xoarz

thanks, im far from done spending money on this car tho. just wait till you see what im doing next

idk what you meant by a lexus isnt suppose to be overly modified.. have you gone to a car show lately? Theres tons of people that put alot more time and money into their lexus :P maybe you meant the ES in particular? i could understand that.

i am not concerned with being considered "ridiculous" or anything like that. Everyone has different tastes in things so I can't expect everyone or anyone at all to understand why I do what I do to my car. I just mod my car to my taste and for my own enjoyment, not for the enjoyment of others. If I did mod my car for the enjoyment of others, I'd be going down a long stressful road that never ends.

And yep, theres alot of lifted trucks in Hawaii, tacomas are most peoples 1st choice though haha. Your brother lives on the big island so definitely alot more open land than oahu. They must have fun off roading, something my car will never have the joy of experiencing.

iowaman

Before I bought my ES330, I had always driven pick up trucks, the Lexus is by far the best car I have ever driven but I miss hitting dirt roads here in Iowa . My plan is to buy a newer ES350 eventually but I also think it would be cool to own an older pick up truck- keeping two vehicles doesn't seem very practical though.

xoarz

so today i decided i couldn't wait a month for my friend to help me so i started working on installing my OBX headers with just the SG forum to back me up.
my car on jacks :'( I already miss driving it

y pipe, easiest part

top headers

I did a dumb thing.. I was loosening the top bolts on the bottom headers and I decided to push instead of pull on the breaker bar.. When the bolt broke loose, my hand slammed into the frame of my car and gave me a pretty deep gash on my finger. I've never seen a gash so deep that you could see the tendon in the finger but today I got a first hand experience of that lol. I had to get 4 stitches because of that dumb mistake however, stitches or not, I came back home tonight and finished taking off the bottom headers

I put in the top OBX header in no problem, probably took me about 30 seconds. so far everything has been going pretty smooth and easy..
But when I tried for at least an hour trying to squeeze the back OBX header through the engine bay to the correct position and I finally gave up.. It's so annoying with so little space to work with, especially if you have stitches in your finger lol.. tomorrow is another day, i'm hoping it will be done by then

xoarz

day 2..
finally got the rear headers aligned.. anyone that installed these headers knows how difficult it is.

didnt take a good picture while the car was on jacks but installed the y pipe no problem.. except i got exhaust sealant all over my face in the process..

the y pipe sits lower than stock for sure so im not sure how long it will stay pretty looking. doesnt help that my car is lowered.

dirty engine bay pic...

LeX2K

Those look sharp are they still being made? Hopefully the exhaust will make up for the power loss of your hot air intake.

xoarz

yes they are still being made. you can find them on ebay.
and yeah the obx headers make the engine bay way hotter. i plan on either extending the intake to under my fender or make a heat shield.

LeX2K

Why would the headers make the engine bay hotter? For the intake use the stock airbox setup you won't be able to improve on it. Remove the resonator bottle in the fender if you want more noise.

xoarz

Obx headers don't have a heatshield like the oem. they are also stainless steel which im pretty sure doesn't keep heat in as well as the oem. i open the hood and can feel warm air coming from the engine bay.
If the injen pipe with the cone filter can fit inside the stock air box, i will do that..

mugencivic

Props on your progress! I've been looking into the OBX headers but hear a lot of bad things about them, mainly on the quality of the land that they tend to leak within a couple of years. Did you get any CEL for removing the cat's? How much of a difference did you feel after installing the headers?

xoarz

Yeah well OBX is a cheap knock off of the JPP headers so i know the quality isn't the greatest. I had to inspect the welds on everything because my friend bought the exact same headers for his solara and there was a gap in the weld of the y-pipe. I blew my vape through to make sure there were no leaks lol. No CEL from removing the CAT, theres still a spot to put the o2 sensor. That nice shiny Y pipe got mangled within a week of me having it but that's what happens when you're low and your work has speed bumps every 5 feet.
I don't really know performance wise if it made my car faster. When I only had my intake, I would always race my friend's integra with full exhaust and always lost by half a car
So if I can beat or at least keep up with an integra now then i'd say that headers actually make a difference. But driving it now, maybe i'm not that aware but it feels exactly the same, except it's about 100 times louder.

xoarz

nothing interesting here

17x7.5 ~+40 (weak lol)

MESHICANO

Looks good man! Can you post a video of the sound difference? I was looking at getting these too but couldn't find any videos of noise. I'm straight piped from the cat back but now I want to run a e cut out before the cat so I can be full straight pipe and throw on the stock muffler so I dont get hassled by local police. Also those wheel caps are nice where did you find those? Or what size are they? car is looking nice man !

xoarz

I have one decent video driving at like 2.5k rpm but at like 4-5k rpm when you really open it up, it screams My exhaust setup was OBX headers/y-pipe with my friends solara axleback with a 3" apexi fart cannon that didn't seem like it muffled anything. It sounded good but I switched back to my stock axleback/muffler because it was retarded loud and I usually come home around 12AM. I'll be replacing the apexi muffler with a 2.5" magnaflow muffler which I hope will make it at least a little softer, maybe waking up half my neighborhood instead of the whole neighborhood.

After switching back to stock axleback, I can hear what sounds like an exhaust leak coming from the headers. It makes a loud whooshing noise like air is escaping somewhere its not suppose to. So I took it to a shop and they told me that there was no exhaust leak.. I went under the car with them to feel for air, I looked by the flanges and stuff to see if there was any black build up indicating leaks and I saw nothing.. Yet it sounds kinda weird with obx headers/y-pipe and stock muffler. Maybe it sounds like that because all the air is being restricted by the stock muffler? The shop did say that some other people have the same problem as me after installing headers on their car... but i'm pretty sure I have a leak.. somewhere.

So this might not be accurate in terms of what yours could sound like, but then again, maybe it is. The SolaraGuy page on facebook has tons of exhaust clips, just gotta ask and everyone will be more than happy to show off their exhaust setups lol.

Soundclip: hows my filming skills? none of that shaky vertical camera b.s. :P

The wheels and center caps are not mine, they're my friend's old set-up. I'm pretty sure those were one of the things on his car he considers "rare". or it could be some TRD center caps that you can find on ebay lol. here's what his car looks like now, without his projector headlights.


sorry for the essay, im bored

xoarz

xoarz

picked up 3 cans of paint in my car's color code (UCA46) from napa @ $28 each. Painted rear lips and front rubber lip. it took a little bit less than a can to do it. pictures:


just need some side skirts now.