After driving around with 2 fish tanks under my bumper I finally decided to refinish my fogs. After taking them apart it was very apparent that the once I had were not salvageable. Luckily I found a used set on ebay in a nice condition and ordered those. Coated them in black paint + primer to prevent them from crumbling like my old once did and then did a full refinish on both headlights and fogs using 2K clear+hardener. Results came out better than I expected and Hopefully I won't need to redo these again anytime soon.

 

They look great!

 

Lookin good man! Keeping the headlights and fogs clean do wonders for these cars - they're such eye catchers!

 

Well done! I learned my lesson with the 2K clear the hard way. Did my daily like you, wet sanded the whole nine. Lasted about a year before it yellowed. I’ll do the SC soon and follow your example. Great job!

Nick

 

Well you guys are doing better than me, nice job on the headlights. Up here in high elevations, 7__8000ft with the strong UV rays and long trips at a time the combo are really tough on the lights. Found nothing I've tried lasts long at all, even fancy products that are "Guaranteed" life long protection__Ha!

Have come to the conclusion I'm just going to use a cost effective cleaner when ever the lights need. It's a "dark sky" area here at night and need all the light I can get. Pretty amazed how good the 30 yr old lights still look after a cleaning. All the praise to Lexus, as always

 

Wait are you saying that 2k yellowed on you or that you didn't use 2k and they yellowed?

 

I see now reading it back how that could be confusing. I did NOT use 2K. Didn’t really know it was a thing at the time. The “normal” spray clear has not lasted. I’ll redo with 2K soon to replicate your results!

Nick

 

Ah, I see. Yeah the stuff I was using would yellow in about a year too but it was a very easy process so I did it for a couple of years. This time I decided to make it more permanent

 

After finishing up the headlights and fogs I decided to have the car polished to get rid of any small amounts of over spray from the clearcoat. Found a guy that did the wash+clay+polish for a nice price. Brought it home and did a ceramic coating using the Carpro CQ Lite this time around. Application was much easier and it comes in a big 150ml bottle so I have enough for 3 more applications. We'll see how long it lasts compared to Avalon King

 

Was planning on doing some suspension work this winter but seemed like my brakes had other plans. While visiting a friend my brake booster went out. Good news: it failed right as I was pulling into a parking space. Bad news: the parking space was 2 hours from my house. Decided to carefully drive the car back in the middle of the night when there was no traffic. Stressful drive but got home with no incidents.

Ordered the booster and decided to do the master rebuild along with it. Of course rock auto sent me the booster for the LS400 but I had to make it work since it was the only decent brand I could get.

While the car was up in the air I also did the engine mounts........I think it was hands down the most frustrating thing I've ever had to do on this car.

Pics:

Passenger engine mount, new one on the left

Driver side came out in pieces, definitely needed to be replaced

Master cylinder rebuild process

Look at all the gunk!

The LS booster that rock auto is so confident is the right one 🤦

Misaligned brake lines due to the booster being slightly smaller, had to bend the lines to get them to line up

Everything attached

Replaced and refinished the fender liners using ceramic coating



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