Connor651

I have never owned a imported luxury car or any luxury car at all. But i have worked on many carbureted and other (US) domestic vehicles. I consider my self an expert in body work and interior (non electrical) work due to the fact I can custom mold dashes/body kits, and I have helped many friends work on fixing their 240s with dents and dings.

My question(s) is in relation to the above is in domestic motors, has any one tried to "clean up" the engine bay of a 91-00 sc400? I replaced the wires, sparkplugs… ect. (Routine maintenance) and this compared to a wire tuck on a 67 stingray was quite the pain. Never the less, it only took an hour and a half rather than a couple weeks. Is all this plastic stuff necessary? Is it cosmetic or is a purpose served? If I mess around in the engine bay are what sensors could go off? Will a 94 Toyota Aristo (2jz-gtte) engine fit snugly in the bay of the SC400? Or is the 1uz-fe a better engine (that I should rebuild and boost)? I hear the transmission has some feature to ‘govern out’ a load of hp, is this true? Is there a way to ‘trick’ the ecu or something without engine failure or computer errors?

The reason why I ask is because this car has 150000 miles on it and it was mistreated every mile of the way. My friend was with me when I was working on a tune up and he noticed that the sparkplug wires, the caps, the sparkplugs, the air filter… was all the Lexus stock, most of these were rusted together. So I expect quite the difficulty with this car and plan to be ahead of it.

And please, this site I have found very helpful to work on this car, but I have seen some very opinionated and bias responses. I would very much like feedback, but please refrain from being offensive.

Thank you guys greatly.

neurocity

iTrader: (17)

I've seen more than a few super clean engine bays. Unfortunately your going to have to search for images to see what others have done.

ScottURNot had some pretty nice custom Spark Plug covers. Just search around.

RedPhoenix

iTrader: (10)

You can tuck and hide everything. This is my friends MK3 1uzfe, but just imagine it as a SC400... same engine and wire mess.



He will be pulling the motor to repaint it all and such... Will be even cleaner, hes going standalone with COP etc...

Connor651

very nice guys thanx a lot. i cant see your pictures red phoenix, but just by you two saying this helps a bit. like the title said, i this is my second imported car and the first was an 88 944 s2. so this is my first jdm, according to my friend "its not a good starter jdm greasemonkey car, too much luxury, too much electronics". I will get to cleaning up the engine. But first and foremost, the car is not passing DC emissions.

It scored an 1.7795 on HC and a 3.7205 on nOX. I am pretty sure its the timing belt or possibly the injectors, but i pray that is not the egr as one suggestion stated.

Also, the cigarrette lighter was out when i got the car, i need it for gps. i took the console apart to check it and saw a few wires that were taped but not connected. when i tried to splice them the fuse blew (or so i belive) is the climate control head unit mapped to the same fuse? it stopped working as well. I dont have it put completely back together (I am painting the trim flat black instead of tan.) so i may of left something unplugged.

Any help with this? All cars are different so with this one it could be anything.

Connor651

and a bit extra, how can we post pictures to our home? or can we? i would like to show progress on this car so if anyone would like to do the same thing (without paying an arm, a leg, and emptying thier bank account) they can see or email to find out directions.
I am very used to be underbudgeted for projects like this and i understand how to do a great job without lots of cash. (but not rigged!!!)