lemon

So, I was doing the 'hold INFO button, turn parking lights on/off four times' thing last night to access some 'secret' menus. Foolishly left the parking lights on after accesing the menus. Then I was playing around with the NAV voice commands ("phone home" either turned the A/C on full blast, turned on the stereo or called E.T.). Finally tried saying, 'call home' and the system flickered a few times and everything shut down. Oddly, the hatch, which was open, began beeping continuously and the dash display showed 'shift to P to start' though the car was already in P. I wondered what the system mistook 'call home' for? Initiate self destruct? I have a GEN4 8.1 disc in the drive (recently updated) and panicked, thinking the update screwed something up. Pulled the radio fuse and the negative cable, waited 10 mins, powered up and put the 5.1 disc in. YAY! I got the 'loading' screen and the green update bar. Halfway through the progress bar, everything shut down again. Now, being used to normal cars, the last thing I thought of was that I'd drained the battery. Visions of the RX on a flatbed being towed to the dealership in the morning filled my head. Finally, when I couldn't eject the NAV disc and noticed that the dash lights had shut off, the lightbulb went off and I realized there was not enough power to run the Skynet computers in the car. Hooked up my digital charger - battery was at 22%, or just around 11 volts or so. I had no idea how small a reserve that auxilliary battery has. Oh well, hopefully it will all power up when the battery is fully charged. *edit* All charged up, loaded the 5.1 disc, then loaded the 8.1 disc. All in order. Also went for a drive with my Scangauge II hooked up, no error codes, and confirmed that the coolant was over 181 degrees before I did the ISC learning procedure.

No. The steering assembly in the hybrid is electric. There's some problem with the magnets or something that can lead to a failure of the power assist. The non hybrid is a traditional rack utilizing a power steering pump and fluid.

I had the service campaign #913 done today at Lexus of Oakville in Ontario, Canada (913 in Canada, I think the US has a different #). I don't notice anything different, except the alignment is now spot on, as they had to do a front end alignment after replacing the rack. I crawled under the vehicle to check out the work that had been done. There's a nice shiny silver steering rack under there now (the old one was kinda rusty looking)complete with new bushings where it connects to the wheels. If you haven't had this campaign done yet, I encourage you to call your local Lexus dealer and book an appointment. The service advisor was quick to point out that this is not a 'recall' (i.e. not mandated by the government), but is something Lexus has decided to deal with BEFORE the government orders it.

I know it's June, but I just picked up a CPO 2006 RX400h and was wondering about parking during the winter. Normally I let my wife park her car in the garage in the winter months so she doesn't have to scrape ice and snow in the morning. Would it be better for the traction battery if I were to park the RX in the garage during the winter? The garage is not heated, but even when it's below freezing outside, the garage hovers around 2 or 3 degrees (celsus). I'm in Ontario Canada, and we see winter temps below freezing many times over winter. Thanks.

I think the RX has a drum type parking brake built into the rear disc, so you won't have to worry about rotating the piston like on the Mazda (and other vehicles that use the caliper for the parking brake). In the future, there is a tool you can use instead of fiddling around with needle nose pliers. Here's one - http://www.carparts.com/Brake-Tools/GP_200...22206_10618.car and here's a cheaper one - http://www.jegs.com/p/JEGS/JEGS-Caliper-Pi...757561/10002/-1. I've used both - they both work, but the expensive one is much easier to use, especially if the caliper/piston is older and doesn't move too freely.