D Johnson

Awesome, thanks so much.  That’s going to save me a pretty penny since I am eyeing up a full set of all-weather tyres after watching Corpjones’ video in the other thread.  Also, re off topic thread, sorry to make work for you, I shan’t do it again!  

Thank you, IS300FSPORT, at least I don’t need to worry that something is amiss and causing inner tyre wear.  My tyres are all the same size btw.  

Corpjones, forgive me for going off on a tangent on your thread but since you have posted photos of your Turanzas this seems a good time for me to ask the question I have been pondering lately which is: the inner sections of both my rear Turanzas are now virtually bald.  This is from the outer edge (wall) to the first longitudinal tread section.  I am somewhat miffed because I had asked my Lexus dealer about rotating the tyres and was more or less laughed out of the workshop.  Now I am faced with major expense when this might have been avoided for the sake of half an hour’s work… Also, does anyone know if there is any significance to this type of tyre wear in terms of what has caused it?  Also, are they illegal or am I within the “75% of the tread” allowance.   Many thanks.  

Marianne 

On 1/15/2024 at 1:31 PM, Cotswold Pete said:

Tyres at 5 years old on a car will suffer thsi problem.  I have seen spares that are 10 years old and never used, but the rubber harderns and cracks as soon as you put a load on them.

I have MB E350 and the Michelin Primacy are an excellent choice, very quite, and seem to wear well.  I am running 17inch rims, with the right balance between pot-hole handling and general road handling.

21 hours ago, wolverball01 said:

Hi folks,

 

I hope someone can give me some help on this one.  I went out this afternoon and tried to start the car and I got a message 'Hybrid not working, move gear to P' I did this a number of times but the car wouldn't start. I think the starter battery is dead.  I disconnected it in the boot.

Can anyone tell me, is there a specific 12 v battery I need to replace it or will any do?  I know there is a temperature sensor in the Panasonic battery, what do I do with that?  Would it be better to buy a charging kit until I can get to a Lexus dealership?

Any help would be warmly appreciated.  Typical something like this happening on a Saturday evening when everywhere is closed. 

 

This is quite long but there is a lot of good info re the 12v battery: 

I was considering giving the £39 glasses a try only to discover several articles which state that there is no scientific proof that night glasses work and that they can be counter productive, eg: https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/accessories-tyres/103379/what-are-night-driving-glasses-and-do-they-work?amp

On 1/29/2023 at 10:39 PM, Hillie said:

I swear by these lenses that your optician should be able to source,  and most importantly they can be made for most prescriptions and existing frames.  Hoya Vision Enroute Pro,  speciality Driving Glasses. 

Not a cheap option but they are very effective with good reviews. Like others here the headlight glare at night is a problem  and espeically in wet weather where the effect of glare is magnified.

https://www.hoyavision.com/uk/vision-products/speciality-lenses/enroute/

 

 

Those Hoyas look amazing, I am definitely in the market for some night vision glasses and since my current specs are Essilor varilux xtractives, have been considering their Road Pilot range (available in single vision and varifocals etc): https://ecp.essilor-pro.com/gb/lenses/single-vision/essilor-roadpilot.  

Shall have a look at the Hoyas though, wondering if anyone has experience of both in order to compare?  These get so pricey when you add in the transitions which I cannot do without - probably talking upwards of £600 with the night vision.  

4 minutes ago, LenT said:

My apologies…that hadn’t occurred to me!

And my thanks to Marianne for doing what I was still working out how to do!

It’s only natural one might assume the venn diagram of Lexus owners and Telegraph readers is a single circle 🤣

3 minutes ago, LenT said:

My apologies…that hadn’t occurred to me!

And my thanks to Marianne for doing what I was still working out how to do!

Lol, have to say I did it very badly Len but you get what you pay for here 😂

https://youtu.be/OZoAOja5qcw

He got off extremely lightly but maybe this is all of a piece with the something for nothing, wealth-hating, everyone must win a prize, communist zeitgeist!  “How dare you own a £60k Lexus when all I have is a Nissan Micra…”

A more realistic punishment might have been £5000 compensation, large-ish fine and a few hundred hours hard labour, sorry, I meant to say community service.   

27 minutes ago, b4u2 said:

@LenT

It seems like I need to pay to read that article. 

unless available on another website. 

On 1/25/2023 at 11:37 AM, Notamech said:

I can second this. Customer service is good at LV in the sense that they answer the phone quick not leaving you on hold too long. I haven't had any claims experience. Negative reviews on trustpilot indicate they're just as bad as most others when it comes to claims. 

 

I feel like such a massive difference probaby is because for 300 you would be insured on your new car only until the expiry of your existing car policy vs 12 months on the quotes you found online. 

Sorry that I did not make this clearer, that is a like for like comparison in terms of time.  I am honestly not that thick that I couldn’t work that out 😂.   The £300 is what my renewal cost me after the interim period had expired.  Btw for info, the most expensive quote I received was from Adrian Flux.  

2 hours ago, Mr_Groundhog said:

I thought I'd ask about insurance: Which insurance do you use + are you happy? This is my 1st year with my IS300h and compared with my previous Civic the price I guess will be higher but I don't want to pay more than I need...

I am with Privilege insurance atm and they've been all right but I had a non-fault claim back in the summer. Now it's been five months plus, and they still haven't resolved it!

My fear is that as an "unresolved claim" it may affect my renewal price in the spring. Apparently the guy who hit me is lying (about who's at fault) and that's delaying it, but at the same time... it cannot go on indefinitely, can it?

(Was with Churchill in the past and they were a bit awckward but I know they belong to the same parent company)

When I bought my IS sixteen months’ ago I received many ludicrously high quotes (over £700 with many years’ ncd.) I found the cheapest option was to carry on with my insurer on my previous car policy which was Hastings.   They were offering  c £300.  I always shop around for quotes at renewal time but (one of the) Hastings companies is usually very competitive.  I cannot speak to claims processing issues (touch wood) as have not had a claim for a very long time.  

5 hours ago, Notamech said:

Overall quite a disappointing experience

That’s got to be the understatement of the year…. 😂  

2 minutes ago, D Johnson said:

So an update on my problem as there has been a development.  After recharging the battery last Thursday evening ready for four days of commuting (60 miles round trip) there were no problems at all.  The car then sat outside for two days and (Tues, Weds) and then today I went to start it to go shopping but nothing doing apart from the red message: hybrid system stopped, shift to P.  It took two attempts to start with my trick of press and hold the start button for 15 seconds whilst pressing hard on the footbrake https://www.lexunx.com/if_the_hybrid_system_will_not_start-111.html  See: “starting the vehicle in an emergency” section. 

This happened several times during my various stopping and starting shopping trip.  I realised I was going to have to spend another £100 and buy a portable jump starter pack.  I decided on the NOCO GB40 and whilst I was at Halfords completing my purchase I asked them to test the battery and this is what they found: 

So that picture has not uploaded with sufficient quality but the ratings were:

Volts 10.74

Measured 41 A 

Rating 325 A 

Unfortunately, this being the busiest time of the year in my industry, I shall not be able to visit my dealer until after everything dies down in the new year.  What are the battery’s chances of doing another 3k miles before it is replaced? (With my trusty little friend NOCO).  

On 12/8/2022 at 6:18 PM, D Johnson said:

I am having an issue which may (or may not) be battery related, opinions differ at my dealer.  My IS is a similar age to yours.  About six weeks ago the car would not start and displayed the red warning message “hybrid system stopped.  Shift to P.”  I could not shift to P as I was already in P.  I eventually managed to start it and wrote it off as some sort of sensor malfunction, but unfortunately this was not the end of it.  The next morning I was late for work because the car again refused to start but this time nothing I tried seemed to work and I had to start scouring the Lexus forums for help.  I eventually started the car by pressing and holding the start button for 15 seconds.  I contacted my dealer and the message from the workshop was that it sounded like the 12v battery was flat.  They suggested I call roadside assistance so that they could establish the fault.  This was likely because I live 40 miles away and work long hours so could not just drop in to the dealer.  Given that I could now start the car with my trick, I thought breakdown would not come out to me since I was not broken down.  Long story short, I did some more research and decided it was worth buying a CTEK MXS5 charger and duly recond and charged the battery.  I did not buy a battery tester but I now think I shall because after everything being fine for a week or two things have started to happen again with the red warning message.  From what I can gather, the 12v battery has no alternator and is charged from the traction battery which takes approx one hour of running… 

My question is: if the 12v battery is never fully charging because my commute is 40 minutes each way, will this cause the battery to eventually fail, hence my current problems.  It seems this is something of a known issue on these and the Prius going back many years.  Does anyone know a workaround or should I just accept charging the battery on a regular basis?  

Also Bounce75, what symptoms were you getting as the battery was discharging?  

So an update on my problem as there has been a development.  After recharging the Battery last Thursday evening ready for four days of commuting (60 miles round trip) there were no problems at all.  The car then sat outside for two days and (Tues, Weds) and then today I went to start it to go shopping but nothing doing apart from the red message: hybrid system stopped, shift to P.  It took two attempts to start with my trick of press and hold the start button for 15 seconds whilst pressing hard on the footbrake https://www.lexunx.com/if_the_hybrid_system_will_not_start-111.html  See: “starting the vehicle in an emergency” section. 

This happened several times during my various stopping and starting shopping trip.  I realised I was going to have to spend another £100 and buy a portable jump starter pack.  I decided on the NOCO GB40 and whilst I was at Halfords completing my purchase I asked them to test the Battery and this is what they found: 

1 hour ago, ColinBarber said:

If you commute only one day a week and then don't drive the vehicle at any time for the rest of the week then it may not be enough in the winter but anything more than that any you would be fine (if you have a healthy battery).

 

I commute 4-6 days per week.  

1 hour ago, route66 said:

 

* There is something draining the battery

 

 The only change to the car since last year is that a few months’ ago I disabled the keyless entry system..  I cannot account for the first 10 months of the car’s life but would assume that this is the original battery and c 26 months old.  

1 hour ago, Herbie said:

No one really knows why Toy/Lex decided on such small capacity batteries but the two main theories are:

1. The cost of the battery itself. A conventional starter motor takes upwards of 300A to crank the engine, but a hybrid only takes 20A to boot the computers and get the car into READY mode, so a smaller battery at lower cost will do the job.
2. A physically smaller battery weighs less, which means that fuel consumption will be less, which in turn means better for the environment and the ever-tighter 'green' targets being brought in by the world's governments. Might sound silly but when you consider the thousands and thousands of batteries per year, it could add up to a considerable sum.

During the first Covid lockdown the advice on Toyota's website was to put the car into READY mode for at least 60 minutes per week to keep the 12V battery topped up. It seemed to work but it wasn't ideal.

@D Johnson Now that we're into bad weather season I'm not sure if 40 minutes each way is going to be enough to keep the battery in good condition; not when you take increased usage of lights, heaters, heated screens etc., into account as well. If you put the car in a garage overnight, I'd be inclined to keep it on a trickle charger. Even if you don't have a garage but just keep it on the driveway overnight, it would be easy enough to keep the trickle charger in the house, drill a hole through the wall and feed the 12V wires through and terminate them in a waterproof box on the outside wall. You could then make a permanent connection to the battery and use some sort of plug/socket arrangement whereby you just pull the car onto the driveway each night and plug it in.

There is a very rough calculation that you can use to see how long the 12V battery will last before going flat but you have to make so many assumptions that I really don't think it's worth the effort.

First thing to understand is that every time it goes flat it sustains a small amount of damage and so its capacity goes down a bit each time.

Secondly, all cars draw a quiescent current in order to keep things like the clock, the radio presets, the seat memory and so on, alive. Rule of thumb is that about 50 to 70mA (0.05 to 0.07A) is considered 'normal'.

We'll assume a brand new and fully charged battery and, being as it was mentioned above, a capacity of 45Ah. This means that it should supply 45A for one hour, or 22.5A for two hours and so on, so it'll take:

45Ah / 0.05A = 900 hours
900 hours = 37.5 days
37.5 days = 5.3 weeks

to go from fully charged to fully flat if the car is just left standing doing nothing. However, for the purposes of starting the car, it will be useless for that long before it becomes fully flat.

Thank you, Herbie, for that comprehensive and extremely helpful reply.   

Thanks, this is very interesting given the age of our cars and the fact that our troubles both started about 6 weeks’ ago…. I also had some flashing lights.  

I am having an issue which may (or may not) be Battery related, opinions differ at my dealer.  My IS is a similar age to yours.  About six weeks ago the car would not start and displayed the red warning message “hybrid system stopped.  Shift to P.”  I could not shift to P as I was already in P.  I eventually managed to start it and wrote it off as some sort of sensor malfunction, but unfortunately this was not the end of it.  The next morning I was late for work because the car again refused to start but this time nothing I tried seemed to work and I had to start scouring the Lexus forums for help.  I eventually started the car by pressing and holding the start button for 15 seconds.  I contacted my dealer and the message from the workshop was that it sounded like the 12v Battery was flat.  They suggested I call roadside assistance so that they could establish the fault.  This was likely because I live 40 miles away and work long hours so could not just drop in to the dealer.  Given that I could now start the car with my trick, I thought breakdown would not come out to me since I was not broken down.  Long story short, I did some more research and decided it was worth buying a CTEK MXS5 charger and duly recond and charged the Battery.  I did not buy a Battery tester but I now think I shall because after everything being fine for a week or two things have started to happen again with the red warning message.  From what I can gather, the 12v Battery has no alternator and is charged from the traction Battery which takes approx one hour of running… 

My question is: if the 12v Battery is never fully charging because my commute is 40 minutes each way, will this cause the Battery to eventually fail, hence my current problems.  It seems this is something of a known issue on these and the Prius going back many years.  Does anyone know a workaround or should I just accept charging the Battery on a regular basis?  

Also Bounce75, what symptoms were you getting as the Battery was discharging?  

Hello, my basic trim IS300h is rising 2 years’ old.  Compared to a 5 series the sound system quality is sub par but I have adjusted to it over many months.  The volume is also deficient.  Despite this it’s a great car!  Hope this helps.  My dealer is 45 miles away but they have never offered me a courtesy car and neither have I asked for one.  I walk to the nearest watering hole and wait for the workshop to call me.  They always overestimate how long the work will take and it works fine as they have an appointment system and even with the longer service they do not take very long.  

It wasn’t just VW, it was Mercedes, Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, Vauxhall, Ford, Citroen, Peugeot, Renault, Nissan, Skoda, Jaguar, Volvo, Hyundai, and Land Rover.  

I wouldn’t give them the benefit of the doubt on this since the entire industry is (rightly imo) regarded as disreputable.  

When I collected my Lexus, I remember asking the sales guy if I had anything to worry about re thieves and he assured me that I did not.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered this was not the case and there was in fact a good deal to worry about.  😂

I don’t think whistleblower action is relevant in this because the lack of genuine interest in theft prevention is likely sub rosa.  

On 5/31/2022 at 11:02 AM, LenT said:

 

If only!

I remember having to stand in front of the car, sticking a rod in to it and cranking it up - hoping you’d pulled out the choke far enough.  What we would have given just to turn a switch!

In most cases, anything that makes driving easier is fine by me.  That’s why we have autos.  And if you can’t reverse into a parking space, there are cars that will do it for you. 

So I have no problem with the concept of a smart key.  Indeed, eliminate the human parasites who steal what others have earned, and there’d be no need for a security system.

So it irks me that having acquired - and paid for - the benefit of a Smart Key, I now have to disable it.  The whole point of that technological development is so that I don’t have to press more buttons!

Which I suspect may be the reason why Lexus doesn’t mention  that turning it off makes your Lexus more secure.  
So for the present I shall persevere with the pouch, which definitely works - and has the added benefits of protecting the key and concealing the fact that it belongs to a Lexus.

If that proves too onerous, then I shall have to consider the retrograde step of pushing additional buttons!

Really tempted to go full-on Four Yorkshiremen at this point but too tired to do it justice so I’ll just say you bring back not very fond memories of always having to park on a hill and mouthfuls of petrol from when we were so poor we had to scrounge half a gallon off a friend via a syphon tube!