Herbie

Then the radio station will swamp your little transmitter and you'll have to change the frequency.

Let me put it this way - "There will be an indicator in the dash and a ride height button, plus one in the boot"

There's a reset procedure to go through if the 12V battery is ever disconnected. You don't specifically mention them but I'll bet the windows and sunroof are also not operating properly either. I can't remember the reset procedure but it'll be in the owners manual (available to download from Lexus if you haven't got one).

You still haven't said whether your car has Hill Hold or Hill Start Assist. My car has the latter and the owners manual states that it does not work on very steep hills.

They actually turn more blue/purple as they get older. If they start at, say, 4000K then by 5 years old they may be 5 or even 6000k. Just replace with new ones and you'll see a hell of a difference. EDIT: Obviously got those figures wrong way round - if they start at 6000k they'll drop from there over time.

Hi Col and welcome to the forum. Looks to be a very nice car you've got there, so enjoy driving her

All you do is press the brake pedal down fully and at some point in the travel you'll hear a beep and the TRC light will flash, which means that Hill Start Assist is activated. I don't know what happens if you have Hill Hold as my car doesn't have it.

Easy answer - no. Why would we?

I have no words.....

Depends which system you have as 'Hill Hold' and 'Hill Start Assist' are two different things. My 2013 RX450h has Hill Start Assist and requires that you still keep your foot pressed on the brake pedal. If you take your foot off the pedal, after a second or two the HSA will cancel and the car starts to creep forward - this is how it's meant to work, so that the car doesn't roll back in the second or two between releasing the brake pedal and depressing the accelerator. The Owner's Manual also states that this will not work on very steep hills. Hill Hold, which my car is not equipped with, will do as it says on the tin and hold the car in position on a hill.

Our November 2013 (63 plate) RX450h Advance had 33k miles on it when we bought it for just short of £25k in February last year (now has 48k on the clock).

Almost all Lexus onboard navigation systems are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard. They are completely counter-intuitive, clunky, and really not fit for purpose. I used to use a TomTom and could get that set up with my destination and actually be driving before I had even completed inputting my destination in the Lexus nav. However, even my TomTom has now gone the way of the Dodo and I tend to use Waze on my phone. Maps are always up to date, easy to follow, easy to set up and use and, possibly the best bit, they can be updated with live traffic info from other Waze users within two minutes of something happening, as you'll see from the photo below. I feel your pain as do many of us on here but I'm afraid it's the only option if you wish to remain sane.

Haha, you may well be right there my friend Having said that, much more effort is required for both of those things compared to auto dip. With the auto dip your hands are already on the wheel, literally within an inch or two of the stalk and you literally only need extend one finger to accomplish your goal.

I would imagine that yes, that would have been enough to flatten the battery. How come that she had to manually turn the boot light on? It should come on automatically as the tailgate is opened and go off as it closes. Anyway, hopefully not too much damage will have been done and an overnight charge may get it up and running again, but I'm still surprised that you couldn't jump start it from the van. Fingers crossed for you.

It doesn't really matter. Personally I've always removed the battery and taken it into the garage to charge, but only because running an extension lead out overnight isn't ideal (our garage is storage space rather than a house for the car). It sounds like there's something more involved going on, rather than just a flat battery though. The reason I say this is because the 12V battery of a 'normal' car provides more than 300A to the starter motor for cranking the engine, but hybrids don't require anywhere near as much power. As you'll see from the photo below, my RX450h only draws 15.32A to get the car to the READY state, which should have been very easy for your VW van to provide when you put the jump leads on. I'd be inclined to try with the jump leads again but clean the battery terminals and clamps first and then connect directly to the battery terminals instead of any 'dedicated' or 'special' jump start point.

Use Rainex or something similar on the lens?

Sounds like the lock actuator isn't operating. Take the door card off so that you have access to the gizzards and check both electrically (loose connections, broken wires, correct voltage etc) and mechanically (something seized, push rod not pushing etc).

No idea what's wrong but I'd take it to a vehicle AC specialist (and I don't mean Halfords) rather than a standard mechanical garage.

I've recommended this one below many times on here and other forums. This guy has reviewed about 50 or 60 dashcams and this is the one he chose to use in his own car, so if it's good enough for him..... Actually, if you have an interest in any technology and/or gadgets, his other videos are well worth watching. Very informative and entertaining. My own dashcam is a Viofo A119S (which is very similar to the Aukey one) because I hadn't seen the review before buying mine.

It is financially viable for them to come over here with a trailer to buy a scrap or damaged car and take it back there for stripping. We've seen many such cars on trailers on our drives around Poland too.

If you don't smoke, simply replace the cig lighter with a USB charger socket like I did in our RX300. I think the socket was about £6 or £7 from eBay and worked brilliantly, giving a fast charge at 2.1A

OK, fair enough, I know that the car comes equipped with 'auto high beam' but honestly, have we really become so lazy that we can't just flick a finger to maually switch the headlamps ourselves? I'm not having a pop at you Lukas, I'm just thinking that this is a piece of technology that doesn't really need to exist and has been developed solely for no other reason except 'just because they can'.

But you said that you gave them a good layer of ordinary wax/sealer - I would imagine almost all automotive waxes/sealers will have some form of UV protection in them, so you did protect them and you didn't just leave the newly-rubbed-down surfaces open to the elements. The semantics of 'clear-coat/wax/sealer' are neither here nor there - the relevant part is 'UV-resistant'.

I doubt the new results would last even a year if no UV-resistant clear coat is used.

400h will be fine, just take one or more of the precautions I mentioned above, just in case.