hotels a different matter though. Was booked in the Novotel in central Brussels and turns out the room is a no cancellation room so we can't get a refund from them (£340), Phoned the travel insurance company and they won't pay out because it looks like we bought our insurance a day late.... We bought it the day after the insurance company have the severe weather warnings going out so they won't pay as they see it as officially we would have known there was a chance we wouldn't be able to go!!!

Only hope is putting a claim in via the credit card company as we paid for the hotel on our visa card. Spoke to them on the phone and explained everything and they have given me the relevant online forms to fill in and print out to send in to them to hopefully get something back but i'm not too hopeful.

We even thought about getting a hotel room in Sheffield centre for tonight so as to just walk to Sheffield station in the morning but they've just stopped all the trains on our line into Sheffield so we can't even do that now.

And just to top it off there's more heavy snow forecast for later today and overnight into tomorrow!!!

Cheers

(A rather down in the dumps) Dave.

Hope you enjoy you're new purchase.

As you know i've just got the 300LE after looking at a few 200LE's. Not sure about performance mods but a cheapish cosmetic mod is the LED/SMD lighting panels i've fitted in the boot and interior & map lights in ours.

Cheers

Dave.

One of the guys i work with has an IS200 sport. The first lot of snow we had last winter he tried to drive off his estate and ended up taking around an hour to just drive a quarter of a mile round trip including people helping him push it at times.

He bought some snow socks thinking they'd not get used till this winter and we had that second lot of snow.... He put them on and managed to get where he was going no probs (It was the same journey he had attempted before but failed dismally whilst still on his estate). In this neck of the woods that second snow fall was the worse of the two as well.

I'm gonna order a couple of sets, (One for the Lexus and one for our Fabia vRS), once i get paid in a couple of weeks as i'm off work for a week or two anyway at the mo so don't need to use the cars anyway..... you can pick them up on eBay for around £45-£50 a pair.

Cheers

Dave.

oh right, they are hids though and designed to be - i thought they made the whole reflecter especially for the hids hence you get a good clear cut off line as opposed to the diy hid kits which can be sometimes not quite right - either way is a hid a xenon ? - cheers ormi,hows the weather up there ?

They're one and the same matey. :) I call them xenons more cos i've come from VAG ownership for the past seven years and the VAG group call them xenons rather than HID's. There are a few cars that have xenons/HIDs but without the projector lenses at the mo.... The civic, some volvos, some nissans, spring to mind. My last couple of cars have had them but with the projectors and both were VAG cars, (Polo GTi and Fabia vRS).

This is taken from the Wikipedia subject of vehicle headlights.....

"HID (xenon) light sources

HID stands for high-intensity discharge, a term referring to the electric arc that produces the light. The high intensity of the arc comes from metallic salts that are vapourised within the arc chamber. These lamps are formally known as gas-discharge burners, and produce more light for a given level of power consumption than ordinary tungsten and tungsten-halogen bulbs. Because of the increased amounts of light available from HID burners relative to halogen bulbs, HID headlamps producing a given beam pattern can be made smaller than halogen headlamps producing a comparable beam pattern. Alternatively, the larger size can be retained, in which case the Xenon headlamp can produce a more robust beam pattern.

Automotive HID lamps are commonly called "Xenon headlamps", though they are actually metal halide lamps that contain Xenon gas. The Xenon gas allows the lamps to produce minimally adequate light immediately upon powerup, and accelerates the lamps' run-up time. If argon were used instead, as is commonly done in street lights and other stationary metal halide lamp applications, it would take several minutes for the lamps to reach their full output. The light from HID headlamps exhibits a distinct bluish tint when compared with tungsten-filament headlamps.[22]"

Cheers

Dave.

look on the bright side re the mpg - most of us have had the same shock but we were only driving a 2 litre without a very loud pedal or schumacheresque gearchange buttons

Yeah there is that isn't there. :winky:

Cheers

Dave.

WHERE CAN I GET A SPOILER LIKE THAT? WILL IT FIT ONTO AN IS 200?

It's the standard spoiler from Lexus it was standard on the IS300 along with the privacy glass i believe along with the IS200 Sport???.... We had one on our 2003 IS200 sport a few years ago too.

The extra little bits you got on the IS300 was the reason i went for this one rather than the IS200 LE... Having had the IS200 Sport previously it was the best of both worlds as you got the extras from the 200 Sport along with the 200 LE extras in the same car. :)

Cheers

Dave.

Thanks guys.

It's not too bad for a six and a half year old car is it??? And i've not had chance to polish her yet!!!

I've just got to get used to how thirsty she is now..... Having come from diesel it's a bigger shock than normal but both me and the mrs love to drive her. :)

Cheers

Dave.

Very Nice, Ive just got the IS 200 2004 LE pics up soon.

where did you get the boot mat?

We looked a couple of 200LE's but one went and the other wasn't quite up to scratch... The we found this 300LE with it's extras and went for that instead. The boot liner came with the car. The previous owner bought it from the dealers.... I kow we had one in our previous IS a few years ago. I'm not sure if they are still available but a dealer might have one in their stockroom somewhere. It's of the plastic tray type and i've a feeling it was around £100 plus when we got ours back in 2004/5 when we had the IS200 before. :winky: There are also ones on eBay but how well they fit i don't know.

Cool - nice looking car...:)

As an aside - where did you get the boot and interior lights from? I need to replace mine and those look the db's...

Cheers

I got them off eBay.... They have been mentioned in a post on here in the past and people said they were too expensive and a rip-off but the only alternatives i could find were from China or Hong Kong and when the postage was added on they only came out to be a quid or two cheaper than these ones which were from the UK and had no postage charges. I also wanted them sooner rather than later and these arrived the next day from buying them so i suppose i just paid the premium to get them quicker / from a UK seller etc....

This is the eBay store i got them from..... CLICKY

Thanks for the comments guys.... Looks like i got the pics just in time as we've had another load of snow overnight and more to come today / tomorrow so can't see the car moving for a week or so now!!!

Cheers

Dave.

Finally got round to getting some pics of the IS today.... Only mods are Bosch aero wipers, Philips SilverVision indicators, LED/SMD sidelights, (They look blue in the pics but are a bright white in reality), Along with LED/SMD lighting panels in the boot and the interior & map lights. Got some more on order for the sunvisor vanity lights but they've not arrived yet.

Cheers

Dave.

We had about an inch or so here and as soon as you got of our side road the roads were clear so knowing this i gave the 300 a trip along our snow covered road just to check what it was like. Might have been me being a little heavy footed as i'm still getting used to driving an auto but it was a little frisky to start with but hit the snow button and it calmed down.

After hearing about a work colleagues antics last year in the snow in his IS200 before he got a pair of snow socks i'm defo gonna get a pair for my 300 just in case. :winky:

Cheers

Dave.

Great looking job you've done there. Trying to decide on what colour to go for myself at the moment..... Black or Silver?????

Cheers

Dave.