GMB

We lived in a very hilly area and the consensus of opinion in these places - garages/competent drivers etc - was to inflate the tyres about 10% higher than the book values. They said it prevents undue tyre wear from all those sharp corners, less tendency to rub the sidewalls and gives better cornering grip due to less roll. It certainly worked for us, and no noticeable extra tyre wear in the centre area. I still slightly overinflate the tyres because the low profile tyres always look flat at the right pressure! PS - less road noise too. I am sure that someone on here will point out the error of my ways very soon😝

There may be a rallycross circuit nearby?🤨. Many years ago I had my soft top sports car in for a service and later saw and heard my car being driven at speed down the road with the hood down ( it was up when I took it in ) with two blokes in it. I complained to the garage and got a shrug - roadtest matey! Tossers! They even put a scratch on it when putting the hood back. They were RAC authorised - and I was a member too, so I reported them. The RAC dealt with them and insisted on an apology and a refund and a scratch repair. I don't think the RAC are as good now as they used to be though.

I found that they will do quite a few miles on an empty gauge indication, which is fortunate as the two times I picked up the car from Lexus (- once after buying the car and secondly after the fuel tank re-call ) the tank was showing empty and also showing a low fuel warning. Neither dealer would put any fuel in the car as any type of gesture of goodwill or whatever. I would have had to pay for the privilege but did not want to take up the miserly offer. It was a bit worrying after 15/20 miles on an empty tank. I suppose somebody has to pay for the biscuits🥲

It is not just us Lexus owners that are seeing big increases in insurance costs. Phone call yesterday from brother-in-law who is ancient and has a knackered old VW Polo, just for shopping. His premium has doubled. He is on a poor state pension only. He cannot afford the increase. He must now take the bus everywhere as the old car in unaffordable. Priced off the road. Sad😒

Nightmare innit! Have you considered moving to somewhere nicer? Not being funny but London seems to be a right pain of a place to live at the moment

Got a reminder from compare the market today and thought I would check the situation. Result: Insurance estimate down by £60 from last month's quote. I updated the NCB to 5 yrs instead of 4 yrs and the benefit was a reduction of 3.6% for the extra year. That is not a lot - three point six! At least it is going in the right direction but still trying to get the ISF out of SORN after the winter for about £500. Currently stands at £600 for min cover fully comp. Then add the road tax £735🙄. The other option is to leave it off road and go to Sitges for a week's holiday instead and just use the 200t ( which is finally growing on me ).

Very wise man, your father. Still true and even more so with all the complicated rubbish gadgets and gimmicks on today's cars.

I get the impression that the staff have been told to keep schtum and play it down. I got the same reaction when I asked about the theft/ insurance problem at another Lexus dealer. I can't believe that they would not be aware of it.

Maybe their list is just targeted at the UK only. Not many of those series III in the UK. I have never seen one. Having said that I have never come across another ISF either😏

No mention of any IS models? Thankfully.🤔

churchill refused to renew insurance on my ISF ( underwriters had banned them- no idea why? ) and cover cost was up from 470 to 670 pounds. I am keeping an eye on prices ready for going back on the road after SORN for winter. We will see if prices continue to rise.

Anyone here remember the sound of the bog standard Morris Minor exhaust. It had an awful toneless deep rasp followed by the loud belch on the overrun. I had a 1966 1098cc AH sprite that had a bit of tuning and a straight through exhaust. It was known at work as the farting pig. My boss knew I was a good timekeeper as he could always hear me coming from about half a mile away.

I lost 20 years NCB when I moved back to the UK. Quote " We do not accept NCB earned in another country". So back to Zero on three vehicles. Thanks UK insurers. Nothing I could do. Funny thing is that one company said they could accept it and their costs were higher than the ones who would not. Odd!

Yes they do have a strong defence nowadays, very true and absolutely necessary. I have a couple of funny, or not so funny stories - in brief: I went to a very large bank HQ for an appointment with their head of IT. I walked in the building and the security guard was busy with someone else so I passed by someone coming out who held the door open for me! I walked up to the server room where his office was. He was not in his office. He was in the bullet-proof air-conditioned glass square construction that held the main servers. I tapped on the glass and someone let me in. I stood next to the IT chief until he spotted me. You should have seen his face. He could not believe how anyone could get in. I know it was cheeky of me but I could not resist the experiment. Crazy times! Second true story: Big manufacturing company had a ransomware attack and rightly refused to pay. Worst case scenario is lose a full day's transactions ( which had an audit trail on a separate network isolated server system anyway ) and back up from a "Ghost" image and re-instate all the data from the daily back-up. The daily back-up was a series of physical tapes which were recorded and saved in rotation every night starting at 6pm. This boring repetitive task was given to a junior member of the IT team. They were very disappointed when the non-existant back-up was found on an empty tape. It had never backed up and was never tested. He just did not understand why he got an error message and thought it was just an information pop-up. Thankfully we have better ways of doing things now.🤭.

Nurses are also punished when trying to park their cars at their workplace and charged and fined for the privilege. One friend has racked up over £500 in fines for parking at the hospital. They, and others are refusing to pay.

Well girls, it's all about fair play and proportional increases based on reality and not based on greed. We all know that prices have to go up, but it seems the insurance industry are being excessive. If you ran a business and saw all your competitors getting away with "too high" price increases you may be tempted to join in the gold rush. The possible silver lining could be that more equitable insurance companies may see an opportunity to offer a better value product, gain customers and make money. Where are they?

I thought it was endoscopy?😖. What a pain in the butt.

Wow! Is that complicated or what? It looks like the Tuba section of an orchestra on steroids. I googled this system and it sounds nice but not much different from any other aftermarket system really. Big price difference from the H&S catback system which sounds very nice. I wonder if you get a performance benefit as well as the nice sound? I think the H&S gives a couple of extra horses by breathing better, but not a lot . BTW - where's the rust?

If you know a friendly garage owner I think it would be a good idea to get it on the ramp and do the usual checks on brake and suspension components. We are lucky we have a good local chap who will do something like this for free. Just a quick telephone call to check if the ramp is free and 10 mins for a look see.

It's actually designed to work that way, that change in sound is normal for the ISF. With the H&S exhaust the note goes from deep musical burble to howling banshee trumpets at about 3500rpm. Lovely!

Believe this or not. I tell you this is what I was told when I queried the ridiculous price increase and that I would be going elsewhere to buy my insurance:- They actually said " But wood has gone up 200% in price. We cannot reduce the offer. I did not know whether to laugh or cry.

This reminds me of the situation where you buy a used car and the insurance ask about modifications and you answer None. Then they find something like this and use it as an excuse not to pay out. At one time you could say - " To the best of my knowledge" but that escape clause seems to have disappeared. For example how would anyone know if the car had been remapped without checking all the possible permutations. Or the car could have a sports cam in it and you would not know. Crazy.

All my insurance has gone up between 35 and 50% - car house etc. Have I done something awful? I don't think so. Can anyone recommend an insurer? I have tried the usual suspects - go compare moneysupermarket and even Adrian Flux but they all want the big increases despite no claims and an extra yrs NCB. Hastings Admiral and Bennetts for the bike seem to be the "best" or should I say least bad value bearing in mind the ridiculous increases.

Tried go compare and money supermarket and the cheapest I can find is £670 with Admiral - 5 yrs no claims and HS exhaust mod only. Did not qualify for multicar but cannot see that making much difference 10% maybe? Last year was £470 for the same car with 4 yrs NCB

If it happens when you go over ridges, speed bumps etc then have a look at the boot lid. Mine was/is badly adjusted and the boot lid was lightly banging against the body/bumper area. I have temporarily fixed it with a bit of draught excluder. Worth a look anyway? There is no adjustment on the bump stops and I cannot find any longer ones so maybe Lexus can adjust it at the next service for a princely sum?