smooth1

Welcome to LOC.

Looks great man. I hope you have many smiling miles ahead! LOL!! BTW, if you haven't done it yet, clear bra it or something protective for the front end. Thier paint is just as bad if not worse than Lexus is for rock chips and scratches. And get rid of the run flat tires as soon as you can.

Email sent.

And the 96 is atleast ODB II. I'd get the 96.

Welcome to the Lexus Owners Club. We have a very active RX group.

Just curious if it's the same on the ES, but have you figured out the dual zone ac, and back to single zone control again? On the IS it's 2 nav screen menues away to switch it back. Is it better on the ES?

Yeah, I've watched "Super Size Me" and the health care one too. I don't know, it's a valid point of view if nothing else. I liked em. I haven't seen the economics one yet, but I'm sure I will. The health care one I thought was great actually.

Congrats! I have loved the GTI for quite some time now. I tried to talk my wife into one but she had already fell in love with the Jetta 2.5 SE. Which is fine with me also, but I think the GTI is a much better car. And your GTI looks great! Those are the rims to have! Your gonna have a ton of fun driving that car. Is it AWD? or FWD?

Volkswagen.

LMAO!!!

I would love to have an LFA.

I've just come to hate dealing with the banks now. Since the whole crash thing, they're swirling sharks now! I'm a small business owner. It's crazy on one side they want to sell me payroll and accounting products, while on the other side telling me no credit, sorry, your a risk. Meanwhile I've never missed a payment or been late ever!

Wow, just saw the thread and thought I'd stop in and take a look see. What a nice surprise! Very nice photography! Very clean shots. I see the Maxima is happy with it's new owner. LOL!! Car looks great man.

I think everyone agrees that just about all factory sound systems are "anemic" when it comes to mid bass and lower frequencies. Which is why I was asking what exactly you were trying to accomplish. So here's a few tips for ya: 1) Ipod in the aux input sucks. It just sounds flat. If you want to get the full sound out of your ipod, you need to use an interface like a Vaitech or even the OEM ipod interface. That will give you a USB input and the before and after sound just for that is a huge difference. 2) Pull the stock bass speaker and use an inline power amp for the sub and get a bigger better sub woofer with an adjustable low pass filter, and phase control. Suddenly it's a whole new system! You don't need to boost the bass so much now freeing up the other speakers to produce upper frequencies much cleaner now. 3) test all your exsisting speakers to make sure your getting a full sound stage and replace them. I've never said OEM speakers are great speakers, but if you use a different set that has a different sound characteristic, you might end up terrible sound. Also make sure the voice coils are ok, and the speaker suspension is still good and stiff. The reason I bring this up is you said it's an 06, so 4 or 5 years of banging the max line with the volume knob may have over stressed the speakers over time. Which results in a tired weak sounding speaker.

Looks Great! Very nice color combo.

Wait a minute, how is it that you have a new avatar already and we still haven't seen any pics? * edit: I just saw you started a new thread with pictures. ( You're lucky, I was gonna start getting ugly about it! )

Buying and selling bootlegged and reproduced copyrighted material is illegal and not allowed here.

Well Congrats SW! pics for sure....

Hello, the RX forums stay pretty busy. You'll find a ton of info there. Welcome to the LOC.

Hello, Welcome to the LOC.

And why don't they release the IS 350 over there? I don't get it at all, it just seems so stupid to me that there is no IS 350 over there? I mean, why not? BMW sells the 335's and the M3 there right?

The ML system sounds nice, but if it were me, I'd skip the ML and just get the premium sound system with the Navigation package. But if your dead set on getting the ML system, then your going to have to wait. Most dealers aren't stocking the "loaded" Is lines because the economy sucks here still and no one is going out and buying them off the lot already loaded. Heck, just finding a black one with the color interior you want is hard enouph right now.

Yeah, the amp is between the quarter panel and the trunk on the right hand side. I've worked with a few people who "upgraded" thier sound systems in these cars and mostly they end up with a system that just gets louder, but definitely doesn't sound better. These new systems are so "sound engineered" and tuned for the best sound imaging that even just changing the speakers can result in a really bright or off sounding system. If you want to do it right, then I would get the OEM ML amp and stock head unit, along with the speakers and do an OEM upgrade with a seperate line in sub amp and 8-10'' sub. DCfish here on the forums sells all the equipment. I don't think your going to be able to get better sound by swapping your current 14 channel amp for a 4 channel amp and a bunch of cross overs, unless we're talking a top of the line Focal system or something and crazy money.

I don't know that investing a couple grand into smaller tires is a very "feasable" answer for the very little differences your going to get. I think if you just install a better suited tire. How many miles are on the set of tires you have now?

So what exactly are you trying to do? The reason I ask is because I've pretty much been down this road a couple of times and there is alot more to it then what you have listed here as "problems and issues" your going to run into. Don't worry about the speaker in the front dash, you don't have one there. That's only a real speaker in the ML set up. But, if your going to be changing out some speakers and adding a more powerful amp, then your going to need to to a full system replacement. If you do that, then your going to lose some of the intergrated functionality of the stock system as well. Which is why I'm asking what are you trying to do here?