A longer view.

 

Another shot of the area.

 

And one more shot before welding.

 

Welding of the the joints.

 

Here is the final weld.

 

One last look at the area.

 

This should be of interest to some. This a look at the OEM pipe at the point where both pipes from the front and rear manifolds join.

 

Now when I first installed the URD pulley, I ran an 18.4, nothing spectacular. One week later, 17.931, which as far as I can tell down to a sea level equivalent is a record for one of these vehicles (I had a friend with a TTE Kompressor in Poland who only clocked 16s near sea level, but those European ones were 201 hp stock without the compressor).

Thus, I should be fair, tune my vehicle this week and then give it another go next weekend to see how it performs. I plan to drive hard during the week.

I partially need this modification for sea level performance to take in a higher amount of oxygen in the future. Read nothing more into this (though I know some of you may think I am hinting something).

My father and I tested this vehicle immediately after leaving Hangar 1 on a the Periferico (big beltway here) and on some of the other roads here.

At about 35 to 40 mph, all I can say is this vehicle goes into god-mode. There is no feeling like it on the planet. It felt at that point as though the incoming air and exhaust pressure had equalized.

Remember Brian O'Connor in the face at the beginning of the Fast and the Furious (1st one) when he hits the NOS in that 4 car race. It felt exactly like when he hit on the first time. The RX300 pulled like god pushing me from behind.

Now on the track on Saturday night, I did not feel this exactly, since I was going from a dead, but not rolling start.

However, I guarantee you if I had been racing in San Antonio, Texas or Veracruz on the Gulf Coast, this RX300 would likely have a legitimate world record instead of trying to adjust from an altitude measurement.

At sea level, more oxygen and more pressure.

Now, I was fairly warned that one might feel little or no gain, and even a loss when trying this modification. Usually, these forms of modification go hand-in-hand with forced induction (nitrous, supercharger or turbo), where significant gains can be had). Again, read nothing into this.

Again, any comments, even negative (I know some of my track buddies had a few) are welcome as we are always in a continuing modification process. I don't know everything.

 

Yikes, you race an RX300???? Thats the most absurd thing i have seen! Well then i have seen pigs fly too, so nothing's impossible.

 

In a few minutes, I will post some videos from the track from this past weekend. It took an awfully long time to upload.

Last night, I had some air intake issues and may have solved them this morning. Cleaned the MAF, PCV Valve, reoriented the MAF sensor from an angled 45 degree position to straight up and down. Additionally, that short ram section of my intake pipe (that silver PVC piece on my intake pipe in the engine bay) was reoriented to have its opening between the fusebox and the Optima battery. Of course I reset the EFI fuse.

This seems to have worked and now the engine is apparently getting the air it needs. If I have a chance to head over to Hangar1 this week, I will attempt to reseal some small exhaust leaks after the resonator that are likely affecting torque.

One other comment...the whole vehicle is much quieter than before both at idle and when in motion. The exhaust is calmer and only aggressive on WOT. This may or may not be apparent in the videos (Fridays before the downpipe and Saturday's after the downpipe). Large diameter pipe definitely has a resonating quality.

 

Looks nice. How much $$ have you put in your RX at this point to make it quicker? Let us know when you break into the 14's as that would be a serious feat with these heavy-weight beasts.

 

Hmmm, I would have to say a rough figure, including the speciality liquids and fluids added in, under $3,000 USD.

14s at sea level is what I am aiming at. I think this would be in the 16s at this altitude.

However, to get that the wind is going to have to blow hard.

 

You would be a real pimp if you could retrofit the TRD supercharger from the Camry/Solara V6 onto the RX with proper tuning. That would drop you into the 14's as well (not sure how well the tranny would hold). Good luck and thanks for sharing all your DIY's.

 

I looked at that once, but the throttle body was a single as opposed to double entry on the RX300. One could retrofit it for sure. TTE did their Compressor for the RX300, but I only knew one person in Poland with it. I don't think the gains (49 hp max...I have my doubts about the true max) for the price in the U.S., which was about 13,000 USD or so, http://www.lexus-parts.com/partdetai...CategoryID=102

I don't think for something like 5.5 psi like those TRD ones that the tranny needs upgrading. I have read a lot about it. For something above that, I would need to modify the tranny and torque converter through a company like IPT.

I am still trying to figure out the miracle of volumetric efficiency with this new downpipe at high altitude, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volumetric_efficiency

 

Ouch, that is a lot of money for only $49 HP. For $13K, you could probably build your own turbo system and put some lower compression parts in the engine. The only real hurtle would be the custom tune.

These engines are tuned very conservatively, tuning alone would probably yeield about 10 HP.