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The dealer parts for mine are a bit pricey at £60 for one side, so I just put Bosch aerotwins on and re-coated the windscreen with Rain-X as I think the stuff my PIAA wipers came with has worn off now. Will be interesting to see how well it works.

Oh well, will just have to never put my daughter in the front then! Thanks Colin

Saying that, I don't see a sensor listed here: https://toyota.epc-data.com/harrier/acu30w/14046/body/7101/?frame_no=ACU30-0042929 so maybe it just always fires?

My car doesn’t have a passenger airbag switch, is there a way to disable it by either removing a fuse or perhaps by shorting the occupancy sensor? On BMWs the sensors fail quite commonly, are expensive to replace and people tend to buy bypass modules on ebay which simply tell the car that someone is always in the seat, probably by shorting the sensor or with some level of constant resistance. If that’s possible it should be possible to wire something that says “always unoccupied” using whatever the inverse of that signal is.

I used to have a BMW E46 which are notorious for tramlining and do it whenever anything in the suspension isn’t tight as a drum.

Are you sure it pulls in both directions? That's somewhat odd, typically a pull would be to one side or the other. Are you sure you were driving on a flat road? Most roads have some degree of camber to let the rain run off. If it's pull to one side then the first thing to do is swap the front tyres left to right and see if the pull changes direction. If it does then you know it's a tyre problem and not a geometry problem. If nothing changes, do the same thing with the rear tyres as a rear tyre can also cause a pull. If neither of these swaps changes the direction then I would suspect geometry or worn suspension components.

Just noticed Halfords sell pre-mixed screenwash with Rain-X in it, which is the same kind of stuff that the PIAA blades come with. Might give that a try

What are the best wiper blades you've tried? I quite like the PIAA silicone blades, they come with a specially treated wetwipe that smells like alcohol, you coat the windscreen with it and then when it rains the water beads up on the glass so it doesn't obscure your vision as much. They work very well and the beading is awesome, downsides are they tend to squeak a bit and sometimes leave streaks of water on the glass from the edges.

I get about 30mpg with my 2.4L and although that’s not a lot by modern standards, when you offset it against reliability or the cost of buying something newer with equivalent boot space it’s a pretty decent tradeoff. One day i’ll probably upgrade to a volvo estate but can’t afford to do it at the moment, and my car wouldn’t be worth much to sell but is very valuable to me as a super reliable runabout with a cavernous boot.

Why would they bother stealing plates when they can get any plate they want printed online for next to nothing?

By “dim view” I presume you actually mean “elated view” as they love to not pay claims! But yes indeed, can’t tow more than the train weight. My car is JDM so no towing ever, and it’s kerb weight is hilarious, it’s not even enough for two passengers and a suitcase haha

Sounds like I got lucky with my diagnosis then!

Or get an airtag on a keyring, those are good for finding stuff.

If you want to change the coolant sensor anyway it's relatively easy, I got one for mine for £20 from euro and it works perfectly. You can swap it over with coolant in the system just do it as quick as possible to avoid losing too much coolant, also be careful where it leaks out to, on mine the transmission was directly under the sensor but I only let a bit out and it didn't go into the vent. I had a bit of a mare trying to figure out if I'd over or under-tightened mine because I didn't have a torque wrench when I swapped it over, would strongly recommend looking up the torque spec and using a quality torque wrench. You really don't want to over-tighten it and crack something.

The coolant sensor bolts on to the side of the engine: https://lexus-europe.epc-data.com/gs300_430/jzs160r/5048/electric/8404/ Thermostat can be found here: https://lexus-europe.epc-data.com/gs300_430/jzs160r/5048/engine/1603/ (Check the same sections with your vin# as I don't know if I selected the right options for your car)

Certainly no expert but my guess would be the thermostat, if the temp gauge moves from cold but doesn't get to halfway then it's likely the thermostat isn't opening. My temp sensor failed recently and it caused erratic readings that were all over the place before getting pinned to hot even when the car had been sat cold for 3 hours, and then eventually it failed completely and set a check engine light. If yours is moving consistently but only so far then I'd think the most likely thing is the thermostat failing to open so the car can't warm up. As with all things I would recommend a professional diagnosis rather than just throwing parts at the car as there are likely many things that can cause these symptoms other than the thermostat.

This will make you feel good 🙂

Yeah I saw that thread but I don't have any plugs on the footrest at all. The rubber/plastic footrest seems to be attached to the carpet, it doesn't just pull out. The support underneath it is the bit I'd need to remove, that seems to be completely under the carpet, so maybe if I lifted the carpet up I could take that out but I've no idea how to do that, presumably that's a fairly involved job involving moving lots of bits of trim. Will have a look on youtube and see if I can find something.

OEM is available too - https://lexuspartsdirect.co.uk/product/lexus-is-phase-2-detachable-towing-hitch/

I think if I could remove the support bit underneath it would lie flat, might see if I can remove the carpet to get to it later

Ok so I don’t think it can be removed without also removing the carpet, seems to be glued together. Oh well

I couldn’t see anything on the footrest that could be unscrewed, maybe it has to be disconnected from underneath somehow?

Interestingly though despite it being very difficult to start when it was assuming hot, once it was running it seemed fine, no power loss, ran smooth. I wonder if it somehow automatically compensated after realising the ratio was too lean?

Another thing that's just occurred to me, when the problem initially started and I'd left it parked up for 3 hours before looking at it again the temp gauge was pinned to hot. It was very hard to start because thinking it was hot it would have created a lean condition which could possibly have caused damage if it'd stayed like that for long. Shortly after it started the sensor failed completely (either that or the PCM decided not to trust it) and the CEL came on and then it defaulted to assuming cold. I now realise what I should have done when it was pinned to hot was to disconnect the sensor then it would have immediately assumed cold and run rich rather than lean. Live and learn etc.

Checked again in the morning, no leaks, ran it around a bit up to temperature, still no leaks, I’m calling this a win. 👍