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Power Rear Hatch - Cutting that Beep Volume in Half
I was busy playing with my license plate lights over the weekend and came across how to reduce the beep volume when opening the rear hatch when using the remote or indash power door button. I'm not sure if this has been discovered before but thought I would post in case no one knows about it.
I have done this mod on my car and I haven't had any adverse effects and everything works perfectlyfine (no new lights, errors or anything else). It doesn't get rid of the noise, but it does reduce it down to the same volume as when you unlock/lock your car.
Open your rear power door
Carefully pry away the bottom section of the interior panel of the rear door (this will be the side furthest away from the rear window glass). The trim is held in place by plastic clips that will pop out. A gentle but firm tug will remove the first one and the rest will just follow as you work your way around.
Once this is open look on the end side of the door
You will notice a black box with one end being rounded
There will be a plug that fits into this. Remove the plug and stow away. I stowed mine back behind the part of the loom it extends from to keep it out the way
Put the trim back and enjoy that annoying beep now being a lot quieter.
The rest of the beep is at the front of the car and looks to hide somewhere underneath the shroud of the wiper blades where the front struts sit. It looks to be from the same area as the speaker for the alarm, so probably won't be able to completely kill the noise.
Because it's kinda mandatory these days, I have done this mod for my car and have not had any issues. You do this mod at your own risk and I nor anyone else on the forum can be held liable for any damage you do to your car or your person or anything or anyone else around you.
Brilliant. I was able to just open the right end of the lower trim piece without having to remove it completely.
On our 2007 Rx400h there is no noise from the front. We originally had the dealer configure things to have no lock/unlock noise, and the least rear beep we could have. Perhaps that's why.
I wanted to add that the Stealership - (for a fee usually, my case $50 USD). Can mute ALL remote fob beeps, including the rear hatch. With the addition of this post, I was able to eliminate ALL rear hatch beeps.
I saw these instructions posted here (I'm pretty sure) about two or three years ago, and I disconnected the rear noise-maker ('04 RX) in about 10 minutes with no heavy lifting. The sound level is substantially reduced with no electronic side effects. Highly recommended modification.
Just noticed the picture had disappeared as I had changed my folder structure slightly. Anyway fixed it back up. One of the first modifications I did when I bought my recent car.
Awesome, thank you! I HATE nanny beepers - attorneys run amok making life annoying for the world.
I'm hoping this solves another problem for me, and I'll try it later this week when a specialty beam comes in to the local lumber yard. When I have a 10' piece of lumber hanging out the back, the RX beeped incessantly because the liftgate wasn't closed. This might fix that.
I also found a little rectangle on that trim piece that popped out easily, and it has a same-shaped metal cutout in the liftgate frame. Perfect place for a hook so I can secure the hatch down when lumber is hanging out the back.
I'm probably not your normal Lexus user, but now I can flog my RX400h for another 100k miles and use it as an ACTUAL utility vehicle.
JLPV - please do post whether this solves the hauling with the rear hatch open issue. Very interested.
It works! There is now just a soft ding every 60 seconds from the dash, letting you know the hatch is open, but not the horribly loud and constant beeping from the rear hatch.
It works! There is now just a soft ding every 60 seconds from the dash, letting you know the hatch is open, but not the horribly loud and constant beeping from the rear hatch.
Thats great news. You can get a little more "utility" out of the SUV.