chimchim

For sale (sf bay area, CA) local pick up only I have a used but in great shape (no rips) tonneau cover that came from our 2004 RX330. Color is the "tan" interior that came in the bamboo pearl RX asking $90 obo local pickup in mountain view, CA weekdays or west san jose ca weekends

Really? I like CVTs for their smoothness (no more hurky jerky toyota automatic shifting program which drove me NUTS on the RX330 we had previously) but I find the CVT to be noisier than the standard auto trans which contributes to "audible roughness" instead of "seat of pants roughness". I'm not hating the RX400h at all, I'm just unfamiliar with a "luxury hybrid".

Ahhh... that answers a lot of my questions. Thanks for the reply! My experience with the car does jive that the car is erring on the side of making sure all systems are fully ready to keep luxury up in sacrifice of hybrid optimization I'll check on the TSB for the ISC learning As for the accessories, I noted similar behavior when our return trip was at night (so no A/C), windows up, heater off, and even the stereo off, cruise on. I understand that city better utilizes hybrid technology I wish there was a "advanced user" hybrid selection control deep in the menu screen or something that would allow me to say "no matter what I do, go aggressive on electric use", and if that means I get a warning bell saying "I can't give you A/C", etc.

I'm interested in finding an understanding for my situation and an appropriate solution. I read the responses 2-3 times and tried to consolidate it with what I knew of my situation and what I had posted, and there seemed to be a disconnect, hence my reply. And even with your latest reply, there are things that don't seem to jive... maybe it's me, but it's still not consolidating. The car may not "know" I'm on "hilly" roads, but it *does* know that the load has suddenly gone up without additional throttle application. In fact, I was on cruise control much of the time to try and let the car sort it out. From what I can see it would seem that with the increase in load and above the "full" threshold charge, the most efficient use of the the stored electric power would be to do electric assist of the combustion engine, not further weigh down the combustion engine by trickle charging the batteries.

Maybe you guys didn't see this part of my post:

Yeah, I understand that. But why isn't there electric assist during cruising, even at 70 mph? Especially if the charge reaches the 80% level and really isn't going to charge more, then why not use the stored power to help with the cruise? Particularly in this trip, I'm going over large hilly freeways, which means several opportunities to recover some downhill energy to assist with the uphill.

We are a 3 week old owner of a used 2006 rx400h (39k miles). We just took our first 4 hr round trip drive with the car (freeway) and I feel like the car is in "engine recharging batteries" mode way too often. We are on the freeways (speed limits 65 or 70) for the entire trip going about that speed. The battery indicators shows that it's 8/10 full and NEVER shows the top 2 bars charged EVER. I understand that the batteries are charged/drained only between 20%-80% levels or something like that for longevity. Fine. But during the whole trip, unless it was downhill, the engine was always charging the batteries. This did not make sense to me since it would seem that the efficient use of the hybrid technology for this trip would be to use the batteries to do electric motor assist to the engine to drive the wheels... until the batteries drained to a certain level then let the downhill charge the batteries. Instead, it's using extra fuel to keep the batteries topped off! This seems stupid! And the indicator showed average mpg of 22-23mpg for the trip. For the SAME trip, when we used our previous car (2004 RX330) we would get 24mph!!! That means the hybrid did WORSE! Does this seem right? Is there something wrong with our car?

You're right, preference is to not drain while on ramps. However, I can't reach it otherwise. Plus I don't think it's that bad because the plug points to the rear.

thanks for the diy!

Bump because I'm using my own DIY as a reference.

I stupidly left the key in on and forgot. Battery died. So the next morning I jumped the car and it was fine. However, the SRS airbag indicator light is on, and the other light on the console says passenger airbag off. The braindead manual says "check with dealer" (no help there). Anyone have this issue? It seems strange to have to go to the dealer just because the battery died.

+1. bciesq seems to be the only one who knows how different octanes are used. It's my guess as well that the knock protection mechanism of retarding timing (etc) which reduces torque/power would have the side effect of "smoothing" the transmission. It's smooth because it's like babying the accelerator more than normal. I got the reflash and the jolt, while reduced, is still there, is still annoying, and I can't stand it.

I couldn't stand the acceleration jolt on our 2004 RX330, so I had the dealer do the reflash. It helped... a little. But it's still there and ANNOYING, especially when I know it's wearing on the tranny. So I was practicing left foot braking on the RX330 automatic, and I found that with left foot braking, you can trail brake into the turn and do a super smooth transition to gas... WITH NO JOLT. So it looks like left foot braking is great for more than making Michael Shumacher fast.

bumpity because I'm using my own DIY.

Lexuses are assembled in asian where mogwai sometimes get into the dash. You apparently got one and he likes music.