I purchased my car through Rightdrive in Toronto.

 

I would love to but in my area they actually ticket from time to time for having tinted plate covers...yeah it's retarded but I would rather not attract any attention if I can avoid it.

In terms of selecting a celsior over LS400...I think you answered your own question. Do you see any rust free mint LS400 with 40,00km on kijiji in Ontario?

I didn't think so!

Plus this car is basically going to be a garage queen...I am an old fart with two kids that spend 99% of driving time in my minivan....so I can have a right hand drive vehicle and not have to worry too much about practicality.

 

Small update....I finally installed the Silkblaze 335mm sports steering wheel!

The colour of leather portion of Slikblaze is slightly off as it appears more of a dark charcoal colour rather than black but it is not as bad as the picture makes it appear due to the flash...

The wood section also appears orangie in the pic because of the flash but it is much darker in real life and it is a decent match to my existing OEM wood trim pieces.

It took about an hour to install...not difficult at all by any means.

Unfortunately I have not taken the car out or planning to anytime soon with so much snow / salt on the road but I will for sure update once I actually drive the car. The smaller diameter does feel very nice so I am looking for to the test drive...

 

Congratulations tsxnbp on your success to install it.
Incidentally, do you know what this is?

 

Yup!

Well at least I think I do...for the Kosoku tolls right? I was thinking of taking it off but I am afraid of seeing what the dash looks like behind it. It seems like a factory option.

I don't want to see one spot that is darker than the rest becasue it was never exposed to the element...

 

That looks like a Japanese Toll road card reader, I had one on my last Celsior as well.
Its been hordes of compacted ice on the roads here, I haven't even moved my Celsior in a month, heres hoping for spring days to come!

 

Yes, you both are right. It is called ETC: Electronic Toll Collection System in Japan. It is just useless outside Japan to use. All you need is just to disconnect the connector cable and remove the unit. This doesn't harm the car at all or should I say you can reduce the battery/generator load about 200mA consumed by the unit.

 

yep. ETC system. i had one in my Celsior and Mitsubishi FTO. they are easy to remove.

i dont think you will have to worry about the spot being darker, it looks like it is in a spot that wouldnt get much sun exposure

Glad to see another Celsior owner on here. check out my build page when you have time
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/ls4...t-colosus.html

 

Since the weather wasn't too bad on Saturday I took the car out for a brief drive around the neighbourhood.

It's the first time I have driven the car since mid-December so it's also the first time I finally got to try out the 335mm Silkblaze steering wheel.

As I had hoped, the driving feel definitely improved with the smaller diameter steering wheel!

I realized that it didn't physically improve the handling of the car but it just feels so much better over the stock steering wheel. I give this mod the

 

Immaculate!

 

Mini almost spring update....

I started her up yesterday since it was nice out...also decided to try on the Carlsson wheels I had picked up while back...they are 19x8.5 40+, 19x10 45+ with 245/35/19 and 275/30/19 respectively.

My apologies in advance for my 4x4 mode....I know it looks horrible.

After trying out the wheels I quickly realized how badly I need to get going on my plans with lowering the car. I have been in contact with timmyOtool offline and he has been helping me tremendously with questions on air suspension set up in general and I have now decided go that route instead of a standard lowering springs or coilover set up.

The wheel style is some what dated compared to the current aggressive concave style trend but I have a soft spot for period correct style...they will serve me for now as I need to put my funds towards air suspension.

 

Looks good! What sort of air setup are you going with?

 

Moved to build threads

 

Thank you. I really like the way your ride looks as well. So clean.

Well I just sold the coilovers which I was initially going to convert to UAS set up with generic brackets so now I am looking at AirRex or FF OnAir 2 in 1 set up....

AirRex looks nice but I also like the FF On AIr kit as it comes with full set of springs to be able to convert back to standard coilovers. That would come in handy if/when I decide to take them out down the road but want to keep the UAS bags for other use/next project. I like the threaded bracket set up too.

Plus I hope it doesn't come down to this buy if I can't afford to source my air management parts right away at least I can still use the FF as standard coilovers.

 

I wish I had some more exciting update but it is still an update so here goes....

After researching I found out that you can connect a harness to the stock Celsior navigation unit to create an AUX input for both video and audio.

Once you remove the armrest box, it reveals an unused plug just behind the rear seat vent....






The little white socket is where the AUX harness needs to go in....just like this!



and once you add the harness it creates a new option on the VTR screen "VIDEO" in green (thank god I can still read a bit of Japanese...enough to operate the nav).



It was starting to look promising...I needed to test it out but couldn't think of a video source that I can bring to the garage...then I remembered an ancient portable DVD player I used to use when my son was young. It even had a super old Rugrats DVD still in there.



now the moment of truth....and success!






I also have the navigation safety feature override harness so the passengers can watch video while the car is in motion but I need to wire that all the way from the trunk so it will have to be another day.

I am going to split the sound aux input and run one to a bluetooth adaptor to be able to play music off of my phone so this mod worked out really well. I am now able to retain the clean stock look while modernizing the features of my car. I just wish I had found the info before I invested in a beat-sonic kit / non-nav climate control to do the un-nav conversion.