LenT

Many years ago (!) a friend with an old Land Rover used to park overnight in a north London side street, facing slightly downhill. Over the course of some months he had three nails imbedded in the near side front tyre. He just thought he was incredibly unlucky. Until one early morning approaching the front of the car he saw something glinting in front of the tyre. It was a nail carefully propped up against the tread. From then on, regular checks became routine. Fortunately he never discovered the culprit!

Apparently Brent it’s the most common cause of motorway accidents involving LHD trucks. Obviously your dashcam isn’t going to stop them changing lanes, but if you survive it the aftermath becomes a lot easier - especially if the evidence shows you were blameless. And of course if you’re a victim of such as the so-called ‘Cash for Crash’ scam, it not only exonerates you but also provides evidence for a prosecution. Incidentally, if you look at the Accord you can see the rubber marks from the impact of his front offside wheel as it was turned to the right and hit the rear wheel arch, spinning the car round! One word of caution, however. You have to remember that the camera is not JUST recording what OTHER drivers are doing...!

I’m not clear if you’ve already covered this point, but as you’re obviously getting tooled up to do your own ‘detailing’, I wonder if you’d considered applying a ceramic coating? It would certainly provide better bird poo protection than you’re possibly getting right now.

Well the original shots looked pretty clean and it can only get better! Like Lexus reds, the Accord really responded to deep, dramatic colours. My Prelude was probably the same red and it always scrubbed up pretty well. However, like most reds I suspect, it was rather vulnerable to sun-fade over the years. Which became a slight problem if any respraying was called for!

You should find that any good tyre retailer will be able to supply a replacement TPMS valve. You don’t need to get them from Lexus. Call a local company and all they need are the car details. When I had to replace one - as a result of a passing motorist trying to help to release a sticking valve cap and snapping the valve off! - I simply drove to a nearby tyre centre who fitted a replacement for £75 and coded it in to the system. I’d be inclined to try this route first. Hope this helps.

As it hasn’t been mentioned, I take it that no-one was fortunate enough to have these incidents captured on a dashcam. Having had them, front and rear, on my last two cars, I have found that they have more than paid for themselves. These kinds of unattended and damaging parking hits, where the culprit believes they’ve got away with it, I think are particularly satisfying when they discover they were caught in the act! I would urge every motorist to protect themselves with these devices. After all, they don’t only identify the guilty, they can also establish your innocence. The so-called ‘Cash for Crash’ scams are just one example.

If the link below works, this is an example of a safe, successful journey by an autonomous vehicle. But of course the more that occur, the greater the chances that one will not be so uneventful. https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/nissan-driverless-car-autonomous-vehicles-travel-milton-keynes-sunderland-394389 And of course driverless pods have been trundling around Milton Keynes for some years now. It may well be an age thing as I thought that years before COVID-19 was invented. So it’s probably just a factor of more drivers returning to driving!

Ah! But are you suggesting that a Tesla without a driver would have worse road manners than a Tesla WITH a driver?

Me too! I had an Accord for six years - and a Prelude for 15 before that - and would have ordered another the day after it was written off, except Honda had stopped selling it in the UK. As it happens, I’d had an MR2 for three years before the Prelude but knew nothing about Lexus. It just happened that the Lexus dealer was the first one I passed when I set aside a day to tour the usual suspects. And the one I bought proved to be the only one I tried! Turned out alright in the end, though. 🙂

Hello Ken. Fascinating to be taken through your car buying journey. No surprise to some of us that you decide to keep your Lexus and change your wife's car. 🙂 As it happens, the Suzuki is an excellent choice. Some years ago my wife had an early Vitara 4x4 which coincided with a very snowy winter and proved an outstanding performer during business trips around the North of England. On retiring she decided she would have the same again. But on visiting a Suzuki dealer she discovered that the latest version had grown substantially - and she doesn't like big cars. Fortunately standing next to it was a smaller offering called the SX4. As the memorably named Suzuki SX4 SZ5, it has served her reliably for the last 12 years and she has resisted all suggestions to change it for the latest version. These days I think this is a marque that deserves wider recognition. Mind you, much depends on the dealer network. The dealer we bought it from turned out to be rubbish at servicing it. And the dealer we found that has been providing excellent service for the last 11 years...closed down last year - a victim of slow Covid-19 sales!

Well that’s an outstanding result, Graeme. Worth the effort and almost certainly increased the property values around you. PS. My apologies, Graeme, for calling you Chris in my previous post. And further apologies for possibly confusing Chris!

I’m inclined to agree re drying blade. I noticed it when Chris mentioned it, but you know after going through the shampooing- possibly twice, one with the mitt - then the rinsing, there shouldn’t really be any grit left. Certainly the drying towel is the way to go, but even they are at their best when pulled across the paint surface. I hesitate to say this, but there is a possibility of getting a bit anal about the washing of a car! Of course if Chris goes the ceramic coating route then then that will provide a much more resilient surface than the original paint. Yes, weather looks good - just avoid bright sunshine if applying polishes. I’m sure you’ll be delighted with the results, Chris. PS - Love the buckets!

A run-flat would be a full size tyre/wheel so it would have to match the others to be used as a spare, because you can’t run different full size tyres on the same axle. So that presumes that the other three are also run-flats. I sure you’re probably well aware, ‘run-flat’ only means that the tyre can withstand short mileage at low speeds in order to get the tyre replaced or repaired. There’s still the possibility of damaging the rim. They tend to give a firmer ride due to the less flexible sidewalls. My apologies if you already knew all that! What you need, as already mentioned probably, is a spacesaver. They can be run on either axle irrespective of what the other tyre is. I’ve had occasion to use mine and it solved the immediate problem.

As I say, I haven’t used a tyre inflation kit and have no plans to do so. But perhaps this video will make things clearer. It features Richard Seymour, no less, who is - or possibly was - Product & Technical Specialist, Lexus UK. He is demonstrating the use of the tyre inflation kit. It clarifies the point that the tyre inflator is run off the power socket and injects the sealant through the valve.

Gets my vote. 🙂 Precisely why I’ve not accepted one when it came with the car. But sadly nothing like the one I had to replace. Six dollars! I wish! The whole of the visible portion of the valve was snapped off and the replacement with an equivalent unit was £75. Taking out the valve stem would make it impossible to inflate the tyre and keep it inflated while injecting the repair solution. In fact my manual (Page 434) also warns that using liquid sealants may make the TPMS unit inoperable! So why do they provide one instead of a tyre, I hear you ask!? It’s stated that these batteries may last between 5 and 10 years - which is quite a broad range. Changing the batteries would involve removing and breaking down the TPMS unit and that would not interest the average owner - like myself! As for your charging idea, well that sounds a bit like my self-winding watch movement. If it can be shown to be cheaper than occasionally replacing the whole unit...you may have a money spinner there.

I can see that you are an enthusiast, John, and speak from experience. And there’s obviously no reason why you can’t use Quadboss if you want to. But your original question was...why wasn’t Lexus using this or a similar product? As I mentioned earlier, my car has a spacesaver which I used because a helpful lad had snapped the valve off the tyre. Clearly no internal tyre solution would have solved that! Now as I understand it, you say that you can introduce Quadboss after you have discovered a puncture, so it’s a cure as well as a preventative. But surely that would also require Lexus to provide a valve removal tool and a means of reinflating the tyre, such as a pump or compressed air cylinder. So isn’t that going to make the process more complicated for the ordinary Lexus driver, rather than cleaner and simpler? It might be acceptable to the enthusiast but less so to the buyer of what’s marketed as a luxury brand. The rationale for Lexus - and other car makers - for going the inflatable injection route and ditching the tyre is generally given as weight and space saving. And I wouldn’t be surprised if cost came in somewhere. But if Quadboss and similar products could be packaged and delivered in the same way as the current kits provided, then presumably they could be sold to Lexus.

I had never heard of Quadboss but looking it up I see that it works in a very different way to the emergency injectable kits. Unless I am mistaken (always a possibility) it appears to be a preventative measure injected into the tyre, after removing the valve, and then re-inflating the tyre. So it coats the inside of the tyre ready to block any leak, being forced out of the hole by the tyre pressure. The emergency inflatable kits are only introduced after the hole has happened. They are claimed to both re-inflate the tyre and seal the leak. So my surmise is that Lexus - and indeed any car maker - would say that that was a tyre makers' problem, not the car makers'. Perhaps the ideal answer would be the introduction of the self-sealing tyre! My personal preference, as I am still capable of changing a wheel, is to have some sort of spare wheel - full size or spacesaver, it doesn't matter - rather than rely on an emergency injectable. It also occurs to me that if I was to use, say, Quadboss, would that affect the attitude of the tyre maker should there later be a fault with the tyre? And if Quadboss works by coating and sealing the inside of the tyre, what affect does it have on the expensive TPMS valve?

I think the answer is...yes! As I understand it, the injectable substance is a water-based latex foam. So presuming that the leak/puncture is small enough to be blocked by the sealant, it could be repaired by a tyre specialist. However it’s a messy and time consuming job to clean the latex out of the tyre, which is why many - if not most - won’t do it. I imagine the valve might also have to be replaced, having had latex squirted through it. Which is an additional cost if it involves a TPMS valve. If the problem is any serious gash or rip - especially in the sidewall - then these inflation kits are useless. I’m sure a spacesaver wheel is the best emergency option, but if there’s any chance that the driver was not able to change a wheel, then an inflation kit might be the only solution, so’s to speak.

I have had occasion to use my spacesaver and it simply involved removing the damaged wheel and fitting the spacesaver on. As it happened I had run-flats on but I preferred to use the emergency wheel. I don’t imagine that your model will be any different. And it’s a whole lot better than using the injectable gunk system!

Waiter! I’ll have a pint of whatever he’s having. 😀

Hello Frank. I applaud your choice but just wondered why you appear to be specific about a 2012 IS250? Is it a budget based choice? I ask because the third generation model was launched in Jan 2013 and was available with the highly regarded 2.5l V6 engine.

Me too! Some years ago we were out in my wife’s company car and she asked me to pull into a petrol station and directed me to a petrol pump. She went off to pay while I filled up. As we drove out I had a sudden question: Isn’t this a diesel? Fortunately there was an immediate downhill left turn which enabled me to coast into a retail car park. The AA guy I called out turned out to be someone I knew in the village. He said it happens all the time. He called out a specialist to empty the tank and refill with enough diesel to get back to the fuel station. He said “you’re the third call I’ve had for this this morning - and I’ve even done it myself!” Fortunately I think it’s supposed to be lot harder to do these days!

So you’re going back to Nietzsche now, are you?

If you have a Karcher then you can use the dispensing bottle to apply the shampoo and get a snow foam covering. Using that instead of - or before - a Wash Mitt I imagine is personal preference. As for the Wrapper, well I’m sure you clocked the two buckets outside the garage! I thought his Lexus looked very good. I used to do a lot of wallpapering in my youth, but that’s a lot more forgiving than film wrap! So not something I’d want to try myself. But I think he tinted the windows too. Traffic Police do carry tint test cards and I have seen windows being de-tinted as a result. Incidentally, quite a few folk have wrapping on the front spoilers to help fend off road debris. One reason why new car buyers have detailing done once the paint has really hardened.

Sounds like you were! Have you thought of moving?