LEX-SV

Happy Holidays, Lexie is looking ready for the season (thumbs-up). Best wishes to all here at LOC. I'm driving my Mazda CX-5 about 300 miles this Friday/Saturday. But Sunday I bring out the Lexus IS, which I haven't driven for 2 weeks, really looking forward to it...

Surf's up and it's almost Christmas. Enjoyed the warmest day of the week at 70 degrees F.

Nicely done, thanks for pics.

^ thanks for report.

Yes, I read letter. "The bolts used to secure the housing and sprocket of the intake-side VVT gear assembly could become loose due to abnormal impacts generated within the gear assembly immediately after a cold start. In certain cases, the VVT gear housing and sprocket could separate and result in the engine stopping while the vehicle is being driven, increasing the risk of crash." So thankfully nobody here has experienced that failure.

Has anybody actually experienced a Intake VVT failure? If so, what happened?

Get the F-sport exhaust for your IS, it sounds really good. Really transforms the car without being overly loud.

Should look good, F-sport stuff is always high quality.

Wow. I guess the blue stitching matches the F-sport springs, chassis brace and brake capipers.

Last night it was 29 degrees F in parts of Silicon Valley, top news story.

No, even Sacramento has many characteristics of that climate type although temp swings are a bit more extreme.

Good question, but not Santa Barbara or LA or San Diego. In Silicon Valley. Are you in Sacramento area?

I intentionally live in parts of California with a Mediterranean climate for good reasons, including my car enthusiast tendencies are easier to enjoy. (When I first saw title of thread, I was thinking it was about the Thanksgiving/Xmas holiday season).

Roger Rodas was believed to be driving at time.

btw - Paul Walker was the passenger. It seems the news is incorrect (again). The Carerra GT is not like the Boxster/911 with a front mounted fuel tank, the fuel tank is in front of the engine behind the passenger compartment. This was a horrible crash, impact speed is still TBD. The Carerra GT is a 600+ hp street legal supercar without the electronic nannys such as stability control that we take for granted today. Personally I would not own a mid-engine or rear-engine car without all of the electronic nannys including VSC, TC, ABS, BA, EBD and I would never turn them off.

Sad to hear about the needless death, certainly no place on a public street for this kind of driving that ended 2 lives. Walker was reported to have been a passenger in the Carerra GT at time of death.

Yes, I hope all had a great Thanksgiving weekend with friends and family. I enjoyed the SF international car show on Friday, but didn't get to drive my Lexus all weekend.

Does your car have F-sport lowering springs on it? The early versions of those springs caused clunking noise from rear. A revised spring came out later eliminating the noise.

JDMVIPCars - The IS350 2006-2013 would be a solid and reliable Lexus for your purposes. It's very quick since it's the lightest Lexus model with the 3.5L (306hp) engine. The clean and simple styling works well with those doing VIP mods, saw many excellent examples of ISx50's at BOS at Fremont Lexus dealership 3 years ago.

Now that I've driven 2 IS350's, I can see why reviews are positive..

So after reading all this, looks like non-ML has 8" subwoofer...

In northern California, I've never seen a IS350 AWD. In last 5 years I've seen 5 or 6 IS250 AWDs, even those are somewhat rare.

exit9 - Glad to hear you still have the IS350awd. Your awd version is pretty rare, must be great when the snow hits New Jersey. Looks like you do a lot mile per year in the Lexus.

So it seems in non-ML, 12 speakers in door and 1 subwoofer in rear deck.

Time for a new service advisor, IMHO. Once you find a good one, stick with that one exclusively. At my Lexus dealership, I consistently use only one service advisor, the rest are questionable.