Rutlandlex

That car sounds like "fun" in the wet! I would just ditch them anyway because they are cheap Chinese . The noise is probably being generated by the interaction between the tread pattern and the road surface as the wheels rotate hence why it only happens at certain speeds and when you go fast enough the noise disappears. If the car has been MOT'd recently then any play in the wheel bearings should have been noted although if you had it done 11 months ago and you've done a load of mileage since then then it might not have been. If the tyres are directional then you shouldn't be swapping left to right either but I don't know if yours are or not.

Mine's just coming up to 123k hence why I'm following this thread with interest 😬

I did 🤣 I'm sure the Harrier has its own quirks or maybe some of the same ones as the Lexus. I would say it's more about the type of journeys that you do as much as distance. If you're just driving at town speeds all the time then you won't get any real benefit from hybrid. Will you be using the car at weekends too because if so then think about how you will be using it? My journey to work is 23 miles which consists of: 2 miles of town driving, 10 miles of A road which can be anything between 50-70 mph, 10 miles of dual carriageway which varies between completely stationary to 80 mph but usually about 60 where it is moving, half a mile of crawling in bumper to bumper city traffic and finally half a mile of 50 mph single carriageway. There are also many hills on the A road and the dual carriageway so the hybrid system gets a good workout and it runs on electric only when in heavy traffic. You could get a petrol and convert it to LPG but that would involve a big outlay which you wouldn't get back for a long time if you're not doing many miles. You will also have to have your spare wheel in the boot reducing practicality too and make sure that you get a valve saver fitted preferably a multi-point injection one. I don't know if the valve seats on the Lexus are hardened or not but the general consensus seems to be that Japanese engines have softer ones and bitter personal experience with a Subaru means that I wouldn't have an LPG converted car without it.

Hope you get a conclusive diagnosis tomorrow Clive. I have noticed that mine lately doesn't shut off the engine at times when I would expect it to but my battery is 3 years old now so I suspect that it isn't charging up enough. I wouldn't rule out the battery on yours despite its age as the quality of the current might not be good when power is being drawn from it. Modern cars can appear to have a totally healthy battery but exhibit weird symptoms only for all of those problems to disappear with a simple change of battery. Please let us know the outcome.

Hi Michael. Don't forget the RX350 if your budget will stretch to one. Which one is best depends on how you're going to use it. For example if you're going to be doing mainly short journeys then you may as well get a petrol one because the hybrid system relies on sufficient forward motion to harvest energy to use for the electrical propulsion so if you're not doing that then the engine will be running constantly anyway defeating the object of having a hybrid. I chose the 400h because the performance is virtually identical to the RX350 but it is more economical and I do the mileage easily to make the hybrid system work. I will have done over 9k in 6 months in a couple of weeks time. The 400h should be 6-8 mpg better off easily which adds up a lot over time. In case you're thinking "Will I have to save up every week to replace the hybrid battery pack?" then fear not because the chances of that are extremely slim and if you are one of the unlucky 1% then a replacement can be had for just £750. Earlier this year I spoke to a rep from Lexus Derby who were exhibiting at a business show and I asked him how many battery packs they had replaced and he said that they had yet to replace one that had failed of its own accord. They had replaced 2 that had failed due to external forces - one car, an IS had been driven through a deep flood necessitating a new hybrid battery pack as well as a new petrol engine! The other had a small electrical fire and the fire brigade went and cut through the supply cable to the hybrid battery pack. I asked him how much a replacement was and he said "Take a guess." I started off at £3k and he said "No, nowehere near." He said that they were £650 for the smaller cars and £750 for the larger ones and I assume that VAT was to be added to those figures but I didn't query it. Those prices are pretty well identical to the few specialist companies who refurbish them so maybe Lexus Derby at least have decided they would like to compete with the specialists. What to look out for on all models: Corrosion particularly underneath as someone has already said. There is some rust underneath mine but it is not excessive and will last for many more years Check for water leaks into the car particularly in the boot area. Feel all of the trim in the boot for wetness as well as the carpets all over the car. Pay particular attention to the carpets around the back seats if looking at the hybrid because the hybrid battery pack sits underneath them Check the electrical items all work - they are very reliable but potentially costly to fix if they don't. If the windows and sunroof don't quite operate as expected then this doesn't necessarily indicate a fault as there is a reset routine to follow after changing the 12V battery and this may not have been done Check for service history and documentation to support it If very near or over 100k check that the cambelt has been changed along with the waterpump - this applies to 400h but can't remember if 300 & 350 are belt or chain driven so if belt this applies to them too On 300 & 350 check for smooth gear changes from 2-3 and 3-4 and vice versa. Again very rare to have issues but can be expensive to fix if it does occur Aside from that just the same checks that you would do on any car. The RX is arguably the most reliable used car that you can buy particularly around the 10 year old mark so just make sure it's been looked after and enjoy 🙂

I have no idea of the technical specs for the Harrier. Weren't they for the Japanese market only and effectively a Lexus RX with a Toyota badge on? Is yours a Jap import?

My boss had his Mercedes C Class battery go flat yesterday. He got a jump start and went straight to the nearest Halfords and it took the fitter an hour to change the battery!! He said he'd never seen a car where it was so complicated to change the battery 🤣 Apparently loads of stuff had to be removed just to get at it. Talk about designing a car to make the dealers money!

Hi Daniel. It could be a faulty injector that is leaking diesel into the cylinder after you've turned the engine off on shorter journeys. This then leads to unburned fuel in one cylinder causing the silver smoke and the shaking because it is now out of sync with the other cylinders. Maybe when you do longer journeys then switch off then it doesn't leak. That would be my guess anyway. The only other cause of the shakes could be a lack of compression on one cylinder but I would have thought that that would have manifested itself when cold all of the time or a failing DMF but I would expect it to shake all of the time regardless of engine temperature. You really need to get a proper garage with the right diagnostic kit to check it over otherwise you could end up throwing parts away with nothing wrong with them and wasting money. Diesels aren't really made with DIY repairs in mind and unfortunately they can sometimes be difficult to diagnose and expensive to repair. Please let us know the outcome.

Really??? Most figures I've seen posted on here range from 30-34. Mine does about 31 and I have a heavy right foot although I expect it to drop to 27-28 in winter. My 12v battery is 3 years old too so not exactly in its prime which hurts fuel economy.

The auto transmission in the 300 has a higher failure rate than hybrid battery packs and they cost more to repair too. I know we're talking single figure percentage failure rates for both but still.....

I thought the 450's were supposed to be better than the 400's.

It makes me wonder how many people who take out these extended warranties actually end up claiming on them and what the value of the claims is given that Lexus is arguably the most reliable brand out there. You also have to pay dealer rates for servicing and some also to find a whole heap of things wrong with your car that are not covered under the warranty due to wear and tear which they will gladly sort out for you for grossly inflated prices but you can't take it elsewhere because you'll invalidate the warranty. Not all dealers will behave in this way but by taking out the extended warranty you are giving them the opportunity. That's my take on it anyway. I would rather save the money from the warranty, save the money on servicing and not have my car used as a cash cow. Each to their own though.

I think that you have misunderstood the issue. When the system is fully functioning and you turn the AFS off via the button underneath the dashboard then this just turns off the swivel function but not the self levelling. AFAIK there is no way to disable self-levelling as it is a legal requirement to have it with Xenon headlights and possibly with LED's too. My issue is that the self-levelling is not working due to the height sensor having snapped on the rear suspension so this disables the self-levelling due to having no height data and it also disables the swivel with the AFS OFF light flashing constantly on the dashboard. So you can have self-levelling without swivel but you can't have swivel without self-levelling. I just wondered what height the headlights would assume given that they don't know what height the rear suspension is sitting at. The answer is that they appear to be at normal height.

I’ve just been out for a quick spin down a dark country road and they seem fine. I would say that they are roughly normal height there or thereabouts. The AFS warning light is also dimmed in the dark so it’s not too distracting. I’ll just have to keep weight off the back until I get it fixed.

The search facility seems to be broken on the website at the moment (no search results) so apologies if this has been answered before. On Sunday I joined the non-exclusive AFS Off club so I'm going to order the bits from Rapid Online and make another drop link for the height sensor. It might be a few weeks before I get round to fixing it so in the meantime I wondered if anyone knew what level the headlight beams are in the absence of the ride height data from the sensor. If I carry a heavy load or tow a caravan am I likely to dazzle oncoming traffic?

Welcome aboard. Yes this "quality German engineering" thing is a hangover from the 1980's! They're good at convincing people to buy them though.

Welcome 😃

So it's on both sides and appears to have come from high up and run down the channels to the bottom? Have they stripped the back seats and the boot completely? Have you had the car valeted by anyone? It may be one of those things that you never get to the bottom of unfortunately but I think manufacturing defect is highly unlikely or you would have noticed it when the car was much newer. Perhaps the best that you can hope for is some goodwill from Lexus to help towards the cost of repair.

It is not possible to invalidate a warranty by getting work done yourself/at an independent garage. The only thing that can happen is that the warranty company refuses to cover any non-genuine parts that you have fitted yourself or they refuse to pay out if any subsequent damage is done. For example, if you were to change the radio head unit for an aftermarket one then the warranty company is well within their rights to not cover it if it were to fail. They could also refuse to pay out for blown speakers if it is suspected to be the new head unit that caused them to blow. They can't however refuse to pay out for a failed fuel pump because you changed the stereo because it's got nothing to do with it. As for getting a refund on the warranty then I think that that would be a good idea since the most likely failures are due to wear and tear which aren't covered by the warranty anyway. I did read an article somewhere which rated the RX400h as the most reliable 10 year old car you can buy so £1k on a warranty does seem unnecessary. Mine doesn't have one and I sleep easy at night.

I take it that you bought the car from a main dealer. Check the MOT history of the car online and see if see if there were advisories on it the last time it was done before the dealer did one as all of these things apart from the air filter should be picked up on an MOT. If these things were noted on the MOT before the dealer acquired the car but not on the one that they paid for or did themselves then you can go back to them and say that the price didn't reflect the true condition of the car so sort it! I say this because many times before I have bought cars from dealers, both main dealers and independents, whereby they sell it with a fresh MOT with no advisories and it should have either failed or had advisories but then honesty wouldn't be good for sales would it? You could also report the garage that did the MOT to VOSA if you think that they have not done the job properly. If you get nowhere with them then you could take it to an independent garage and get them to inspect the car and quote you for repair including parts and labour because those prices quoted are out of this world!

Mine did this recently. It occurred to me that I haven't had my air con or fan on at all for many weeks due to the heatwave as I like driving with the windows and sunroof open in hot weather so I just put it down to that. I rarely use my air con because I've never been a big fan of it so I tend to only use mine for de-misting the windows when it rains or for long journeys when it's hot because of the noise with windows and sunroof open. I went to Scotland last week and suffice to say the weather was much cooler and wetter than what I have been used to and I noticed the smell the first time I put the heater on. Sometimes I had the heater on without air con and sometimes with and the smell has now gone regardless of whether the air con is on or not. I know that doesn't help the OP but just thought I would share my experience.

Mine averages 31-32 until I attach a caravan to the back of it then it falls to about 17. Three quarters of a tank of petrol gone in 190 miles = ouch!! I did try and see how low I could get it with the caravan on and so I floored it after turning a corner and got it down to 3.4mpg 😱

That's very weird. Normally the anti-skid light would come on under acceleration i.e. traction control or if the car was in a spin. My guess would be that the car thinks that you are in a spin and it is possibly pulsing each brake in turn trying to find the best grip. I'm guessing that you're not driving in this way so I would imagine that one wheel is registering as going slower or faster than it really is hence confusing it. I would say wheel speed sensor/ABS sensor or reluctor ring as already suggested.

Did both quotes include VAT? I personally would get my local indy to do it because I trust them. At the end of the day it's a cam belt change on a petrol engine so bread and butter stuff. That said my local garage is about 0.75 miles from home whereas my local Lexus dealer is about 30 miles away and nowhere near where I work. Your situation may be different so the main dealer may be more convenient, may have better courtesy car availability/better courtesy cars than the local indy, may have a better looking receptionist etc. so there are other factors to consider. It's not a decision that I will have to make because mine was done before I bought it at 99k and I bought the car with 113k on it and since I only do about 17k p.a. it will probably rust away before it gets to 200k! How much did you pay for the car if you don't mind me asking?

OK so I borrowed £20 from my manager to get me home. Thanks for the suggestion Andrew but I haven't got Apple Pay set up on my phone and I'm not even sure I would have been able to given that I don't know if the credit card on my Apple account is still current. Cash was just simpler on this occasion but I will set up Apple Pay on my iPhone once I start using it properly (long story won't bore you with it.) I decided to fill up at a Shell station on the A1 about 7 miles from work so I pulled in only to find that the bloody thing was closed due to refurbishment!! There was a sign on the carriageway saying "No HGV's" but nothing indicating that they were closed and the pricing sign was still lit up too. Is it seriously too much effort for someone to turn the prices off and to put a sign on the grass verge saying "Petrol station closed" or words to that effect? Anyway, I then had to waste fuel getting back up to speed and then I had to think about where the next petrol station was. I didn't fancy driving into Stamford so I carried on to the next service station which was another 7 miles up the road. I was hoping to slip stream a lorry on the A1 but could I find one? There was one in the distance but I couldn't catch it as I was only doing 60 MPH. I made it to the next service station and the car was still running even uphill and the needle was going off the end of the gauge as illustrated below. In total I did 15 miles starting with the needle at the very bottom marker so it's good to know that there is still some range left.