Raising my SC from the Dead Thread
UPDATE
Working from home since mid-March due to the virus has allowed me time to get back on this project. The car basically sat garaged and untouched since Dec 2017. I connected up a battery and pretty much nothing changed. I pulled the stater out and saw that it looked virtually new (it was replaced a few months before the flood) but there was this very fine line of rust at the seam. I installed a spare starter from my parts collection and it started right up. I was actually very surprised by how well it was running on stale gasoline. No warning lights of any kind are coming on.
Next steps are to remove the gasoline in the tank, change all fluids, and go shopping for parts.
I think I can get put together something really nice for not much money. It needs front and rear seats (might try the SC430 seats in the front or buy some cheap destroyed stock seats and have them redone), door speakers, radio amp, radio, cd changer, the metal plates in the knee area of the dash on both right and left sides.
Pics to come once I have the interior all put back together and just need to find seats.
Working from home since mid-March due to the virus has allowed me time to get back on this project. The car basically sat garaged and untouched since Dec 2017. I connected up a battery and pretty much nothing changed. I pulled the stater out and saw that it looked virtually new (it was replaced a few months before the flood) but there was this very fine line of rust at the seam. I installed a spare starter from my parts collection and it started right up. I was actually very surprised by how well it was running on stale gasoline. No warning lights of any kind are coming on.
Next steps are to remove the gasoline in the tank, change all fluids, and go shopping for parts.
I think I can get put together something really nice for not much money. It needs front and rear seats (might try the SC430 seats in the front or buy some cheap destroyed stock seats and have them redone), door speakers, radio amp, radio, cd changer, the metal plates in the knee area of the dash on both right and left sides.
Pics to come once I have the interior all put back together and just need to find seats.
Last edited by texan_176; Apr 29, 2020 at 07:16 AM.
Welcome back, Texan! Good to hear you're getting your SC roadworthy again after the long hiatus! I don't know what the word is on fitting SC430 front seats other than getting some custom rails for them but reupholstering a pair of SC stock seats is a good bet! Maybe put out a WTB ad here in the Marketplace section and see what shows up? There are more than likely some 92-00 SC front seats available from wrecking yards on ebay also. I'm seeing a couple of sets of 92-00 SC seats in tan leather on there right now but they wouldn't need recovering. Many more sets of SC430 seats in my ebay search just now.
Welcome back, Texan! Good to hear you're getting your SC roadworthy again after the long hiatus! I don't know what the word is on fitting SC430 front seats other than getting some custom rails for them but reupholstering a pair of SC stock seats is a good bet! Maybe put out a WTB ad here in the Marketplace section and see what shows up? There are more than likely some 92-00 SC front seats available from wrecking yards on ebay also. I'm seeing a couple of sets of 92-00 SC seats in tan leather on there right now but they wouldn't need recovering. Many more sets of SC430 seats in my ebay search just now.
I saw your build thread from 5 years ago where you want to do the fully legal 2JZGTE swap. Your seats looked new in those photos. Were those reupholstered locally or did you buy a kit online? The local junkyards have trashed seats for $50 each so if I go that route I want to have the recovered seats look OEM. The problem with 99% of recovered seats is that the leather is not pulled properly over the foam so there is a puffy look to the coverings. Some really botched jobs have wrinkles in them.
UPDATE
I found a 98 SC300 in a junkyard and was able to score tons of parts I needed. Someone had taken the rear seat but I paid $50 for the fronts for the pair. The driver side is torn but usable for when I complete the car and drive/test out everything for several months before putting more money in to repair the leather. I bought nearly the entire OEM audio system (front speakers/boxes, CD changer/amp, rear speakers/amp). The changer is working perfectly; so rare these days and I was stunned by this.
Problems I am having at this point that need fixed before I can completely reassemble the interior:
The junkyard radio does not have working back lighting and the right rear speaker still does not work. This speaker never worked in my time of ownership of the car. I have tried 3 radios and 4 amps in it prior to the flood and the speaker still did not work. I was too scared about breaking something to remove the rear shelf. Now I have a spare shelf so out it will come out to try a used speaker. Hopefully, this car was not built on a Friday at 4pm in 1998 so some worker on the line just let it go if a wire to the speaker got cut that day.
I think the HVAC air routing motor is shot. When I set the HVAC to floor, air is still coming through the dash vents. I need to check the blend motor as well by getting the coolant hot and trying the heater. The recirculate motor works fine. I will go back to buy these parts.
I found a 98 SC300 in a junkyard and was able to score tons of parts I needed. Someone had taken the rear seat but I paid $50 for the fronts for the pair. The driver side is torn but usable for when I complete the car and drive/test out everything for several months before putting more money in to repair the leather. I bought nearly the entire OEM audio system (front speakers/boxes, CD changer/amp, rear speakers/amp). The changer is working perfectly; so rare these days and I was stunned by this.
Problems I am having at this point that need fixed before I can completely reassemble the interior:
The junkyard radio does not have working back lighting and the right rear speaker still does not work. This speaker never worked in my time of ownership of the car. I have tried 3 radios and 4 amps in it prior to the flood and the speaker still did not work. I was too scared about breaking something to remove the rear shelf. Now I have a spare shelf so out it will come out to try a used speaker. Hopefully, this car was not built on a Friday at 4pm in 1998 so some worker on the line just let it go if a wire to the speaker got cut that day.
I think the HVAC air routing motor is shot. When I set the HVAC to floor, air is still coming through the dash vents. I need to check the blend motor as well by getting the coolant hot and trying the heater. The recirculate motor works fine. I will go back to buy these parts.
Last edited by texan_176; May 24, 2020 at 05:30 PM.
UPDATE
The car is around 80% done now. I am still missing a rear seat and the brakes need to be checked from top to bottom. Oh, and the oil in the diff needs to be changed. The only electrical thing I need to figure out is why the radio is not getting any LCD back lighting. The wiring manual shows it shares a common power source with the HVAC control LCD back light so I am a bit stumped here since the HVAC illuminates correctly. The LEDs in the radio are known to be working so it is a no power problem.
The biggest PITA so far was replacement of the HVAC blend door motor. This sits under the HVAC box above the carpet where the passenger's left foot is when the passenger seat is occupied. It is held in by 3 screws of which 1 is a pain to get out. Then instead of putting the connector and plug right there so you can swap it out in under 10 minutes, some engineer routed the wires that come out of the blend motor behind the HVAC box. I looked at the service manual and the correct way to change the motor is to remove the ABS pump, evacuate the A/C system, open the evaporator and heater core connections on the firewall, remove most of the dash, and then take out the entire HVAC box. This is total insanity and the worst design mistake I have personally found in a Toyota product.
So instead of doing that I opened the old blend motor while it was still in the car, de-soldered the circuit board, and swapped the guts of new motor into the old case while soldering the old wiring to the new circuit board. It was a nightmare soldering job in such close quarters. Oh, and BTW if you ever run across a junked SC grab this motor. It has been discontinued and I could not find any aftermarket replacement.
I am glad I did not give up on this car.
The car is around 80% done now. I am still missing a rear seat and the brakes need to be checked from top to bottom. Oh, and the oil in the diff needs to be changed. The only electrical thing I need to figure out is why the radio is not getting any LCD back lighting. The wiring manual shows it shares a common power source with the HVAC control LCD back light so I am a bit stumped here since the HVAC illuminates correctly. The LEDs in the radio are known to be working so it is a no power problem.
The biggest PITA so far was replacement of the HVAC blend door motor. This sits under the HVAC box above the carpet where the passenger's left foot is when the passenger seat is occupied. It is held in by 3 screws of which 1 is a pain to get out. Then instead of putting the connector and plug right there so you can swap it out in under 10 minutes, some engineer routed the wires that come out of the blend motor behind the HVAC box. I looked at the service manual and the correct way to change the motor is to remove the ABS pump, evacuate the A/C system, open the evaporator and heater core connections on the firewall, remove most of the dash, and then take out the entire HVAC box. This is total insanity and the worst design mistake I have personally found in a Toyota product.
So instead of doing that I opened the old blend motor while it was still in the car, de-soldered the circuit board, and swapped the guts of new motor into the old case while soldering the old wiring to the new circuit board. It was a nightmare soldering job in such close quarters. Oh, and BTW if you ever run across a junked SC grab this motor. It has been discontinued and I could not find any aftermarket replacement.
I am glad I did not give up on this car.
UPDATE
Got a little more time to spend on this project so I went for my first real shakedown test run right before sunrise on a Sunday to avoid the dangerous and stupid driving that is the new normal in Houston. So much for that theory. I drove past 2 really bad wrecks on the freeway plus there was this one that had three separate vehicles crash (2 hit and ran) at the same site within an hour of each other. The third driver hit a parked fire truck with flashing lights.
https://www.khou.com/article/news/lo...e-5a535a9633d9
Anyway, I had to drive 30-50 miles to allow the ECU to cycle through all of the emissions systems so the OBD system was in ready status to pass inspection later this week. I was very nervous taking it on the freeway for the first time in nearly 4 years. I probably would not have gone if those wrecks took place yesterday and I knew about them today. It ran flawlessly under all conditions from street driving at 25-35 mph and at 75 mph on the open freeway. The temperature gauge was exactly at the correct spot the whole time, no funny sounds, no smoke, etc. It tracks as straight as an arrow and actually feels a bit faster than my 99 SC300 from a stop. With a missing back seat it is a bit loud inside but you just turn up the radio to fix that for now. Next steps are to flush the transmission fluid for a 4th time just for my peace of mind and to replace a somewhat noisy power steering pump.
What I love about this project it putting things right and solving problems as I go. I will probably be a basket case driving the car when it is done. There are just too many people who should not be driving any kind of car on the roadways in my area.
Got a little more time to spend on this project so I went for my first real shakedown test run right before sunrise on a Sunday to avoid the dangerous and stupid driving that is the new normal in Houston. So much for that theory. I drove past 2 really bad wrecks on the freeway plus there was this one that had three separate vehicles crash (2 hit and ran) at the same site within an hour of each other. The third driver hit a parked fire truck with flashing lights.
https://www.khou.com/article/news/lo...e-5a535a9633d9
Anyway, I had to drive 30-50 miles to allow the ECU to cycle through all of the emissions systems so the OBD system was in ready status to pass inspection later this week. I was very nervous taking it on the freeway for the first time in nearly 4 years. I probably would not have gone if those wrecks took place yesterday and I knew about them today. It ran flawlessly under all conditions from street driving at 25-35 mph and at 75 mph on the open freeway. The temperature gauge was exactly at the correct spot the whole time, no funny sounds, no smoke, etc. It tracks as straight as an arrow and actually feels a bit faster than my 99 SC300 from a stop. With a missing back seat it is a bit loud inside but you just turn up the radio to fix that for now. Next steps are to flush the transmission fluid for a 4th time just for my peace of mind and to replace a somewhat noisy power steering pump.
What I love about this project it putting things right and solving problems as I go. I will probably be a basket case driving the car when it is done. There are just too many people who should not be driving any kind of car on the roadways in my area.
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boostinsc
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Oct 18, 2011 08:33 PM