Hedgehog Motors - The ̶L̶e̶x̶ Rex Files

[davehedgehog31]

14 minutes ago, hairnet said:

scottish man not liking volvos shocker

excommunication?

is the 450 lightly more complicated or is it whole other world job?

 

I just don't like this particular Volvo 😉 

It's a tricky one, there's nothing particularly eccentric about the Lexus. It's more just that everything is relatively new and bits are very expensive so I'm a lot more nervous about bursting anything!

The workshop manual is really good and has kept me right so far.

[davehedgehog31]

Had mentioned the couple of brake issues on the Lexus. Judder from the front and a squeak from the rear.

The discs and pads on the back were well worn so opted just to replace. It has the shoes in disc handbrake setup, planned to just eyeball those and order bits if required.

Nothing particularly worth documenting here, handbrake mechanism given a good clean, re-greased and adjusted up, it has an electric handbrake but the process for adjusting it is really just the same as any other handbrake mechanism. . Carriers given a right good clean  up with the dremel, pins re-greased etc and all back together. 

Onto the juddering fronts, as mentioned before the two part front discs are about £700. I measured them scientifically* and found they were well within thickness tolerance albeit with a reasonable sized lip. 

I found a guy in Ayr willing to skim them. Dropped off on the Monday and had them back on Thursday. Looks like he done a good job. 

I had new pads to go along with the skimmed discs. Didn't get new fitting hardware because ££££ so just cleaned up the old bits. Before and after. 

Callipers on the front are four pot efforts. Cleaned all the contact points again with the dremel, a bit foutery as the caliper is obviously still attached to the car... All greased thoroughly and re-assembled. 

So it should now stop as intended. I have my suspicions that the juddering on the front brakes is caused by the pads leaving deposits on the discs when sitting stationary with your foot on the brake. It has an auto hold feature which automatically engages the handbrake when you come to a halt, I'll use that in future and see how that works out. 

My grille shutter motor arrived from Japan yesterday. 

Fitted it and it was the exact same. After some head scratching I decided to check the wiring, removed the plastic conduit and traced the wires back a bit and found this one broken. 

Fucks sake. 

In my defence I did test the wires for continuity before ordering the replacement, that wire was covered in green corrosion and fell to bits without persuasion so it must have been making very weak or intermittent contact. 

Repaired the broken wire and it's working fine again. 

Hopefully someone in the UK wants a replacement one in jig time, the only other one on ebay is £300 so I should see my £117 back anyway. 

That kind of concludes the mechanical/repair jobs on it. I've got the Corrolan stuff to go on, so it's just a case of stripping the remaining plastic undertrays and arch liners, applying that and re-assembling everything. None of those steps are a small task and I must have about 150 fixings in various labelled freezer bags. 

Code clearing went well too;

[davehedgehog31]

Aware this isn't exactly Autoshite, but it is 10 years old, so will keep it in the main forum.

With all the mechanical work completed on the Lexarse it was time to put the Corrolan Lanolin rust proofing stuff on. This is a pretty miserable task, but probably a lot easier to do an effective, if agricultural looking (and smelling) job than some other products. 

The Corrolan stuff is pretty cost effective compared to Lanoguard. I have never used Lanoguard but suspect it's maybe a bit more of a user friendly product, but more expensive and possibly less hard wearing. The Corrolan range features two main products "Pure", which is the most viscous product and is basically solid below room temperature and "Active" which is a runnier cavity wax. I completed all the work on this using the "Pure" product, diluted in various ratios with white spirit. I suspect the "Active" product is just this anyway. 

Cavities - Compressor with blow gun and flexible wand - 80% Corrolan and 20% white spirit
Underside - Compressor with blow gun and bullet tip - 90% Corrolan and 10% white spirit
Spray bottle - Used for final application, getting to awkward areas missed by gun - 70% Corrolan and 30% white spirit 

I had already got the car entirely in the air in preparation. All the plastic undertrays, arch liners etc had to come off and on this there are plenty of them. Gave the underside a clean with the pressure washer and some Screwfix degreaser. 

It's spent most of it's life down in Hampshire so it's pretty tidy rust wise for a 10 year old Japanese car. The only surface rust I thought worth treating was on the rear subframe and the brace sections on the transmission tunnel towards the rear. Nothing at all worrying but thought best to do it while I was there. Just brush painted with some Vactan. 

Preparing the Corrolan for application. The hotter it is, the runnier it is. This is probably not a recommended method given the petroleum based ingredients. 

I used this little tube heater to sit the stuff on whilst outside applying it. Helps slow down the cooling and keep it runny long enough to blow on easily. 

Don't have any pictures,  but the first step was applying the wax to cavities. This is probably the most tedious part as you can't really see the progress you're making and it can be quite messy. Done using the spray gun and a flexible plastic tube which you can feed in and spray the wax while slowly pulling it out. I hate drilling holes in cars, luckily all the void sections on this already have holes with rubber bungs. A top tip for this, you can often access sill voids and quarter panel areas from above. There are usually holes there for kick plates, door catches or door open sensors and are usually big enough for the lance to get into. 

Moving onto the external spraying, every time I've done this I've always concluded that however high I can get the car on stands just isn't high enough. The spray gun is bulky with the air hose fitting on the bottom adding to this. It's easy to spray the arches and things, but some underbody areas can be very awkward. I done as much as I could with the gun and finished off the detailed bits with a spray bottle. You could in theory do the whole underside with spray bottles quite effectively, but it would need to be thinned so the film strength will be a bit weaker and it would be harder work physically. The ideal combo would be the spray gun and the car on a lift, it would be a very easy job indeed that way. 

It took a bit of foutering to get the gun dialled in, the first arch I sprayed it on way too thick, like icing on a cake...

Once I got it dialled in I used the stuff quite efficiently. Here is how the arches look with the liners back in;

Given how clean the rest of it now was, I gave the undertrays a clean with some degreaser before refitting. 

 

And the finished underside; 

Wheels given a good cleaning while they were off the car and I could get to the backs of them;

Before

And looking a bit more like a car, ready to come off the stands. About a million screws, clips and assorted fixings later. Took a good few hours just to reassemble everything. 

Getting it off the stands was a delicate dance with a trio of trolley jacks. The first drive out was a success, no errors on the dash and the brakes night and day. The previously sticky handbrake no longer an issue. Other than the smell of the lanolin overspray burning off the exhaust it was spot on. 

[davehedgehog31]

With all that work done and initial testing complete all that was left was for a wash and some small details. The headlamp cateracts had been pissing me off, so decided to sand and polish them. Hit them with 1000, 1500, 2000 and 3000 grit sandpaper then some polish on the DA polisher. 

Before;

And after;

Was surprised and delighted with how well they came up. Given a right good wash afterwards and that's everything done for now. Have a gratuitous photo dump from yesterday. 

It's the most modern thing I've owned and that does take some of the fun out of the ownership experience, it's also tying up my car monies, so I can't be quite as spontaneous as I would have been in the past with buying stuff but I do love it. It's such a competent thing to drive, really cosseting and relaxing but can't half shift when needed. The active dampers and various modes do make a big difference to the driving experience too and it can be an engaging thing to drive when you want it to be. 

Personally, I think the CVT gearbox is great when combined with this engine. It has plenty grunt to drive it at low revs if that makes sense, it doesn't use the upper end of the rev range unless you mash your foot to the floor. The benefit being it will do 1100 RPM at 80mph. It's far better on fuel than it has any right to be with the performance on offer and considering the battery is 10 years old with 115k on it. 135 miles of mixed driving at the weekend and it done 43mpg. 

[sdkrc]

43mpg + 1100rpm from that has made me very uneasy. That's a lot of mpgs from a big lad.

 

[Spottedlaurel]

Interesting to read about your ownership experience, and also to see some things that are similar to what I have on the RX - steering wheel looks identical. I can't quite approach the economy/speed you'd get from what I think is basically the same engine, but the whole V6/CVT/battery package is just as effective and satisfying.

Sadly no tacho in the RX, so I don't know what it revs at when cruising, but it feels like it's just loping along at little more than tickover.

[davehedgehog31]

29 minutes ago, Spottedlaurel said:

Interesting to read about your ownership experience, and also to see some things that are similar to what I have on the RX - steering wheel looks identical. I can't quite approach the economy/speed you'd get from what I think is basically the same engine, but the whole V6/CVT/battery package is just as effective and satisfying.

Sadly no tacho in the RX, so I don't know what it revs at when cruising, but it feels like it's just loping along at little more than tickover.

Interesting, have to say an RX with the hybrid engine and CVT drivetrain is appealing, one area the GS falls down is practicality being a saloon and not having folding rear seats. I had a MK2 RX300 SE-L and while it was a nice car it was very thirsty without much in the way of performance, even my LS400 was markedly better on fuel so a Hybrid one sounds just the ticket.

I think it's basically the same engine although slightly lower compression. Not sure on the electric motor side of things but I'm sure it will shift just the same.  

A cheapo OBD adapter and the Torque app on your phone would give you a tachometer if you're curious. This displays the Hybrid meter thingy by default, but if you put it into one of the Sport modes it changes to a tacho. 

[davehedgehog31]

I've been doing a good job of not buying any cars recently. Maintaining my ideal fleet of three vehicles for several months. When @sdkrc offered his veg friendly Rexton 290 for sale though I was powerless to resist. I supressed my feelings of deep dread and anxiety and agreed to take it on. Sam  even delivered it to my door and offered most agreeable payment terms. A+++ seller, would recommend. 

It was very fairly described so I knew there were a couple of issues needing prompt attention and that it is generally pretty baggy. I get the impression this the actual running gear etc are very robust but that everything else is less so and hasn't worn the miles well. It's sub 20 years old, but with it's considerable bulk, old school five pot diesel and separate chassis it feels like a big old truck. Evidence below of said bagginess, yes, that is it in gear. 
 

In truth the main selling point is the license built Mercedes OM662 engine under the bonnet. It's a 2.9 litre, 5 cylinder, turbocharged (not that you'd know it) with I believe a fully mechanical fuel injection setup. This engines prowess in alternative fuel running is legendary and hard to beat for veg oil running. 

The most pressing issue was the PSF leak. It was leaking behind the front bumper in quite an awkward spot. It's a low pressure return line which runs in a big loop along a crossmember at the front to aid cooling,  even in the tropical microclimate of North Ayrshire I didn't feel this was critical so cut it off nearer the pump and looped it off with some 10mm ID rubber hose. 



Next, in the definition of fiddling while Rome burns, high fidelity bluetooth audio install. No, that isn't a woodscrew through the top of the head unit holding it in place and I do not care for such slanderous accusations.  The hole was approximately 2.347242 DINS so fitting this single DIN head unit in was like flinging a sausage up a close, punching smoke, etc. 

That's better*


 

[cort16]

The kind of motor car other road users park two spaces away from in the supermarket car park. 

[davehedgehog31]

1 minute ago, cort16 said:

The kind of motor car other road users park two spaces away from in the supermarket car park. 

Glad it's not just me who saw that 🤣

The thing is monolithic, if I park it in the car port I can hardly get round it and it has an eclipse effect on the strip lights on the roof.