Project Manual Lexus GS300 skidder

Was going to weld my own but a spare diff would be nice. Where abouts are you?

 

I'm from Northern Ireland, but I go to uni here in Edinburgh. You from Edinburgh?

 

Hello again, some good news and some bad news. Firstly, the memory card with most of the photos for this massive update has corrupted itself, so its going to be a not so massive update. Secondly, the car is pretty much ready for the road, and finally its still in fcking Northern Ireland.

I don't remember all of what I done, but I do have photos from the past week or two I was at home. The biggest thing that happened since last time is that I have moved to a new place to work. I recently got a garage put up at my house and I finally was able to move in. This is a massive deal for me as when the car is in bits in my granda's house I rely on people to run me between there and the house. Now I can work to 4am and pop out for an hour whenever it suits.


The interior is finished for now, made up a nice aluminium panel for the centre console and mounted my battery cut off switch. No photos of this unfortunately.



I painted the exhaust I made up in high temp paint to try and avoid rust, also added a little heat wrap where it came fairly close to one of the HEL brake lines.





One of the problems I had was the clutch refusing to bleed. I had a look and thought it was weird the bleed nipple was below the clutch line, realised the slave was in upside down. I flipped that round and bent some brake line to get the clutch line to work with new positioning.




After sorting that the clutch bled fine, but wasn't fully disengaging. This is something I worried about when putting the kit together, but I noticed the pedal box wasn't pushing the clutch slave very far before hitting the stop. I re-drilled the hole for the bolt holding the clevis farther from the pivot which gave me a nice clutch pedal. All good.





While I was there I have been meaning to swap the brake master cylinders round. When the brake was pushed hard the bias bar would hit the accelerator pedal. By swapping the master cylinders, which travel different amounts when pushing the pedal, the bias bar moves away from the accelerator pedal instead of towards it.



Pain of a job but I then re-bled everything and all was working well.


Around this time I bit the bullet and sent the car away to get the wiring/immobiliser issue sorted. Two days later the car was working and the section of loom that I hacked was untouched. Maybe it wasn't my fault after all... probably was.

When it came back it was making a pretty nasty tapping from the top of the engine and there was an oil pressure light on. After a lot of thinking I realised it could be possible I mixed up the lines for the oil relocation kit up. I didn't realise oil filters have an anti-drain back valve in them meaning the routing would matter. Sure enough oil cooler/relocation kit off and the oil pressure light went off. The noise stayed though.

To cut a long story short, I have changed the oil, checked the oil control valve, had the valve covers off about four times, checked valve shim clearance, checked the timing and belt tension.













So after all that, the noise is quieter but still there. Its a tapping that sounds like its coming from the back of the intake side valve cover, around cylinder five or six. Loud enough at idle, but it disappears as soon as I get on throttle. After a week or two of trying all that I decided that I'm just going to drive it with the tapping and if it blows, it blows. 2JZ-GE's are cheap to come by, but I'm not swapping it till I need to, I'm desperate to properly drive the car.

I am going to try running some ATF in the oil and then use a flushing fluid and some new oil when I get home. Hopefully that quietens it down more.


Other than that whole headache, i decided to re-route the oil cooler setup so I could run an in line thermostat. I don't have a picture of the thermostat i got, but the whole oil cooler/relocation kit/thermostat is ready to go back in the car after I flush the oil. I ordered a few more AN fittings and had enough braided line lying about.





Another thing I needed to sort was the wiring for the radiator fans. For some reason when the car came back from having the wiring sorted, the radiator fans came on when the ignition was on and didn't go off. I wanted to wire them on to a switch anyway, so I mounted two relays on a little bracket and ran wire to a switch beside the battery cut-off on the centre console.







That little assembly bolts to a rivnut in the engine bay, again, couldn't find a photo.

The final thing i can remember doing in that time is fitting the front arches. I don't have any photos but you will see them in the inevitable picture whoring at the end of this post.



And thats about all for now. As it currently stands, the car is finished, ready for MOT. I would like to sort the tapping, but it'll have to wait unitl after MOT.

There are still a few little things to tidy up to completely finish this part of the build, (which I'm going to start calling stage one for easiness), but the car is finally ready for the road as it stands.

Unfortunately the way student finance NI works, the first semester is always the hardest on money, so it is purely financial as to why I don't have the car over with me this time, but when I get home from uni at christmas it will finally be time to drive it.

I'll post a couple of hundred pictures soon and I'm pretty sure I have some snapchat videos of me driving it about the street before I left. Look forward to that.

 

I downloaded some editing software to string the few clips I had together, and I ended up having a quick play with it. This is my first video, so keep that in mind haha.

 

Hey all, we are right in the middle of what will hopefully be the last big dead zone in the thread. Cant wait to get back at christmas and drive this beaut.

Another member messaged me on here, and I though I would paste it to the thread so anyone doing this conversion in the future will be able to find the info. I know when I was researching the conversion it was a case of the more info the merrier.


Quote Originally Posted by R55 BGL
hi bud! nice thread! iv just bought the same kit, i was wondering who done your prop and how much? and did you get the speedo to work in the end? any thing worth knowing about that kit when i get it?
cheers
Russell

Hi mate, cheers. I got a prop made from a few bits. I got a prop with the BMW gearbox I bought, I then went to a breakers yard and bought the longest prop I could find that was a similar diameter to the original Lexus prop. A company here in Northern Ireland then made me a custom front prop section.

The car is running the standard Lexus rear prop section, (from the diff to the centre bearing). The custom front section then consists of the long breakers yard prop, cut to length then the rear part of the front section of the standard prop was welded to one end, and the front end of the BMW prop welded to the other end.

So just to clarify, standard rear section. Then the front is made from Lexus rear end (bit with splines), generic middle section from the breakers yard, then the gearbox end of the BMW prop up front to bolt to the BMW gearbox. Any good engineering company should be able to cut and weld it for you on a lathe.

The speedo should be working, but on the test drive I completely forgot to look down at it. Too much excitement haha.

As for the kit, its a great kit, all lined up nicely. One thing I will say is pay careful attention to the flywheel spacer issue I had on the thread. PMC told me not to use any spacers between the engine and the flywheel, whereas I found I did have to use only the thicker spacer. If I were you I would measure the distance from the face of the adapter plate to the face of the flywheel before you bolt the gearbox. I don't remember the measurement it should be, but its on the thread. Think its around 46mm or something.

Good luck with the build, if anything comes up I am happy to help out, just drop me a message or write in the thread so people doing this in the future will have the info available.


Hope it helps someone out!




By way of updates, nothing has changed. Trying not to buy anything for the car as insurance, MOT, tax and an alignment is the next priorities.....but.....

A guy from the Lexus GS facebook page messaged me saying he had a bonnet I might be interested in. Got a sweet deal and the legend drove it down to the flat in Edinburgh, where it is now proudly displayed in my girlfriends room because I ran out of space haha. She loves it really.

GS bonnet with an Evo 8 vent blended in. Needs tidying and paint, but I'll worry about that when the car is over. He threw in a free bumper for me to mess with too.

 

By request, here is the design for the diff ring to get the speedo working. All credit to Wilbo666, master of wiring on old Toyotas and a gent.

 

Nice man, when I get this car over we should go skid! Was checking out your thread there, I love big old volvos, it'll be so sweet when its done.

 

Yeah man, I was planning to make something too, couldn't believe it when I saw the Evo vent. Going to make up some ducting on the underside of the bonnet to get air going in the right direction and keep water off the engine.

Any time man.

 

Hi all, its been ages since I updated this, mostly because there has not been much to update. I got home a couple of weeks ago but I didnt really get to touch the car till the new year with uni assignments. Since then it has been mostly tidying up little things and driving it up and down my street to get miles on it.

Pretty much the first thing I done was a rear alignment. I was planning to get the car properly aligned, but the only thing that is stopping me driving it is still the lack of finances. So paying for one went out the window and I had a crack at my first ever eye-lignment.





I used boards and some string with bolts on the end to mark the angle on the garage floor and went from there. It actually worked pretty well, seems to be bang on second time. 0 degrees toe and I reduced negative camber for a more functional setup hopefully.


My engine is still tapping at idle, I put flushing fluid in the oil, let it idle for the proper amount of time and then drained it. I used this as an opportunity to fit my new and improved oil cooler/filter relocation setup. It now runs from the block to the filter, back to a thermostat and then back to the engine if the oil is cold. When the oil is up to temp it goes through the thermostat to the cooler then back to the block. I also have hydraulic lifter additive in the oil now, not that it has helped.

I definitely dont have the money to be splashing out on fancy AN fitting spanners, so the fittings are a little scuffed, but most of the worst of it is hidden.












I also spent a bit of time tidying up the engine bay and getting it sitting how I wanted, also have the obligatory energy drink overflow tank because drift car.

So until the time is right for boost this is how the engine bay will sit, really happy with it!









And finally some interior shots, because i didn't have any of the centre console i made last time round. Still need to get a gator of some kind for the gear stick.







Like i said, i have been driving the car up and down the street to try and get some miles on it to see if anything is going to break. All looks good so far apart from the tapping at idle, the car is a dream to drive, and makes a seriously fierce sound. All in all, phase one complete and I am happy with the result.

If plan A was to get it to donegal rally 2016 this must be plan fucking Y or Z, but the plan is... Go back to uni, find a part time job and as soon as I get that financial security come and collect the beast. The build has not been made any easier or quicker being an eternally skint student on the other side of the Irish Sea, but providing I get to drive it some time this decade it will have defiantly been worth it.

One thing I forgot to mention is my speedo isn't working. Haven't had a chance to get a look, but I did primer the trigger wheel I got made to stop rust. Does anyone know if this would stop it from reading? Cheers.

Happy new year everyone and i will leave you with this. Lying in wait.

 

I haven't got to drive it on rough roads yet, but nothing has been hitting so far. Are you sitting mega low? Shit.

Hoping to shorten them in the near future anyway to sort out the roll centre.

 

Thanks man! I love me an ls400, which model is it? Do you have a picture?

 

I have tried to be sensible for a while now, I'm a skint student and I cannot afford to run a drift car over here.

In other news, flight is booked for Friday to go and get it. Insure it at the house, chance it to the ferry, MOT and tax it in Stranraer and drive on to Edinburgh. Wish me luck!