Hey everyone, I just picked up an 04 LS430 on Saturday. It's white with beige interior. 86K on the clock.

So far it's still a lot of getting used to the new car. Front pads are ok, but rotors are warped so gonna replace those. It has a lingering smoker smell that I'm gonna have to do some work to try and mitigate. It's also got a bad subwoofer that will need to be addressed. Apparently the cd changer doesn't read discs, which I missed on my inspection cause I didn't try a CD, but I'm hoping I can fix it. If not I'll just use a cassette adapter or something along those lines.

Other than that it's been good. Nice car so far and I love how the luxury touches it has, even if it's just a 2004. It's got the Modern Luxury package and the Mark Levinson audio.

Every time I look something up about the car, this site comes up so I figured I ought to be a part of the crew.

Anyway, looking forward to learning more about the car and getting these little issues fixed.

-Adam

 

although they call it a sub woofer, it really doesn't go BOOM BOOM BOOM like you would expect. mostly for what they call fill in music. take the cover off and if your cone is alright and it is vibrating then that is what it does. new one is around $500 and if you want a lot more base you are better off getting another amp and speaker set-up.
Centric rotors are supposed to be alright and much less than LEXUS but just an opinion I don't have evidence to back up.
two kinds of cabin air filter, I think you need the one with charcoal for smokers. welcome, but not an official or anything

 

Thanks, the sub is more rattle rattle than boom boom. Reading some of the posts on here about it, it sounds like maybe the foam is deteriorated. I'm gonna pop the cover off this week to get a look at it. I saw a nice write up on here somewhere about foam replacement I'll follow if I go that route.

for the rotors I'll probably either get centrics or cut them if they aren't too thin.

 

I replaced a '96 LS400 with an '04 LS430 and have loved the car, especially the keyless entry. I thought I'd be able to us the FM adapter from my previous car to hook up my Sirius radio, but it wouldn't work since the amplifier is in the trunk. I used cassette adapters for a while, but they degrade quickly, so I finally bit the bullet, and since my radio was Sat-ready, ordered a from Amazon and I love it. It came with a three-month subscription to Sirius and it has worked very well. There are good tutorials on Club Lexus for removing the whole center stack, so it's easy to remove the radio, CD or whatever. As for the CD, try another CD disc first to see if the disc you tried was defective and if OK, there are lots of used CD players on Ebay. Be sure that the year matches. My wife's 2002 SC430 needed the door speakers fixed and I used a place in Dallas, where we lived, and they were able to refoam the speakers for about $60 each vs. $475 for one new one. Also, her amp got bad on my wife's '02 SC430 and I bought a used one off Ebay and it turned out to be an '04 LS430 amp. As for the smoker smell, I think Fabreze would go a long way in alleviating that problem. I have replaced my warped rotors with after market rotors which worked well and were amazingly inexpensive.
As to why I bought the '04 LS430, I was really wanting a 4th Gen LS and called my Lexus guy in Dallas and ran it by him and he said the 4th Gens have a problem with going through front suspension bushings and the repair costs $6,000. I asked him about the '04 LS430 which I had noticed in the paper with 88,000 mles and he said that was the car to get--he thought they were great. He even directed me to High End Automotive in Wylie, TX for a driver's side mirror rebuild, which has worked out great. Good luck with your find!

 

I was thinking of looking for some kind of Bluetooth adapter for the radio as opposed to replacing the cd changer.

After the speaker repair did they sound alright? I just ordered a full foam repair kit. I'll be doing the work myself

 

I think you'll run into the same problem that I had with the FM adapter--the equipment that you need to connect to is in the back. If your radio has a SAT button, the Vais that I got will work, I believe. Look through the Ebay LS430 CD Player listings and I think you'll find what you need. Good luck--fab car!

 

The bt45-toy works very well for that

 

That's exactly what I was thinking of! Thank you.