Ideas for my 1500$ upgrade
10-26-14, 09:18 AM
#1
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Ideas for my 1500$ upgrade
I have a white 95 lexus sc400 in excellent condition with 105k miles. Grandpa gave the car to me and it is in excellent condition. I replaced shocks, speakers, new rims, new tires, and a new timing belt. I have 1500$ that I want to spend on upgrading it either to make the gas millage better, or to make it fast as hell. What can I do to make this happen?
I have almost zero knowledge on cars so installing things will be extremely hard for me unless there is a really detailed thread.
Give me ideas fellow lexus sc owners!
I have almost zero knowledge on cars so installing things will be extremely hard for me unless there is a really detailed thread.
Give me ideas fellow lexus sc owners!
10-26-14, 10:10 AM
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Pictures please. (: Well I would say maintenance first. Replace worn out stuff. Have you changed your oil? Spark plugs? Coolant flush? Just stuff to get it in top shape. $1500 can go very fast. Also bfi. Its free. Hmmm. Tint if it isn't already. Hows the interior? .... But first PICTURES haha Welcome to CL. Plenty of good write-ups in here if your confortable in trying to do stuff yourself.
10-26-14, 10:48 AM
#5
Save your money. Things will break and it will need maintenance. You probably have timing belt water pump coming up as well as suspension, tuneup and all types of other stuff. I'd maybe spring for an OEM lip for the front. A set of coilovers and installation would pretty much eat that budget up. $1500 won't get you any real speed on a 1UZ Sc.
Nice car!
Good luck with it.
Nice car!
Good luck with it.
10-26-14, 10:53 AM
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Save your money. Things will break and it will need maintenance. You probably have timing belt water pump coming up as well as suspension, tuneup and all types of other stuff. I'd maybe spring for an OEM lip for the front. A set of coilovers and installation would pretty much eat that budget up. $1500 won't get you any real speed on a 1UZ Sc.
Nice car!
Good luck with it.
Nice car!
Good luck with it.
10-26-14, 11:03 AM
#7
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Lips come up on craigslist or the classifides here. You could do a manual swap for around your budget if you find parts cheap, that's what i would try to do. Bfi is a no brainer, this is the best link I've ever found. Follow it exactly and you should be happy.
http://planetsoarer.com/BFIHardware/BFIHardware.html
http://planetsoarer.com/BFIHardware/BFIHardware.html
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10-26-14, 11:08 AM
#8
Curious how much you spent on 'brand new' stock suspension, because for about 1500 you can get decent coilovers.
There won't be much you can do to make it faster. If you were to do it all yourself I suppose a W58 swap could be done for 1500, but you say you know nothing about cars so that's definitely out of the question. You could throw in some catbacks but that won't yield much results in terms of performance.
I say you're best bet is to learn about cars first, you're money will go a lot further that way.
There won't be much you can do to make it faster. If you were to do it all yourself I suppose a W58 swap could be done for 1500, but you say you know nothing about cars so that's definitely out of the question. You could throw in some catbacks but that won't yield much results in terms of performance.
I say you're best bet is to learn about cars first, you're money will go a lot further that way.
10-26-14, 11:33 AM
#10
First thank grandpa for saving you a ton of money by taking car of the car the way he did. Looks like your instrument cluster, climate control screen, interior, headlights, paint, etc are all better then average and saved you a ton of money trying to fix all of those things. Save money and if you want to change suspension and tires/wheels down the road you can save up additional money for that. You can make your first simple performance improvement by installing a BFI but it will not make huge performance improvements. Good luck and great car.
10-26-14, 11:37 AM
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Im in Dallas, Texas.
What would be the point of making it manual? Just wondering.
I think I spent around 2000 on parts and labor for stock suspension.
With the BFI, I'd be really worried about messing up my car some how. Are there any videos on how to do it?
What would be the point of making it manual? Just wondering.
I think I spent around 2000 on parts and labor for stock suspension.
With the BFI, I'd be really worried about messing up my car some how. Are there any videos on how to do it?
10-26-14, 11:47 AM
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Manual you can change gears manually? Makes it feel faster. You get to control the car more. Be one with the car. Also I don't think there could be any possible way to hurt your car with a bfi. Unless water? But doubt it. No video. I've looked. Also I would leave this car stock as can be. Something about nice stock cars makes them look good. Rear roof spoiler?
10-26-14, 12:09 PM
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First thank grandpa for saving you a ton of money by taking car of the car the way he did. Looks like your instrument cluster, climate control screen, interior, headlights, paint, etc are all better then average and saved you a ton of money trying to fix all of those things. Save money and if you want to change suspension and tires/wheels down the road you can save up additional money for that. You can make your first simple performance improvement by installing a BFI but it will not make huge performance improvements. Good luck and great car.
My windows are tinted, I forgot to mention that. Right now, I'm for sure going to do the BFI, but I'll have to understand it a little more because I don't want to screw up my car. I'm also probably going to buy a front lip. When y'all say a front lip, you're talking about like a body kit type thing?
How would a body kit look? I heard that it doesn't look very good with 16" wheels. When I first got the car, I replaced the tires for about 600$. I wish I waited and thought it through and got 18" rims, but I didn't so Im gonna wait out the 55k miles i have left in my tires before doing that.
Another thing, how is stereo? I have a Nakamichi and its in good condition, but the fact that I don't have a AUX cord pisses the hell out of me. Should I buy a new stereo or just use a cassette tape AUX cord and live with it?
Last edited by Jpgranier; 10-26-14 at 12:18 PM.
10-26-14, 12:34 PM
#15
Not to derail this thread, but one of the reasons I dislike the traditional BFI design is it has one big potential point of failure that could be really bad for the engine. We all know how brittle the plastic bits on these cars have become over the years, and the BFI relies on a piece of plastic bent out of shape (and subsequently being hammered by wind forces) to funnel air into the filter box. If that somehow fails, you've basically got a sealed off intake and an engine starved of air. It's the whole "normally open" vs "normally closed" engineering issue. Systems should always be designed to default to the safest operating mode when something fails.