the Walnut Diary

The Lexus mirror saga continues. This week we traded the new mirror, including the attached 2014 Lexus es300h, on a much newer Lexus hybrid, a ’23 UX250h, also grey, at the local dealership. The hatchback offers a flat load surface so that one can slide heavy packages out, rather than lifting them from the depths of a trunk. It lacks the pleasing lines of the classic es300, choosing instead to bulge out unpredictably about where the driver and passengers’ hip bones and shoulders ride. It has the usual shiny steel roof reinforcement in place of the elegant chrome lines of the old one. But it is too cute to be called ugly. Just don’t look at it from behind. That seems vaguely indecent. Kick under the bumper instead (also indecent) and enjoy the opening of the welcoming and extremely well upholstered hatch

Its navigation/safety/cruise control system takes a bit of learning, though I have passed beyond the bewildered swearing stage and have progressed to highway driving with the radar on. My wife found it disconcerting the first time the UX scolded her for changing lanes without a signal.

Last evening we changed the oil. It was a bit overfull and was on a 16,000 km cycle.

NO. It will continue its tenure at the farm on an 8,000 km interval, though I shall stick with the 0W16 oil as my research indicates it is the right choice for this car. Mind you, it would have come from Japan with 0W8 oil in it. The correct Mobil 1 oil at Canadian Tire (on sale) displays a little silver shield on the jug instead of the regular round dot with the details printed inside. Mobil 1 makes the official Toyota 0W16 to a different recipe than the generic product, but I have no reason to believe that Lexus dealers actually use the premium stuff.

The Car Care Nut, a vintage Lexus specialist in Chicago and former Toyota mechanic, suggested that the bulk oil in the dealerships is selected for price (brown and slippery), and nobody opens those quart bottles to fill an engine. He further specifies that the premium formula has extra anti-wear additives to get the bearings through the second half of a 16,000 km oil cycle. It is much better not to exceed 5,000 miles in the opinion of every presenter in a video on the subject I have watched.

Chat GPT told me that the proper oil fill with filter for a 2023 UX250h is 4.26 litres, quoting the Amsol Lubrication Manual. I believe the car’s dipstick indicated 4.5 litres in it before we did the oil change. It now reads right at the top mark on the dip stick. For any skeptical readers who wonder how I could see transparent new oil on a flat grey dipstick, I’ll relate to you a tree farmer’s trick: Take a blue shop towel. Fold. Lay it on a flat part of the engine. Lay the wet dip stick on the towel. Roll the stick enough that you can see the oil turning the light blue towel a darker blue.

With the use of the shop four-armed hoist, lifting was easy on the pattern suggested by ChatGPT and later by the Kingston Lexus service manager. There are four hardened pads at the corners of the rocker panels, the same as an Audi. A cover plate came off with the removal of four 10 mm hex screws to reveal the 13 mm drain plug (crush washer required) and a little oil filter, the size of the 4 cylinder Subaru one I use on my CaseIH 250 tractor because the correct one won’t fit around the plumbing for the cabin heater. It is the most convenient oil change I have done. The twist on oil filter is a welcome relief from the rather fraught plastic filter container on the 2014 and similar vessels on the Porsches.

Anyway, we find it is a very nice car — the same width on the hoist as the earlier one — so the only small part of it is its engine and the rear seat leg room. On the other hand, we made an emergency run to Ottawa last Sunday with the missing truss from our son’s garden shed. It unscrewed into two parts for transport, but I think a seven foot fishing rod should fit diagonally into the hatch with one rear seat folded down.