Originally Posted by scdroptop

Ok, hold on, take a deep breath.

We can make some immediate performance adjustments for you!!!!

First of all on the wind noise-the answer is YES. Virtually ALL convertibles no matter if hard or soft top will give you some wind noise. The mirror excuse is a common one. I pursued my wind noise on my three year old SC430 when I bought it and drove the dealer nuts about it. They replaced the rubber gasket going all the way around the windshield and doors and that helped a little. They also re-insulated the a-pillars and it helped, but at the end of the day, I had to turn up the ML speakers to forget about it.

My best advice/two cents from a super **** guy who has owned dozens of convertibles, lexus cars and two SC's is this: Pick and choose your battles on the noise. If it is really loud and bothering you and feel like they haven't fixed it at all, by all means pursue it. If no one else but you can notice and the radio helps you forget about it, then I'd question your relentless pursuit of perfection and perhaps be at ease with it knowing that we all go through it and it's just a little imperfection.

If it persists or gets worse, try the gasket thing or the a-pillar. I will say this, my Lexus dealer (Sewell) had to send to the bodyshop to re-insulate the a-pillars and adjust the top so perhaps there is special soundproofing stuff or insulation they have at the body shop that they don't have at the regular service garage? Maybe your dealer did this?

Now on the performance piece....

First thing you need to do is disconnect your battery (both terminals) for at least 30 minutes. This will reset your ECU and your car will more than likely be much quicker, shift quicker and respond quicker. Our cars have adaptable learning between the ECU and transmission and if a grandma or light footed individual owned your car before you the ECU might have been very conservative on shifting intervals.

Secondly I would use the manu-matic (you have a 2006, right?) option. I don't have a 2006, but the 2002-2005 you can manaully shift via the c-gate 2-3-4 option and I love it. I test drove many 2006 cars and was bored to death in Drive but moved the stick over to manual and loved it.

Once you reset your ECU, drive your car like you stole it the first week or so and it will be trained more aggressively.

Lastly, if you still are very unhappy and expect Corvette type performance from this car, maybe it's not the car for you??? Totally agree that the IS is more fun, but then again how many IS sedans do you see out there? $29k sedan vs $67k classic roadster. We have debated the IS-C vs the SC as well on here and many of us were tempted at first but ended up staying put. I sold my first SC looking for a Porsche and almost bought a 993 2005 C2 Cab for same price as my 2005 Pebble Beach SC430 but obviously ended up back home where I belong . Try doing intake/exhaust/headers that may do something for you as well throttle controller too.

Or how about a SL63 AMG? Okay, maybe a little more than the SC in price. How about used a 2003-2005 SL55 AMG? 400HP lots of issues though. What else would you get? Trust me this has been debated a lot on this forum. The SC is truly unique. Wait and see. You will love it more the more you drive it. The less I drive mine (garage queen), the more I think about selling it. As soon as I get in it and drop the top the more I stop thinking about that!

Originally Posted by 2007sc430

I had wind noise issues and had to replace the seals going around the doors and the torn-seal that was just above the area where the mirror is attached to the door. Not much wind-noise anymore...it solved 95% of the problem. If you search for an earlier thread that I posted, you can find the pictures that I attached which show one of the areas where the seal commonly tears.