I would lower them to 31.

 

well turns out this was much to do about nothing, and pretty much brought on by myself..... lowered the psi from 34 to 32... that seemed to help a bit.... also, I have to be honest, the more I drive the car, the less of a concern the ride becomes... maybe I was just too used to the 'CUSHY" ride my 07 Avalon had, and perhaps now I'm getting accustomed to it... and that's probably a good thing because earlier this evening the dealership called me to see if I was "happy" with my purchase..... I mentioned the ride issue and they put a manager on... told me "very politely" they wouldn't just swap them out for 17's.... which is okay since I'm less concerned about the issue than I was the day I got it.... plus, the 18's do look good on the car... again, thanks to all for your replies... bear with me.. I'm leaning as I go here...

Poppa

 

Good news Poppa. Glad you've learned to like the car and the 18" wheels. They do look nice, but as you've surmised, there's a slight trade off in ride.

 

Bridgestone Turanza's..... The same tire came on my 2007 avalon when I bought it new.. as soon as they wore out I went to a set of Michelins.... softer sidewall, softer ride....

Hey Poppa. It's still about those tires. Do what you did before, put some Michelins on that puppy. You'll experience what you did before - makes a BIG difference.

 

@Larrystar.... my plans exactly... but even at that, I don't know if it will make as much of a difference as it did on my Avalon's 17" wheels... with the Lexus there is 1" less of sidewall cushion so that will hinder the ride somewhat, but I think the michelins will make some difference.. but with only 120 miles on this set of tires, I'm going to wait til they need to be replaced before I go and dump 1100 bucks or more in another set of tires.... the more I drive this car the more I like it... again thanks to all of you who have jumped in here.. I really appreciate the input...

Poppa

 

Mine came with Bridgestones on it, after a few days and 250 miles I called my salesman and asked if they would swap them for Michelins? He never had a customer ask for this and passed it on to the sales manager who authorized the request. They did say before it was done that they would charge me $50.00 total to reprogram the TPS monitoring on both cars.

I was happy to pay it especially after reading the reviews on Tirerack comparing Bridgestone to the Michelins.

 

It sounds like things worked out well for you with only having to pay $50 to swap the tires; however, I'm not sure that I understand a charge for re-programming the TPMS because the sensors are associated with the wheels, not the tires. If they just swapped tires, I don't think that there would have been a need to re-program the TPMS.

It sounds like what they likely did was to swap both the wheels and tires from your car with both the wheels and tires from another vehicle. If that was the case and if I found out that I had bought a vehicle with "used" tires and wheels, even if they only had 250 miles on them, I wouldn't be happy about that. The normal procedure would be to swap out just the tires and to sell those take-off tires to someone else at a significantly reduced price, which is why the customer who got the swapped upgraded tires would normally be charged a few hundred dollars for the swap. I'm not sure whether it is even legal for them to sell a new vehicle with tires and wheels that had been used, even if only for a few hundred miles, on another vehicle. On the other hand, if they swapped your wheels and tires for those on another vehicle that had already been used, such as a vehicle from their loaner fleet, I suppose that would be okay, but, if they did something like that, I would think that they should have disclosed that to you.