Great thread.
Is it just me or are most of the images in the thread not showing up?

 

Thanks and yeah I rearranged my imgur albums not too long ago and deleted some pics that I thought were duplicates forgetting I had linked them here. I just went through the thread and the missing ones are mostly of the various springs I went through so nothing major is missing.

 

The motherland provides!

 

My face when I realize I ordered one without sunroof controls

 

But it turns out even our American panels still have fittings for the sunglass holder and latch to attach to! You just have to live with the opening cut out for the garage door control wiring

 

I gave up on trying to find OEM rubber bushings to fit the TRD sways and went with poly bushings from Figs. Even then, they still took a slight edge off when hitting bumps probably because the rubber ones were so old and hard.

And got a matching set of TRD door stabilizers for the rear:



And I finally pulled the trigger on new weather stripping for all four doors. $300 on Buyee for the set plus $60 for shipping still made it cheaper than any place I could find them for sale in the US. So soft and supple and they further cut down on wind noise!

 

Peace, would you mind sharing the link to the door weatherstripping set? Dm or here.

Thank you in advance.

 

It was from Buyee so you'll just have to search and see what pops up although I did find this listing right away https://buyee.jp/item/jdirectitems/a...ranslateSearch

 

I know you guys have missed me and my basket case. I started on encapsulating our crawlspace around the beginning of the year so that's been dominating my work time.The car has been doing great otherwise but the areas where the clear coat are flaking off are getting worse so I decided to hit the rear driver's door this weekend.

I know the most proper way to do this panel would have been to remove the door belt and door handle but I didn't want to do that for fear of breaking whatever fragile pieces are holding those together. I also opted to rear-clear it only rather than do a repaint like the wing. The paint where the clear flaked off didn't seem too far gone or faded so I just sanded it all and re-sprayed clear in hopes it would blend well enough.

First up was finally applying sound treatment to this door; the last remaining one to not have any:







The problem paint areas:



It looks like someone has been here before based on the deeper sanding marks in the paint...





Plus treating this dent that has been annoying me for way too long:



Pulled it almost completely out then sanded, primed, and touched up the rust spot:



Prepped and ready:





Getting the sanding going:



And the finished product:












You can see where it had flaked off before if you look close enough so those areas didn't blend in quite as well as I had hoped but the important thing is it's much better overall

 

An experimental bracing mod with a positive outcome.

Credit to ForwardMomentum on youtube. A few months back he did a meetup video with a guy who added SC430 chassis bracing to his GS. I was messaging with FM about it and he said the guy had to have some additional mounting points welded to his car to fit the full lower bracing. I didn't want to go that far but after having an SC430 pop up in the local junkyard I wanted to see what I could pull off with minimal modification.

At the rear subframe, our cars share the same lower mounting plate that also serves as a "washer" for the front subframe bolts except the SC plate has some additional threaded holes.



From there are two long flat pieces that angle towards the center of the car and mount where we have that small brace that goes across the diff/exhaust tunnel.



Then going back to that subframe plate are two smaller bars that on the SC that angle back towards the center rear and mount where our fuel tank is. The great part with these two pieces is that you can chop the ends off with an angle grinder then remove the rubber aero flaps on them exposing holes that allow you to bolt them together. From here, they fit perfectly across the rear of our subframe and line up perfectly with those mounting plates:



I had a coworker's husband weld them together for me and just finished bolting everything up:

 

The outcome is better than I expected. The rear end feels noticeably more solid when going over bumps and uneven pavement and stays flatter on turn in.

 

I keep enjoying your updates. Looking good!

 

That brace is very interesting... Thanks for sharing

 

Finally decided to tackle the rear knuckle bushings. I was getting a bit of a tail-wagging-the-dog feeling over rougher pavement and the rear always felt a little harsher than it should over sharp bumps. This solved that and improved the rear end feeling more than I thought it would.

Carnage from removing them. The one that bolts to the control arm is on the left. The other that bolts to the forward traction rod arm whatever it's called is on the right.



New one pressed in. It wasn't too bad to do. I left them in our deep freezer overnight then used plenty of grease



And I went with poly on the other one for ease of installation

 

I had been watching this one on ebay for awhile and finally pulled the trigger. Once I can get the rear main seal dealt with so it's no longer dripping oil all over the lower brace, I'll get them powdercoated together.