TexasComputerMan

I have a 2008 ES350 Ultra with Nav. I also have a Garmin unit. Each tells me different things. The Lexus Nav system gives me a running list of upcoming exits (On highways) and what amenities are available at each exit. I like that, the Garmin unit shows a different map and includes the speed limit and what my speed is. (My speed is black when I am at or less than the speed limit, but turns red when I go over the limit. I like that also. So I use both.

Here is a pic of the ES300 CD Player mounted in the trunk of my SC400;

I have a 1994 ES300 CD player with the full brackets. I bought it because it is plug compatible with the SC400 sound system. I bought two of them and they both work in an sc400. However, I do not have the SC400 any longer and this has been setting in my utility room for a couple of years. This is PICKUP only. I will not ship. I Wil trash it if no one wants it. I will sell for $75.00 firm PM me if interested TexasComputerMan I am in Arlington, Texas

I do not usually comment on other people's postings. We each have our own opinions but I noticed a pattern in some of the newer postings. These are from some current threads and are all by a mr JohnD38: JOHND38: 30000 Mile Service Lexus is a Very Poorly "designed" car, made for people, who barely know how to operate. Real POS!! Get rid of it as fast as you can & go to Toyota or Hyundai. Bumpy Shift From Park To Reverse Just POOR Quality & no engineering! Designed by marketing & shoe sales For Those That Want To Change Their Oil Diy On Es350 What a *BLEEP* Poor design!!! Extremely Bad!!! Extremely Poor Gas Mileage (2007 Es350) 2009 350 has Very Poor mileage too. Only about 24 mpg & dealer says that's normal. Real POS!!! POOR!!!! My Lexus Won't Unlock Very Poorly designed car! Needs Keys!!!!! Bunch of dumbass designers at Lexus. Black mark on Toyota name & reputation. Consumer Reports Reliability Rankings Must have gotten a good payoff to rate this POS highly! Worst car ever! Horrible Seats? Totally agree! Hot, Uncomfortable, Poor seats!! Might as well sit on a wooden stadium bleacher seat. POOR!!!! Cleaning Leather Seats Don't clean them. Let them wear out & replace with Good Seats - Cloth. Leather's Hot & Uncomfortable, so why keep them. Marketing has people fooled into believing that they are luxurious. They are CRAP Lexus Es 350 Parchment Interiors Leather is Hot & Uncomfortable, so why bother? Sooner it is worn out the better. One wonders why he keeps his ES350 if he hates them so much. I have two (2) 2008 ES350's. One a Maroon ultra that I bought on 5/8/2009, it had 24000 miles on it (Now it has 44000 miles) and it has become my highway/travel car. I have traveled literally around the whole USA in this car. These trips have been my retirement trips and this car has performed very well. The only thing that I have needed to do to it is to replace the front rotors and pads. Oh, I also put an Ipod adapter in it. This has been a superior car and because of how good it has been, I bought a second 2008 Es350: It is Gold and I bought it on 4/12/2011. It had 9000 miles on it (It now has 16000 miles). It is a basic model and I use it as a daily driver. I also put new rotors and pads on this car. Also, I put in an Ipod adapter. I am sure that everybody's experience an be different, but if I despised a car as bad as JohnD38, I would get rid of it. In fact, I did just that. I, foolishly bought a 2010 Honda Accord. After driving about 1000 miles, I realized that I just hated that car, so I traded it in on the Gold ES350.

I would like to share my leather seat problem with you all. My 2008 ES350 Ultra has a parchment interior and I noticed that there was a drop of oil on the passenger seat. I left it alone for several months because I was afraid that if I tried to clean it up, it would just spread and smear and look worse than just that one small drop. But, it drove me crazy. I wanted to cleaned up, so I tried Meguiar's One Step Leather care. I was super careful to just touch the drop with a cloth containing the cleaner. I did NOT rub the spot. I dabbed it carefully. Surprise, Surprise, after the second dab, the spot was gone. I do not know if you will get as good a result, but it is worth a try. Particularly if you are as careful as I was. B-T-W, I bought the Meguiars at Walmart.

Yes, that is a tricky button to find. Try this: Sit in the drivers seat in a normal position. Put your hand on your right leg/knee. slide your hand to the dash and follow the curve of the dash downwards. Keep sliding forward underneath the dash you will find two buttons. One to reset the tire pressure check and one for the AFS light. That sounds stupid, but this way works.

I own two 2008 ES350's. A gold one that is a basic model and is my daily driver. And a Maroon ultra with everything except ML audio. It has the premium audio. I knew that there would be a difference in cost between the Lexus and Toyota service. What I found was eye opening. I took the Maroon one in to Lexus for it's 40,000 mile checkup and oil change. It cost me $284.60. Then I took the Gold one in to Toyota for its 15,000 (Yes Fifteen thousand) mile checkup and oil change. The work that both service departments was nearly identical. The Toyota did a 32 point inspection and cost me $0.00. (Yes, nothing) The Lexus dealer charged me $146.03 for a 16 point inspection. Toyota gave a detailed check list, while Lexus gave me a printed list of the checks that the mechanic should have done. (I have No reason to doubt the mechanic) I had both cars changed over to the synthetic oil, the tires rotated, a new cabin filter but did not get an Air cleaner. I have K & N Filters in both. The final totals are: Lexus = $284.60 Toyota = $123.10. I believe that the service was nearly identical at both dealerships. Think that I will be taking both cars to Toyota from now on.

I have now burned my third tank of regular gasoline in my 2008 ES350. So far, I cannot tell the difference, except the cost of the fillup. The car is running perfectly and my gasoline mileage is the same as when I was using High test. I do not see a difference in performance either. There must be some, but I cannot detect it. I will keep you all up to date as the months rollby.

My dice duo (Silverline) unit has been in for 7 months and is working just fine. I have tried all 'dip' switch' settings and like the MP3 the best. That is dip 1 (Left) off (up) and dip 2 (Right) on (down). the Manual says that this setting is for late model navigation units. My ES350 is NOT a nav unit, but this setting works the best. Also tried Sat settings and the text on my radio would flicker all of the time. Very distracting. The CD changer setting also works ok. B-T-W, I have a 2008 ES350 w/o Nav and a base radio with a sat button. (Don't have a sat radio setup) I can recommend this Ipod integration. I like it a lot.

I have hesitated to jump in here, but I just want to tell you of my experience. I bought a 2008 Lexus ES350 Ultra two years ago. It has been my travel car. That car and I had been literally all over the US. It has always had a slight shimmy at 65-75 mph for that whole time. However on a driving trip to Florida and after a very hard brake effort. (A Nut cut me off at 70 mph) I realized that the shimmy was much worse. I called my buddy who is a mechanic and asked him for his opinion. He thoght that it was warped front rotors. OK, I had never heard of that. When I got back home, my buddy checked the rotors and they were warped. He had to take it into his garage to prove that but I know and trust him. He suggested that I buy after market rotors and get ceramic pads. I did that and it totally cured my problem. We now believe that the rotors had been mildly warped by the first owner. Now at Any speed it is super smooth. You may have a completly different problem, but it might be worth taking your Lexus to a shop and having them check the rotors.

This was my choice and it works with All of my Ipods. Including a Nano. http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=69428

I just put these on my 2008 ES350 and they are super so far. I have a close friend that did the install for me for free, so the cost below is all that I paid. My Order: Part #: CE117.44083 2008 Lexus ES350 Centric Brake Hardware Kit Brake Hardware Kit ES350 Centric Qty: 1.00 Price: $ 7.67 Part #: P15K186 2008 Lexus ES350 Powerstop Brake Disc and Pad Kit Brake Disc and Pad Kit ES350 Powerstop (Ceramic pads) Qty: 1.00 Price: $ 225.75 Sub Total: $233.42 Shipping: $17.78 Handling: $4.27 Tax: $0.00 Core: $0.00 Discount: $0.00 Total: $255.47 I got them from: www.carparts.com THey have been on for week and totally solved the high speed shudderung that I got when braking.

I got back into my Lexus to route the Dice cable into the glove box. I had to take out the cabin filter and found a small opening on the extreme left of the glove box. (Almost hiddened by the Cabin filter cover)I threaded a stiff wire from the glove box down to the area where the Dice cable came from the headunit (Had to take off the passenger kick panel , the triangle one, to see into this area). When I got the wire down there, I wrapped it aropund the Dice plug and GENTLY pulled it up to the glove box. You have to jiggle it a few times to get it through. During this process, when I plugged back into my Ipod, I noticed the the Dip switch settings were in fact both OFF. That is the CD Changer setting and is working OK.

I bought the new Dice SilverLine DUO Ipod Adapter for my ES350. My Lexus is a 2008 Lexus ES350 without Nav and with the standard radio. (with sat & text buttons) I printed and followed dreyfus' (from Club Lexus forums) Nav/audio head unit removal steps. Everything went well except I managed to overlook step 5 showing that the left triangle trim piece on the drivers side also needed to be removed. When I had everything else taken out, the head unit would not budge. I realized that there must be a bolt on the left side. Taking that out did it. Hooking up the Dice splitter cable was a snap and the whole thing went back together very easily. I set up the dice unit as an MP3 player. (Dip switches = left off, right on). I tried to use it as a Sat setup but it had problems, so I reset it to MP3. It works Perfectly, including showing the song title on the radio's display. A Great Thanks go to dreyfus for the incredible pictures that made this install very easy. Scary, but easy. If you have the nerve, look at this link to see the removal steps. http://www.clublexus.com/forums/es350/234398-nav-audio-head-unit-removal-steps.html

In several places, there has been an ongoing debate about what octane we should be using in our ES350's. Mine is a 2008 ES350 ultra. I decided to look at the engine specs for my ES350 and compare them to the same year Camry engine specs. My owners manual says that my ES350 should use 91 octane gasoline. But, the comparable Camry model with what seems to be the same engine says that they can use 87 octane gasoline. So here is my research: Camry: 2011 Technical Specs Standard Engine 3.5L V6 Standard Transmission 6 Speed Automatic Cylinders 6 Horsepower @RPM 268@6200 Fuel Economy Cty/Hwy 19/27 Combined Fuel Economy 22 EPA Class Mid-Size Number of Valves 24 Torque @RPM N/A Fuel Type System Gas Engine / Sequential Electronic Fuel Injected, Sequential Port Fuel Injected Sequential, Multi-Port Fuel Injected Turbo (Yes/No) No Overdrive Transmission Yes Battery Output N/A Compression 10.8:1 Displacement 3458/211 Bore X Stroke 3.70x3.27 5-speed ECT-i automatic transmission w/OD Type: 6-speed automatic Ratios: 3.30, 1.90, 1.42, 1.00, 0.71, 0.61 Final Drive: 3.69 ES350: 2008 Technical specs Standard Engine 3.5L V6 Standard Transmission 6 Speed Automatic Cylinders 6 Horsepower @RPM 272@6200 Fuel Economy Cty/Hwy 19/27 Combined Fuel Economy 22 EPA Class Mid-Size Number of Valves 24 Torque @RPM N/A Fuel Type System Gas Engine / Sequential Electronic Fuel Injected, Sequential Port Fuel Injected Sequential, Multi-Port Fuel Injected Turbo (Yes/No) No Overdrive Transmission Yes Battery Output N/A Compression 10.8:1 Displacement 3441/210 Bore X Stroke 3.70x3.27 6-speed automatic electronically controlled transmission w/intelligence (ECT-i)-inc: sequential-shift Type: 6-speed automatic Ratios: 3.30, 1.90, 1.42, 1.00, 0.71, 0.61 Final Drive: 3.69 The only difference seems to be in the displacement calculations. Please note that the compression ratio is identical. I have always thought that a 10.something compression ratio would require high octane gasoline. I have Not decided to switch to regular (87 octane) yet, but I am mixing 1/2 tank of 87 Octane with 1/2 tank of 93 octane (=90 octane). What are your thiughts and/or comments?????