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Anyone tried this with a hybrid, thought about it..??

PHILL is a device which connects to your home natural gas line and then overnight compresses and fills your CNG tank with enough NG for the next day's use/travel.

ab-o-li-tion

1. The act of doing away with or the state  of being done away with; annulment.
2. Abolishment of slavery.


Following statement taken from Lexus NCF, New Car Features, for the '99 RX300.


1. Direct Clutch Fluid Pressure Control

Direct fluid pressure control using linear solenoids is adopted for fluid pressure control of B1 and C2 for
engagement/release upon shifting between the first and second speeds and between the second and third speeds.
The output pressures from linear solenoids SL1 and SL2 are led to B1 and C2 control valves for optimum
control of each clutch pressure. As a result, the automatic transmission size is reduced by accumulator abolition and fine fluid pressure control not possible with clutch fluid pressure control using accumulators.

"..the automatic transmission size is reduced by accumulator abolition..."

Fluid pressure accumulators are often used to sustain/maintain fluid pressures for the brief periods it takes for the hydraulic pump speed to rise to the required flow level.

Eliminating the accumulator was undoubtedly one of the methods used to make room for fitting more robust components into an otherwise light duty Camry transaxle that was now to be used to haul around a much bigger and heavier vehicle.

Premature transaxle failures for '99 & '00 RX300's.....

Prematurely burned ATF fluid for the '01 to '03 RX300 series...

1-2 second downshift delay/hesitation throughout the Toyota/Lexus FWD and F/AWD fleet due to DBW being used to delay the onset of engine torque until the gear type ATF pump could pump enough fluid with the engine at idle to bring the pressure back up to snuff....

Engine flare during 3-4 upshifts...

All traceable to one simple engineering mistake made during the design phase for the RX300.

The seat belts in my '95 would not readily retract so bought new ones and just completed the installation.

I completely disassembled one of the old ones and now I maybe know the cause.

The front seat belts in the 95 LS have a dual-speed gearbox within the retractor/tensioner assembly.

It has two clock springs that are used to retract the seat belt, a light duty low tension spring and a heavier duty high tension spring.

The retractor uses a solenoid actuated escapment to shift between the two tension springs.

The idea seems to be to use the STRONG spring until the belt is buckled and then lock the strong spring in place and only rely on the light duty spring.

The problem is, apparently, the escapment gets stuck in the low tension position, maybe due to the solenoid armnature becoming permanently magentized.

If you have this problem my suggestion would be to remove the "electric tension reducer" connections to each front seat belt that enables the retractors to "shift" into the low tension mode. Then pull the belt out to the fully extended position 3 or 4 times to be sure the escapment unlocks. With the connection open you will always be using the high tension spring but that's better than paying $300 for a new set of seat belt retractors as I just did.

PIC is of a fully disassembled driver's side front seat belt retractor from a 1995 LS400.

Just installed aftermarket 4300K bi-xenons in my '95 LS400.

Pretty nice even on low beam, a tremendous improvement in night vision, especially so on high beam.

The LS is of canadian purchase origin so while it uses the traditional hi/lo filament halogen bulb it also has an extra high beam bulb each side that is also used as DRL at low voltage, in series, 6 volts each.

I doubt if it is really needed for HB, probably only there since the canadians require DRLs.

The HID bulbs/lamps use a solenoid to move the arc back and forth to/from low beam and high beam position.

Bulb assemblies also came with their own metal shading for sharp upper pattern low beam cutoff.

Impressive.

The high beam bulb on the left was removed from my '01 AWD RX300 about 5 years ago, at I believe, about 12,000 miles. I gave the other one from the RX to the service manager at Bellevue Lexus to let him know what I had found. The two on the right were just removed, moments ago, from a '95 LS400 with 210,000 miles. I'm fairly sure they are the original factory bulbs.

When I put the new bulbs in the LS the DRL mode was so much brighter it was hard to believe these original ones were still working. Luckily the 95 has two high beam bulbs in each side so the loss of one due to the severe sooting wasn't all that noticeable.

I have found documents on the internet indicating that this is a fairly common problem with Halogen bulbs being operated as DRLs with sub-standard, below normal operating level, voltages. The 95 LS operates the halogens in series, 6 volts each. The Rx300 also operates the bulbs in series but has an additional voltage dropping resistor mounted below the battery.