Lutkis

Of course, my mistake.

mlracing

I was working on the other car and had a few things I wanted to get done on this car while I was out and doing stuff. First up, if anyone asks you to replace the headlight bulbs in their GS300/Aristo regretfully decline without failure! Worst job ever!


Alex's 101 trick to not wrecking knuckles while doing the install work.. way too tight in there for gloves so I had to improvise. Would not wish this job on my worst enemy.. it may be easier if you have small child hands though.


Anyway I finally got them both installed after much swearing and some burning smell due which ended up coming from the bulb where it is meant to ground with the cable.. met some plastic instead.. (my bad). Resolved and works ok now. The picture is odd it shows them quite green but actually they're much more clear/blue. Which is great because previously I had the OEM 4500k ones and it had a very yellow look against the inners which are cheap blue/white LEDs that I actually need to replace as one is flickering. These are just 6000k so still legal and doesn't look too blue.

Also while I was there I replaced the battery. Side note, Lexus Premium Sound System cranks pretty hard with a tape player adapter.

mlracing

Also a couple days ago I was a bit bored and had finished my work for the day so I had a go at polishing up the front Bazreias. After being out in the rain and muck they'd got a bit **** and faded with some water spots and the usual. At first I started with Megiuar's metal polish but it just wasn't quite harsh enough, I think it's more of a finishing polisher. When I moved onto Autosol the magic happened. It was hard work and there is still more to do but for now it's good enough. Just need to get the rear pair out some stage and do that on them too, perhaps this weekend.

mlracing

A little while ago I purchased some from roll centre adjuster blocks from Japan, 23mm so not huge but enough to make a difference. Finally got around to installing them today. Not too difficult just getting the bolts out is probably the hardest part if they're a bit stuck in there. The kit came with longer new bolts and I torqued them all up nice afterwards as well.


Simple idea just a block that pushes up the hub a little bit.


A whole lot more thread to play with at the front now so if I really wanted to I could put it completely on the ground!

mlracing

****ty weather today and my white LEDs arrived a little while ago so I did some work on that. Pro tip for new players - the forward voltage matters haha. I didn't really understand it before but the red ones have a lower forward voltage so can use many more, white ones have higher so I could only use 4 in each row before it would run out of juice. No matter, still worked out looking ok. Not sure how it will look when actually on the car.. Tomorrow might get cracking on the other side.

mlracing

Few bits arrived today wooo


Have wanted the blinker in the mirror for a while and it seems like the easiest way is to get these covers with LED lights inside. These already attached to mirror and I can't easily figure how to remove it so I will just get the wrap guy to wrap it while it's on the mirror still then just install the whole lot and wire up the indicator to the fender winker. Which then I will be able to play with fibreglass and remove the fender light


Also these arrived, factory window visors with all the clips in tact and no cracks.

Will get to installing these once car is back from the panel shop

mlracing

Dropped my mirrors off to get wrapped this arvo so should get those back in a while then can put them on, woo! Need to get the mad 3m take from them too so I can mount up the visors.. don't want them flying off at speed.


Finished up the other side fog light LED today, went to test it with the controller and derped out (watching Le Mans at same time) by plugging neg into pos and fried the controller.. doh! Ordered a couple more so will test it works when they arrive then work out the best way to control that from inside the cabin.

mlracing

So I drove down to Taupo for the weekend and it went OK (actually it's a bit of hard work on some of the roads!). Anyway went to pop into see a mate in Rotorua that runs a tyre/align shop and got that looked at seeing as I can't remember the last time it was done and I had made several changes over the last while.. made me laugh..



So much toe incorrect on the driver side. Unfortunately for whatever reason the toe adjust bolt had some problem and the part where it is meant to hit on to change the toe is bent (how does that even happen?) so I will look at some toe arms to get that all squared up.

Definitely feels much lighter in the front now vs trying to fight it all the time. Also dropped the mirrors off to the Jerry to wrap them up for me, should find out how that's going.

mlracing

So just ticking off some of the small things now, have done pretty much all the majors that I want to do on this car. Today I got around to installing the monsoon guards on the windows.. made a right hash of a couple before I figured out you don't actually need the double sided tape all the way around as the clips hold quite a lot of it in place.. nonetheless they on there now so I can actually open the window when it's a raining a bit.




Many people install them for style but I actually want the practical use!

Lutkis

Looks good.
I'd get them for practical reasons also but the styling factor is important too.

mlracing

So this shifter gate has been pissing me off for a while, wondering how I can replace it so it's not all smashed. Looking on Yahoo doesn't yield many good results for that part and I don't really want to put some kind of leather thing to fake it being a BMW.. ideas? Find one at a wrecker maybe? New parts available?


Also picked up my mirrors from my wrap guy just need to figure the best way to wire in the indicators.. I think it will be easy to just use the current wiring from the fender indicator and put them through as stealthy as possible.

mlracing

Test fitted up the mirrors/covers that just got wrapped.. looks better in photo than in person in my opinion.. still a bit undecided if I want to run them or not. I do like how the Aristo mirror glass is bigger and blue vs the Lexus mirror which is a bit smaller.


As my car is not Aristo and also it's a 99 the plugs are not the same between the mirrors.. so I'll have to wire it up to suit. The wiring of the indicator should not be too bad I can just run the wiring from the fender indicator. My original plan was to replace the fenders with ones that don't have the indicator so I would just have the mirror winker there but.. may not have this car for too much longer so probably won't end up doing that.

mlracing

With the weather being poos today I couldn't go outside to wire up the mirrors so did a little more on these. Getting pretty close now to putting them in the car.

Short clip without lenses on - https://instagram.com/p/5lloD5GbBu/?...=mlracing_alex
Short clip with lenses on - https://instagram.com/p/5lnxKKmbFA/?...=mlracing_alex




And a picture of my awesome workspace..


Wondering the best way to make these a little more weather proof though, might try and make something out of the bulb holder or something unless I can find a nice rubber bung to go in that space.

Ava92

iTrader: (3)

Love how the LED fogs turned out

And post up if you find a fix for the shifter gate cover, a friend of mine has the same problem and the RHD cars are quite rare here, so we can't just go to a junkyard or something for that piece

Sevenevez

iTrader: (2)

im lovin everything about this