Nicely done so far. Awesome to see you clean this car back up and get it driving right. Great choice on replacing those taillights game changer for sure, makes the car look way cleaner. Keep it up

~Slow

 

Thanks! It's certainly been an adventure so far. Sinking in a little more money than I originally planned, but it's a project so it is what it is.

Got a factory rear deck speaker installed yesterday, as the OEM had been removed when he put in a 15" sub. Closing up that hole in the trunk really cut down on exhaust drone, and the speaker definitely helped my audio quality

Unfortunately, I also took it in for an alignment and was told that my front right LBJ and both rear UCAs need to be replaced. I'd already ordered a pair of LBJs just in case - so will swap that out this weekend, and went ahead and ordered Godspeed spherical, adjustable rear UCAs. They have a decent warranty and I've heard good things about Godspeed from my friends that autocross/race on their parts, so I figured they were worth a shot for the price.

 

MAF arrived and made the car respond much better at full throttle! No more horrible lag at WOT/3k RPM. Still a miss at idle and some weird response issues while driving, so I'm moving on to the OCVs which appear to be OEM at 220k miles.

Replaced the valve cover gaskets and spark plugs seals this weekend....the last owner had half the plug seals (passenger bank) in upside-down......Guess that explains all the oil in the plug tubes!

Rear UCAs/front LBJs/alignment are being done by my buddy's shop today. He's also gonna do a once-over to see if he can spot anything obvious that could be causing my miss and will throw on the O2 spacers I ordered while it's up on the lift. Hopefully they get rid of the CEL I've been getting since I put the exhaust on.

 

Car's aligned and driving great! The shop also did a smoke test that found a massive leak under my intake manifold. Apaprently I'd forgotten to retorque the manifold bolts when I installed the graphite gasket (wish I'd had a metal one :/ ). Cleaned that up and installed a new gasket today. Also replaced the OCVs and it's running perfectly now!!! FINALLY.

My 'JDM' city light for the passenger side headlight also showed up from Japan (that part number was a b**** to find). So I installed that to match the driver side (which the last owner *had* installed). And also replaced my cracked passenger mirror with one I found from a part-out.

Here's a pic of the city lights (amber). I'll likely swap the LEDs in my DRLs over to amber as well. I really like the look.

 

Good progress seems like you took care of a lot issues.

 

Keep up the good work.

 

man you’re getting things done. Just noticed your plates and you’re in VA what part? I’m in Va Beach and Richmond area. Also I heard of the A’pexi throttle controller is it worth the money? How easy was the install.

 

Yeah, my bank account and my gf are both not happy about it lol. I just kept running into more and more things that needed replacing. *Hopefully* It's solid now and I can enjoy it for a while with little to no issues. And I'm in Radford (down by Roanoke/VT). Picked up the car from a dude in Woodbridge.

The throttle controller is definitely noticeable when you want to accelerate. You don't have to put the pedal all the way to the floor to get the car to drop a gear or two (or 4, as it seems to do most of the time). It has a ton of modes, but I've really only messed with the aggressive one and the one that reduces throttle inputs. Install was simple and took maybe 15 mins of me standing on my head under the dash lol. That said, I also didn't connect the reverse sensor that turns off the controller in reverse. The inputs aren't *that* crazy that it's needed, in my opinion.

 

Nice good to know. Keep buildings you’ll love the car once it’s done. There is a valexus group on FB and GSkingz VA chapter if you’re not join those groups so you can be around like minded people.

 

How do you like hte exhaust sound? There may need to be a MN chapter of the GSKingz @nyc80rick

 

Now that I've reinstalled the rear deck speaker I love it. Not a lot of *bad* drone (nothing that makes me need to turn the music up/talk louder) and cruising at 70-80mph it's dead quiet. It's mainly loud around 1500-2000RPM under light load. Once you actually give it gas it quiets down and has a nice thrum. The throttle controller actually helped that a lot, as it now spends less time in the 'drone zone' with the different throttle map.

The full throttle brappyness has calmed down a little bit since install, but is still present. I may put on some resonators in the future to try to smooth it out, but for now I'm happy with it!

 

Thats cool, I bet response is also improved as well. Specially for this V8 that you have.

 

make it happen. You’re the man out there

 

Yeah, response was helped a ton by it. That's probably my only complaint with the car though, really. The throttle is very numb (I get it, it's a luxury car). I'm curious if there's a way to make the pedal stiffer though.

 

Swapped the inner DRLs to amber and love the nighttime look now