^^^^There's a thread in the 2IS forum and it appears that some dealers remove the dash, and sone don't.

Lou

 

I got an RC350 F sport....far from an F car, but decently quick and it did attract just as much attention /people asking questions as my F does....

V.

 

I got a call the afternoon I was getting my recall done and they said something along the lines of "Hey, we have a slight issue. Seems that a rodent has chewed up your cabin air filter....it's all in shreds and pieces. We can replace that for you for $87 installed. Want us to go ahead and do it?"
First, there's a 99.999% chance that a rodent would NOT be in the car as it spends 99% of its time in my 8 car heated and cooled, 6 figure garage that I fully treat for inspects, etc and have NEVER seen a sign of a rodent in or around the garage, much less in the car. Made zero sense to me. I politely told them "No, I'll take care of the filter myself". I wanted to inspect the filter etc.
so get to the dealership to pick up the car and the service advisor (which most of them come off shady to me) tells me "yea, the manager told us to replace the filter free of charge for you, so you're good to go". I asked if I could see the other filter and he replies "no, we threw it away....it was all in shreds and pieces....ripped/chewed up"......
I had a bad vibe about it and really felt like they were BSing me and just trying to get an extra $87 for no reason out of me. When I got home, I checked the filter and call me crazy, but it doesn't look brand new.... of course I have no way of confirming that as I hadn't checked the filter in the last year or so, so have not clue of how it looked exactly before it went in.
Just be careful as dealers will always try to hound you out of extra bucks, especially if they feel like you have extra cash to blow.
Another slight thing that ticket me off was that I asked him on the phone did they get my alignment straight and he told me they realigned the car and that it was straight and my RR Racing LCA bushings are causing the pull to the right. I said ok, fine, what does the print out look like of the alignment?! He said he hasn't seen it but they said it was fine, and that the printout would be in the car upon pickup. Picked the car up and no printout in site.....car pulls just as hard, if not harder to the right now.... I think it's time to try Johnson Lexus of Durham and wipe my hands clean with Johnson Lexus of Raleigh as there have been too many bad experiences with our F, IS300 and RX350 all in the past 6 months. Could almost write a book about it unfortunately.
Sucks we have to go thru this with dealerships, but over the past couple of years, I totally see why people try to stay away from that place if they can.

V.

 

Hmmm...and I considered using them instead of Johnson of Durham...
After reading the above reports of dash alignment issues and things dangling, broke or disconnected after the work as well as my previous Recall experiences ...I just don't feel enthused about getting this work done.

 

Six figure heated and cooled 8 car garage... what's $87?

Between the two, JL of Raleigh or JL of Durham, I have always recieved better service at the Durham location. Durham also seems to be a tad bit more "mod" friendly. Caveat being, my car is just OEM+ and not track or show car modded. Like you tronim I'm not enthused about getting the work done and I'm actually holding off on it until the dealership gets some experience with the process.

 

This works with any 2nd gen IS. You don't have to take the steering wheel off. I remove the two 12mm nuts for the steering column and that gives you plenty of room to remove the dash

 

And the fun thing is, the replacement air bag is just a newer version of what came out. Do the research! Some years down the road it has to be done again, since it is not improved or reengineered like it should be.

 

ZONE A: Includes states with high temperature cycling and humidity. Time in service until significant propellant
degradation may occur is projected at 6-9 years.

ZONE B: Includes states with moderate temperature cycling and humidity. Time in service until significant
propellant degradation may occur is projected at 10-15 years.

ZONE C: Includes states with lower temperature cycling and humidity. Time in service until significant
propellant degradation may occur is projected at 15-20 years

 

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/is-...l-process.html

 

Luckily I didn't have anything misaligned, broken, not put back together correctly....just really felt like they lied hard about my cabin air filter, as petty as it seems.
And $87 is nothing, but I'm not giving out a free $87. I give them plenty of work/business so no trilled about changing my filter when it's not supposed to be changed. And again, they said they changed it, I feel like the same one is in there. No way it was "chewed up", lol. With my business, if someone had an issue like that, I would 100% want to keep it and SHOW the customer what it looked like and what I replaced it with. How come they couldn't do that for me?! Even a pic would have been fine.....leads me to believe it was just a quick show at a free $87 since they were already there. Just felt like they were being shady. Not supposed to have that feeling as a customer.

V.

 

I had the recall done on both my ISFs. I was there while they did it. It took 15 minutes each and they only had to loosen the right side of the dash. They did NOT remove the dash. It was a very simple process.