AndyL

I was one of those 3IS owners who raised the concern about this issue. In my case, the wind noise is a whistle at the top corner of the driver's side window where the window glass meet the frame. The glass run (a piece of weather strip running inside the window frame and along the window glass. As the corner of the glass run was crooked, I had the dealership replaced it during the summer. The situation was improved and I hardly heard about the whistle. But recently as the weather gets colder, the whistle comes back but it is not as bad as before. So this is more about the design of the glass run and/or the insulation around the surrounding. Also the structure of the mirrors is still not effective to divert the noise elsewhere (If you look at the triangular black plastic piece at the A-pillar, you will see it has a bulging structure which is actually a measure to reduce wind noise.

IronPyrite

I used to have a whistling sound coming from the driver's side, especially at certain temperatures and humidities. After removing the 3M protective film from the mirrors, the whistling stopped.

Something to consider if you have the protective films on your mirrors, which may alter aerodynamics of the stock mirrors enough to cause wind noise.

J3ffrey

just drove an hour on the highway was listening for noise.. I have no film and no irregular noise.

EZZ

It can't be engineering if some have it and others don't. Bad quality issue but there is a way to mitigate it.

darkarmy

Mine is really bad, once i hit 65km in speed, I hear it pretty bad and once i go above that speed, it sounds like the drivers side has a bad case of wind drag. Dealer heard it, they tested it on a few other cars and it also had the same problem. Therefore they assumed its a design flaw.

EZZ

I know for certain mine doesn't do that and I've test driven others that didn't do it.

J3ffrey

I was up at 80mph and noticed a TINY bit of noise coming from what sounded like the rear drivers side door... listened for it on both of my 1 hour highway drives and heard nothing from the front drivers side door..

NickTee

Pull the window channel out and put it back in, seeing if you can align it so it is not deforming around that area. If that proves to be impossible, I would not resort to adhesives of any sort. The reason for that is because it becomes a royal pain in the butt to clean if you ever need to remove it.
What you can do is find some 1/8" closed cell foam(this way it doesn't absorb moisture. Make sure it is springy and quickly returns to its original form after being compressed) such as gym foam or neoprene, like this and put it in the gap. Pull the window channel out where you're going to stick the foam, trim it to shape, place it there and put the window channel back into place. Make sure to trim it so it is not visible, the point of this is to make it undetectable. Put the window up and go for a drive.

AndyL

From what you described, I think this is what my dealership mechanic refers to as a kit to solve some wind noise problem. In my case, the driver's side window channel (properly called a "glass run" ) is visually crooked at the top corner of the B pillar and so they replaced it with a new one. For the kit to install, it doesn't involve taking the door panel off. You simply pull the Glass Run carefully away and partially from the black window frame in order to stuff the foam in some places.

NickTee

Correct. You're essentially filling holes with foam, since it's less permanent than adhesives. It just has to be thin enough that it does not disrupt another part of the window run channel.

darkarmy

Lexus Canada called me back regarding the wind noise, they confirmed it as being a problem on all 3rd Gen IS and now its up to the technical team to create a recall, if they decide to do nothing about it, then nothing happens. But at least Lexus Canada has confirmed the issue.

A 15K Honda Fit doesn't even have this problem, so sad.

EZZ

I don't think it affects all 3IS. I think many members here don't hear a thing. I've tried it on my car and it was silent. So was my loaner.

AndyL

Mine is affected but not all 3IS are affected because I find there is no issue with a few loaner 3IS that I came across.

CLUM

hmm it's as if there are 2 different wind noises people are talking about in this thread. one from the window and one from the mirror.

Mine is a high pitch whistle from the mirror (and I DO have clear bra on the mirror). I can put my window down while on the highway and put a finger to cover the seam between the top part of the mirror and the mirror stalk and the whistle goes away. Interesting that people say removing the clear bra should fix it though. I’ll have to conduct more tests with tape…

AndyL

I also have clear bra on mirrors but there is zero noise coming from the mirrors. The film that I used was Xpel Ultimate and it was a pre-cut kit.

I suspect it is something to do with how the installer did the installation for you as mirrors are tricky -- you can lay a precut film for mirror and stretch it as intended or you can struggle to make it work. Unlike hood and fender film pieces where there are certain alignment or boundaries to adhere, there is a certain deviation far as where the mirror film should lay and yet it might cost some aerodynamic issue only discovered at a later time.

On the other hand, I hear a whistling noise from the driver's window sometimes. Dealership already replaced the glass run for the driver's window and yet the noise is not totally eliminated. If I stick a finger in the top inner corner of the window, the noise will stop. The noise is only apparent at higher speed. But I am already used to it.