hi everyone from club lexus, i am a recently new member and i bought a lexus sc300 1997 about a year ago. before that ive had about 8 sc300s/sc400s prior to this one. this one i decided to do an aristo GTE vvti swap on.





so i swapped the motor in, all was well, the swap started right up after i put new bkr7e spark plugs, and added fuel through a tt supra denso fuel pump. i have an authentic aristo vvti JDM MAF on it, and a proper igniter, and ecu wired in by a local guy. the stock twins are good, no shaft play, the MAF housing is 3 inches in diameter just like the aristo ecu requires, and the stock blow off valve is used with stock hosing. car is BPU with intercooler piping that is 3 inches with 3 row core. exhaust is open downpipe for now because i have not got my exhaust made yet, but i have a 3 inch hks superdragger catback for it. transmission is shifting smoothly into each gear including overdrive, and filled with toyota type 4 fluid.





i am getting terrible break up as soon as i hit 3k rpms, and it is not revving past 3k rpms in park. in drive it is very sluggish, smells of gas, and ignition breaks up as soon as any boost comes on.

technical steps already taken:
-etcs-i throttle body suspected of being malfunctional, changed out to a known working one along with tps sensor, accel position sensor. throttle opens up 100% with throttle actuation, but still in limp mode

-check engine light reads codes 21 and 31. 21 - oxygen sensor heater circuit, brand new DENSO o2 sensor bought and installed. still in limp mode, still code 21 and 31 come up

-code 31 - air flow meter circuit. 2jzgte vvti aristo maf switched out for known working IS300 maf, still in limp mode.

-checked etcs-i circuit to see if 15amp inline fuse is installed and good, inline fuse is good, and still in limp mode.

-timing checked to see if off, all timing marks line up when the crank pully is at 0 degrees.

-oil control valve (vvti solenoid) replaced to see if that could be the cause, still in limp mode.

- ECU checked for leaking capacitors, all caps look good and clean, board is clean, no melted circuits, no melted board, etu seems to be good. (ecu does seem to get a bit warm when the engine is running.... just thought i'd put that out there)

these are the steps i took so far to try and solve the limp mode issue, but still nothing.... any suggestions as to what i can check from here?


my 1997 lexus sc300



engine bay shot. aristo gte vvti swap, 3 inch maf intake pipe, ecu installed in black is300 ecu box

 

The issue may be with your wire harness. I read your thread about how you wired the swap and although it may seemed to have worked there may be issues that need to be worked out. From my experience the only proper way to wire in this swap is by merging your sc300 body plugs with the aristo engine harness which is pointed out in the wire harness swap tutorial. Theoretically speaking though all you need to get the swap started is to ground the grounds and supply power to the power pins but that wont guarantee that it runs properly. Sorry I know I'm not much help but I think you need to reevaluate your wiring harness.

 

Did you ever figure out the issue?

Did your Maf have 12v ignition power going to it on the blk/red wire?

 

Just posting this so others can find from Google search.



My Aristo Swap.
Stock 2JZ twins.
Limp mode after swap.
Turns out I just needed to adjust the throttle cable so it had more tension on it .

 

Beautiful widebody Starion!! I have always loved those. Is yours an ESI-R? The 2JZ-GTE looks like a perfect fit in there!