jgoergen

Hi all, first of all I want to apologize for this being so long. Second of all I want to say that I have had a business relationship with my dealer for the last 4 years as I also have a 2004 LS430. I have always had excellent communication with my dealer and they have always addressed my concerns professionally and thoroughly. I will add that my LS430 had virtually NO issues whatsoever, other than a transmission recall in 05 that the Service Dept. performed. Any little issues I had were always done to my satisfaction. BTW the car is still flawless at 75,000 miles.

I have the LWB and I bought the car in April. The sticker date is 1/07 and the car was purchased with under 50 miles. I test drove the car and fell in love, obviously not noticing the following. After purchasing and driving the car I noticed the transmission hicccup that occurs when the car is cold, only happens once, but after backing out of the driveway and putting the car into drive, the transmission "hiccups". I also noticed that when pulling away from being stopped, the car "hesitates", both these issues have been addressed on this Forum and TSBs have been released. When I initially brought the car into the Service Dept in May the assigned service person sent me out for a test drive with a tech. He agreed that the car did hesitate, but due to the car being warm, couldn't duplicate the trans hiccup. The Service tech told me that these were issues Lexus was addressing and to come back in August as the TSBs would be out. Meanwhile, the windshield issue started on this Forum and I too noticed not so much a whistling, but a low wind noise. In addition, on the 460 it sounds like the window is open, in the fact that I can hear each car "swoosh" by, not the tomblike silence I get in my other car.

So, on Tuesday I brought the car in. My service rep called me in the afternoon and said the following: As far as the "hiccup" goes, couldn't replicate so no fix. As far as the hesitation goes, my car didn't produce the "codes" necessary to warrant any further adjustments. I told the rep that in May I was told that it needed the TSB and to come back in August. The rep just repeated what he originally said - no code, no fix. I guess this burns me as when did computers become the authority and not the PERSON???

As far as the wind noise, he said, come into the dealership and test drive a LWB 460 that had the 50 page TSB performed and let him know if I thought it made a difference. He explained that this is a BIG project and most people were not getting the results they wanted, so he wanted to make sure I knew that if I had the fix performed I might not see any results. So, I came in and they gave me the car, it had less than 1000 miles on it. To be honest, it was worse than my car. It seemed that the window on the driver side window was quieter, but the sound had shifted to the other side of the car's windshield. In addition, this car had not had the "ticking engine" TSB performed, but the "hesitation" when accelerating was gone. Now I was really upset because I knew that the hesitation problem was fixable. So, brought the car back and he said "How was it?". I told him worse than my car and asked what Lexus was doing about this and he said "Drive your car, and if it really bothers you, bring it back and we will try the TSB". I am upset because I really don't want my car torn apart just to make it worse. Has anyone else had this problem / runaround? Has anyone had satisfactory results with their LWB? What had been done?

garyr

If I'm understanding you correctly you did not have the wind noise TSIB done yet. I have a LWB and all they do is put in some felt under the door weather strip and also near the windshield. It does not take long and almost nothing has to come apart.

They were changing the door glass on the SWB to the LWB glass thinking it was thicker and it is not. The door panels on the SWB had to come off the car in order to do so. It sounds like your dealer does not have a clue. Call Lex corp and tell them you want a Lexus technical field manager their to supervise the repair. I had mine done that way.

The wind noise in my car was extremely bad after the TSIB is 70% better. But now it's still louder than any other car I've owned and while it's better it's not acceptable. I'm waiting for a proper fix like redesigning the rubber glass weatherstrip.

jgoergen

Yes, I did not have any TSBs done yet. I guessed it was a very entailed fix as he kept repeating that the TSB was 50 pages long, over and over! 50 pages for a weatherstrip? My dealer is Lexus of Naperville, in Illinois. I thought I had seen that a service tech from this dealership had been following and posting to these Forums? Maybe he can shed some light. Thanks for the reply, I will contact Lexus on this.

mmorozov

The TSIB for wind noise consists of 2 parts. First part only applies to cars produced prior to some VIN number and it is a couple of pages long (basically plugging holes here and there). The remaining 50 pages is windows replacement to combat the noise, not to fix the problem. There are many steps to properly disassemble the doors and replace the windows, that is why the TSIB is so big. It is also very detailed, with pictures of every step, so even a monkey could do it. I guess Lexus doesn't put much faith into the intellectual capacity of the "trained professionals".

On one hand, the door disassembly is not trivial. The tech at the dealership couldn't do it when we tried to look at the speakers. On the other hand a couple of mexican guys that could barely speak English, took the doors apart in under a minute, when they performed tinting.

Don't be alarmed by the size of the TSIB. There is nothing destructive in it.

My LS also has low turbulence noise and intermittently I hear the wind whistle. But I could never replicate it at the dealership. As far as the low rumble goes, I was given the oximoronic excuse - "the car is so quite, you can hear more" I am actually sympathetic to the dealer. Lexus put them into a really bad position by releasing a half-baked car with problems that simply cannot be fixed. And what's even worse, it happens to be the most expensive car of the line-up. If IS or ES had this problem, the dealers could just point towards a more expensive car. With LS they can only make weird excuses and massage the customers into believing they drive in silence

jettie1767

Definitely push for the transmission update. It's a worthwhile fix to have.