Project Manual Lexus GS300 skidder

[kyle5894]

This was a good read, I'd imagine it would feel like a totally new car. Did you find that your front upper arms make contact with the strut towers as simonman mentioned? And has it been round Driftland yet??

I ask as another skint student with a GS, I should probably be focusing on my coursework but keep finding things to do to the car. I also told myself I wouldn't touch it until my other car is in roadworthy condition but that's still sitting on my parents drive while I sink more money than I have into the Lexus

Thanks man. It does feel like a complete new car, I am in love with it! I have had issues with the upper control arms hitting the strut towers, but I'm not mad low. I do plan on going a little lower in the future, but I plan on shortening the knuckles when I get RCA's anyway. The car already feels so grippy, cant wait to sort the front geometry and see how it feels. Haven't really drifted it yet, I MOTed the car on the way to Scotland and I have nowhere to work on it over here. I'm waiting till I get back to the garage at easter to weld the diff and sort a few small things. Driftland after easter.

Haha, you and me have a lot in common. I have definitely been there.

 

[kyle5894]

Time for an overdue update, uni and the car have kept me busy.

As I said in the last post, I bit the bullet and booked a ferry to bring the car over. Flew home with three days to fix the speedo, and I literally tried everything. Ruled out everything I could think to test, even built a little jig with an angle grinder to test if the speed sensor was reading the trigger wheel. I ended up ringing the MOT guy to ask if the car would pass if a SatNav displayed the speed. Ended up spending £90 on a Garmin. Ive since read that the speedo doesn't operate if the car has four bad ABS sensors, I removed them all when I ditched ABS. So anyone breaking a mk2 GS let me know!

So the time finally came to drive it out of the street. Being a fresh build I got a ferry in the middle of the night so if I broke down it would be quieter. Thankfully everything was fine. Car didn't miss a beat the whole way there. Flew through MOT with an advisory on a ball joint.

Some last minute prep

The car is driving amazing, the tapping is still there, but other than that it is a dream come true. Handling wise it feels tight and planted, it makes some amazing noises and with the really short diff ratio, it really moves. I wasn't expecting this much fun from the 2JZ GE. There is five of us in our flat in Edinburgh, the flamily, and it was so good taking them runs in this thing I'd spent the last year and a half boring them about.

For me it really is one of those cant walk away without turning round cars. Plenty of pictures were taken.

For valentines day me, Rebecca, my best mate and his girlfriend went a wee road trip. After two and a half hours each way, coming in at like 4am the power steering started making a pretty bad noise. Literally pulling into a parking space on my street. It was late, and parking is extortionate during the day in the centre of Edinburgh, so I called a breakdown for the next day and went to bed. Got up early the next morning, got the car on the transporter and took it to uni, where parking is free. As soon as the car came off the lorry I opened the bonnet and seen the serpentine belt had half jumped off the power steering pulley. Fixed it in thirty seconds, moral of the story, no matter how late it is look to see what happened haha. At least I got some cool photos.

About a week ago I started hearing something funny from the bell housing. Havning nowhere to work I rang around a pile of garages in Edinburgh to see if someone would let me use their lift for a few hours. Eventually Kim and Maybury garage helped me out, really nice guy. i had from nine till twelve on a Saturday morning, I was supposed to have a bit of help, but we were all at a party that went on till 6am that morning, so I was solo and extremely hungover.

Basically pulled the gearbox, couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, then because i was pushed for time I had to get it all back together. The gearbox put up a fight getting back on and then to top it all off, I was tightening the bolts holding the gearbox to the engine and i heard two loud snaps from inside the bellhousing. the poor guy that owned the garage was supposed to leave for Newcastle at twelve and I was already running a bit behind, so I had to just stick everything back on. Got out at ten past twelve and the clutch has started to slip massively. It feels like I somehow snapped pressure plate bolts or something? i don't know, I have literally never heard of this happening to anyone.

http://s304.photobucket.com/user/ky...8-4a1c-9779-6465acf970a7_zps8ccalugh.jpg.html
So as it stands I am waiting on a decent jack that I ordered and me and my mates are going to pull the gearbox again in the uni car park. Can't wait.

In the mean time, the brake pedal had a little too much travel for my liking, and there was a tiny bit of spongeyness. I think it's the unbranded master cylinders that came with the pedal box. After emailing Wilwood I ordered a 0.7 for the front brakes and a 0.75 for rear, one size bigger all round. I swapped the 0.625 from the front brakes to replace the 0.7 in the hydro. Should make it easier to lock the rear wheels.

Still waiting for this jack to arrive so me and Rebecca went to the uni car park today to put in the wilwoods in and swap the hydro master cylinder.

Excited to see what the pedal feel is like now. This jack that was supposed to be here Friday at the latest should turn up this week and I'll get to see what I broke.

Update on whats broke to come.

 

[Captain]

I fucking love this car, bet your proper stoked on finally have it on the road. Good job on all the work you put into it

 

[kyle5894]

I fucking love this car, bet your proper stoked on finally have it on the road. Good job on all the work you put into it

Thanks man! Can't describe how stoked I am, and it just keeps getting better, fun updates to come!

 

[scotty dugg]

Subscribed, love these for some reason, very cool.

 

[kyle5894]

Subscribed, love these for some reason, very cool.

Thanks man. There is just something so pimp about them.

 

[kyle5894]

I haven't updated this in far too long, a lot has happened, so I might do this in a few chunks.

Last post I was waiting on a Jack showing up to see what I had broke. It turned up, and it was back to the Uni car park to get it done. Turns out I mangled the pilot bearing when tightening the bellhouse bolts. Clutch probably wasn't eye-lined properly, I should have seen the gap around the bell housing. Never again am I working on the car severely hungover, rookie mistakes.

After Euro Car parts dicking me about for a couple of days, I finally got a pilot bearing. Pretty sure its 35x15x10mm, BMW one did the trick. Getting the outer race of the pilot bearing out of the casting on the back of the engine took about an hour. It was a complete nightmare, obviously because it was just the outer race I couldn't use the wet tissue method. Eventually got it with some prying and hammering, the gearbox went on again without issue.

Around that time I had a prop-shaft bolt back out on me on the way to uni. I managed to find the bolt on the road, but it messed up the threads on the way out. I replaced it with a high tensile bolt from the Uni workshop while I tried to source another Lexus one, this was the start of an annoying couple of weeks.

I rang breakers yards and checked ebay for days, couldn't get ones anywhere so I replaced all of the Lexus bolts with high tensile ones from the workshop. In certain gears I could hear the propshaft bolts hitting the selector rod. I flipped them, swapped in three of the Lexus ones, as it would still be in balance, a pile of combinations. It got better, but I eventually decided to try source some BMW ones, finally got them and that solved the problem.

Only thing is, it appears to have wrecked the gearbox hitting all those times. Its making a nasty noise, I've tried changing the gearbox oil, but it looks like I'm getting a new gearbox. Sweet...


Couple more photos about Edinburgh...

Right, I'm heading to bed, but on the next update: RCA's, LS400 brakes and a mad new shifter

 

[kyle5894]

Forgot to mention, during the whole propshaft bolts hitting the selector rod period, I mangled, upgraded and then managled again two donuts. It was a frustrating time.

The red duraflex looked like the one on the right after a few days.

 

[mc_bob]

Somethings seriously out of balance for that to happen. Im still pushing the stock one and it doesnt get an easy life.

 

[kyle5894]

Somethings seriously out of balance for that to happen. Im still pushing the stock one and it doesnt get an easy life.

Yeah, the propshaft bolts were hitting the selector arm under hard acceleration.The bolts I replaced the Lexus ones with had a larger head, took a while to source some reasonably priced BMW ones. Its all sorted now, but it was a nightmare! Prop bolt backed out and I lost one, even though I had them mega tight after you saying the same happened to you.

The five speed ZF prop donut is also much smaller than the Lexus one, looks undersized, looking to get an aluminium one with polyurethane inserts eventually.

 

[kyle5894]

Girlfriends in the shower, so might as well try get the build thread more up to date.

As I mentioned, got an advisory for a lower ball joint at MOT, and it started making the steering wheel shake on the motorway. Managed to get a deal on two decent ones on ebay, a garage was selling because the customer didn't show up to have them fitted. There are horror storeys on the GS facebook page of lower ball joint failure, so I'm glad I got two.

Seeing as I was doing both I thought it would be stupid not to do RCA's. Learning a bit about suspension geometry in Uni and really wanted to see how much of a difference the made.

Got some Autosports engineering 30mm ones from America to go with the new lower balljoints.



Fitting them wasn't too hard, in the uni car park once again, but I borrowed a big breaker bar from the Formula Student workshop to make life easier. I did split my 17mm deep socket which I wasn't particularly happy about.

I do not miss working in that carpark.


Needing to replace the ball joints was convenient, but the real reason I got RCA's was to fit these bad boys.

The GS must run a decent bit of vacuum in that ABS/brake servo unit because the brakes are absolutely shocking unassisted. I knew I'd have to put more force in the pedal to stop the car with the pedal box, but I couldn't even lock up the wheels before.

Really wanted LS400 calipers for the car from day one, and then I got my first pay check for some bar work in Edinburgh and bit the bullet. Got a great condition set cheap on Ebay from America, even with shipping, not sure how that worked out, but yeah.

The photos of the disks and painting are on my dead phone right now, so I'll have to continue this tomorrow. Badassery to come.

 

[frakey79]

this is awesome. i have an auto one but wish i brought manual

 

[kyle5894]

this is awesome. i have an auto one but wish i brought manual

Thanks man. Can't buy them in manual unless you find one that has already been converted, all auto from the factory, all Aristo's were auto too.

 

[kyle5894]

Long, LONG overdue update incoming.

The build thread is so far behind the car I have forgotten what order some of this stuff happened in, but you'll get the gist!

When putting together the LS400 brake upgrade I decided to get some new disks and pads all round. I had heard good things about MTEC, really reasonabley priced disks, grooved, drilled, couple of styles to choose from. I decided to go for their C-hook disks. Similar to grooved but apparently a bit more aggressive, rip off of Alcons J-hooks really.

I hate the look of rusted brake disks, so a coat of high temp paint was in order. MTEC offered a coating service, but it had mixed reviews. Mask off the contact areas and some purple high temp paint. Primer and clear too obviously, no half measures.

I was still in the flat in Edinburgh at this stage, with nowhere to work on the car. An indoor spray booth in the corner of your room sounds like a good idea at the time, but its not, its just not. Fumes were insane, room reeked for weeks, but it got the job done.

Calipers got the same treatment

I also used a fine paint brush and hammerite black to paint the c-hooks on the disks

Installed everything in a uni car park as always... but in the pitch black for some reason. I don't remember why I done it at night but I remember it being a nightmare. Pun not intended...

I took some of the prettiest pictures I have of my car around this time while blasting round Edinburgh's B roads with Rebecca.

Not much got done after the LS400 brakes being exam time, but while I was procrastinating to avoid studying I made a list of all the things I didn't like about the car and managed to get some parts ordered for when I went back to Northern Ireland.

Main things to do were:
Shifter had play and generally didn't feel that nice to use

Accelerator cable felt a bit weird through the pedal, probably due to the 180 degree bend it had to make

Take another fucking crack at finding this tapping in the head.... Although it is annoying, I have been thrashing the car all summer and nothing has got worse/catastrophically failed. Thats a 2JZ for you.

New gearbox mount to better centre the gearbox in the tunnel as I read of a better method than I used initially. And the old gearbox mount was pretty ugly, I would have more time with this one. Also wanted some hardcore bushings as the standard BMW ones were very soft.

And I wanted to strengthen the A/C delete bracket while I was at it, just incase.



Even though Jasper was pretty scared getting on his first ferry, we made it home to a nice pile of car parts.

Down to business in the next update.

 

[kyle5894]

Just realised all the photos are dead on this thread now..... Fucking Photobucket

I may go through and fix them but it it literally going to take forever

 

[85dirty30]

this is rad

 

[TS_Bisc]

Saw you coming off a roundabout at about 6 today near your uni, noticed out the corner of my eye so only got a glimpse but that's proof she's a head turner Take it the cars been behaving itself?

 

[kyle5894]

this is rad

Thanks man!

 

[kyle5894]

Saw you coming off a roundabout at about 6 today near your uni, noticed out the corner of my eye so only got a glimpse but that's proof she's a head turner Take it the cars been behaving itself?

Haha, yeah, just heading home at that point. Do you live in the Edinburgh area? Been looking for some local drifters to hang with/see where the good spots are! Since coming here I've seen about two other drift cars in and around the city.

Car is sort of behaving itself, the accelerator pedal has started to stick slightly at the start of its travel making me look like I can't work a clutch in slow traffic haha. I'm in for another uni car park sesh soon.

 

[UmarK96]

This is awesome man! do you often visit Knockhill much? there is a drift event scheduled for next weekend. I'll be up there