btw, it took them a week to fix that problem. Meanwhile, they gave me ES330 for a loner.

at that point , i for sure know I am in love with my IS350

 

...that someone else heard this sound, or not! I thought my mind was playing tricks on me the first time i heard it. I thought that maybe i was driving through some light road grit that was hitting my windshield. i turned off the air to hear it better and it went away, but i still wasnt sure it WAS the air conditioner. Im definitely going to complain about this next service. Funny the sound didnt show up until about 6k miles. Thanks for the heads up.

 

isnt the cabin air filter carbon activated?? may be the culprit

 

Thanks for the info. I tried turning the ventilation completely off and most of the noise went away, but I still heard a slight popping when going over my drive way curb slowly which will tend to stress the body slightly. However the noise was reduced after turning the ventilation off, so it might be related somehow. Anyway, I guess I will have the dealer tear apart the dash to try and fix it my next service. I was hoping not to have an issue like this with a Lexus, but hopefully their world class service everyone raves about will make me happy.

BTW my car was port delivered in March so it is not one of the very early models. Some of the early models were built in the Tahara plant which was supposed to have very high quality. Most 350s now, including mine, are coming out of the other new Lexus plant which came on line late in 2005. Figures with my luck, they are not up to Tahara quality standards yet.