Awesome build! Subscribing for more.

 

The rear arms are pretty much all Figs except the LCA because I got a price on Megan Racing LCAs that I couldn't pass up. The only thing holding me up is getting the old arms off the knuckles because the bolts are seized
I'll have to check out Ortiz and Monkey Wrench, Thanks!
Good luck on your FA install! Let us know how it goes!

 

Thanks guys!
I've been really tempted lately to buy the RR-Racing rear brake kit. I know people usually do front kits before rears, but would it be alright to run the Lexus 4 piston calipers up front with the Wilwood 4 pistons on the rear? or do I stand more of a chance of locking up the rear because of the extra braking power?

 

Wheels came in today! They'll be going in for powder coating soon which is why tires aren't mounted yet, but couldn't resist putting one on the car. I'm seriously considering upgrading the brakes to the RR-Racing Wilwood kit front and back now instead of the IS350 upgrade. I know the car is currently under-powered for large BBK kits but ultimately the stock engine is going to be removed for something more powerful. So if anyone would like to buy this setup send me an offer!!
They're IS350 4 piston Advics Calipers powder coated, comes with Lexus oem rebuild seal kit for both sides. Brand new Stop Tech sport rotors. No pads.
Backs are used IS350 single piston calipers, with brand new Stop Tech sport rotors. No pads.



Excited to start playing with ride height once the tires are mounted. Advan A052 245/40/18, 265/35/18!



Also cleaning up the headlights and going to put a wrap tint on them! Eventually the whole car will be wrapped as well, the body has been used and abused on this thing. Definitely needs some TLC!

 

If you set the tires on ramps vs free hanging, the housing can be lowered, turned, and axles extracted. Two large screw drivers 180° apart and in one motion, pop the axle free you'll be down the home stretch in regards to having it out. That said, during install, you'll need to spin to the input shaft to align the axle splines before seating them if the tires are on the ramps.
Same is true during drive shaft install, pop the trans into N and spin the the shaft until it aligns. And don't forget them poly bushings to reduce wheel hop from the diff winding up and releasing.

 

What offset? 35?

 

Yeah, 35 offset. 8.5" front 9.5" rear.

 

The build has slowed down a bit because my work has started to get quite busy causing me to work overtime and on the weekends. On the plus side it's more money for the car, but on the down side I have no time to make it over to my dad's house where Lexy is being built.
As mentioned before I decided to pull the trigger on the RR-Racing rear brake kit. Massive difference in size compared to my oem non-ventilated rotors. Can't wait to feel the results!


I rebuilt the front calipers with new seals, shims, pins, and pads. Unfortunately when I went to put them on today I noticed that there's about a half inch gap at the top of the pads where the rotor ends making the rotors too small. I bought these calipers second hand off Kijiji and the guy said he bought them off ebay then while they were getting powder coated, he totalled his car before he had a chance to put them on. Also said they were from a 2IS 350. The problem with sites like Kijiji and Craigslist is who actually knows the real story on why they're selling them and where they came from. After doing some more digging and research I've come to the conclusion that they're actually from a GS350 which has a 14" rotor, which makes sense with the half inch gap difference on the 13.1 inch rotors. So I'm going to try and get some Stoptech 14" rotors for the front from a GS and see how that goes?...
At lease now my back brakes won't be bigger than my front brakes lol.

I also decided to get Figs rear LCAs instead of my Megan Racing ones just to keep it all Figs in the back.

So currently for sale I have Megan Racing rear LCAs in 99% mint condition.

And brand new Rear ventilated brake rotors for a 2IS 350.



Message me with any offers!

 

The single-mass aftermarket flywheels for the 4GR are all generally of the same design and dimensions, which sinks the friction surface into the face of the fly by 7.5mm. That's all fine and dandy, but if you want a sprung hub disk, your options are few and expensive.

The friction surface of Mk4 Supra JZ flywheels are proud of the surface by either 0.020" or 0.5mm, depending on the tooling it was machined on. Meaning, if you put a spacer behind the friction surface of a 4GR flywheel, the disk and pressure plate from a MK4 Supra will bolt to the fly and work as designed. I've got half of the holes drilled in my 5/16" thick spacer to run an ACT T014X kit bolted to a Spec SL25A fly. Life happened before I could finish the last 20% or so of that fit-up, but it's just a matter of finishing up the spacer and sourcing some NAS 35191 screws of the appropriate length (gotta run the thread checker again, I've forgotten the length I need) to sandwich the spacer between the fly and friction surface, then the only hangup I have is the geometry of the slave cylinder's piston throw maybe being a little off from the new offset, but I was planning on solving that problem if it presented itself while I was deleting the clutch delay valve. After that's done, I'm off to replace the 2-piece driveshaft and solidify the rear bushings to take all of the slack I can out from between my clutch foot and the rear tires.

My spacer is made out of cheap steel, and my original idea was to mass load it with a 5/16 sheet of copper to help pull heat from the friction surface, but that's like $75 just in raw copper.

 

That sounds like quite the operation! I honestly haven't looked that much yet because there's still a lot to do before the car even touch the ground. When the time came my original plan was to take the RR-Racing approach and use the ClutchMasters friction disk with the Fidanza flywheel. But I'm really dreading doing the clutch, and when the time does actually come I might just throw the 4GR in the trash and start the engine swap!

 

Hey man, Im also from ontario and have a 2013Lexus IS250,
You know any place in the ottawa or toronto region where I can find some mods or tune my car? My cars quite slow since it is the 250, so I wanna tune it up and get some custom headlights, taillights, and maybe some bumpers

 

Hey man also from ontario and own a 2013 Lexus IS250 Automatic, any tips on how to tune the car up and buy some custom front and rear bumpers, and headlights and taillights? I wanna get my car up to 400-500 hp, but Im a newbie to cars and have no idea how to tune or do anything tbh

 

Hey dude,
Great to hear you're getting into modifying cars. It becomes a serious addiction though so be careful going down the rabbit hole! Most of my parts are coming out of the states. RR-Racing is one of the best and only tunes to get for our 250s because of the complexity of the IS250 CPU. Now, as far as wanting 400-500 hp, I'm sorry but it ain't going to happen with the 4GR 2.5 V6 unless you really start ripping it apart and making custom pieces. You can get a supercharger kit from RR-Racing but it will only bring you up to around 360whp with the top trim kit and will cost you many thousands of dollars. It's a high compression engine that can only handle lower levels of boost. Also even if you could get it over the 400whp mark I would imagine you'll start breaking transmission shafts and driveline pieces that were never rated for power levels that high.
My solution is to engine swap for a "poor man's LS" which is the 5.3L from the truck bored out to 5.7L with LS1 heads. All and all the swap should be around $10-12gs but will provide 400whp all day long-ish. But I wouldn't recommend for a street vehicle because of the complexity of making all your luxuries work. For a track vehicle it's not so bad because most of that stuff goes in the garbage anyway.
It's honestly just a matter of how much money you want to throw at something right? I'm sure you can take any setup and get whatever power level (within reason) you want if you have the resources and money to do so.
A good start if you're new to the modifying scene would be the standard bolt on's such as exhaust system and intake pieces along with a tune. You're still looking at 2-3gs for that alone and will bump your power up enough that you should be able to keep up with dodge caravans lol (around 200whp from the 160-170whp stock). Anyone who thinks that's a joke hasn't tried to race a grand caravan with a stock IS250, spoiler alert, you will lose.
As far as the exterior of the car, Ebay is your bestfriend. There's tons of aesthetic parts such as bumpers, grills, and lights on there usually for a decent price.
Both Johnson Research and Performance and Nextmod in the GTA are great performance shops that can also help you getting stuff put onto the car if you're unable to do it yourself.
Any other questions don't hesitate to ask!

-All the best

 

Thanks so much man, really appreciate that you took the time to give me all this info
I honestly dont know anything about cars lol, but I love cars, like growing up and until now, I even still play old car games such as MidnightClub Los Angeles.
The main thing I really want in my Lexus, is for it to be a 5 sec 0-100 (dont know if thats possible),
Besides that, Im willing to spend a good amount of money on the car but def not gonna do that 10-12 g swap,
For now I really want to get custom headlights, taillights, and my paint isnt in the best condition so I might get the car repainted either black, red again, or maybe white. Def also want some black wheels, and for the interior just get LEDs and a star light roof (would cost like $100 max including labour I believe).
Im quite interested in that exhaust system tbh
Lastly, I might upgrade to an IS350 from the 2014 generation, since that was the car I really wanted, but settled on the 2nd gen IS250 since I couldnt afford the newer ones (still love the second generation, its beautiful).
Do you have any websites or youtube channels or any place from which I could learn more about cars?
Also which Lexus is worth buying as a daily driver that you could tune up to a higher hp?
Thanks so much man!

 

Never too late to learn. I think I speak for all gearheads when I say we're constantly still learning everyday no matter if you're new or an expert.
5 second 0-100 is definitely going to be challenging. the IS350 has a 0-100 of 5.2sec or something like that, so to get the IS250 do to the same would take roughly the same power-to-weight ratio ~ 300hp for a 3700-3800lbs car, since the two share the same body style. Obviously two ways to go about changing a power-to-weight ratio, either more power or less weight. Since it sounds like you're trying to make a nice sleek street car, I'm assuming you probably won't want to start doing too much weight reduction.
As a guess I'm going to say 6 second 0-100 would be achievable through bolt-on mods(exhaust and intake), tune, lightweight wheels, and some lightweight coilovers. I know it doesn't sound like much but with those mods it will be a completely different car than what you're driving now. If you think you might get the newer gen IS350 in the near future I would only do mods that can be transferred to the new car, such as wheels/tires.
Definitely Check out youtube channel Speed Academy, couple guys from the GTA area that build some sweet rides. Also Donut media has some good stuff from the Drifting boys Tuerck and Forsberg building missile cars. Although they don't do Lexus builds, it's still great general info on how to modify cars. There's also a lot of great builds on Club Lexus forums that will offer tons of information on what's worked and what hasn't on these cars.
It all depends what you want in a daily driver. Personally speaking, I'm getting older now, my street racing days are over. I find the risk/reward of potentially losing everything that you've worked doesn't outweigh the little amount of joy you receive in beating some kid in a civic. As long as its not dangerously slow (which is a thing) I really don't mind daily driving a regular old commuter vehicles. Currently I drive a 09 Mazda3, cost me $2000 to get it on the road and gets me back and forth to work no problem. If I had tons of money my ideal commuter car would be a new rx350 or a gs350. Comfortable, stylish, lots of room, and fast enough for public roads.
If you're new to driving/haven't done much car control practice, I wouldn't even recommend getting something faster. Vehicle control is definitely a skill that shouldn't be over looked. I believe we should have the same driver training laws in Canada that they do in the Scandinavian countries where you must take pretty much a stunt driving course in order to get your full license. There's way too many bad drivers out there, and unfortunately some of them have very fast cars which gets to be quite dangerous. Don't be that guy on Instagram that loses control of his Mustang and kills 5 people.
When it gets snowy, find yourself a big open parking lot, fully disable your traction control and have at er!
When you get good in the snow, graduate to wet pavement where your reactions have to be a quicker not to lose control. Practice makes perfect!