Thanks, I'll check out his vid. I think I recall replacing them on my 300 but that would have been awhile ago.

 

Well my passenger side mirror decided to free itself from bondage today. I'm driving down the road and noticed the mirror started getting wobbly then just popped out The motor already wasn't working so it's been on the to do list anyway. I had also noticed the glass looked slightly different from the driver's side and didn't dim at night. Turns out it's been replaced before as the part number is from the first gen LS400. Guess that means a trip to the junkyard this weekend.

 

This is your cars way of telling you it loves and trusts you.

My hood came down on my head as a way ask for new struts.

 

Haha I think it was mad because it knew I was going to be doing the timing belt on my sister's Fiat 500 this weekend. After getting her godawful piece of engineering out of my garage I got back to showing the blue bucket some love.

A trip to Valhalla aka the local junkyard found the gods smiling upon me. A gold 2003, which I had picked from before, had its passenger door removed and the lovely person who did it removed the passenger mirror without breaking or destroying anything and left it sitting right on the seat for me. How lucky is that? And on the way out I got to help some guys pull a grille from a Buick so what a great day.

So I dissected the mirror at the yard just in case I broke anything in the process and brought it home looking like this. Pic was taken after I de-pinned the connector as the plan was to transfer the glass and motor guts to my mirror housing but you can't remove them outright as the connector is installed after the wiring is ran through the metal side of the mirror.





And my dissected mirror along with it



My mirror cover was cracked worse than I thought it was



So I took some super blue and tried to brush it between the cracks without getting it on the exterior then brushed a little more on the inside hoping it will hold



New old motor assembly installed in my housing. It snaps onto three different white clips. It's a good thing I grabbed them from the donor car as mine broke apart when removing the old assembly like every other piece of brittle plastic in this car



New old glass cleaned up



Which I then installed before putting the front trim cover of the mirror on so I had to pry it back off without breaking anything to then reassemble it correctly.

Put the rest back together and I now have a working power mirror!



And while I was in the mood to screw with wiring I re-pinned the connector for the airflow sensor

 

So after all that yesterday, I decided to drive our Volvo C70 to dinner because it had not been run in awhile. As I start leaving the driveway, I suddenly hear glass shatter. I get out and do a walk around to find the passenger side mirror, which is held on with adhesive, failed and fell off. The universe got jokes for me.

 

The Tein springs will be going up for sale within a month or so if anyone is interested in them.

 

With the exhaust on hold I decided to get back at it to polish it better. I wasn't super happy with how it came out but granted I was working with limited materials at the time. I went back and sanded it using my drill and sanding discs ranging from 800-5000 grit. Then I got some polishing bits for the drill along with polishing compound and quickly realized the drill was not going to cut it as I was burning through batteries faster than they could charge and it was taking forever. I got a cheap polisher on Amazon and it's turning out better although I can't go faster than the lowest speed without it flinging **** all over the garage. Once I can setup a better work area I'll get back at it with the polish.

 

Feeling pretty satisfied.



Got a set of new OEM caster arms for the front. Uupdated design with the reinforced areas...thank you ForwardMomentum for pointing that out in your recent vid. Hoping to get those and the front TRD springs in later this week.

 

Those look really nice my man! Keep it up

 

Thank you! Wish I could quit my job and work on it full time but I guess being able to pay bills is important.

In not so great news, the clearcoat that was barely starting to fail on the top of the rear left door and rear left fender has gotten significantly worse over the last couple of weeks. I think its failure has been accelerated by some of the huge temperature swings we've been having. I guess I'll be learning to fix that sooner rather than later as its on the verge of starting to flake off.

But in good news, today I received my rear sway's long lost front brother who will be getting a trip to the powdercoater next week

 

I love this hahaha. the imagery I got from this, in addition to the memory of personal experience, really caught me off guard right here. Always funny when you can relate.

 

Yeah...this is definitely not a professional operation The inferior Swedish car you see in the background was completely covered in white specks but were at least easy enough to wash off. I can't wait to sell that stupid thing.

 

Fronts done and the new caster arms means the front end is no longer talking back.

I'm curious to know what their official drop and spring rates are. I expected them to be close to the Teins but their free length is shorter by almost an inch....so much that I didn't need to compress the springs to reassemble the strut unit which is always welcome. They're also a lot heaver too. I moved the strut perch back to the higher OEM height as I was worried the car would then be too low. The wheel gap seems about equal to the Teins at the lower perch so I think I'm good with that. The lower perch would definitely close the wheel gap up and look better but I can barely get my jack under the front of the car as it stands and I don't want to worry about scraping so I think I'll keep it as it is for now.

Ride quality impression so far is that they seem a tiny bit more plush than the Teins while body roll doesn't seem to have changed. The Teins were already pretty comfortable but sharper bumps just seem to be absorbed a smidge better.

This is also the first time getting under the car since doing the PS pump and lower oil pan gasket. All of that remains leak free which is great. However, the upper oil pan is still leaking a like a sieve and it will be huge project to reseal that on jack stands so I suppose I'll just have to keep the oil topped up for now.

And of course in typical old car fashion, the GS was idling in the driveway while I pulled the wife's car in the garage for an oil change. I get back in the seat and the CEL is on. P0442 which seems to indicate any number of possible evap leaks around the fuel tank and charcoal canister so that sucks. I inspected that area when I was swapping the rear sway bar and all of the hoses were so hard and seemingly brittle like everything else in this Florida sun drenched car so I'm not excited about dealing with that. The car didn't come with the original gas cap so I wonder if maybe this code had been triggered before. I ordered a new cap in hopes of it being an easy fix. If not, I'll get to put my leak tester back to work...



Ride height sitting on the upper Bilstein perch

 

Oh, I can actually answer this one for you. Or rather, TRD can, since luckily they still list the information table for Sportivo products.

The springs offer a -25mm ride height. The fronts have a (77.2N/mm) 7.9k spring rate and the rears (75N/mm) 7.6k.
Stiffer than H.Tech, so it's interesting that you found them softer.

Sorry, ignore all that, I just realized you have TRD, not TRD Sportivo springs.

TRD springs have 8.6k front and 7.6k rear spring rates and -35mm ride height.
https://www.trdparts.jp/parts/archive/parts_spring.html

Still interesting that they feel softer than the TEIN springs, considering how much stiffer they actually are.

 

Cool thanks! And yeah I don't know, maybe the new bushings in the caster arms are helping? Or the spring rate just meshes better with the car's weight and Bilsteins?

But the front sway is at the powdercoater's now. Can't wait to get it back and installed!