IS300 tear down and track car build
 

I decided to write up a log of my other car build just in case anyone might be interested. it's a 2003 Lexus IS300 5 speed. I bought it from a friend to use as a daily driver a few years ago. He took fantastic care of the car, and when I bought it off him with 115k miles it didn't look a day older than 40k miles. It was bone stock. That didn't last long.

I swapped out the sways for a set from Hotchkis and put on Swift springs and Tokico 5 way adjustable shocks. A Tanabe cat back, Megan headers and a JoeZ intake made a slow car be slightly less slow and sound good. The bigger sways kept snapping OEM endlinks, so a set of Figs engineering links solved that problem. I topped it off with a short shifter and weighted shift knob, and drove it daily for another 20k miles.

The previous owner and I had been discussing splitting the costs of a track car for years, and once I picked up the Z to drive every day it occurred to me that the IS would be an ideal track car. Rather than buy an unknown vehicle for 5k with a ton of miles on it, why not use the perfectly maintained vehicle. It's not going to be the fastest car out there, but tons of guys track Miatas and they're much slower.

So, the decision was made. He would buy a set of track tires and all necessary safety items- cage, seats, harnesses, etc. I'd contribute the car and odds and ends. Black Friday sales and combing the forums for used stuff supplied me with a set of prosport gauges, an old Blitz AFC and some other little stuff. I still had a catless Y-pipe to put in now that I'm not concerned with it being too loud.

The first step was to get the interior out and sell it to fund further parts purchases. This was to be a completely DIY low cost track car, so anything recouped from parts sales would be huge. Luckily, somebody bought the entire interior. Other little bits sold pretty quickly. We ordered a set of OMP seats and harnesses, a full Autopower cage and all of the mounts and sliders we would need. The interior came out pretty nicely, but it's a huge pain n the *** avoiding breaking all the little panel clips. Now we were left with an empty shell to work with.

The next project was the sound deadening. This stuff looked like it was going to be hard to get out. Luckily it came right up after letting some dry ice sit on it for a while and whacking it with a hammer. Other than some on the transmission tunnel that seems to be invulnerable to conventional weaponry, it's bare metal through the entire car now. It'll get a coat of paint soon to correct all of the little dings we put in chipping up sound deadening. There was probably 20 lbs of it in the car.

The next things to be tackled are going to be a little harder. The dash needs to come out, both to get the useless stuff behind it out of the car and to paint it. For some reason IS300 dashboards get sticky and nasty in hotter climates. The sunroof needs to be taken out, with a piece of metal riveted over the hole.

Once those are finished, the cage and seats should be here. I'll keep this updated as things arrive. I'd like to have the car ready to go in a month or two. My goal is to get the car sitting at about 2750-2800 lbs with somewhere around 210-220 whp. It'll be fast enough to have fun with, but it's not so fast that I'll kill myself.

More pics

PLEASE put a big áss wing on it!!! PLEASSSEEEEEEE!!! (No sarcasm)

It's nowhere near fast enough to justify it, but it's not out of the question. Itll be after I home brew a front splitter and underbody panels. I'm combing the is forums in case some ricer needs to sell his wing. Other than safety equipment, I'm trying to avoid buying anything new. This is a low-buck track car above all else. Until the motor or transmission pops. Then it gets a ls1 and t56.

Attachment 62021

Made my blood sacrifice to the race car gods.

JEEZUS!!! That looks TERRIBLE



What happened............

The chisel slipped chipping out the sound deadening. Looks worse than it is. It bled pretty good since I'd been drinking. Hopefully that's the most carnage this project causes.

Update- the roll cage shows up today. So this weekend I have to find out how to delete the sunroof.

Look up Westabo

I think your best bet will be to take all the motor and railing and crap out and Westabo can hook you up with just a piece of glass there

Is there anyway to change the first set of pictures so that I can enlarge them to take a look?

Looks like a very cool build.

Click on them

LOL, tried that. I recently downloaded a new add blocker for chrome, maybe that is whats doing it. I guess the issue is on my end then :tiphat:


Edit - Nope still wont work :/ the two first ones do but thats it. Weird.

They work fine on my iWhore

Glass is heavy. My plan is to cut a piece of aluminum or thin sheet steel to cover the hole and pop rivet it in. Some silicone to make it waterproof. I'll paint the metal black so it kinda looks like a sunroof. It shouldn't see any flex once the cage is in.

They're coming up weird for me as well. All the pics are in an album here anyway. I'll try to mess with them later. I'll have more from this weekends projects anyway.

LOL!!!

Well, if you don't mind making it dirty like that, more power to you!

I want a ricer wing on it though!!! Lol

Honestly, I think it'll look fine from ten feet away. It's a dedicated track slut. Aesthetics are not an issue at all. I'd love some kind of wing, but I'm not paying that much for one. I found an APR wing for $600, but I'd sooner spend that on new wheels. Or put it toward the LS1/T56 that's going into the car in a year or two (or sooner if I blow the motor or transmission).

I like sluts
Why would the motor blow??? 2JZ FTW! (I know it's not exactly the Supra one, but it's as near as makes no difference)

Who knows. it's got 135k on it. I'm pretty sure it'll be ok, but old motors may pop. I'm not too worried about the motor. The transmission, on the other hand, is going to die at some point. They pretty much all do. It was a crappy tranny when Lexus put it in, so I'm not going to replace it with another stock one. A MKIV Supra Getrag is $6k. I can buy all of the parts for the LS1/T56 swap and the whole freaking Z28 for parts for $6k.

Welllllll, you're paying for "Getrag" and you're paying for "the supra transmission"

And that bitch will take 1200HP, lol


RICER WING!!!

If I were going to turbo the 2JZ I'd man up and buy the Getrag. I just don't think you can get enough tire under the *** of an IS300 to hook up until 100mph. I think the car will be just fine with a heads/cam LS1. 400+trq in a 2600lb car will be plenty of power.

Made some more progress over the weekend. The cage showed up Friday. Got the dash out. Tore out the AC and heater core, airbags and other bits. Painted the floor pan. This week I'll cut down the dash to the bare minimum needed to cover the instrument cluster and sand/paint it. I'll get some more pics up tonight.

This weekend should be sunroof removal, dash reinstall and more weight reduction. The cage needs some paint touch ups from shipping scratches as well. The seats, rails, harnesses and cage padding should get shipped out toward the end of the week. Ideally, this week and weekend is the last of the prep for the cage install. Once the cage and seats are in, it's time to fab up a gauge panel, install the gauges and electronics, and swap out the oem y-pipe for a catless one. Maybe remove the entire cat-back and replace it with a 6' turn down under the car. Then I'll pull out the ac system under the hood, grab a shorter belt, get a new set of tires and an alignment, and go play with it.

Made some good progress this weekend. Dash is back in (most of it), cage is assembled in the car (not bolting it in just yet) and the sunroof is out and temporarily covered. I'm building a panel to replace the sunroof this week, and it should be in this week. Seats and harnesses should be here tomorrow or Tuesday. I'll probably install those immediately so they don't take up all the space in my garage.

Everything but the drivers seat and slider showed up yesterday. Looks like this weekend will be sealing up the sunroof permanently and bolting in the cage. Maybe installing the seats and harnesses if the other seat shows up during the week. Attachment 63485

looking good!

You know, for what a good set of race seats and all of the rails and adapters cost, you would think it comes with the freaking hardware. Looks like I'm not installing the seats tonight.

Cage is in and bolted together, just not tightened down. Made a quick and dirty sunroof replacement panel out of lexan and got it sealed up. In a perfect world, I'd get the gauges wired up this weekend. No clue if the gf is ok with that considering how many weekends I've put in on the car recently.

Time for another update. Cage is bolted in, seats are in, harnesses installed, dash and cluster reinstalled. I've now got to re-do my sunroof replacement panel since it isn't quite water tight and install a shift light, oil pressure gauge, and water and oil temp gauges. Then I've got to wire in a SAFC and tune it. I'll get some pics up later this week. Hopefully I'll have everything together to actually drive the thing by summer.

i used to have a 2003 silver 5 spd IS300. sold it to tom peacock when i got the 370.

be crazy if you have my old car.....

if you notice is has a W55 instead of the W58 tranny then its mine. i went thru 2 factory transmission before finding an old SC300 transmission and swapped them out. the IS tranny was aluminum, the SC was steel.

It's definitely not yours. Bought it from my buddy who picked it up new from Westside. Need to get some more pics up. Progress has been made.

I wish it had the sc300 tranny. There's a used vortech on the is forum. I'd throw that on in a heartbeat. No more power mods now (except for a SAFC tune) since the plan is to run it until the tranny breaks and build a LS1 for it.

gl w it!

Alright, just broke through the roadblock. The car was a project with two buddies of mine, and one just had to bow out due to a baby on the way. Now that we know that, we can get the ball rolling again. I've got an oil cooler and filter relocation setup on the way, so we can get the oil temp and pressure gauges plumbed in when we install the cooler. It's good to have forward progress again. Picked up a spare set of wheels to put the good sticky tires on so the car can sit on the old garbage tires and the good ones don't get flat spots.