Herbie

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.

It doesn't really matter what we think, what we feel, or what we want our tyre pressures to be - if they aren't what the manual states they should be and you're in an accident, your insurance may use it as a way of getting out of their responsibilities. I think someone on these forums posted as much about a year ago. He cited the case of a friend of his who was running a different pressure all round from what the manual stated and he said that the insurance either lowered the payout or refused to pay out altogether. I've seen all sorts of reasons for messing about with tyre pressure (harsher ride/softer ride/better mpg etc) but it's one thing I just won't mess with - my pressures are what it says in the manual/on the pillar.

Yes, cambelt is 100k miles or 10 years, whichever comes soonest. Most people replace the water pump at the same time because it's located in the same place. As an example, say the cost of changing the belt comes to £350, changing the pump at the same time might add £50 to the job. However, if you don't do it at the same time, 90% of the work done to change the belt will need to be done again to get to the pump so you'll end up with another £300 bill. Note that if you get Lexus to change the belt then that's literally all they do. They do not change the belt idlers/tensioners at the same time, even though it's best practice to do so, unless you pay extra for that. If you're good with the spanners and wanted to do the job yourself you can buy cambelt kits that include the idlers/tensioners and everything you need, but like I said, when Lexus give you a price to replace the cambelt, that's all they do. Most people change spark plugs on a mileage basis rather than time and I would do them at whatever mileage your owner's manual says they should be done.

First of all, buy yourself a multimeter. Cheap ones can be had for a tenner or less and even good ones can be less than £30. Once you have it you can use it for all manner of things both car and household, so it's a very worthwhile investment. Using said multimeter, turn the dial to the 20VDC range, connect the black probe/croc-clip to any handy earth point and then use the red probe to touch the metal contacts on the tops of the fuses in turn, first with IGN OFF then with IGN ON. If you do indeed find that all circuits in that fuse box are energised even with the ignition off, you'll need to find a different fuse box and go through the process until you find a suitable fuse. I think the cigar lighter is usually switched by the ignition but may be wrong.

I have an RX450h rather than a GS so I don't know about the specifics of your car but... 1. I'd be very surprised if the lights aren't automatic. Just make sure the stalk is in the 'Auto' position and forget about it. You say that you have a small green display light in the format of two green sidelights - my car has the same but just one green sidelight format. This is the only indication you get for normal side/tail/headlights operation. Push the stalk away from you to switch on the high-beam lights and you'll get a blue indicator light in the instrument binnacle; pull it back towards you and the high-beam lights are extinguished, as is the blue indicator. 2. I have both front and back parking sensors and they aren't individually switchable - all parking sensors are either on or off. When on, there is a small green indicator light illuminated in the instrument binnacle to tell me they are on. I never switch them off - seeing a tiny green light on all the time is no hardship and you soon become oblivious to it. It doesn't distract in any way at all. 3. This topic has been covered in these forums before but I can't remember the topic title to search for it. However, ALL vehicles are like this and it's nothing at all to worry about. It is illegal for a vehicle speedometer to read lower than the actual speed that the car is travelling at, even by just 1mph, so all manufacturers err on the side of caution and make their speedos read high. It's not a fault, it's designed this way and you'll find an explanation here as to why it's like this. EDIT: If I've got the wrong end of the stick (or stalk 😁) regarding your lights, could you upload a photo showing what you mean?

Cheers Andrew.

Thanks Peter and Andrew - but I don't think it's that. I usually turn the climate control off when parked up and although the weather has started to get generally cooler, it's still warm enough to have the windows open when sat there people-watching, so that's what we've been doing - CC off and windows open.

Sometimes we'll park up on a Promenade or sea front somewhere and just watch the world go by. We always have the radio on or music playing from some other source so I have the transmission in 'P' and the car in the 'READY' state, so that the ICE will fire up when necessary to stop the traction battery from discharging too much. Usually the charge indicator will go down steadily over time until it reaches 2 or 3 bars and they also change from blue to purple, and it's usually at this point that the ICE kicks in and brings the charge back up to 3 or 4 blue bars. Recently though, the ICE has been firing up far earlier than normal - the photo below shows how many blue bars were visible when the ICE has kicked in over the last two or three days. What do you think - just an anomaly or something I should worry about? On Monday I'll be ringing the dealership to book the car in for its 50k/5-year service so I'll mention this to them (unless the general consensus is that it's nothing to fuss about).