Lexmex

Back in December 2005, I lost an ignition coil after attempting to clean my throttle body and intake manifold. Given that Lexus does not exist and shipping stuff down here can take a few days, I need a quick replacement so I could get to and from work.

The next day I went to a Toyota dealer and picked up a coil (right), 90919-A2001, unlike the eventual RX300 replacement, 90080-19016 (left). The coil I got at Toyota I was told was used in the Camry.

You may notice in the photo it appeared that the coil on the right was sanded down. This was because about 1/4 up from the bottom of the coil there is a slight gap. Here, two protruding plastic rings prevented the coil from fitting properly into the RX300. Worked fine, and I even took it up to the track, but I could notice a very slight improvement once the replacement RX300 coil was eventually put in.

Lexmex

From the top, RX300 coil on left and coil picked up at Toyota on the right.

TunedRX300

Always a good idea to have a spare once mileages start to pile up. I ordered one for 2001 Highlander with the same Toyota part # as RX300's, just cheaper.

Lexmex

Highlander parts are an incredible resource. My father used to go over to the Toyota nearby to go pickup the Highlander pads (cheaper, too), until you gave me that great idea to try Akebono pads...used effectively in winning a recent weekly bracket competition as I had to slow down on a competitor I passed by in order to avoid breaking out on my time. Those Akebono pads were much, much smoother in performing this difficult maneuver.

Lexmex

Want to see/hear about what other goofy things happened over the weekend?

1. Busted my right front tire on screw. Luckily in Mexico, on every corner and on every major highway, even in the middle of nowhere, they have what they called a Vulcanizador, which are literally people that work with rubber. Should you ever venture south of the border and have an issue, just go to one of these fine peope and for a price usually around $5 USD they will take off your tire, pull the screw, take the tire off the time and put a nice patch underneath and then put your tire/rim back together and on your vehicle. Very effective. They even have some advanced, though slightly more costly methods for when the puncture is on the side of the tire. Only thing I have to go do tomorrow is get some nitrogen put in this tire, as they had to fill it up with air, but running fine after only a few hours.

2. The MAF sensor- Running just fine, but late Friday night there came what I like to call the BURP. We have had rain here and Friday night was no exception, so I though that maybe the sudden stuttering I was feeling was due to the wet conditions. NOPE. When I got home, I went to go check my RX and then decided to do my weekly MAF sensor cleaning and after removing it I discovered this.

The screw had worn away the piece that held it to the Weapon-R pipe. Thus it was bobbing up and down.

Lexmex

I looked at the piece below it and thought about my options.

Lexmex

In the end, my cousin Rodrigo though a simple washer would do the trick, if we could find the right size among the thousands we have at my uncle's shop. And so now the bolts sits on top of the plastic.

Lexmex

And for those who were curious if I ever got to test out my intake system, I did against better judgment due to a rainstorm, set up the equipment at our track on Saturday night for myself and a small group of vehicles (who wanted to wait the storm out to race), but hit only 18.5 on a wet track with driving rain. A few times, I spun on launch even with AWD and had to start again. Keep in mind that near 100% humidity is not favorable either for the air intake.

Hopefully, next weekend won't be as bad as the last 2 where we have had a shut track.

miniround

Haha, just not your week!

Lexmex

It's an awful experience when you have to see this at your track and for two straight weeks. In fact our monthly bracket race got rained out last month and I managed to win something by going to another track on the other side of the mountains. oh for shame the weather here.

miniround

haha dang

that accord looks ready to race. all suped up. windshield sun visor tint and all.

haha

Lexmex

Some of them are stealth. A lot of these cars don't do much to the exterior as a way of hiding stuff for illegal street racing. A lot of people come to our track as a means to test what they will do eventually on the streets. The police don't care either as most of the racing does not occur in this particular jurisdiction.

Incidentally that vehicle has some headers, but as I mentioned in a post a few minutes ago over in the RX330/350 forum, they are useless without forced induction, and this car has none.

TunedRX300

The middle pipes (in both banks) in Accord V6's stock header are shorter than the rest. This means there is backpressure introduced by unequal length. Aftermarket header usually gains at the high rpm because of all pipes will have equal length until the they merge at the collector just before the cat.
1mz-fe is even worse, all three pipes in the same bank have different length. There should be power to be had by just getting manifold headers replaced, even if you keep OEM pre-cats and downpipes.

Lexmex

Now that is a true point about manifold headers. I know this is the restriction I next want to pick apart at some point, as I we could use every gain possible in our engines.

I guess one of the issues I have is still the cost of most of these aftermarket setups like JP, Xerd that really don't fit our RXs quite right anyway.

The issue we have in Mexico is a lot of young people go out and mix and match modifications without understanding the whole system like we do on CL, and end up getting something worth nothing.

Headers for some reason seem to be particular to Civic owners down here. Seems like every other modified Civic I see has them, even if it doesn't have much else.

TunedRX300

Yes, these JP Performance at >$1000 is too much. From your picture, it seems as simple as 1) moving the downpipe to the middle 2) lengthen the middle pipe by arch out more, will give an effecient design without affecting emission.
If someone will use above design with stainless steel and sells $300, I will be the first to buy. Oh, wait, gotta make sure both oxygen bung holes are cut out (Remember that Solara guy who bought Megan?)