Delphius1

I've been caught out at pedestrian crossings. Once a girl just walked out in front of the car expecting me to stop. My speed meant I didn't see her approach the crossing because of the windscreen pillar. I also didn't see her walk onto the crossing despite the oncoming car and I only saw her at the last moment as she walked in front of the car on my side of the road. Luckily the brakes worked well that day. Of course she carried on crossing oblivious to the 4x4 squirming to a stop just feet from the crossing as she chatted on her phone.

One thing to note is that the timings of the operation after doing the door open-close thing was different on my RX.

On the video after the door open/close stuff, the central locking locks/unlocks the doors straight away. On my Rx the timing was more like Lock..2..3..unlock.

Then I could press the lock/unlock button on the fob for a second and then within 3-5 seconds press another key on the fob.

That was the tricky thing.

At first the doors locked and then I pressed the key straight away...fail.

Then I realised, so waited for them to unlock and pressed the lock/unlock buttons on the fob for too long... fail.

So, try again. Waited for the door locks, then pressed the lock/unlock buttons for a second and then took too long before I pressed the lock button...fail.

Then finally I waited for the doors to lock..2..3..unlock... then pressed the lock/unlock buttons on the fob for a second and straight away pressed the lock button.. success!

As Herbie says above, timing is everything. :-)

So the programming goes something like this. (I did it at the speed you can read this text, it didn't work if I took my time like the video):

Sit in car with drivers door closed

Open drivers door.

Key in ignition, key out of ignition, key in ignition, key out of ignition

Close drivers door, open drivers door, close drivers door, open drivers door,

Key in ignition, key out of ignition,

Close drivers door, open drivers door, close drivers door, open drivers door,

Key in ignition, close drivers door, turn ignition to on (lights on dash), turn ignition off and remove key

Central locking locks doors... wait for doors to unlock,

Press lock & unlock buttons on key fob for a second, release, then press lock button

Central locking should lock/unlock.

Key is now programmed: open drivers door to cancel programming mode.

1 hour ago, katabrontes said:

Can you give me the link you used to program the key for central locking etc?  I have tried several methods and could not get any to work.  I have got the key to start the car using a plug in module to do this but the central locking has still defeated me.

Regards

Mike

I used the video below and followed what he did. The techstream bit was straightforward, but doing the door close/open and press the lock/unlock button thing on the keyfob was a bit hit and miss. I had to have a few goes before I got the timing right. The lock unlock cycle of the doors after opening closing the doors was slower than I expected and certainly slower than on the video. Also pressing the lock unlock button and then the lock button on the fob needs to happen I think within 3-5 seconds. Iit seemed I was too slow the first few times.

Once I got the timing right, it worked.

1 hour ago, Herbie said:

Or, you could have just used this guy on eBay who will supply a key already cut from a photo of your existing key and then you just put your electronics in the case.

I have a bit of an issue giving someone I don't know details of how to get into my car and an address where the car is located overnight. :-)

But that's just me.

1 hour ago, cruisermark said:

Hi Mark is the the key a smart key?

What version of techstream are you using?

Hi, if by smart key to mean keyless start, then no. It's just the normal 3 button ignition key. I used version 10.

When I got my RX300 I only got one key with it. So, I decided to research getting a speare key sorted for it. The internet is a lovely resource and found you can do it quite cheaply if you are canny.

So, the first step in the process was getting a used key (I preferred a genuine Lexus key with Lexus electronics rather than an aftermarket one) complete with electronics off eBay. I got one off eBay for £24.95.

Critically it has to have the same markings to have any chance of working. My key has CE0123! CLBT/C/245/2002 DENSO 1512V on the back, so I chose a key with the same markings on eBay.

Then I needed a new key blank. I went for one of the 3-button flip fob cases on eBay rather than exactly the same key. That was £3.95.

Getting the key blade cut was a tenner*. Then I fitted the electronics in the new key.

Now for the technical bit: Using techstream to program the car to accept the new key. Easily done.

And finally the "insert the key twice, open the door, close the door twice etc" bit to get the central locking part of the fob working. Done (after getting the timing right on door opening, key entry and button presses: it took 5 attempts to get it all synchronised so it worked).

So now I have a spare key for around £40. I'm a happy bunny.

* There is a bit of a saga involved in the key cutting. I had to buy a pair of spare blades for £3 after the first two people I asked messed up the key cutting. The first Timpsons I went to actually cut completely through the key blade and messed it up, the second place (a car key specialist) used a computer to cut the key but the cutting seemed to be out by a millimetre so the key didn't work. I finally went to a Timpsons where a young lad gave me all the usual caveats (may not work because it's not our key blah blah) but still had a bash when I said fine. He cut the key on a simple jig and voila! It worked the lock.

I'd agree that a diagnostic check is the only way to see what the system is complaining about. VSC is a complicated system that involves a lot of sensors and it may be just as simple as needing to do a reset procedure on a sensor. 

For instance if it's an accellerometer and the vehicle power was applied whilst the vehicle wasn't on flat ground, the sensor would give the wrong reading.

But without Techstream looking into the bowels of the vehicle electronics, it's difficult to say what the problem could be.

Ah, you made it sound so easy... so normal BMW service then.

Teslas aren't doing too bad on Battery longevity. The Tesla roadsters have the Gen.1 batteries that seem to be holding up pretty well. Indications are leter generations are holding up pretty well even after much supercharging.

The Battery technology on Teslas is up there with the best, but personally I agree the build quality of the cars is pretty appalling. Panel gaps all over the place, trims not lining up, door handles that stick and lock you out of the car and plenty of wind noise, rattles and squeaks. Not something you want on what is a pretty expensive car.

The technology side Tesla seem to have sorted: the software tends to work. It seems the fit and finish side they're lacking on. It seems there have been numerous recalls on various items. Reminds me when I worked for an American software company. The attitude to quality wasn't up to European statndards. They were quite happy to release something that wasn't quite 100% and fix it later in updates while customers struggled with frustrating issues that should have been fixed before release.

Wow, that's customer service!

I just wonder how many dealers whould have sent the skinny trainee into the bowels of the car with a dremel to hack off the offending bracket?

This one was pretty loud and annoying, so it had to go. No matter how long it took. The main issue was on the passenger side, but the drivers side also had a small rattle that I noticed after fixing the big one. So the drivers side got the same treatment.

It's nice to have a quiet car. Now it's just my keys rattling hanging from the ignition. That I can solve easily. 

Ever since I bought my RX back in May, it's had an annoying dash rattle that appeared to come from the very front of the dash by the demister vent.

I've had a couple of goes at quietening the rattle down. The first few attempts I attempted to secure the front of the dash to the demister vent with different thicknesses and strengths of double-sided tape. I got some improvement, but there was still a rattle on certain bumps.

Today I decided I would silence the thing once and for all. This time replicating the vibration of the dash by pulling the demister vent up and down. By using pads of material stuffed into random places, it became apparent that the rattle was coming from the very front of the dash where it butts up to the windscreen. The tongue of dash material between the vent and the dash seems to have shrunk so it can move around and hit the windscreen and the support brackets underneath. By stuffing a pad between the dash and the windscreen the rattle was silenced.

All very good, but stuffing pads in between the dash and the screen is pretty unsightly :-).

In the end my solution was to strip the black outer sleeve from a satellite coax cable to give me a black crushable tube to fill the space. The material was a bit plasticky which I thought might rattle on it's own if it was allowed to move, so I wrapped black tape around it to bulk it out and deaden any rattle. I then stuffed it down the gap between the dash and the screen. The tube easily squashed into the gap and being black blended in so well you can't see it. But being a tube it conformed easily so there should be no danger of it putting excessive pressure on the dash or screen, it just filled the gap.

Taking it for a run on my worst rattly road, the rattle has gone. Hopefully for good. 

Obviously this solved my rattle. It may not help with other rattles, but it's a starting point for anyone being sent spare by dash rattles.

Plug in hybrids really need a larger Battery and that's where Tesla have made the leap ahead of the Japanese. The Toyota RAV4 EV in the USA uses a Tesla Battery, not a Toyota one, because the power density and longevity are superior. 

I agree, cheap O2 sensors can be a gamble. They don't last as long as better quality ones, but the thing you gave to remember the O2 sensor has failed for a reason. A sensor upstream can create fuelling issues, or oil being burned in the cylinders can cause the sensors to fail.

So if the O2 sensors fail, the underlying issue needs to be addressed as well as replacing the sensors, otherwise the new sensors fail quickly.

I'd get the suspension bushes checked out. Worn bushes will make the car track badly and it'll be all over the place.

Well, my tame mechanic finally got to grips with the RX and the job of changing the bushes on the front lower arms.

The first thing I would say is the job is not an easy DIY one and not for the faint of heart. My mechanic said things were as close to disaster as he like to go a few times. He was not a happy bunny! His description of the work included lots of Anglo-Saxon words which when interpreted, his conclusion is it was a pig of a job even having workshop facilities.

The first point is that on the nearside, there is no way to separate the engine/transmission mount from the end of the gearbox, so even undoing all the nuts and bolts on the mount means the engine and gearbox have to be raised substantially and the subframe has to be lowered to get enough clearance to remove the mount and get access to the bolts for the front bushing for the arm.

He said the engine and gearbox were jacked up as far as he dare go and the subframe bolts were on their last millimetre or two of thread and he just and only just was able to remove the mount. It took 2.5 hours to remove the first arm.

With the mount out of the way and the arm finally removed from the car, his 10-ton press could not push the old bushes out of the arm. The rear bush required a 40-ton press to push it out of the arm. The front bush needed some hacksawing and drilling of the rubber to separate the butterfly pin from the bush and the arm.

Fitting the Superpro bushes was a bit easier and of course putting everything back together was a little better than removing them.

So in conclusion, the job isn't easy and really isn't something you can do at the side of the road. If you fit replacement arms and don't try and be clever and fit polyurethane bushes, it'll be half the hassle.

But getting to the front bush mounts to remove the arm is a real pain. The mechanic was disputing the parentage of whoever designed the car to have the engine mounts right over the bush mounts. :-)

Anyway, after the bushes have been fitted, I can report the car handles so much better.  The rear bushes on the arms were so shot you could see daylight through them, so even new rubber bushes would have dramatically changed the handling for the better. The steering is flatter where before it had a tendency for the outer corner to tuck in and dip a bit in corners. Steering is now quicker and I don't get that lag from turning the steering wheel to the car actually doing the turning.

As for the bushes themselves I can report even having stiffer bushes there is no extra noise in the cabin or anything detrimental at all.

Okay, so.... the rusty oil cooler thingy has been deleted and transmission fluid replaced,  another tick in the job box.

My tame mechanic looked at the front arm bushes yesterday but needs another bite of the cherry because his transmission jack couldn't lift the combined weight of the engine and transmission high enough to remove the engine mountings and uncover the front bush mounts. I've got to book another day when he has more time and hopefully a cunning plan to lift the engine, or he has to drop the subframe. I did tell him it would be longer than an afternoon's work. :-)

Anyway, the latest instalment on the job creation front looks like leaky cam cover gaskets. The engine has suddenly (yesterday) decided to leak oil onto the hot exhaust for no reason other than to prove that not all Lexuses  are reliable. I suspect a blocked PCV valve, mainly because it has just started happening for no apparent reason, with no evidence of leaks before. Of course a blocked PCV valve allows pressure to build up and blow oil vapour out of the weakest point. Hopefully changing or cleaning the valve will restore oil-tight  integrity and I won't have to delve into the bowels of the engine bay removing the intake plenum to replace the cam cover gaskets. Thankfully a PCV valve on eBay is less than £20 so replacement won't break the bank.

This car is starting to get a Lemony smell about it... and it's not the air freshener!

I'm a bit paranoid about the Battery state on cars that have so many electrical toys, especially as the wife tends to keep the seat heater on constantly (why do women do that?). But because the car is so dependent on the Battery being in good condition and the fact there are so many toys to drain it even on an RX300, I installed this little doohickey.

Two hi-current USB ports and a digital voltmeter all in one. It need some slight adjustment of the switch position with a file, but I'm sure will be invaluble over the winter. Keeps the mobile charged as well and turned out to be a pretty tidy setup:

The Battery is a bit healthier now, that was after a few days of mucking about with the lights on and the engine not running. Back up to 12.6v with the engine off now.

You do need to use hose clips to secure the hoses, but using jubilee clips allows you to get a driver in from the side, above or below to tighten them which is easier than using the old spring clips which are definitely attached before assembly.

I did the trans flush this week. It took 9 litres of fluid to do. The gear changes have smoothed out since the change, but not as dramatically as some of the how-toos online suggest.

On to the next job ....

I agree with Brian26. If you don't have any dampness in the car then a mouldy aircon unit would be the first port of call. There are many products available that can disinfect the Aircon and heater matrix.

Damp carpets point to an actual water leak so it's worth checking around the footwells and the boot.

Codes P0420 and P0403 refer to the catalyst efficiency for cylinder bank one and bank two respectively.

Part of the OBD2 standard is that the ECU has to be able to measure the efficiency of the cat and report any deviations, so the car has oxygen sensors before and after the first cat in the exhuast stream. The first O2 sensor measures the result of the combustion process and the ECU alters fuelling to suit. The O2 sensor after the cat checks the efficiency and that's what these codes refer to.

It's unusual for both banks of a "V" configuration engine to report problems with cat efficiency simultaneously. Usually there's an air leak in the exhaust manifold that allows excess oxygen to enter the exhaust on one side and cause the efficiency code on that side to be thrown. It would be unusual and very unlucky for both cats to suddenly become inefficient both at the same time.

If both banks report problems  it's possible something upstream of the combustion process is causing the issue, so it's possible an air leak in the intake could be responsible, that would affect both banks simultaneously. It would really need some diagnosis to find out the cause. 

A decent diagnstic centre should be able to look at the figures coming out of the ECU via the OBD2 connector and narrow down the cause.

I've seen it before on a car that I modified. The ECU couldn't cope with the amount of air entering the engine so the mixture was very lean, resulting in excess oxygen in the exhaust and tripping the cat efficiency code on the ECU.

Difficult question to answer remotely. It depends on the state of the hybrid Battery, the state of the 12v Battery and the other software & hardware interlocks such as gears that would prevent the engine from starting as it should. Do you have any error message on the dash like hybrid error?

With a good hybrid Battery charge, the 12v Battery should be in a good state of charge too. I can't remember whether the starter iruns from the 12v or not, but if it does, a low 12v Battery may prevent the engine from being started to avoid issues with all the other 12v systems.

All this hybrid trickery is new to me, but I do feel there should be some way of starting the internal cumbustion engine independent of the state of the hybrid system so you can limp home using the ICE. It just seems there is a bit too much interdependence in the system.

Obviously Lexus knows that's when the world really ends.

Cue cheesy impossible CGI effects-heavy movie sponsored by Lexus where the protagonist drives an RX300 through falling buildings and over jumps, all without affecting the car's ability to drive.

At the end of the day, I don't know what you can do really. I'm not sure if that part of the software is updateable.

It does seem a bit short-sighted to put a limit (in my car's case 16 years) on the calendar function if they expected people to use it. It'll be interesting if it also affects the maintenance application. I mean, the cars should last past 2020 so why doesn't the calendar reflect that?

Did the all the hoses finally this last weekend. I made sure it was proper oil cooler hose and they can be routed so they don't rub against anything. The bad news is it took 3 hours to do them in total, the majority of the time was taken trying to get the old hose clips off because there was no space to get pliers in there. In the end I used a small set of snipe nosed pliers and a lot of skinned knuckles to free the old hoses.

The original hoses are 10mm, which is not easy to get. I did have some 3/8 (9.7mm) oil cooler hose from ages ago, but it wouldn't slide over the hose fittings on the RX properly no matter what I did.  I ended up ordering 7/16 (11mm) braided hose off eBay and 1m of hose is enough to replace the two hoses to the oil cooler.

I plan to have a couple of days off work this week so I should be able to do a transmission fluid flush while I'm off.

I know a bit about cars. When it comes to mechaniking I'm a talented amateur. :-)  I'm not sure when I'll get time to fit the bushes. What I do know is that I'll unbolt the bottom ball joints from the arms rather than split the ball joints as that means there's less chance of damaging the ball joint dust boot.

I don't have level ground at home to do the work, so I might have to pay someone to do it for me. There's a friendly garage next to work that we use from time to time that may be able to do the work. We do have a press that should do the job at work if I could get the arms off, but I think the suspension work may be beyond a lunchtime session in the works car park. :-)

The Superpro Polyurethane bushes arrived this week. They look pretty chunky:

Looking at the instructions, they need pressing into the arms with a hydraulic press. Certainly the rear ones with the steel ring will need to be pressed in and the instructions show the front ones being pressed over the mounting pins as well. Both kits come with sachets of grease which is a nice touch and will help installation.

In other news I have braided Oil cooler hose arriving today so I can bypass all the transmission oil pipes. I fitted a temporary hose to bypass the leaking pipe, which took an hour to fit thanks to the lack of space. I have 10 litres of transmission fluid so I can do a flush of the auto box at the same time as bypassing the metal pipes.  The hoses I can hopefully do this weekend.