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We just picked up a pretty clean ‘93 SC300. We have been thinking about what car would best suit my younger son.
I have an Infiniti Q50 and my older son has a ‘74 ‘Vette. Of course, I was thinking that a NissanZ or Infiniti G35/37 would be good choices for him, since I love my VQ so much.
They thought that those were too common. They wouldn’t even consider a Civic for a second. He likes exotics but he can’t quite afford a Performante just yet.
We all, including my wife, agreed on a SC300, They look great, not as common at the car meet-ups and so prime for tuning with the much lauded 2JZ. It was way harder than we thought to find one.
My 18yo is interning at a local shop, where they’re working on his ‘Vette. He had them take a look at it and they said it was good to go. His guy at the shop has done a lot of turbo builds and has tons of ideas for it.
We want all of the usual upgrades, wheels, tires, coilovers, turbo kit… on and on. So many choices, it’s tough-but that’s also the fun of it.
My wife and I have been putting away a little money each month in a fund since our two sons were born. They often contributed their B-day, etc. money to their funds. We said that they could use the money for an car or whatever else made sense.
We told them that we’d match whatever money they chose to spend on a car. Provided that they were did well in school, stayed out of trouble and earned money for gas, insurance, (we might have to help out on that) mods, etc.
We matched 3K on my 18yo son’s ‘74 Corvette. My 14yo picked a $4250 SC. That left $1750 to equal the same 6K that his brother spent.
We had the shop where my 18yo is interning inspect it and they only found a.slight oil leak. We wanted all fluids, filters, plugs, cap, rotor, etc. done.
When they started working on it, they found that the water pump leaked a bit too. We decided to do the timing belt while they were at it, as well as the cam and crank seals too.
Then when they got into it they found that the threads were falling out of the timing tensioner. He said whoever did the timing belt last time jacked it up.
Instead of the huge expense of removing the oil pump they found a way to make it work. We’ll probably do a new oil pump and beef up other internals eventually when we turbo it. Threads falling out of timing temsioner Before Before During Looking purdy Painted up the valve covers After
The good news is the engine is going to be strong. The downside is that we used up the cash we were going to use on tires and wheels. We’ll worth it though.
Great first car and future investment to keep in the family; if you take care of it and put quality parts in; she will definitely last and increase in value.
I think you nailed it with the maintenance being the first priority; new water pump and timing belt, valve cover and cam seals; replace the belts and pulley bearings and it will be good to go for thousands of more miles. Doesn't look bad inside either.
Hope you take a look at all the build threads and wealth of knowledge on here. It will definitely give you many many ideas and pathways you can take when modifying or replacing. I'd say the only other things I would for sure look at are ball joints and brakes from a safety stand point.
Couldn't agree more with Joe. My parents did a very similar thing with me buying my first car and it truly made me appreciate the value in the car and in their help. On these cars maintenance is a huge deal, albeit, not much and it's relatively easy on the 2J's. Get that bad boy squared away and then you can start on the fun stuff. Nothing feels as good as driving a nicely maintained SC down the road (even when they're stock). Just wait until you get a drop and wheels on there - it'll look like a whole new monster!
^ I also highly agree with this, my friends grew up driving a metro and a suzuki samurai and while gutless, they both learned to become quite good drivers and never got anywhere fast. Me on the other hand? First car was an 88 turbo 5speed supra; bought with a bad head gasket and I learned how to yank it out, had a machine shop do a metal gasket with ARP head studs and upgraded to front mount intercooler with piggy back tuner; i was forever hooked and now my addiction continues well into my thirties.
Great first car and future investment to keep in the family; if you take care of it and put quality parts in; she will definitely last and increase in value.
I think you nailed it with the maintenance being the first priority; new water pump and timing belt, valve cover and cam seals; replace the belts and pulley bearings and it will be good to go for thousands of more miles. Doesn't look bad inside either.
Hope you take a look at all the build threads and wealth of knowledge on here. It will definitely give you many many ideas and pathways you can take when modifying or replacing. I'd say the only other things I would for sure look at are ball joints and brakes from a safety stand point.
Thanks. My kids took a lot of time thinking it through. We’ve been looking at the build threads and I must say, it’s a bit overwhelming -but in a good way.
Brakes are good, fluid changed . Not sure about the ball joints. We’ll ask our shop guys.
The tire codes indicate that they’re 10 years old. Yikes.
Originally Posted by RudysSC
Couldn't agree more with Joe. My parents did a very similar thing with me buying my first car and it truly made me appreciate the value in the car and in their help. On these cars maintenance is a huge deal, albeit, not much and it's relatively easy on the 2J's. Get that bad boy squared away and then you can start on the fun stuff. Nothing feels as good as driving a nicely maintained SC down the road (even when they're stock). Just wait until you get a drop and wheels on there - it'll look like a whole new monster!
Can’t wait to get to the fun stuff. It’s such a great platform to have as a jumping off point. It looks so nice completely stock too.
ength System for Ride Height Adjustment w/ Minimal Change in Ride!Full-Length System for Ride Height Adjustment w/ Minimal Change in Ride!
I found this service by Tanin Auto. I found a few other threads about Tanin and saw that they had a presence on this board. It’s too bad that they can’t give you a price until they diagnose it, due to there being so many different problems to repair. I’ll have to try more searches.
I’m hoping that we can just change burnt out bulbs in the speedometer and tach but we don’t know. I’d like to just replace the climate control screen ourselves but we’re not up for that.
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As for tires we’re thinking about these:
These seem to be a good balance between price and quality. We would like to wait until he earns enough to get some aftermarket wheels with bigger/better tires but the ones on there now are 10 years old.
We’ll probably never put enough miles on them to wear them out before he goes aftermarket, so we’ll just have to roast the crap out of them when he earns enough to install a turbo kit.
Still not sure what size aftermarket wheels/tires to go with. So much good info here and on The Fitment industries site.
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We’re pretty set on these coilovers. I see tons of members using Teins. We’re going to go with the Flex Z. I think the extra $200 is worth it. Made in Yokohama, full length ride height adjustable. I’ve been riding on them in my Infiniti Q50 for years and absolutely love them. I wonder if they’re only temporarily out of stock or they’re not making them for this car anymore. https://www.tein.com/products/flex_z.html
I'm a little late to this but congratulations on the purchase and project car for your son! An SC is certainly a classic car now but it's very overbuilt with a safe body structure, dual front airbags from 1993 and up model years and it had good handling in stock form.
--I'm going to suggest that for a young new driver with no prior experience on his own, to hold off on turbocharging the engine. As easy as it is to make these cars 350whp-500whp+ machines with some standard NA-T treatment and as tail-happy as these cars tend to be *if over-driven for the road conditions* once you add an LSD it's better to set up the car in *every* other way and let him get used to the chassis.
These cars with just the stock non-turbo engine can still be a LOT of fun if the focus is put into the rest of the chassis: suspension, brakes, wheels, tires, manual transmission conversion, and potentially an LSD (with a 4.083 or 4.272 final drive ratio).
To address several bullet points:
--Tanin Auto will take care of the cluster and climate control repairs. They do excellent quality repair and upgrade work for our community. I also highly recommend that you send the ECU out to them as well (by special request first) to have all of it's capacitors replaced. These days this is one of the first types of baseline services that we recommend to new SC owners as it's such a common thing to see issues with if an ECU has never been cap serviced before.
--The VERY next thing that I suggest is to do the 1995-2000 Lexus LS400 front brake caliper upgrade. This, I feel is essential safety equipment for these cars given their weight and sportiness and the stock front brake setup is not really more than borderline adequate. Those LS400 front brake calipers should have been standard equipment from the factory and they will prove an essential piece of insurance for both panic stop improvement and they will have some greater resistance to brake fade depending on the pad type that you install.
Alternatively you can find a set of OEM (not Autozone reman) new or used Supra MKIV TT front calipers and rotors for a set up improvement with greater pad selection. There are also many kits available that allow the installation of other factory multi-piston front brake calipers from other OEM vehicles.
--As for wheels, take your pick. I run 17" rims myself and find them to be fine... *except* that tire selection does get a bit more difficult now in my preferred sizes (245/45-17 front & 275/40-17 rear). I think a good set of staggered 18" rims might be the best sweet spot today. Try to get a rear rim in the correct offset that allows fitting between 255mm-275mm treads at the rear without compromising the sidewalls. 19" diameter is, IMO, just a bit too big and impractical for these cars. 17" or 18" are the sweet spot for rim sizes. In the front, try to get a 7.5-8" wide rim so that you can run 235mm-245mm tread width at that end of the car.
--Your tire choice seems pretty good to me. May I also suggest for consideration the BFGoodrich Comp2 A/S Plus? Normally I dislike all-season tires but this particular compound was derived from BFG's excellent Comp2 summer compound tires which already have excellent rain traction. The newer A/S Plus version gives up nothing from the summer compound predecessor and adds a bit more wet traction capability. This is key for an SC300/400. It's also generally a reasonably affordable tire depending on where you buy it from and it has very good tread life.... assuming you aren't doing burnouts every day, lol. They're what I have on my 350hp SC right now and I cannot recommend them enough if you can find them in your preferred size.
--Then for the alignment, look into the "Lance Alignment" settings on SupraForums. This is especially applicable once coilovers and sway bar upgrades have been added.
--For coilovers I'd suggest looking into Fortune Auto options as well. Tein has a wide range of products and I'm not sure where the Tein Flex types measure up against the competition. There are some excellent threads on Supraforums where various coilovers are reviewed. Remember that any coilovers which fit onto the 1993-1998 Supra (and JDM 1992-2002 Supra) and 1991-2000 Toyota Soarer will also fit onto your SC300.
There are certainly many places to buy from but you may want to add RHDJapan to your list as well as sometimes their prices shipped from Japan are competitive depending on which specific kit you are buying.
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--Also, I highly recommend a restoration of the front headlight housings and an upgrade to HID lighting. XenonDepot makes a good, reliable and affordable 4200-4300K Single Beam Phillips HID kit that fits SC's which greatly improves nighttime visibility and safety
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Now as to turbo engine prep (which, again, I feel should come later down the road), the first thing I'll suggest is to judge the compression of the engine with a leak-down test on each cylinder. Without changing any internals on the bottom end that engine will be totally fine for up to 500whp so long as the bearings and rings are all good. So long as the numbers check out it should be good to go in that department even if it's got over 200k miles on the block.
The engine should be pulled, and the lower and upper oil pans should be pulled off in order to drill and tap the un-machined oil drain return area. It's best to do it that way in order to keep any shavings out of that oil pan(!). At the same time, evaluate the lower steel oil pan-- if there is any doubt as to its integrity, that will be the time to replace it with a new one as the only other method involves dropping the front crossmember (a big PITA). The newly bored out (totally smooth) turbo oil drain with new studs on each side can be blocked off with an AN cap until it will be used later on.
Also while the engine is out to change that oil pan, change the oil pump to a new OEM 1996+ 2JZ-GE oil pump which has a factory mounting point for a crank angle sensor. The crank gear should also be changed at that time to one with a crank angle wheel on it. Early type crank gears with those wheels benefit from a little tack weld at the back as a counter-measure against separation.
When the time comes later for turbo the easiest go-to changes for a basic NA-T setup are: OEM 2JZ-GTE 1.6mm MLS head gasket, ARP head studs, your choice of injectors (JDM 2JZGTE 440cc injectors are a direct drop-in to the stock fuel rail), 12V Mod w/Relay while retaining the stock fuel ECU just for main ECU safety control & Denso/OEM Supra TT stock fuel pump, your choice of a turbo exhaust manifold (Treadstone makes an excellent one capable of fitting 58mm-62mm turbos).
The cheapest turbo-friendly engine control you will get is a JDM 2JZ-GTE Aristo stock ECU (pre-immobilizer type) or any Supra JDM 2JZ-GTE ECU. With the crank sensor type oil pump already in place and a commonly sourced distributor cap delete kit and coil-on-plug conversion these ECUs (they also need to be checked for cap service as well) will give bulletproof engine management up to around 450whp. In fact, a stock 2JZGTE ECU is a good baseline computer to start with and to do basic engine diagnosis with.
--A limited slip differential is highly recommended once a turbocharger is added, however it's a fine addition to the car even without a turbo. There are a few options available for this but with a naturally aspirated stock engine it's best to stick with a 4.083 or 4.272 final drive ratio (all SC300 automatics come standard with a 4.272 and all 5-speeds come standard with a 4.083). For turbo, the appropriate ratio for a 4-speed automatic or R154 manual is a 3.92, 3.76 or 3.615. Other transmissions (CD009, etc) have other ratio considerations.
--Currently XCessive Manufacturing makes aftermarket manual pedal kit conversion parts for SC's unless a used set of factory parts can be found.
--In addition, once you add a turbo to these cars you will also need to upgrade the cooling system. Mishimoto and Koyo make good upgrade radiators for the MKIV Supra that also fit SC's with some extra work: https://www.clublexus.com/forums/per...0-5-speed.html
--And unless you add a lot of extra electrical components in the engine bay a good drop-in upgrade is an OEM Denso 100A alternator for a Supra TT.
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However you and your son handle getting his first car in shape there are many options and ways to go about it. The 1992-2000 SC/Soarer is such a versatile chassis that there is no one way to get it done "right". We're happy to see and help in your progress with it here as you go along
Awesome post. I agree that he should get used to the car’s chassis in it’s stock form. His older brother and I have been taking him out to local parking lots to allow him to get a feel for it. He won’t have the money for a turbo kit, or any other big ticket items for that matter, anytime soon. So, he’ll have plenty of time to get used it. It will be a year until he gets his learners permit.
I’m not sure why but I’ve always felt that it’s important that my kids learn to drive a manual transmission. My 18 yo passed his driving test in a manual. These days, so few people know how that it’s like an additional theft deterrent device. We definitely want to do a manual transmission swap. We’re going to pass on the LSD for now, even though it could make driving more fun.
We’re just not into drugs. <JK!>
We’re going through a similar process with my 18 yo’s ‘74 Corvette. Focusing on steering, suspension and brakes. He went with an amazing Ridetech coilover system and Wilwood brake upgrade. It totally transformed his car. For the better part of his years wages, it should. He bought a big block 454 and a manual valve body transmission and it’s being built, as cash dictates. I’m not sure if he’ll want to just do the caliper upgrade, or go all out with complete upgraded system.
My 18 yo’s 350 engine is fine for now-along the lines of your recommendation to learn the car’s characteristics before bumping it up to 500-600hp. He’s interning at the coolest shop, across from the highly recommended alignment shop that installed his suspension and brake system. Hopefully he’ll earn a paid position there soon. They do mostly vintage and off road work-but the younger tech has done a ton of JDM tuner/turbo builds and loves the 2JZ platform.
They can’t wait to get/keep going on both builds. The added bonus is that both kids can be involved, helping out at the shop, while being a part of their respective builds. Luckily, the SC will be far less expensive in every phase. I fear that their sibling rivalry may result in an all out HP war between them… yikes.
It’s nice to know that Tanin does good work. We’re using an app as a speedometer for now. Do you know about how much the ECU and instrument cluster service might be? We’ll probably just end up doing custom gauges.
I was pretty set on Tein Flex Z’s because I’ve loved them for years on my Q50. However, I’ve taken a quick look at the alternative brands that you mentioned. I’ll look into them further. I’ll also pass along the Lance Alignment settings to the alignment shop when we get there.
Have you checked out Daniel Stern Lighting? They’ve been very detailed in their email responses for our F150, Xterra, Corvette, T-Bird, Infiniti Q50 and SC300. I think that we’ll do at least a headlight bulb upgrade. I would like upgraded housings, since they’re almost 30 years old and have probably lost a good amount of their reflectivity.
Now for the big enchilada, the turbo upgrades. That’s a lot of information to digest. Our tech mentioned many of the same things that you did, leak-down test, oil pans, oil pumps, ECU, cooling, etc. We’ll have plenty of time to research, which is good as we’ll definitely need it.
06-15-22, 08:15 PM
My 14yo son’s first car
