[Jetstream]

All I can say is WTF were Lexus designers thinking when they did this?!?

1st off I love the car, but if there's one thing that pisses me off to no end it's when I'm driving on the freeway, am behind some stinky rig or car and I start to smell exhaust. Now I tell myself "My windows are shut and I know I hit the "recirculate" button on the friggin dash", and then I look down and the farkin thing has automatically switched to outside air rather than remain on recirculate or recycled air LIKE I PUSHED PREVIOUSLY!!!

This happens all the time, I dunno exactly when, why or how, but I do know hitting "Auto" does this. Other than that it just seems to happen randomly from what I can tell. So why the hell is the car apparently smart enough to switch to using outside air, yet it can't seem to detect awful exhaust odors and switch back over? If it did that I'd be okay with it...

Sorry for the rant and I did do a search first and mainly came up with SC threads lol, but nothing that directly answered my question.


How do I keep this thing from switching to outside air and remain on recycled / recirculated air? I'd love for it to simply remain on what I put it on end of story. I don't mind auto lights or wipers, but damn it I don't care to smell the ass end of cars & trucks and it pisses me off cause it seems to do it randomly and all the friggin time. Someone please help. If there's one thing Lexus farked up on, this is certainly it...

Again sorry for the rant thread, but as you all can tell this stupid feature has taken it's toll with me

 

[METEORO]

Moving to GD as it does not have anything to do with inside/out.

But to answer your question, that is part of the automatic system. You can have that disabled at your dealership. Its part of the custom settings package.
I did on mine, as I hated it switched to fresh air too.

 

[cdeslandes]

The recirculation button has 3 settings:

- Outside (1 light)
- Auto (2 lights on)
- Inside/recirc (1 light)

Each hit on the button switches to the next mode.

In Auto mode, the sytem only recirculates when CO or smog is detected, or if needed by the AC. Hit the button until recirc is on with only one light.

 

[ItalynStylion]

If you go from having the temperature low and then change it to high it will switch. Not sure why.

 

[MrGregski]

If you go from having the temperature low and then change it to high it will switch. Not sure why.

He's got a 250.

 

[tsopranoMB]

you can switch that, go to the dealership to have them change your personalized settings....there is no charge for it....

 

[wlk20]

What bugs me the most about the A/C control is that I can't keep mine set on auto permanently - for whatever reason, when I shut-off my car & re-start it the next time, the control will also switch to outside air.

 

[JasonAlex.us]

I have the same frustration with my IS300. It annoys the hell out of me.

 

[Jetstream]

Great thanks for the feedback guys! I have the 5k checkup in another 2600 miles anyway, but I dunno if i can wait that long and may have to drop by sooner to fix this. I'll try what cdeslandes mentioned though first, cause if there's a way that it will detect CO or smog and will switch to recirculate before you smell it then I'd be fine with that.

Thanks again!

 

[cdeslandes]

What bugs me the most about the A/C control is that I can't keep mine set on auto permanently - for whatever reason, when I shut-off my car & re-start it the next time, the control will also switch to outside air.

Yeah, that drives me nuts too.

 

[clarkman]

The designers did the auto set to fresh air to reduce the complaint of windows fogging. Owners often would complain of the windows fogging on quality surveys even though they were causing the fogging by leaving the HAVC in re-circ mode. So, you can leave the HVAC in re-circ mode just don't complain about the windows fogging.

 

[Jetstream]

Interesting... I don't think I've ever had a problem with previous vehicles and fogging of windows due to the air being set to recirculate. I have noticed that if i have the air turned off things might fog up, but if i turn on defroster even just the lowest setting seems to clear it up even with recirculated air.

Actually it's funny the service guy didn't tell me it could be reprogrammed not to do that (glad I know that now), although he told me the reason why I want to have it on outside air is because otherwise I'd have to replace my in cabin filter sooner as all the recycled air makes it dirty faster, or some crap like that. Even if you look in the manual it always seems to recommend outside air. Maybe its just me, but I don't enjoy breathing in ass fumes

I can't wait to hear of someone suffocating themselves due to breathing recirculated air for too long...

 

[clubfoot]

What bugs me the most about the A/C control is that I can't keep mine set on auto permanently - for whatever reason, when I shut-off my car & re-start it the next time, the control will also switch to outside air.

If you have an IS350 with NAV, I believe the latest NAV update disc fixes the problem of losing your a/c settings on shutdown by flashing the firmware.