texas008

From time to time, AC vents blow out pieces of black foams as shown in photo.
Seems AC duct insulation is breaking apart
2009 LS460 94k miles, Texas.

213374U

Haven't seen this from mine yet, 2010 w/ 107K in Texas

Falbz

Chuckinnj

213374U

Have you had your dash apart at any point in recent history?

texas008

Not that i know of.
My current workplace does not have covered parking, so the LS460 was parked in the open parking lot during the day for the past 4 years in the extreme heat of Texas. It must has been very hard. During that period, roof rail trim piece's paint/wrapping peeled away, door armrests become sticky, headlights' plastic cover clouded up a bit & paint suffered a bit as well.

davedudu

Could it be mice? Rodents chewed my cabin air filter (on a different car) and the debris came out my air conditioning ducts.

Chuckinnj

mckellyb

It's the foam gaskets for the vent openings deteriorating.

My wife's '02 RX 300 started doing this at about year 10. It'll stop, but be careful picking those pieces up, they'll stain should you crush them against something.

Your own fingers are no problem, but I can see people trying to pinch them between a finger and say, carpet, leaving a dark spot on light carpet.

It'll stop after a few years. In my wife's car's case, it was Vegas which did it in.

The headlamp covers starting to cloud, however, is UV, not heat. They can be brought back to clear, but you've gotta keep an anti-UV coating on them to prevent them fogging up.

Mine are starting to do the same, because no covered parking at work, and I've been lazy about keeping a UV blocker on them. At least the hail damage is unchanged since I bought it...

Oliver Enterprises

texas008 - I did some Lexus RX 330 (called 483N in Toyota world) liaison work for Japanese coworkers. Part of what I did was the ductwork for the vehicles. On many vehicles, especially luxury vehicles, urethane foam pads are placed inside the vents in elbow locations. Meaning a worker either has to reach in the duct and place the foam pad via adhesive on the backside of the foam pad, or a tool is used to reach far enough up the duct to place the foam pad in the correct location. The reason urethane foam is place inside the ducts is it reduces the whooshing noise of the air through the vents as it hits a wall and changes direction.

My guess is that it is that foam that is coming out. Not a big deal. I doubt the whole thing will come out, just pieces. The root cause would be the combination of age and heat cycles. Park the car in the sun and the car gets hot, turn on the A/C and everything that is exposed to cold air cools off. Do that thousands of times and it causes wear.

I remember this vividly because the drawing had Kanji (so I didn't know what it was saying), and my Japanese coworker pronounced urethane foam to where it sounded EXACTLY like "written form." It took me a LONG time to figure out what he was talking about.

jud149

I have the same problem if you want to call it a problem with my '11. My advice...don't sweat the small stuff.