How to Silence Your Lexus RX F-Sport
Most find fake engine noise annoying. Here’s how to make it go away using an easy to install OEM part!
These days, tightening emissions standards are robbing performance engines of their pleasant exhaust tones. For enthusiasts, this is a problem. Part of the joy of owning a fast vehicle is hitting the gas and being rewarded with an array of soul-pleasing sounds. Automakers are well aware of this problem, and they’ve taken steps to compensate by intentionally piping artificial engine noise into the interiors of our performance cars.
The problem is, nobody likes artificial engine noise. Just like fake hair, nails, and crab, fake anything just won’t cut it. Maybe you dig the looks and performance goodies on vehicles like Lexus’ F-Sport lineup. But if you buy one, you’re stuck with those crappy fake sounds. Or are you? Club Lexus member MisterQ decided to find out how to silence the artificial engine noise in his Lexus RX F-Sport. And his efforts paid off big time!
“I bought a Lexus RX F-Sport 5 months ago because I just love the look of the grille. Immediately after I got it, I noticed the harsh engine noise during acceleration. Not even hard acceleration, just normal driving. Quite disappointed with it. I expected to have a much quiet ride from a Lexus. I later found out that the Lexus RX F-Sport engine comes equipped with a ‘sound generator’ that cannot be disabled.
So after months of searching, I found an online store selling Lexus parts that has a ‘cap’ for the non F-Sport engine. I bought it a few weeks ago, replaced the sound generator with this cap, and voila! A quiet Lexus RX F-sport. The engine is much more quiet now and I can totally enjoy the ride in my RX. The cap only cost me $16 while the sound generator was selling for $113 (for those who want to get extra engine noise).”
Thankfully, the OP also provided some nice pictures showing the part, part number, and location of the sound generator as well.
“Below is the location of the sound generator. There’s not much space back there behind the engine. The parts fit quite snug, so it takes a bit of effort and twisting and turning to get the sound generator out and push the cap back in. Make sure you push it all the way in before tightening the clamp. All you need to do is unscrew the clamp to loosen it. Don’t need to take it out, just loosen it enough to pull the sound generator out and push the cap in.”
“I purchased the cap from https://www.lexuspartsdirect.ca/
The part# is 178930P150 , it’s called Air Intake Resonator w/o Fsport
https://www.lexuspartsdirect.ca/p/Le…78930P150.htmlEnjoy the quiet ride!”
There are quite a few DIY examples where members have simply figured out a way to cap off the sound generator. But this is about as OEM a solution as you can get to eliminating that annoying noise!