Hi All,

New to board...Thinking of purchasing an 06 330 from a "B-Lot"...Carfax, etc reports no accidents, however since I live out of town, I sent CarChex out to inspect...The inspector reports back to me that in the trunk, if you life the carpet up thats covering the spare, you can see there is putty right at the back of the spare compartment in the seam that connects it to the back of the car...so if I open the trunk, lift up the carpet and look straight down, I would see it...

Does this sound normal? The inspector says he cant see evidence of any work done to the bumper or anything so I don't know if this is a big deal or not.

Thanks for any insight.

I think it is normal. I have seen the material you are talking about in the trunk of many different cars. I'm guessing it is put on at the factory as an extra measure to help keep water from entering the luggage compartment.

The body shop manager for Sewell Lexus of Fort Worth, TX told us it helps to deaden sounds especially with noise from spare tire movement. He said the material is applied at the factory and he showed us other cars with the same material in the trunk. In our case most of area at the bottom of the spare wheel tub in the trunk was covered with this material. Some area of the trunk bed adjacent to the spare wheel tub also had this material.

Mine has a similar material...

my 04 ES330 has it. I wondered about it but it really looked factory.