When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Nice! Thats about the same car as mine, I've got a 97 in Diamond White Pearl but with 253k except mine came with the 5 spoke chrome sport wheels found on the 98+ and the coach ed. I'm not sure if the previous owner upgraded or not since mine isn't a coach ed.
Make sure you replace all the engine vacuum lines and hoses. Those on mine were brittle and petrified. One was a PS hose that developed a leak dripping fluid down the side of the engine bay.
I had to do balljoints and sway bar endlinks since i had a clunking over low speed bumps. My Crank seal also blew 2k miles after i bought it which meant a new Tbelt and Waterpump.
Overall looks good, a couple dents in the paint with chipping but interior is pretty clean. Maybe you can get the fenders and bumper off the JY car? My front bumper is rockchipped to hell so thats what I'm looking for.
The $500 LS400 is home with me now. It's not perfect but has some parts I need. I may just flip it after I'm done with it. The starter grinds when you turn the key. The owner drove it for a month or two before that happened. He pulled a starter from the salvage yard and left it in the car as part of the deal. Who knows if that is the problem or there is an issue with the flex plate. Either way the car will not run currently for that reason. The car is Blackberry Pearl. I don't seem to see many this color being that I think it's 95-96 only. The paint cracking but isn't really peeling or bubbling anywhere other than some body damage. The rear seats are in good condition but the front seats are pretty torn and ratty. The dash is in good shape except for one small 3/8" long crack in front of the passenger. The AC works and it has the Nakamichi sound system. I'm still unsure of what my white car had because the radio and ch changer are gone. I'll pull the Nak unit and check out the plugs and any differences there as I know the harnesses are different. The radio works but the LCD is all messed up as usual. It's my understanding that the once a Nak radio/LCD is dead, it's dead forever as there are no parts available for them. Maybe the Pioneer's are still repairable with the LCD and backlights so I would prefer that unit probably and statistically that's what my white car 'had.' The wheels are chrome on the blackberry pearl car and are really in excellent condition. The center caps are much better than the white car so I'll be swapping those. There is a factory spare as well so I'll also be switching that over as well as the corner front lamp assemblies and hood latch.
I may end up repairing this car and flipping it to cover some parts for the white car rather that letting it rot away on my property while I slowly rob parts off it. Really the only stuff that I could use down the road would be the drivetrain and steering rack possibly. I'll at least swap the parts that I mentioned above but I may otherwise leave the car in tact so I can sell it. The owner said the AC works great and the engine and transmission operate well. It has 235k miles. I'll probably look for a front seat or two as well as center console at a salvage yard to spruce up in the interior before selling. There is also some sort of coolant leak on the blackberry pearl car as the overflow tank was empty and he said he put water in it the last time he drove it. The leak is most likely in the intake area so I'll check all that out while doing the starter. I really need to invest in a pressure tester one day.
I also spent a few hours in the u-pull-it today getting some parts off a diamond white pearl LS400 just like mine. I was mainly going after the rear bumper cover if it was in good shape along with a long list of stuff. I ended up coming home with the rear bumper cover, engine appearance cover, and left rear tail light. Someone that knew the LS400 was all over the common problem parts of that car in the last month. The steering rack, ECM, trans solenoids and both radio pieces were long gone. The dash had a crack but I went on removing it anyway to walk away with the harness. I also wanted to see how it came off for future reference. The hack job that took the parts off prior to me broke the hell out of the fiberglass dash frame by the glovebox. The pass seat was also move all the way forward so I wasn't able to get to the front bolts for the seat. I didn't see a way to remove the dash harness without removing the seat and I didn't have a power source to move the seat so I just had to walk away at that point.
Sorry for the poor photo quality. It was getting dark and iPhone's don't so well at any sort of high ISO for proper exposure.
Nice to see it rides okay on a uhaul trailer. Can you open the driver door? And maybe that's the best way to tow a car if you don't want some idiot using chains on it. Tire straps are the best. It looks pretty straight, and nice wheels
Nice to see it rides okay on a uhaul trailer. Can you open the driver door? And maybe that's the best way to tow a car if you don't want some idiot using chains on it. Tire straps are the best. It looks pretty straight, and nice wheels
Yes, you can open the door. The left fender folds down to allow the door to open. It will NOT open until the back wheels are off the ramps an fully on the trailer as the clearance is too low and the door will hit the fender. Let me tell you how fun it was winching that thing up on that trailer by hand, alone.
The wheels are really in much better shape than the ones on the white car. I'm going to pull one and make sure it is genuine and not aftermarket. If they are genuine I'll look into swapping the wheels on the tires. That will rebalance the nice Michelin tires but there will obvious be a decent amount of cost there. The passenger headlight assembly is pushed back about 3/8" at least at the bottom. I bet it will point down pretty bad. I'll remove the headlamp and see what's going on down there. There may be some damage associated with the damage to the fender that flaked the paint off in that one spot. The front bumper appears to have been off before as well because the clips are not correct. The front bumper also does not match the paint quality of the rest of the car so I bet it is a junkyard bumper cover. That is all fine for now but I need to make sure there isn't a lot of damage behind it.
I washed the car today and I continue to be impressed at the quality of the paint and how straight the body is except for a dent or two that could be PDR'd out. The clear coat is 100% and I'm looking forward to see how it clays and waxes up. The car is in such good shape that I would even consider having some body work done if there is an issue behind the front bumper cover.
man the blackberry pearl is VERY rare and it looks really nice. id fix up that one and flip the white one!
Originally Posted by dicer
X2, so little $ in them why flip there is a lot of parts.
I haven't paid much attention to the colors on LS400's. Is the blackberry pearl indeed a pretty rare color to see around?
I've toyed with what to do with the black car. My idea when I saw the ad (before purchasing) was to strip it of all useful parts and scrap the body to recoup some of the $500 spent on it. This way I would have one of everything as a spare, like the motor, trans, rear axle, half shafts, power steering components, suspension components, everything electrical, and some interior parts. But then I saw the car. I first wanted the car for the spare tire, radio, CD changer, and dash if it was in perfect shape as some of the mounting locations for the CD changer are broken on the white car.
Then I saw the car. The wheels really grabbed my attention. They're very clean with no rust or anything, and the center caps are in good shape. The wheels are so clean that I need to check if they are genuine or aftermarket. The paint, while maybe rare, is in pretty rough shape. There isn't a ton of fading but there is some. The hood paint is cracking like crows feet and there is body damage all over the car. It doesn't appear to have been in a bad accident though, I'll check the VIN stickers on the body panels tomorrow maybe. The interior is pretty bad. The dash is actually nice except for one small crack in front of the passenger. The radio is the Nak system and the display is all jacked up (unrepairable.) The Nak system with a bad display makes me want to leave it in there and wait until I come across a good Pioneer system in the salvage yard. I actually have no idea what radio the white car had before it was removed. I'll have to look at the amp or something to try to determine what system it had. That would obvious play a lot into whether I put the black cars radio and CD changer into the white car. The front seats and center console are pretty trashed. Some of the worst tearing and holes that I've seen. The steering wheel is also in pretty crappy shape.
The white car is overall much nicer as far as exterior and interior. The interior is super clean except for the missing radio and changer. The exterior is also very clean. If the bumper covers were resprayed and that one part of the fender repaired it would be in better shape than most 3 year old cars. I washed it the other day and it really washed up nice, It looks to have been garaged most all of it's life. The things that are better on the black car is the trunk fitment (which may be able to be adjusted) and how the front end lines up. The passenger side headlight can only allow and 3 of the 4 bolts to be installed, not all 4. There seems to have been a minor impact there. I need to remove the front bumper cover to see what's behind it. As I've said before, the front bumper covers paint quality doesn't match the rest of the car. Although, that could be because it's painted plastic compared to painted steel.
At this point, with all of this in mind, the current plan is to replace the starter in the black car and see how/if it runs and drives, swap the wheels while keeping the tires where they are (the white car has nice Michelins and the black car has 2 good Radar tires and 2 bald Radar tires) and go from there. At this point the radio may stay in the black car.
There is obviously lots of mentality that can change as to making one of the cars a parts car, or flipping one. The black car, to me, seems to be the best candidate to flip as it has 70k more miles and doesn't appear to have been taken care of as well. By taken car of I mean it's missing a lot more parts under the hood and under the car than the white one. For instance, the white car has it's engine under cover completely in tact with all of it's fasteners. The black cars cover is pretty much dragging the ground.
If both cars were in the same shape I would fix up the black car over the white one any time. I like back cars and the blackberry pearl color is really pretty cool.
I'm certainly open to some more opinions of you guys on which way I should go with either of these things. Getting both running here in the next several day's will be step one. I have a new steering vacuum switch coming rather than deleting it for the white car and I'll install the starter on the black car once I finish this VW TDI head gasket job I have going right now.
To provide some input, I would keep the car with lower miles. From what I understand, despite some body damage your white car has, it seems to be in overall better running and cosmetic condition, than the black one. A respray for the black car is really the only way to rid the paint imperfections [the cracked paint on the hood], which is not cheap.
Panel alignment can always be adjusted, but cracked paint is tough. Keep the best parts from both for your best car.
To provide some input, I would keep the car with lower miles. From what I understand, despite some body damage your white car has, it seems to be in overall better running and cosmetic condition, than the black one. A respray for the black car is really the only way to rid the paint imperfections [the cracked paint on the hood], which is not cheap.
Panel alignment can always be adjusted, but cracked paint is tough. Keep the best parts from both for your best car.
That is presently what I am thinking. I'll post some better pics of the blackberry car tomorrow.
Here are a few more photos of the blackberry pearl car. If I were going to flip the car, after swapping some parts to and from the white car, I would probably just replace the starter, get a nicer junkyard drivers seat, and replace the door handle on the drivers doors that is broken.
Sounds good. Yeah, your white LS looks much better and doesn't have the quarter panel unibody damage.
Are the door handles on your black LS plasti-dipped or coated with something? They look to be matte instead of Blackberry pearl.
I'll be following this thread. I'm really interested to see how everything turns out.
EDIT: By the way, if the gold badges are shinier on the black LS than on your white LS, the grille badge is the easiest to remove and swap. It is held on by one screw on the back of the radiator grille.
man the blackberry pearl is VERY rare and it looks really nice. id fix up that one and flip the white one!
My once pristine blackberry pearl 95 has gotten dinged and keyed the entire time I have owned it. Makes me sick to the point that I want to sell it after I repaint it.
I was very mistaken. I haven't even looked over this car that much as I have another project going on before I can start on these LS400's. But, I assumed the door handles were plastic based on the photos while I was uploading them and how the drivers handle broke. The handles are metal as I'm sure all LS400's are. I'd love to know how in the hell someone broke a metal door handle like that... They just look plastic in the photos because the paint is a shade lighter than the rest of the car. I will probably just salvage a door handle and rattle can it.
08-05-16, 05:52 AM
