codeXsupra

Here's a thread I'll continue to build upon.. hopefully some people learn from some of the issues I've dealt with over the past year.

My brother-in-law bought a 2001 blue IS300 back around 2004 off lease from the first owner and put several treks from coast to coast on her. I bought it from him at 159k miles in April '14 in Sacramento, CA and drove it ~2,800 miles back to Orlando, FL.

I drove it a few years ago from Sacramento to Tahoe and back, and really enjoyed how it handled state road 50 through the wooded twisties. The owner has been meticulous about maintenance and have a stack of paperwork from everything he's spent on the car. He's not interested in mods, so it's always been stock and babied.

Figured I'd keep it in the family, and since I already have a '94 6-speed Supra, I was more than happy to pick up another 2JZ as a more practical daily than my current '06 350Z Grand Touring with 37k miles, which I'll list for sale soon now that I'm confident in the IS's long-term comfort and reliability. I've been joking with him for about 5 years that I'd end up buying his car for the right price, but I never thought he'd actually sell.

Plans are to clean her up and make this IS300 last me at least 500k miles, with a high likelihood of some major modifications in the future - Aristo 2JZ-GTE VVTi swap, STU GT28 twins upgrade or small single turbo, and GS400 rear. Will probably stick with the built Aristo auto to keep it driver friendly for family/friends.

Here's the car just before I flew out there, early April 2014:


Had plenty of pics before flying out, but I looked her over and found no corrosion or obvious leaks. A/C was blowing 'cool' but definitely not 'cold' - so that was something I knew I'd need to look into. Needed new rear tires for the drive back so I picked up a set of 225/45/17 Toyo Proxies and got an alignment.

Every trip to the west coast has to have a stop at In-N-Out, so that happened in Kettleman City, CA on the first day. I don't do much fast food, but for In-N-Out and Chick-Fil-A, I'll make an exception:


Also put the car on the 'dyno'.. running out of gearing. Notice the spots on the cluster lens - that will have to be remedied when I get home:


Made it to the Best Western of Williams, AZ at the end of the first day and had an excellent peppercorn steak, rare of course:


Got up before dawn and drove up to the Grand Canyon to make it there before sunrise.. I'd never been before:


Then headed out to the Meteor Crater just east of Flagstaff. When I was 7, my dad and I drove from St. Louis to Monterey in what became my first car - an '84 Celica GTS, so I had to see how it had changed nearly 30 years later. (It didn't):


Got pulled over near Albuquerque for 'passing too wide of a semi' that was driving like he was running on 3 weeks of no sleep, or in the middle of a novel of a text on his phone the past 8 miles. Had to prove the car wasn't stolen since I am obviously not my brother-in-law with a different last name. Cop was nice though, and I didn't act like a jackass, so we were cool, neither of us got injured/shot/died, and I was on my way without a ticket.

CA, AZ, and NM have some great scenery for interstate driving. Quite unlike Florida where it's flat and you can't see anything but pine and oak trees on both sides of the road for the entire trip.

Made it to Childress, Texas by the end of the 2nd day. Up before dawn and back on the road. I must say, I've driven all over the country, and Texas has by *far* the highest portion of the driving population who know how to use the passing lane. Few sit in that lane going slower than the middle/right lanes. They pass, then get back to the middle/right lanes to speed on ahead. I appreciate that, and drivers in other states need to learn how to drive like a Texan.

Once you hit Dallas, eastward is nothing but trees on both sides of the road. I'm too familiar with this.. nothing to see. Drove to Jackson, MS then cut down to Mobile, and crashed at my parents house in Ft. Walton Beach, FL for the 3rd night.

Finished up the drive I've done over 50 times by now from Ft. Walton to Orlando. The poor car is tired of tasting bugs and needed a cleaning, and that front license plate was the first thing to go:


First thing I wanted to tackle was a driver's door actuator that didn't want to open at one of the gas station stops on the trip. I've found that if you lock and unlock the car more than a couple times in a short time period, the motor doesn't have enough juice to unlock the car. Opened up the door, got the motor out, and ordered a new one for $6 on eBay. I disassembled the motor assembly to replace just the motor. Old motor is still in it, new motor is on the desk:


Installed it back in the door with the new motor and put the door back together. It worked perfectly.. for 3 days. Then as I was going to leave for work, it sounded like a burst-fire machine gun in the door. It unlocked, but I knew it was skipping teeth or something along those lines. Took the door apart again. Turns out there was too much flex in the case of the motor assembly, so I shimmed under one side of the motor with a piece of cut zip-tie and put it all back together. It's been fine now for a year.

Next issue.. one day, randomly the window decided it wasn't going to roll down. So I took that apart, all the way down to the regulator:


Didn't see anything binding, and the motor worked both in and after I removed it from the regulator. Cleaned up the regulator and re-greased it, then reset the motor's stop limits, which you MUST do if you roll the window up and down when it's not installed in the car. Felt around behind the door to see if there was anything blocking it, and felt something hard move on the back of the speaker. I removed the speaker by removing the screws (!):


As I was taking out the screws I realized they weren't OEM and that rivets should be there. Then I see the drill bit with a freaking rivet plastic magnetized to the back of the speaker. Mind you, my brother-in-law bought the car around 2004 after the original owner's lease was up and has never done a mod to it. Looks like someone failed the re-install of factory speakers after using aftermarkets temporarily. My guess was either something was binding the window, or the drill bit was touching something in the motor and shorting it - preventing it from rolling down.

The window worked after that.. for about 2 weeks. After reading online about a TSB about ES300's having windows getting 'stuck' closed, the fix was for the dealer to install shims along the track to guide it in. The simple fix was to hold the 'window down' button and firmly close the door. Wow, that worked for me. It happens about once every 4-5 months now, but not a big enough deal to try to fix, especially since I can't find any details of that TSB.

The gauge cluster lens was scarred and pitted, probably from some caustic cleaning solution, so that's going to get replaced with a new one from Lexus:


While I was installing the new lens, I decided to update the lighting with white LEDs - haven't been a fan of the red/orange interior. In the bottom right of the pic, I also ordered a new shiny OEM shift ****:


Next project was to clean up the fogged headlights. I've used restoration kits before, and they suck. This time around, I'm wet sanding and clear gloss coating them. The headlights and round trunk tails were bad:



The process was simple. Wash and dry, then tape/mask off the painted areas. Next, wet sand 600 grit, rinse and wet sand 1200 grit, rinse and wet sand 1500 grit. Always wet sand in horizontal strokes to help prevent runs during gloss coats. Then fully dry and gloss clear coat spray multiple light coats. While it won't make them look like OEM new headlights, they're pretty damn close and will last me until I do upgrade to either factory or aftermarket headlights:
Wet sanding:

Let dry after 1500 grit - it will appear very foggy/hazed:

Mask off the paint to not get gloss overspray where it shouldn't be:

Gloss coats on headlights and taillights:


Let dry and enjoy clear lenses, TRD license plate frame also went on around this time:



After I took those pics, I noticed the hood a little higher than the headlights even though it was fully closed. I took off the front grille and loosened all 4 bolts to the hood latch. I had to hold the latch down hard while I tightened up the bolts, but that did the trick - it now closes flush with the lines of the headlights, fenders, and grille.

Next up.. this summer I've noticed the A/C compressor hasn't kicked on at all. It's freaking hot and humid in Orlando. I only have a 5 minute drive to work, and I have my 350Z for comfortable drives, so it hasn't been a priority until now. The dash was making a back-and-forth motor chugging sound, so I knew I had a servo to replace. After taking out the glove box to feel which motor it was while making the sound, I ordered a new air mix server from Toyota and installed it:


Then hooked up my manifold gauge set and find there's no pressure. Hooked up the vacuum pump to see if it'll hold vacuum:

..nope. Low pressure is losing vacuum faster than high after ~5 minutes, but it's not a sealed system. I suspect the compressor died as the high pressure sight glass is solid gray - not good and likely a blown compressor lining the system with metal particles. Ordered new Denso compressor, condenser, drier, evaporator, expansion valve, and o-rings. I don't want to risk possibly having a bad expansion valve at this mileage when installing a new compressor, so I'm biting the bullet doing that too. Since I have to take the dash out for it, I'm going to replace the evaporator too. It's likely still physically fine, but it'll need to be flushed, which I'd prefer to do out of the car.

At the start of this project, removing the seats makes dash removal much easier, and what I found was disgusting:


I immediately asked my bro who puked in the front seat. He has kids, so this is a mix of kids food (found a couple cheerios) and a smoothie he spilled years ago. Also earned $0.55 for my efforts. Carpet cleaner to the rescue - it looks even better in person than the pics:

codeXsupra

The dash is almost out.. for anyone following along, the factory Service Manual is correct step-by-step:


I was using a 2005 service manual to help with the removal of the dash, and there are a couple minor differences around the A/C unit. Example being the A/C unit has to come out to remove the heater core due to the pipes wrapping around it to go through the firewall, which means the A/C unit has to come out to remove the evaporator. The manual seems to indicate that the heater core can come out without A/C unit removal in 2005? I don't know. To prevent damages/scratches to the steering wheel and make dash removal easier, definitely remove all 4 bolts holding the steering column to the dash reinforcement bar and drop the wheel to the floor. Remove the top plastic and cover the wheel with a towel. The evaporator is behind here:


I didn't take pics, but to take the A/C unit out, you should disconnect both A/C lines in the engine bay at the firewall. I also had to remove the dash reinforcement bar from the car, but I left as much of the wiring harness attached as I could. I did unplug almost every connector to give it more freedom of movement without taking the harness off the bar itself. Take the A/C unit out with the tubes and expansion valve attached.. this is what remains:


No pics, but next I needed a long round-head allen wrench to get the bolts for the tube assembly off the evaporator while it was still inside the A/C unit. Peel away the neoprene to see them. Once you get the tube assembly off, remove all neoprene and hard putty packing and clean up the tubes. Remove the expansion valve with the allen bolts. You can't re-use the packing, so I ordered a new one from Lexus. It's part # 88578-53010 for under $20 through Lexus. I highly recommend using it because you don't want condensation from these tubes dripping all over your feet and driver footwell. I also ordered 2 new tube assembly to evaporator bolts (mine had some corrosion on them and aluminum in the threads, and I want a good seal) and a large roll of 1/8" thick neoprene with an adhesive side. I'm using it for more insulation around the packing, but also on the deteriorated foam padding on the A/C unit.

Since I'm going to re-use all the lines, I removed them from the car for flushing/cleaning. To do this, you'll need to remove the front bumper cover and driver headlight, and get the ECU box up and to the side, but you don't have to disconnect any plugs. The high pressure hard line from the condenser to firewall is a ***** to get out, and you do not want to bend/kink it. It'll have to come out the hole where the headlight was. The others are cake. All lines are out:


While cleaning up the lines, there's a dark gray film mostly in the high pressure lines from the compressor's death. These lines must be clean before installing a new compressor, so it'll take many flushes to get all that gunk out. The sight glass on the high pressure hard line is most definitely caked over in dark gray metallic residue, so it can't quite serve its purpose until it's clean and clear. All the o-rings come off the lines while they are being made like new. I notice there's some dried liquid/oil(?) on the exterior of the underside of the low pressure hose, and I can't tell if it's old motor oil from a filter change since this line is under the filter, or a possible leak location of refrigerant and compressor oil. I'm going to clean it up and go with it, and use UV dye when I finally charge the system back up to see. (It's $200 new to replace, and easy to replace without removing anything else from the car, unlike the evaporator.) I ordered new valve cores for the 134a valves since those are frequent leak points. I'm hoping that between those, new o-rings, and new compressor, any leaks will be taken care of.

Here's extracting the condenser. To do this, just unbolt both A/C tubes from it, unbolt the radiator and push the top of it towards the engine. The condenser will barely fit through the gap between the radiator and radiator support bar:


Also, when trying to remove the A/C lines from the condenser, one of the bolts sheared off due to being rusted. My bro-in-law had a minor front-end and had it repaired 'perfectly,' but it looks like the repair shop ****ed up when installing a new condenser. They didn't use OEM Denso (it's black), and moisure was allowed to enter the system at this bolt as it rusted and expanded:

Moisture = dead compressor. Who knows if they even added oil and a new drier like they're supposed to when replacing it.

To get the compressor out, that can be a bit tricky. I removed the lines first to not risk damaging them, but I wanted to get the compressor out without removing the power steering pump hoses. Follow the manual to remove the bolts and move the power steering pump up a little bit, then get the compressor unbolted. Needed to run to Sears to pick up a female torx (E10) socket set to get one compressor bolt off. I was able to maneuver the compressor out from under the car. A bit of a ***** and you have to undo the power steering hose bracket, but it is possible.

Here's the new OEM Denso compressor (minus the sticker Lexus would slap on the box and charge another $300-400 for). The old compressor clutch would only rotate about 30 degrees each way, with a lot of resistance, before it locked up. The new compressor clutch spins 360 degrees with only slight resistance:


It comes shipped with some oil, so you'll need to fully drain it and refill it with ~3.5-4 fl. oz. There are conflicting reports as to how much and I didn't find a solid source anywhere, including the service manual. The ES300 and GS300 use 7 fl oz and have very similar systems/parts, so I'm aiming for that amount. A little too much is better than not enough. My compressor didn't have that much, so I had to add some PAG 46 (ND-oil 8) to it. I'm also adding 1.4oz to the evaporator and another 1.4oz to the condenser.

Since nearly the entire interior is torn apart and my rear 6x9 factory speakers are rattling/blown (for some reason our cars use 2 ohms to the rear making simple aftermarket options limited), and I want to upgrade to modern amenities in bluetooth streaming and backup camera, I'm replacing the entire stereo. I'm also going to hard-wire my Garmin Nuvi GPS into the center console tray above the A/C vents. The tweeters from the front components should fit in the stock tweeter location since I prefer to re-use factory speaker locations:


I also ordered new floor mats.. tired of looking at the shredded driver's mat.

..to be continued..

codeXsupra

..reserved..

codeXsupra

..reserved...

GearGrind

Wow grand canyon looks like somewhere i should be visiting next year

mbogosia

Great job man. Any updates?

96gti2.0t