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I've been wanting to do a VIP build for a while and finally made the move when I sold my miata earlier this year.
After spending a few months searching, I can across a clean black on black 98 LS400 which is the exact color combo and body style I wanted. The car had 123k miles and was owned by a retired DEA agent from Bolivia. Dude had some crazy stories and babied the car. After some negotiating I picked it up for $4000.
I forgot to mention that I'm bi-coastal. I purchased the car in Los Angeles and kept it there until October.
Only issue I ran into with the car was the previous owner forgetting to mention the gas gauge didn't work properly. So one day in traffic on the 110 I ran out of gas.
I thought it was something way worse, but thankfully it wasn't. I now reset my trip meter at every fill up and get gas every 100-150 miles.
While in LA, Boden Autohaus installed the new AccuAir Endo tank system with Airlift bags. Also, I decided to go with Rotiform ROC's because I do a lot of work for Rotiform and got a great deal on some great wheels.
I knew I wanted to keep the car in Jersey since that's where all my car friends live and personally I like the "scene" here a lot more. So after the air install was finished I had the car shipped to NJ. Also, I got so caught up in work over the summer that the car sat at Boden from May to Sept, then shipped in October. I had the tires shipped to NJ so the car never had a chance to get the wheels fitted properly, which is what AUTOCouture has been doing this past week.
I knew I wanted to tuck as much as possible so after chatting with some friends about what suspension pieces to purchase to fit the wheels I was advised to get toe, traction, and camber arms for the rear and NRCA's for the front. When it came time to fit, the rear had just enough adjustability to tuck. The fronts however needed way more than NRCA's.
The NRCA's allowed for some camber adjustment, but pushed the wheel out about 4 inches. My buddy at AC still did his best to pull as much camber out of the NRCA as he could.
There was still way too much poke for my liking so I decided to go with fuca's to allow for more camber adjustability to hopefully get enough to tuck them in.
In the meantime, my buddy pulled as much camber out of the rear as he could and was able to fit the rears nicely when aired out.
The fuca's arrived yesterday and he was able to get about 2 more degrees of camber which is enough to tuck, but not how I had hoped. Someone at the shop was also kind enough to grind down all the fenders as opposed to rolling them. I told them from the start I didn't want any pull so I could keep the stock body lines.
In a few weeks I'll purchase flca's, but until then the car is sitting pretty nice.
The exhaust is sitting pretty low so I'll also have to figure out tucking a lot of the undercarriage.
These photos are also all pre-alignment. When I go later today I'll get some updated shots. Very excited to continue with this car! Slowly it's coming together.
Couple updates since my last post. Had Suprlife in NJ make some custom fenders, custom foglight vent inserts, and filled the plate holes. Car goes to paint in a few weeks and some new wheels are in the works.
11-17-17, 10:25 AM
Mike's 98 LS400
