Lexmex

I think about every weekend for the rest of the time I have my RX300 I probably will find myself tinkering with it. In addition to the coolant change out that I did, I also found the time to do some minor maintenance work on the steering wheel and also a small modification to the lower air intake.

We'll start with the steering wheel. A repeated problem I have had was some minor vibration that I occasionally get that cause the wheel to turn to the right. After doing what I am about to show, we realized the center bolt was tight and that the real culript was the replacement cartridge I used on my front passenger shock absorber, so I will need to replace that cartridge (the replacement one that I am using is a bit smaller, modified from one off of an old Pathfinder, but it has done the job).

Well, first the steering wheel.

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We wanted to take a look underneath where the airbag is so we first had to take out the two plastic covers on each side, here is the one on the right removed with a flathead.

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Which reveals this.

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And then removing the panel on the other side.

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which reveals this

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Then my cousin Rodrigo demonsrates putting in a T20 Torx wrench. This will actually (even with the vehicle off) cause the horn to sound. Thus, we disconnected the battery to avoid ticking off the neighborhood.

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This actually wasn't easy on this side, and the bolt actually ended up staying in. In the manual, they tell you that you just need to loosen it up, but we found we at least had to remove one on the other side. This is how it wound up on this side.

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And the bolt on the other side we had to remove completely.

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Now, you grab the center piece from the top and pull it off to reveal this.

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Bottom of the airbag.

Now, if I ever decide to upgrade the steering wheel to the wooden ones, I for sure will post an enhanced DIY.

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Now, that center bolt we didn't remove. For the life of me, I can't remember the size, but I estimate it was close to the size of the transfer case bolts. Only thing we did was put a wrench on the top and see if it indeed was tight. We then took the vehicle over for an alignment with a friend of my uncle's who has an advanced Hunter machine to also check rear alignment and we were able to determined the front right shock was still the culprit after a careful inspection of other suspension pieces.

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Now, you might remember this thread, https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=298404

Well, this turned out to be so-so. Part of the problem is that the lower air intake designs I have used are still very much an L (we'll get to that in a bit). What I realized is that the air was taking too long to reach the engine on this design and it needed to be more angled.

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So I decided to take out the old piece and modify it. First I start at the top and placed angled PVC piece to aim directly toward the front hole in the bumper as shown.

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A closer look and this is where the piece enters the engine bay.

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And then those little so-called mini-bullhorns on the front, well they get chopped up a bit.