Herbie

Take everything out of the boot and see if there's any water or dampness on the floor pan in that area. Apparently the 400h had a problem with water ingress either through faulty rear light unit seals or a welded seam also at the rear. You should be able to find lots of info about it if you search this forum. EDIT: Never needed to use them myself but I believe these dehumidifier bags work well, although that's not curing the problem, of course. SECOND EDIT: here you go:

Here's a handy chart for reference:

It's on the screen for you, top left, under the word 'Consumption' E = 50Wh regenerated.

Even if they had done that, the battery lasted for 5 months after purchase of the car! I'd say that in itself is proof that the battery was good at that time and the multimeter would have shown it to be so. I think the clue to the problem is where the OP says that the alternator has been replaced - the battery has been damaged by being completely depleted and not being recharged Well now we know that they also sold a 9 year old car with the original alternator too, which is probably the main contributory factor in the failure of the 10 year old battery 😉

What 'Lexus Approved' means (quoted from their own website) The engine bay of a car is quite an inhospitable place and many batteries will either have had their date label obscured or obliterated if it was on the top or it may even need the battery to be removed to see the date stamp if it's anywhere else other than the top. I, for one, do not expect battery removal to be part of the 150 point examination for the 'Approved' status. If the connections are tight, clean, and the battery starts the car, then that's enough for me. OK, maybe if it failed within a few days of purchasing the car you could argue a case for free replacement but if it failed later I would think nothing of it and just go get a new one.

No need to take it to Lexus unless you particularly want to Steve. The codes relate to the internal combustion engine and emissions, so any good garage/mechanic should be able to sort it. Ask family/friends for personal recommendations or maybe you have a similar thing to our 'Safe Trader Scheme' which is run by Lancashire Trading Standards office.

If anyone doesn't fancy taking a file to the dash, this may be a better alternative if you don't smoke. It's a direct replacement for the cig lighter socket.

Take the cig lighter out completely and replace it with one of these or something similar.

Sounds like the NX is different to the RX. I usually have the display screen set to show the trip economy or energy and whatever it's showing when I switch the car off, is what it shows next time.

Never, ever, ever, will you get anywhere near the figures that any manufacturer quotes because they go to stupid lengths such as taking out seats and carpets and other crazy stuff to get their figures and it's all done in a laboratory, not the real world. I'd say the figures you're getting are reasonable but if you've never driven a hybrid before, there is an art to it. Accelerate quickly to the speed you want then just back your foot off slightly, just enough to maintain that momentum, and that's when you get best efficiency. The best I've ever managed in our RX450h is 41.8 on a 50 mile journey but I've never been able to replicate that - my average sits at about 33mpg. As for the integrated navigation - I hate ours and never use it, preferring to use my TomTom. However, I recently thought I'd try Waze on my Android phone and it's brilliant, so I think even the TomTom is going to be used far less now. Even better is an app called What3Words. A postcode can cover quite a wide geographical area, especially in rural areas, but with What3Words you can get directions down to a parking space accuracy. They've divided the entire world into 3 metre x 3 metre squares and given each one a three-word name, such as 'Tin.Mouse.Fork' or 'Speaker.Paper.Bell' You use the What3Words app to search for an address and the app then gives you its specific three words. You can then 'Share' that into Waze, Google Maps or whatever your favourite navigation software is and get your directions as normal. It's so accurate that the front door of your house has a different three words to your back door. It's brilliant!

You need something like these surgical clamps on eBay. Not these particular ones as they are too expensive, but I got a pair of these clamps on a Fleetwood Market tool stall for £3.99 each and they've come in really handy for all sorts of jobs - none of them surgical I hasten to add 😁

For more than 30 years I've only ever driven automatics and as you probably know, you can't push/bump-start a car with an auto box so I've always kept a very beefy set of jump leads in the boot. However, the Law of Sod being what it is, you could almost guarantee that there would be no one else around to provide a jump start when needed, so I invested in one of these little rascals. I've not needed to use it yet but it's been in the boot for over a year and is still 75% charged, so I know it holds its charge well and will be ready if I ever do need it. Yes. We often park up on a seafront/promenade somewhere and if the weather is too bad to go for a walk we'll just sit in the car for two or three hours watching the sea and watching the world go by. However, we are both big music fans and so will have the radio/other media playing all the time. If the car is in READY then the ICE will fire up as and when necessary to keep the traction battery charged up but if you don't, the radio will shut down after a while and a message on the multi-function display informs you that it's been turned off to conserve battery power.

I don't call £400 small at all and I really don't think it's worth it given that they will already have access and be inside your car before it begins to do its job. They could nick anything in there or cause damage just because they will be pigged off at not being able to start the car. Like I said above, the best thing is to deter them and make them think that your car is too much hassle to bother with so that they don't even try to get in and they move off elsewhere. OK, locking a big yellow bar to the steering wheel every time you leave the car is slightly more hassle than punching a few numbers, but it keeps them out and at just sixty-odd quid is a fraction of what that Ghost system costs.

Personally speaking I think prevention is better than cure, which is why I have a big yellow Stoplock Pro Elite on the steering wheel when the car isn't being used. Not pretty I'll grant you, but hopefully they'll just see it through the window and move on somewhere else without getting into the car in the first place.

Exactly as Lee says above - get a new battery and it'll be sorted. There's nothing special or difficult about changing the 12V battery so just do it yourself. I haven't got a 400h but I would imagine all you need is a 10mm spanner or socket to undo the + and - post clamps and something to undo any clamp or bracket securing the battery in place, then it's old battery out, new one in and Robert is your mother's brother - simples! EDIT - you may be getting your Amps and Volts mixed up. Below is a chart of battery voltages just for your info:

Unless things have changed in this new MOT, hybrids are not checked for emissions. This is because to get correct readings the engine has to be at a certain temperature but with a hybrid the engine may not even be running, let alone at working temperature. And in more than 40 years of driving I've never had a cat fail, nor do I know anyone who has, so I wouldn't worry about that too much. Linky to latest MOT Inspection Manual - and no, hybrids still don't have to be tested on emissions.

Although the RX300 and RX400h are the same body shape I'm not sure how similar their exhausts are but, someone on this forum had a custom stainless steel exhaust made for his RX300, cat back and guaranteed for life, for £395 all in.

Nah, is it 'eck. It's very handy to know the time as you're driving along, either because you have to be somewhere for an appointment or to see how long you've been in a traffic jam; and not listening to music as you drive is quite inconceivable to me - but I've never had an urgent need to know what date it is as I drive along my merry way 😁

Could be the neutral safety switch (or whatever its official title is). It's a physical switch interlock that prevents the car starting in anything other than P or N. If that switch is broken the systems may think that the car is in D or R.

I had my 2005 RX300 SE NAV for two years and didn't even know it had a calendar! It does beg the question as to why there's even a calendar in a car and what possible use it could be when we have them on our phones, computers, tablets and kitchen/study walls?

Try disconnecting the 12V battery for a few minutes to reset things (your windows and some other stuff may need to be initialised afterwards if you do).

Called them today and it's booked in for this Friday (12th) with a 12-noon arrival time and he reckoned it would take a couple of hours, so no real need for a courtesy car. If the weather's good I'll go for a walk and if not I'll take my book 😉

I don't think that will work unless it can be restitched with metallic thread. The way these things work is that inside the 'leather' outer pouch is an inner metallic mesh pouch. The keys go inside the inner pouch and it's this metallic mesh that forms a Faraday Cage and stops the signal from getting out. The slightest break in the continuity of that mesh will render it useless. They really aren't that big when you see them in the flesh.

On its own, with no other symptoms, I wouldn't think so. From reading other posts on these forums it seems that when the 12V battery is on its way out it causes lots of warning lights on the dash, random codes and other spurious stuff.

Not sure I'd agree with that but then again, maybe I'm just overly cautious. Whenever I buy a second-hand car I always change the cambelt (unless there's a record of previous owner doing it in the recent past) and also all fluids including coolant and ATF - only then can I rest happy. In my opinion it's not just 'moving miles' but also how long the engine spends idling. Because this is a hybrid if the previous owner has ever been parked up listening to the radio or whatever, the engine will have fired up to keep the traction battery from discharging too much. I do this myself - park up on a sea-front or Promenade somewhere and spend ages just enjoying the view, with the radio on, and I know that the engine fires up quite frequently. I also remember that someone on here recounted a story last year that a milkman had had a belt give up on him because he spent a lot of time out of the van with the engine idling while he delivered the milk to individual houses. The odometer showed some value (think it was about 70k) but the engine actually had a fair few thousand miles-worth more use because it spent almost as much time idling as it did moving. I know that I'm paranoid about it but to me, it's just not worth taking the risk and I'd rather do jobs like these too early rather than too late.