Stanky's Car Fixing Thread - Lexus Living 13/01

[Stanky]

For a while now the Dacia battery has been a bit crap, needing putting on the trickle charger about once a month. It does generally get used for local duties, doing 5-10 miles at a time, but gets longer runs fairly often. Now its getting colder, it seems to be worse so the trigger was pulled on a new battery from the excellent Tayna.co.uk.

As usual, it arrived within 48h. I trickle charged it overnight and fitted it this morning. I opted for a mid-price Yuasa ESB with more CCAs and Ah than what was on there currently. I came mildly unstuck when I realised that the new battery was about 40mm longer than the old one, and the battery tray has a weird plastic protrusion to hold the OEM battery in place

However 20 minutes with a hacksaw blade, stanley knife and a bit of sandpaper had that removed and sanded flat, and the new battery then fitted like a glove.

As usual, once the new battery was installed and the ignition put on, the dashboard lit up like Blackpool, but a short drive, turning the steering wheel lock-to-lock and confirming that the tyre pressures were OK had it settled down again. What was a little bit interesting* was all the errors it threw for things our base Sandero doesn't have. I got TPM, front radar, rear electric windows and something else warnings on first startup but these went away after I turned the ignition off then on again. 

Not radically interesting, but cost me less than half what Dacia wanted for a new battery of lesser spec. There seems to be a bit of internet noise about the longevity of the OEM batteries on Dacias, with lots crapping out with similar symptoms to mine at 3-4 years old, which ours is. I guess its one of the ways that Dacia can sell them so cheap and still make money on them but its a bit annoying. Anyway, the new battery should last another 5 years or so I hope.

One further annoyance is the SOS system, it began to flash up errors about a year ago intermittently, and has got worse and worse to the point its now on more than off. Apparently the system has its own battery in the dashboard somewhere which conks out after a while and throws the error. Alternatively it could be the GSM aerial being broken too. Anyway, I'll leave it for now but make sure it gets looked at when the car is in for its next service next summer. Dashboard warning lights bug the hell out of me, but my wife who is the primary driver isn't bothered by them at all - especially if its something like the SOS function which sh'd never use anyway so its not a big deal.

I'll keep the old battery as I have a 12v > 120w 3-pin plug inverter which might be handy in a power cut potentially. It'd keep a load of LED lights working for a few hours at least.

[mk2_craig]

3 hours ago, Stanky said:

There seems to be a bit of internet noise about the longevity of the OEM batteries on Dacias, with lots crapping out with similar symptoms to mine at 3-4 years old, which ours is. I guess its one of the ways that Dacia can sell them so cheap and still make money on them but its a bit annoying.

Certainly not limited to Dacia. Current shape Ford Focus, and especially the ST like mine, are also significantly prone to the same issue. 

[Stanky]

I've been living a charmed life since buying the Lexus about a year ago, but we all knew the dream would come to a crashing halt sooner or later didn't we? That something catastrophic would befall me and sour the ownership experience. Well, Last thursday was that day. Its taken me all weekend to come to terms with the scale of this disaster. Yes, I know what you're all thinking. Its a "Japanese car, they never go wrong!" and "Its a Lexus, the pinnacle of Japanese cars (which never go wrong)!" however it turns out we're all misinformed my the mainstream media, and bad things can, and do, happen.

Thats right, the worst has now come to pass.

I think we all need to accept that they really don't make cars like they used to. You'd not see this sort of shoddy attention to detail, and penny-pinching-at-the-expense-of-the-ownership experience with a REAL car made by a proper BRITISH company in the 1970s now would you? With a heavy heart, I pulled over on the side of the road, unscrewed the number plates, stuck a 'police aware' sticker from my confusingly large pile of emergency-service issue warning stickers and walked home in bare feet in the sleet. No sooner did I arrive at the end of my street, than did I see my wife hurling the last few worldly possessions out into the front garden from an upstairs window before yelling to me that I was a life failure with nothing to offer, that her affair partner had moved into the family home and had legally adopted my children and cat, that she had faked every orgasm she had ever had with me and that my penis was both smaller-then-average and mildly deformed.

My vision faded to greyscale and a man approached me introducing himself as Ken Loach, and that I was going to be the main character in his next film but that it was to be an unpaid role due to circumstances outside of his control. 

A single tear ran down my cheek, froze in slow motion and then the scene faded to black accompanied by the soundtrack of children laughing...

 

*ahem*

Sorry about that. Yeah so basically the Lexus has behaved impeccably for a year, literally nothing has gone wrong, everything still works as Lexus intended/it left the factory 15 years ago and it continues to be a warm, fast, comfortable place to be. Its getting a mixed 28mpg on local drives in winter (32mpg in the summer), does 37mpg on a run, has plenty of power to overtake dawdlers as demonstrated on the A32 last weekend when I blasted past a mk4 golf that had been lowered to such an extent it couldn't/wouldn't exceed 40mph. My kids choose it as the car to be driven around in and are still fascinated by all the toys it has. Its hands-down the best car I have ever owned. I really can't recommend these enough if this is what the ownership of an 'average' one of these is like. The plans for this year are to replace the spark plugs which are about due based on 60k interval, this is a slightly complicated job due to needing to take part of the inlet manifold off, but gives me a good opportunity to inspect the valves for carbon buildup since this is direct injection. Depending on the outcome of that I might get it booked in a specialist to have them walnut blasted if they need it (though apparently this is much more prevalent in the US and rarely seen here). The only other job that I'm considering is an ATF change which I will probably outsource. It'll want a service later in the spring but thats not hard or expensive. Otherwise it just does everything I want it to. If they had made the 2nd generation of IS with an estate body it would be a literal forever car. That said, I still can't see me replacing it with anything else for a long while, and I'll almost certainly get another Lexus after this. I'd love to have a go in a similar age CT which I think is basically a fancy Prius? I wonder if the quality engineering extends to the entry level models too?