Do any of you remove and discard the side black plastic under hood covers? And how many have stopped bothering with the retention clips?

My new (to me) 2008 has zero clips holding the under-hood covers. They are all just sitting loose except for the one over the fan/engine front.

I just ordered some clips as they're quite cheap, but I kind of wonder if I ought to just store and forget the two side covers.

 

After about a week of owning the car, I removed all the underhood covers, as I'd rather see even an ugly engine than beauty covers.

The sides weren't too bad, but under the silver, center one...man, is that one homely pair of airboxes!

I put it all back, though I left specific clips out (battery) so I can move things around quickly and without any tools at all.

FWIW, I remove the beauty covers on any engine. Keep 'em for future owners, but I don't want to have to work around them.

It bothers me less on this car, for some reason.

 

I leave them all in place. As much as I'd rather look at a nice engine, the LS 's engine is not....well....."nice". The covers almost never need removing, and when they do, they're easily removed. I bought a 100 pack of the clips for a couple of bucks on Ebay, so no worries of running out. I've seen posts where people have done some custom paint work of the covers. The HKS supercharger kit comes with some nice covers :

 

Wow RoadFrog, that kit engine cover is nice!

Personally, I'd rather see a beautiful set of REAL intake runners than all this plastic crap. However, everything under these covers is pretty ugly. I will probably leave them on since they come off so easily and may contribute to a cleaner and quieter engine.

My LS400 had nice looking intake runners...

 

I removed the passenger side plastic cover in order to use Group 24F battery (which has reverse terminals as compared to Group 24 batteries). Group 24F batteries are more common than Group 24 batteries and often at a lower price, everything else equal. Additionally, removing the passenger side plastic cover makes it easier to disconnect battery for routine work on the car without the fear of setting off airbags or triggering false alerts.

 

I believe there are other threads on this topic. In one of them, I recall reading that the covers on the sides are needed to channel rain water away from some of the parts underneath... Have not verified or tested that but I was not motivated to remove these on the 460 (but have been tempted on the 430).

 

I thought it was only the cover for the battery (the small cover on the left most corner on the passenger side) that must be on to keep rain from dripping onto the battery and engine compartment. The rest three large covers are more for cosmetic reasons to be on. On a GX460, in comparison, Lexus just supplied the center cover, leaving the left and right sides open. Taking off the side covers on the LS460 makes it look similar to the under hood of a GX460 - easy to conduct routine maintenance work. Of course, taking the side covers off the LS460 is an individual choice and would not be recommended by Lexus. Sort of doing it at your own risk, if any.

 

I've given it some thought (removing the covers). It's just a pain to remove everything to work on the engine, the reason I haven't removed them is because thankfully I almost never have to work on the engine...so why bother? But I have considered removing them...I may do it when the car gets a little older and starts needing under the hood attention but right now at 166,000 miles, the thing has been flawless.

 

I'm assuming the covers help reduce engine noise and from what I hear the 460 requires very little attention under the hood.