wookee

Hey Jason, To be clear - is it inverter coolant or engine coolant that you're losing? I'm assuming engine, since you mention the head gasket. Re the MPG drop, I'm guessing that this started around the same as the coolant drop? On the premise it could be coincidental, have you inspected / replaced your spark plugs and coils lately? I think sparks are due every 60k, so they would have been due on yours at 240k. When I replaced mine at 120k, I found oil in the wells of some of the plugs. After cleaning out and replacing with new Denso plugs, my MPG went back up above 50. A few of the plugs I replaced were not torqued down to spec (pretty loose), so perhaps that's how the oil got in there. Tube seals appeared fine otherwise, and tips looked healthy. Hey ho. Hope you figure it out! PS. Thanks for all your excellent write ups. A huge help! Hoping to do my transmission fluid this weekend.

👍 That's a good shout

Sorry, I should've mentioned this. The car was serviced at Lexus Croydon about a month ago, and they reported 6mm pad left all around (I did wonder if it was simply the wear indicator impacting). So I think we can rule this out. Yeah exactly - reminds me of the Northern line trains pulling in to the station at Bank! I have already emailed Lexus Croydon about this and several other issues. Waited 5 days for a reply, and then they completed skipped over this issue entire. Honestly, getting a bit fed up with them. What's the point in the extended warranty if they just wriggle out of everything. I'm going to get the wheel off and see if it's something simply like trapped gravel (which seems unlikely, since it only happens in reverse). I am planning to do a full brake job and caliper refurb at some point in the near future, but just want to squeeze a bit more life out of the current pads if possible. Thanks all 🙏

This started happening to me about a week or 2 ago, noticeable when I'm reversing into the parking bay in my apartment building. To be clear, I'm talking about the high pitched sounds, not the lower groaning sounds that happen when turning the wheel at a standstill with the brakes applied (which I'm told is normal(?). It seems to happen more when turning rather than in a straight line. Sound appears to be coming from the back-left wheel area. Here's a video (windows down in order to hear it properly) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Tsfbk4zMn-sxIMmNIJchB1E9hkJBa7Ng/view?usp=sharing I did see this other thread: ... but this is the opposite of this problem. Mine happens when the brakes are off, not on. And in reverse only. Anyone else encountered this before?

Thanks for the replies. That's really good to hear! So I did notice that the plug in cylinder 1 (no oil) took a lot more force to undo than cylinder 4 (the one with the most oil). So either the lubricating effect of the oil had helped it come loose over 60k miles, or the engineer at Lexus Stockport (who did the last change) did not torque it down to spec (25nm according to repair manual and Denso catalogue). I find it hard to believe that they would be that sloppy. But who knows. I had a look in the repair manual and spotted something else a bit surprising. While there definitely are rubber gaskets at the top of the spark plug tubes, it seems there is no gasket at the bottom of the tube. Instead, you're supposed to apply a ring of "Toyota Genuine Adhesive 1324, Three Bond 1324 or equivalent" around the outside and then tap them in to the hole with a hammer until they protrude out by exactly 112mm (!). So appears to be in contrast to many cars that include the gaskets for the tubes and the valve cover as part of a set, often all attached as one piece. Here's one for a Vauxhall Astra: So... is it possible the adhesive has failed? I can't see replacing that being a particularly fun job. The spark plug tubes also don't seem to be replaceable (can't see a part number on the catalogue for them) so if you damage it, you might have replace the entire cylinder assembly = ££££. The gaskets at the top are dead easy to replace and cheap, so I could do that anyway. But the tops of the tubes all looked clean and dry, so that seems unlikely to be the source. Thinking I'll probably inspect again in 6 months and see what it looks like. If anyone else is changing their spark plugs, I'd be very interested to see if you have the same issue too.

I undertook a DIY spark plug change on my IS300h (122k) a couple weekends ago. Access to each cylinder is dead easy, so if you're a confident DIY'er and you have a decent torque wrench, I'd definitely give this ago. Lexus will charge you ~£300 for the same job. The first plug I pulled out looked fine (cylinder 1, closest to front bumper): There was a bit of carbon build up on the threads, a dry ashy build up around the tips, and a bit of discolouration at the bottom of the ceramic insulation. But I understand this is normal (...?). Otherwise they were dry and healthy-looking, typical for 60k. Cylinders 2, 3 and 4 though.... ... all had a fair amount of oil around the threads, gasket and on the hex nut. Looking in the spark plug wells, I could also see some carbon build up and spots of oil: Ignition coil plug rubber boots were also quite discoloured, so clearly they have been soaking up oil: Given the amounts of oil here were fairly low, I decided to continue on with the job and fit the new plugs. Used an extension and clean microfibre cloth to clean up the wells as best I could. The only other quirk I found was that Lexus Stockport had installed FK20HBR11 instead of the FK20HBR8 factory spec. Having said that, the Denso catalogue suggests these are fine to use in an IS300h. And actually, after speaking to a very helpful Denso rep, I had opted to fit the newer IKBH20TT twin tip plugs, which supposedly outperform the originals, whilst still operating within the same temperature spec. They were also half the price (£27 from Ambush Parts), so this seemed a no-brainer. IKBH20TT looked virtually identical to FK20HBR11, so perhaps they had simply been re-badged. IDK. In any case, I've been running them for several weeks now and they seem great. Seem to be getting a few more MPG now. Denso recommend installing the plugs dry - so I doubt very much this was Lexus lubricating the threads. Googling around the problem suggests this is a spark plug well / valve cover gasket leak. Since the car is under extended warranty, I put all this to Lexus Croydon. Their response was that this is normal. So my question for everyone - is it ok for engine oil to leak in to the spark plug wells? Surely not.

So I have quite a few updates on this that may be of interest to others with this rust issue. I took the matter up with Lexus Croydon. They asked me to bring the car in for inspection. Paint depth readings where taken, although strangely none from inside the engine bay. The matter was then referred to Lexus UK. Their response was simply that the 12 year anti-corrosion warranty only applies to body panels, and not the engine bay. So that was a bit of a dead end. So I bit the bullet and tried to tackle the issue myself. Since the car is in daily use, this has proved quite tricky. Once the air filter box and the inverter coolant pump mount were removed, I was able to fully assess the damage. Annoyingly, the rust was more extensive than it first seemed. I was able to grind out most of it with a cordless drill and wire brush. I then used Bilt Hamber Deox Gel to attack what was left. After 24 hours, it looked like this: After two rounds of Deox, lots of cleaning and degreasing, there was still some small pitted areas of rust remaining. So I decided to use a rust converter to be on the safe side. I went with Loctite Rust Remedy 7503. Initially this seemed to work quite well. I then left it for 4-5 days. This weekend my plan was to repaint the area and get the job done. Once again I pulled the airbox out, and I was shocked to see that the rust was already starting to return under the rust converter! Unbelievable. Suffice to say the Loctite is going in the bin. So... more stripping, sanding, grinding, degreasing. I didn't have time to get the paint on, so I decided to apply a different rust converter - Bilt Hamber Hydrate 80. Fingers crossed this one actually works. I'll hopefully get the primer on tomorrow. Once I've got the job completed, I'll post some photos as a follow up.

This is my 2014 IS300h (122k miles): It's hard to see from the picture, but there's actually a pinhole spot that appears to have gone all the way through. There's basically no metal left on the left side of the bolt. I haven't taken the arch liner off yet to get a look underneath, but I might try that tomorrow. To confirm, I've never jet washed the engine bay or anything silly like that, but I can't speak for the previous owner. I also live in London. Before that it lived in Cheshire. Car has full Lexus service history. Needless to say, I'm a bit concerned. I did point it out to Lexus Croydon when I dropped it off for a service last week, and asked them to investigate. Heard nothing back. Going to chase on Monday. Has anyone had any positive results on this with Lexus? And if so, was it on the basis of the factory warranty, extended warranty, or the 12 year corrosion warranty? Incidentally, the strut mounts aren't looking too good either: (passenger side is much the same)

A few updates worth sharing on this. Several other dealers as well as Lexus UK on Twitter confirm that Essential Care Servicing has indeed been discontinued. It seems there is some sort of replacement offering on the way, to be announced on June 1st. Most reps I spoke to were pretty tight-lipped about what exactly that will be. But what I did get out of them was the new offering would be the same price and spec as the "full-fat" service, but with some sort of added benefits for owners of older vehicles. Hopefully more than a posh coffee and a valet. The good news is I had multiple dealers offer to do an Essential Care Service for me at the current prices before June 1st. Better still, I managed to lock the current Essential Care Service prices in for the next couple years on a plan, saving ~£200. Because of this, I also went for the Extended Warranty (I checked - ECS won't invalidate the warranty). Re: Essential Care vs Manufacturer Servicing - If you compare the checklist of items, there really isn't much difference. One notable exception are spark plugs at 120k. I'm happy to fit them myself (looks dead easy on the IS300h), so that suits me just fine. Will probably be doing brakes and rotors too in the coming weeks. So all in all, I'm pretty happy. Your mileage may vary, but it's definitely worth shopping around a bit if your service is due any time soon.

Yesterday I tried to book my IS300h (122k miles) in for a major Essential Care Service with Lexus Twickenham, only to be informed that Essential Care Servicing has been discontinued as of May 1st. Spoke to Lexus Hatfield, and they confirmed it has been discontinued nationwide. The option seems to have also been removed from the "Book a service" tool on lexus.co.uk. Any mention of Essential Care Servicing has also been dropped from https://www.lexus.co.uk/owners/servicing-and-maintenance/lexus-essential-care/. However other Essential Care repair items (brakes, shocks) remain on offer it seems. Most of the franchisee websites still mention ECS (eg, RRG Group, Currie Motors etc). I had a brief exchange with Lexus UK on Twitter, and they said that Essential Care was still running, but they promised to look into the servicing further and get back to me. So, has anyone else come across this? If ECS really is gone, that potentially means much higher servicing costs to keep your full Lexus service history. I was also planning to take out the Extended Warranty, but since this requires main dealer servicing, I'm not sure this makes sense financially any more. It also raises the question of what the recommended servicing schedule should be for older >100k cars? Is it still 10k / 1yr? Do we just do intermediates now? Or start over on the 20k, 40k, 60k etc cycle? So I'm thinking my alternative plan would be to take it to Toyotec (Redhill) for servicing and then maybe pay for the Hybrid Health Check separately (£59?) at Lexus Twickenham to try and keep the Hybrid battery under warranty at least. Possibly look into a 3rd party warranty. Has anyone else come across this yet?