While stopped at a light today with the radio off, I heard that tiny noise from the dash again. I noticed that the center vent vanes were moving, so I hit the climate button and disabled the swing. Sure enough, the noise went away.

Is there a way to lube the vents? If so, what lube?

 

FWIW my vents make the identical noise.....just barely a plastic-ey gear crunching/grinding noise too, not noticeable unless the cabin is 100% quiet. You're not alone with your phenomonon. I always leave them stationary, unless I'm trying to impress someone that's never been in my car before.

 

I'm not familiar with the mechanical part of it but I assume its either a small gear drive or an offset cam. Either way my preference for lubricating something like this would be a small amount of silicone paste lubricant (available in a small tube) or 3M silicone paste.

 

I believe Jim Chow posted a thread a while back about this noise. I personally have it once in a while and so did a whole lot of people from that thread.

 

My dealer fixed this for me three times on my 03 LS and twice on my 04 LS. This is a known problem with the LS430. However, it's supposedly a quick fix by adding a little bit of oil. The question is, where and how do you add the oil? Now that I am out of warranty, I'd love to know.

 

I actually completely disassembled the navigation head unit to get to the vents for this same reason. In the end, I was able to make a very slight difference, but it wasn't worth all the effort.

 

There's always WD-40 with the little red straw... NOT

Remember that thread a couple days ago about an "oil smell" in the car.