Funny, I'm actually from Olympic Peninsula and learned how to drive on those NW roads. I've crewed at Oregon Trail and Olympus but never run them. Didn't actually build my first rally car till I moved to the south. There are some world class roads in TN as well as WV. MO, MI, PA, and surprisingly OH have some fantastic roads as well.

 

Little paint goes a long ways

 

Beautiful cage work!

 

thanks! My buddy Matt at Vaught Specialties gets a lot of the credit as he did all of the bending and a lot of the fitting... I got the fun job of tying in the front and rear strut towers. Few things I'd do different lot next time but overall I'm very happy with the result.

This chassis is a real challenge, especially at the A pillar, to stay tight and not infringe on the viewing area. Matt did a fantastic job as most of the cage is within a finger width to touching.
Towers fully tied in and will not be moving without a big crash. All crucial areas stitch welded and crumple zones between towers reinforced.

The boxes with the openings in the rear are for the coulover reservoirs. I'll post pics when thy go in and it will make more sense.







Waiting on 14" springs to set final ride height. Jarco Inc sourced 2015 engine going in for test run this weekend then we'll come back out for the manual swap.

 

Are you going full Lexan windows in this thing?

 

yep, sliders in front, factory windshield with 10" banner give or take.

debating on tint now... last car was silver tint on red tommi mackinen style... but not sure with white.

 

On the ground, suspension looks good, body panels going back on, fittting skid plates, lexan, etc etc, plumbing in tilton box, moved steering wheel back 8", 6" extension on shift linkage, seats moved back.

Through out hvac box not realizing the smart key code reader was in there so have to trailer the mess to local Lexus dealer to get my spares synced on tech stream, then hopefully she will be running and ready for the manual trans to go in.

Anticipation to drive this thing very quickly through the woods is definstelu boiling over.

weight looking good, this car is gonna go:-)

 

What are the corner balancing results?

Cool to see those tires on on that car! LOL! What wheel size/offset did you have to get to clear the rotor/caliper...or did you go with something other than factory?

 

i just grabbed a weight to see how we were doing but have a couple hundred in parts to go on so haven't bothered by balancing yet. Perches are off a bit as front left and right rear were high.

Wheels are method vt Spec 15x 7. Et 15 machines to et 21. Knuckles are modified to clear wheels, stock is250 calipers/rotors

 

Ah, IS250 brakes. Makes sense!

Any pics of the modded knuckles?

 

no pics. Not too exciting, just machined 5mm off the bottom and 2mm off the dowels on bottom piece.

 

Very cool build! Are there many IS's out there on the rally circuit?

 

thank u. As far as we could find this will be the first gravel Spec 2IS in the world. There is ar least two is200s (beams 4 cylinder). One is in Finland and the other Australia. I suspect there are more 1is cars out there but not 2IS... if anybody finals full gravel Spec 2IS love to see it. We are starting from scratch.

 

Now this is worth following!

 

Ah, ok. I was wondering if it was something more extensive like those weirdos doing crazy wheel offsets and camber thus needing chopped/reinforced/re-welded knuckles.