Superduner

So far this is only a theory - I haven't had the chance to test it out, and may only be valid for my car. The rubber cover on the tailgate is badly deteriorated and I cannot open the gate "by hand". The rubber is completely solid. I've ordered a replacement rubber, which should be here by the end of the week. Judging by the number of similar rubber parts on EBay, it's not at all uncommon. I'm wondering if the switch under the rubber is slightly contacting all the time due to the distorted cover and causing a parasitic draw. Now I'll stand by to be shot down in flames......

Steve Fletcher (he from "The Repair Shop") has a shop somewhere in Sussex, I think. At least you won't have to go through the rigmarole of the tv programme. Unless you want to.

A good test (on an RX400H, at least) is to put a voltmeter across the battery when the key is in the off position and then turn the key to acc and read the power socket voltmeter. The difference on mine is 12.6 to 12.2. I'm assuming that it's because in acc mode there is a lot of stuff going on to prepare the engine/system for starting. Remember that on a hybrid, a lot of the bits that are belt driven on a normal car are electrical on a hybrid. I think that includes power brakes. a/c and power steering. Of far greater importance is the power drain when the key is off. 50mA appears to be acceptable, although mine is way less than that, at least on a spot check.

Yes, I like it. I'm just fiddling with the settings to get it to do what I want. There are several YouTube videos on how to set it up.

I've ordered a low current amp clamp to avoid the issue of waking up modules when disconnecting the earth lead (and yes, I know that they are not terribly accurate). Hopefully it will let me let the car go into sleep mode as well before testing I'm suspecting that the current draw rises dramatically when the key is put to acc, presumably because systems go live waiting for the actual "start". I can't find any info online about exactly what extra load is placed on the battery in this state. The RX400H would be a terrible car for a police stakeout where they sit for hours with the radio on, eating doughnuts. Villains emerge, Plod tries to start car for the dramatic chase...and nothing. Still, better than the old Rover 3500s where the hydraulic valves couldn't catch up to the pistons from rest until the pressure built up. My dad had that happen a long time ago.

Fyi: Lexus RX 400h Questions - starter battery not holding charge - CarGurus It's obviously a very well known issue, and one which apparently is not possible to fully fix.

I've just put a multi meter in line with the disconnected earth cable and the current draw when the car is completely off is 1.2mA. That's with the Vline disconnected, and the OIBD dongle out. The reading does not alter much, if any, when they are both connected. As I understand it, they will both require a small amount of constant current to "remember stuff", along with the Lexus audio system and security system also taking a bit of power even when the audio is off. The Ctek comfort lead uses 1.7/2.5 mA (it alters with the flashing signal light). So, does that mean that I'm overthinking this and all is ok and normal?

Can I ask how you do that? I'd love to do it to mine! Edited to say I found Car Launcher AG on Google Play. Now to try it.

The OBD Link dongle is specced to draw 2mA, but in my experience it is not good at "waking up" ready to pair with the car. That that means that I have to go through the whole pairing thing again to make it work with Hybrid Assistant. My cheapy dongle is much better at "remembering" but as yet I don't know the current draw.

Exactly. As I later found out. I thought, wrongly, that if the Vline wasn't connected it would revert to normal mode. So I'm going to have to do without the satnav until I've figured out if it is the Vline causing the drain. According to Vline: "We have different sleep modes for the VLine, the initial sleep mode is around 0.3 Amps and is for around 10 minutes, then goes down to 0.1 Amps, then over the next 24 hours it goes down more until the end of the 24 hours where it completely turns off." I've had a few minor issues with the Vline, mainly bluetooth, and they have already offered to replace it, so I'll reassess after the weekend. Part of that reassessment will be to put a multi meter on the battery earth to actually measure current drain. I couldn't do that before as a mate had my good Klein meter.

As I've posted elsewhere, I've been having battery drain issues for the last few weeks on the "little" battery. I suspected the 1 year old Toyota battery was faulty so changed it for a new Bosch. It drained from 12.8V on the car (after Ctek charging) to 12.1 overnight. I put in a power plug voltage meter and checked that against a proper multimeter (pretty much spot on). Today on a run the meter was reading 14.5v (so it was charging), whereas yesterday it was 14v. When the engine was turned off it quickly went down to 12.5, and after a couple of hours down to 12.2. So, today I disconnected anything not original Lexus. OBD dongle, Ctek comfort lead and the Vline audio system. Now I don't have any display for the Lexus satnav, menu and dest. or reversing camera except a black screen with vertical yellow strips. Audio, climate and info are ok. This is all, I guess, something to do with taking out the Vline. I'm obviously destined to spend some time online with Vline support if that is something to do with the battery drain (and to be fair they have already offered to change the unit for an unrelated bluetooth issue), but why the display issue with nothing connected? Something (or things) strange is going on, but what? There are no error messages, and the car is running fine.

I'm investigating at the moment if the Vline is draining my battery overnight. It's supposed to turn off completely after an hour or so (according to their help desk), but it's the only non-Lexus system on my car - and my new battery is definitely draining faster than it should.

We have built in Tom Tom in our Captur, and Sygic is far more up to date in terms of mapping. The Tom Tom in the Captur I think is a cut down (special for Renault maybe)version as we don't have the average speed feature (whereas my stand alone, data connected Tom Tom does).

Try Sygic as a navigation app. I find it really works well and has a lot of low cost add ons that keep you up to date with maps and speed traps

See if there is a Vline system for your car Grom Audio UK makes them. Could be just what you are looking for.

If you look on YouTube, there are several videos covering the work. It's more fiddly than difficult, by the look of it (I've yet to have to do it)

If you mean the HID dipped beam, it means dropping the front bumper, inner wing liner and removing the whole headlight assembly. The main beam is easy!

I have 2. An OBDLINK LX and a cheapo one from Amazon: TONWON OBD2 Scanner OBDII Bluetooth Scan Tool Car Fault Code Reader for iOS Android: Amazon.co.uk: Car & Motorbike I use the Tonwon with Hybrid Assistant and it seems to do everything the OBDLink does and stays connected much, much better. I was finding that the OBDLink needed to be re-paired at almost every startup. I have a Vline in my RX and was spending an awful lot of time trying to iron out the kinks in getting them to talk to each other. A word of warning. If you use Torque as a monitoring app, it hogs the bluetooth connection (even when you think it's not running) and makes using any other diagnostic app almost impossible

I don't know anything about the NX300H, but an hours work on the inside of my RX400H with the doors open is enough to seriously deplete the "little" battery. sometimes to the point of it not starting. I've just fitted a new Bosch battery, fully charged, and I'm going to take readings every day to see how fast it drops voltage while in the car. So far, after 4 hours, it's reading 12.4v

Mine are the normal CrossClimate (not +) My local dealer didn't give me any option for the others, but it is a small country garage (in France)

All of the above +1 for them on my RX400H. Way, way quieter, and the car just seems a lot more "surefooted", particularly in the wet. I've not noticed any more economy though, as yet.

Can anyone tell me the part numbers of the exhaust hangers on a 2007 RX400H (or a link to find them online)? The net tells me there may be 3 different ones, all looking very similar but with different part numbers. I'm quite a way from any Lexus dealers where I live in France so they will have to be sent mail order (from the UK?) I'm hoping new hangers will stop a slight "thrumming" I have when pulling away loaded or uphill. Having looked underneath this morning we moved a heat shield slightly, which helped, but it was only when I got home it occurred to me that new hangers might help as well.

Ok, so a friend of a friend runs a small workshop out in the countryside and checked my dipped beams on a proper alignment gizmo. It seems I wasn't too far out except one dip beam was a bit high. The good news is that once the dips were ok (and the dips are the only ones checked for alignment in France), the new HID main beams were pretty much spot on. If only the curfew in France would let me go out and check them. (I'm not keen enough to get up a 6am to do it!)

Unfortunately not. I've adjusted the low beams to just below horizontal as they should be, and really just put up with what the high beams end up at - which in my case with the new HIDs is not too bad. Laterally, as the low beam top is so flat you can tweak the high beams side to side as much as you like without really affecting the dipped beams.