McShmoopy

Hey guys, I was helping my friend out with a lift late last night as there were no taxis avaialble and during the large snowfall we got in Nottingham and I soon realised how awful summer tyres and our RWD vehicles are to tackle the snow. Managed to get stuck twice on hills (thankfully I had people come and push me twice!) so its something I definitely want to have for the colder winter months. I happen to have a set of spare 18" alloys I acquired so was hoping to get some good recommendations of a winter tyre setup. I know some people have suggested 16s and 17s are superior but given I already have these I figured if someone could provide some solid recommendations that would be brilliant.

Apologies mate been sick last few days, dropped you a PM EDIT: wouldn’t let me upload photos in private messages

Brill thatll be a facelift infotainment then, I'll dig it out for you tomorrow and drop you a PM

No problem I could part with the bottom section if needed as its spare, I take it your infotainment has a white screen when youre on the climate control section like this? Thatll indicate its facelift Infotainment

Congrats on bagging an IS350 she looks like a beaut! You'll need a facelift radio which I happen to have if you wanted to see if it works / buy it off me but if youre going through the effort to change that out I'd recommend getting an Android Head unit instead like a Teyes CC3, itll replace the screen section of the radio and modernise the car in general with wireless apple CarPlay as theres no guarantee a UK facelift radio has the same wiring necessarily til you compare them. If you can take a photo of the back of the radio and show how the interface looks (white or black for climate control) you can tell if its facelift infotainment or pre facelift

A fairly straight forward solution is an android head unit which supports SWC out of the box, with some easy splicing I've got everything wired up to accept and decline calls, Siri, and skip track in Apple CarPlay quite successfully. Same would be applicable to Android Auto

I contemplated this issue myself and tend to agree largely with what Linus says, if it aint broke dont fix it. That being said my car is on 155k miles roughly and because I do plan to keep it for a while I may give the oil catch can a go, you do get some aggressive cleaners in the US that can clean carbon build up when you have an issue but I may stock up on some cheap Mannol intake valve cleaner and put it in every few fill ups when the oil catch can goes in. No harm in it I suppose as well as changing the PCV valve! The frequent oil changes do make the biggest difference, the logic being the more often you change the fuel the less contaminants are in it therefore no need for things such as engine flush and oil additives, Im cheap and cheerful and keep them to a year irregardless of the miles I do

On the contrary they’ve been absolutely fine and look great (was dropping a car off at the garage with my brother driving my car)

This is a support video I sent out to XTRONS to get my climate control functions working, it shows you how to change the canbus type and the two different ones for our Lexus vehicles (Lexus LZ 205 for pre facelift and Lexus High Version 328 LZ for facelift)

Hi Don I myself have VLAND Headlights and Smoked HC Motion Tail lights providing me with sequential indicators and quite outstanding modern lights. They're on the pricey side but going used or waiting for a deal on eBay is a good shout.

Depending on who you got the head unit from it could be that the Canbus settings need to be changed to accommodate your specific vehicle (pre facelift or facelift), I had to do this with my XTRONS and even when I did some functionality of the AC wasnt fully working. I had to contact there support team for them to get it working (Front demist and pollen feature), these non TEYES ones arent the most refined so your mileage can vary. I'd advise getting dropping me a DM and I can go through stuff with you as I'm very familiar with alot of the Lexus android head unit options

I’d probably drop the price a little, I picked mine up for £100 from eBay USA including postage and customs after the currency conversion. Hopefully you get some interest though!!

Thats good insight Linus! Interestingly enough its a 2011 IS250 SE-L with the 18" wheels, I borrowed it while my car exhaust was out of commission off my mum and have to say it was an incredibly smooth journey overall. The mileage was similar to my own car so I just assumed its down to the softer suspension, truth be told the ECO Contacts were put on for fuel efficiency primarily not necessarily comfort so maybe swapping the tyres again could be a good shout. If I recall I think my bushing did show some cracking so I would consider replacing those, I have seen Ahmed use LCA bushings from an RCF quite successfully to counteract inner tyre wear, would they be a comfier ride I wonder! I'd consider taking you up on your offer of swapped suspension thank you! Where about are you based?

It should be plug and play but I struggled to help a fellow member get it working. Apparently plugging in the OBD cable helps with reverse detection , in the end we just ran a new reverse camera instead

Hi everyone I was wanting to get some ideas and thoughts on how to improve the ride quality of my IS250, being an f sport the ride was quite firm but this was majorly improved with my continental eco contact tyres, I recently have tried out a SE-L 250 and the ride quality was vastly superior, is it worth trying to get a hold of stock IS250 suspension used or getting after market coilovers, I have heard the springs used in the f sport suspension are very stiff so could changing those make a difference?

There is a place in Leeds that apparently do a bespoke stainless steel full exhaust fitted for £700 when I contacted then might be worth looking into them! https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174152384512?hash=item288c4a8000:g:2DUAAOSwvR5Z6RlY&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA8F9cQ56TjQbo10HEckN565mU6CvGAf9x4oul40ct3kscIh0J4rLaR5QfktkyG%2F2JLuNB4Z5MEzlUkLyKgMxYQnhsN%2BUV6NaDJTXkUV1XtFHyS5CER8Hty6049MMP9yL0KAw4H4SeDj6%2FYzCq368w2e50SNg4Nwey5uMNy89Ycjr1fVGkYZgkViD0f245op9%2FE6DrwdqTByujDgQkuxzDCCKMPJc0tz%2BaKyl3guqDWQc97l2dkqztUchp08A61GSB8TZglSVkootPyE6sd%2B5wirNUY5kpdTUvT3b8g%2FsgJ4xWwSxvFcEIiyKzlHl1LshKJQ%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR5Cgo__eYg

fingers crossed it turns out well! Keep us posted mate

Exact same thing happened to me, when you replace the exhaust back boxes the mid pipe if far enough along tend to go aswell. I ended up getting this and it turned out to be a perfect fit and replacement, it has a higher purity in the metals and the car has been running beautifully smooth since I had this fitted. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/234890664854

EDIT: Found a post on the web and someone else had the same issue, turns out I've installed the motor incorrectly and you have to clock it back before installation. Will give this another crack tomorrow or have a garage do it

Hi Guys A while back I swapped out the rear driver side door after a collision but I never got around to changing the window motor as for some odd reason Lexus changed the pre facelift and facelifted window motors. I managed to tackle this and get it all wired up however I've noticed an odd thing where if I continue to hold the window close button it decides to just start opening it again, I feel as though maybe it needs calibrating but wanted to see if any of you guys know about this? IMG_3376.MOV

I did create a rough wiring diagram for the XTRONS head unit which I'll post down below as well as the one XTRON have provided, yeah the USB cable was a no go for me so I ended up buying an aftermarket toyota retention cable from eBay.

Did you buy the additional fibre optic unit with your XTRONS head unit? You will need that to make the head unit work with a Navi vehicle

That'll explain it then! Thanks for that John thats put my mind at ease haha

That seems like better names than what I came with, thanks for sharing the part numbers and advising mate! By slacken do you mean disengaging the parking brake? I left it on while taking off the disc so I imagine I didnt EDIT: Would this be anything to be concerned about and should I avoid driving the car til I get the hold down pins replaced?

Hi everyone, I've changed up my brake discs and pads and re-greased my calliper pins however with the old seized up brake pads I manage to get them off using the M8 Bolts. Upon yanking them off I noticed that two springs , 2 clips faces came flying out and the handbrake shoes seemed to be just loosely hanging behind the rotors. From what I can tell there seems to be some riveted long clip and the clip face goes over it but for the life of me I was unable to get them back on. Getting the brake disc on as a result was a nightmare as I had to reshuffle the position of the loose hanging shoes for both the left and right rear brakes. I just wanted to know is this a common issue and is this a major safety issue? I'm thinking to take the car to the garage to get these parking shoes looked at and fitted properly but don't know if this warrants a replacement. I've stuck two photos in of how it's looking and how it should look when I've pressed it in. One of the riveted long clips has been pushed back somewhere into the void but I've retained all the other bits for this in a box. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!