Hi everyone, new guy here. Just wanted to introduce myself before I go asking loads of stupid questions. I'm a mechanical engineer by trade (hopefully Lexus owners are kinder to engineers than typical car forums) and general auto enthusiast. My DD is a 2016 WRX making 330 or so AWHP on an Ethanol blend. Now, on to the Lexus.

About this time last year, I went through a bit of a soul searching phase, AKA spent a few weeks browsing craigslist project cars. I found a 1994 LS400 in two-tone beige for $1500. It looked clean on the outside (minus two rust holes, but this is Michigan...) and ran well. I'm not sure why, but something told me I had to buy it. I haggled the guy down to $1300 and got a PS pump with the car. For some reason he changed the alternator but not the potentially leaky PS pump while he had all of that apart. It has the typical 20 year old electrical gremlins, most of which are not annoying, and won't matter anyways.

First move was to get it up on a lift and check out the bottom side. Holy mufflers, Batman! Broke out ye olde Sawzall and took care of everything up the the resonator. Weight savings. Man these things sound good with no exhaust, to the point that I'm sure I've given a few Mustang guys whiplash when I get on it. I pulled the whole intake tract out to, to open up the induction noise. I probably need to fashion a scoop for the filter pod, but it runs fine for now. Second order of business was the misfire. It was running really rough, like it wasn't getting spark, especially when it got really hot and the resistance crept up. Ignition parts are cheap, so I did an old fashioned tune-up and replaced everything: rotors, caps, wires, plugs, and coils. Did the PS pump and an idler pulley while I was at it. Rock Auto FTW. She runs like a dream now. In fact, it starts in fewer cranks than my brand new car. Last was the brakes. They worked fine after a bleed, but the fronts were leaking and had to be replaced.

Now that I had a perfectly working, somewhat loud LS400, I spent a lot of time thinking what to do with it. Of course there's the VIP drift car route, but stylish cars are not my thing. My WRXs only ever seem to get speed parts. I thought about a few other things, but looking at the aftermarket for the 1UZ and LS400 only made me regret my choice for a project car. Like some sort of divine intervention, a friend and fellow gearhead sent me some pictures of MartinC's lifted LS400, and I knew what I had to do. We welded the diff on Saturday, and now I'm on the lookout for some big 'ol tires.

The one item I have left to deal with is the lift. I'm thinking some spacers on top of the struts will give me enough lift that I can cut the fenders and fit some 30-31" tires in there. If anyone has a spare front or rear strut top sitting around I'd like to get some measurements without taking my car apart. The other option is spacers on top of the springs, which are probably easier to measure for.

Anyways, I'm hoping this thing turns out sweet.

 

Why didn't you just buy a forester and lift that? It makes no sense to ruin an LS400 and turn it into something it will never be good at.

Or do what Matt Farrah on Drive and buy an e30 and turn that into an off roader, guaranteed to be a lot more fun and cheaper. The suspension on the LS400 is pretty complex, especially in the rear end.

 

Because everyone has a lifted Forester. I'm not going to invest the possibly few thousand in parts to get this thing back to a daily driving condition, which is the only thing its truly going to be good at. As for an offroader, it will only be as good as I make it. I'd argue that a Subaru is a terrible car to drag race with, but that doesn't stop literally hundreds of people. I can design and fab most of the components myself, or with the help of a few friends. Money isn't going to be a huge factor. Wheels and tires are going to be the most expensive part, I think. I mostly plan on running it in rally-x and maybe on the dunes to mess with the truck bros. It's purely meant to infuriate and bewilder people.

 

That's stupid, nobody is going to dump thousands into a 20+ year old car when there is no return when selling. Do your homework and research and find a clean example like everyone else. C'mon you're an engineer, you didn't wake up yesterday. As long as you do your due diligence, you'll be easily be able to find a good condition LS from a retired old person that garage kept and dealer maintained it for the majority of its life. But its your choice if you want to fabricate everything to make it off road capable, since that's not what these cars were designed for.

OR you could just come to AZ and find tons of rust free examples in easily restorable shape. All that wears out here is rubber and paint if left outside. I really don't see why people in the midwest spend a couple thousand in rust repair and paint when they can take a cheap one way flight to the southwest or west coast and drive back in a perfect bodied car. I picked mine up for 2700 and just had to do a TB/WP to it to make it reliable for my long commutes to work, paint was immaculate aside from a few rock chips on the front bumper. Everything else for the most part was left untouched. Since mine had 253k miles, I did suspension parts such as balljoints and sway bar endlinks which were worn to make up for the slop.

Your choice man, but I highly doubt you'll be getting much support from anyone to change an LS that drastically into something it is not. A supercharger, VIP stance, slamming on air suspension, Yes. A 6spd manual swap possibly. But that's the extent that anyone has done on here. Everyone on here is trying to make these things last the hundreds of thousands of miles they are built for and ask questions when things break along the way. To me, that was the intent of this forum to help each other out in that respect.

 

If someone is a mechanical engineer then they would know that ruining something that other mechanical engineers spent lots of time on is futile.

 

You call it ruining, I call it having fun. I do find myself going "ooh that's neat" a lot as I rip all of the useless parts out. One thing I will say is that the car is good, but not the way you guys see it. Someone that knows their stuff can find many many design flaws that have crept in over the years. Leaky PS pump takes out alternator because putting your main source of electricity below a known hydraulic failure point makes sense. All of the nuts that hold the beautifully stamped aluminum brackets and heat shields around the car are rusted to hell. The studs are rusty. The frame is rusty. Galvanic corrosion is a nasty phenomenon. If the car was perfect, they'd have never replaced it.

My car already had a junky interior with a bunch of malfunctioning lights, displays, and switches. It has aftermarket garbage struts that I intend to blow out rallying this thing. It ran like hot garbage. It has rust in the body. I paid $1300 for a large, well made, V8, RWD car that had 230k on the clock and probably $2-3k worth of part-out in it. The timing belt has to be done kind of soon, but it's still within the service limit.

What else can you do with $1300? Buy a big TV? A PC? a gun? I guess. But do any of those do skids?

 

I like your attitude even though your probably pissing off most of the members with your posts lol. You most likely won't get a lot of help but who's to say you can't ask a question. Post some pics of the car for historical data.

 

If your LS is in that bad shape, then i now see why you want to convert it into a rally car. I bought a 96' Honda Odyssey for $300 (running and driving w/ tags and 2 yrs emissions) so I got you beat there...its more of a flip project to sell as a family hauler for a 1500-2000 or so. I'm just about done fixing it and have a total investment of 600 after axles, tranny and oil change, sway bar bushings, tierods, alignment and rotor resurfacing. All I have is the PS pump rebuild w/ new o-rings and an AC compressor bearing and it'll be ready to flip.

Wait until you figure out where the starter is in your LS.

 

I'm clearly pissing off most of the members. C'est la vie. Here's an album of pics. Didn't get any of welding the diff, but that's not really special.

http://imgur.com/a/gSLXN

 

Im very much against ruining a well preserved survivor but it sounds like yours is a dog. running good but pretty crummy cosmetically.
that changes everything! if you want to jack it up on big tires I think that would be cool! youll be the only one on the dirt track or the mud hole in one! the drivetrain is definatly strong enough to handle it and then some too. 2 other routes you could do is the 5 speed swap / drift car or rat rod kind of car. either way very interested in seeing how this pans out. ive got 2 ls400s, a 95 that's pristine and original, and a 94 that's in deplorable condition that's been rotting in my driveway for the last 2 years that im probably going to rat rod if I ever get the time.

keep us updated!

 

So far, I'm only like $3-400 in parts into it. I need some cheap used seats to replace the 80 lb recliners in the front. That's a lot of the weight. We'll see how much comes out with the dash, etc. If you remove all of the extraneous bits behind the drivers seat, you save about 250 lbs (spare, jack, trim, carpet, etc). I'm sure the sound deadening weighs a bit, but I'm keeping that on for now. Maybe I'll beat it off the car when it gets down to zero degrees here. My goal is to get it to weigh about what my DD does at 3350 lbs. 3800 - 250ish = 3550ish so far. I think it's reasonable. Then some day, turbo(s).

 

The paint actually does not look bad but the interior is a different story.

 

Maybe make a pickup out of it. I still can not figure out why anyone wants to race or do anything special with a 4 door, back when I was a kid anyone with a 4 door was a nerd.

 

Custom mount rally suspension, gut the interior with a full cage that goes to the suspension points through the firewall up front, and through the rear deck in the back. From there, gut the glass and the mechanism to the rear door, weld in a cross support bar, and weld the skin to the chassis. Then pick up chop the thing Mighty Car Mods style and mount a 5th and 6th wheel holder in the trunk [now bed] Baja style. Final piece to the puzzle would be an offroad bash bar front bumper and some rally lights.

 

Now we're talkin! That's a lot of fab work and probably outside the scope of what I can do in the next year or so. I thought about the pickup thing, but you'd have to relocate the fuel tank. I suppose you could get a custom cell for the spare tire well and do the truck bed on top of it. I like the idea of having 4 racing style seats with harnesses to take friends hooning, though.