I guess we can consider this an intro as well as a general progress thread on my new to me 95 SC400.

A Little backstory:

Back in February a friend and I were discussing doing a drive across the US following Route 66.We started looking for cars within our budget that would be different from our norms and entertaining as well as comfortable on such a drive. After he ended up finding a 97 Lincoln Mark 8 LSC, I was pressured more than ever to find something as well. I'd been looking for any decent BMW (I've owned a few now) from the Pacific North West down into California but the prices were horrible. 6500 bucks for a 325i with 200k miles and a salvage title? No thanks.

Thus arrives the only clean ZZ30 chassis car I found for sale on the entire west coast via facebook marketplace



The seller stated he was moving to Texas come March due to a job relocation, he'd only bought the car in August 2020 and barely put a thousand miles on it. It was listed with 131,000 miles. Doing some research here on clublexus as well as the facebook groups, I saw how many of these are turned into drift missiles, stance cars, VIP cars, you name it, and its getting harder to find nice examples. I also know the subframes on these cars rust real bad out on the east coast, and that black interior is a sought after option. I arranged for a friend of mine in WA (and former 93 SC300 owner himself) to inspect the car. He said it looked nice and drove nice at 80 down the highway, so a deal was struck, I now owned a car over 3000 miles away that I haven't seen in person.



March 7th I flew out to Washington and got to see the car I bought a month ago. I had shipped a bunch of basic parts out there already as a "just in case" for repairs, I knew at this point the alternator wasn't charging at idle (bad regulator) so I ordered a Denso replacement. The next day I got to work swapping the alternator and doing a basic check over before taking it out for an extended drive. The oil was just changed, I popped in a new air filter and topped up the coolant which was a smidge under the cold mark.



The car drove great, everything works to an extent (hvac screen has bled out, audio system is missing the sub). At this point I wanted to clean a few things up and change out some light bulbs before setting off the next day.




The trunk was starting to oxidize which I knew about a bit from the ad but it looked worse in person. I spent a lot of time with a harbor freight special Bauer DA and Megs 105 and cleaned it well enough for a barn job. I need to give this whole car a cut/buff but at least I know this isn't permanent. I was told the first owner of this car parked it under a tarp and the trunk was exposed to the sun, it was like this for a while.







So after that it was all driving upon driving. We drove south to California then headed east out 66 (or as much as 66 still exists).



Funny enough while crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, I came across the only other SC I saw on the entire trip, a pretty rough 92-94 SC300. The female driver gave me the "hang loose" sign as I drove past.








So quite a road trip overall, I put a little over 4300 miles on the car and the only "needs" it had was an alternator and a thermostat. Both easily taken care of for a little less than $200 in total. I have a fair bit of service records since the original owner had the car dealer maintained from 94 to 06 then the dealer did a lot of refurbing in 2015 when the original owner traded it in. I was able to reach out to the second owner who had it for 5 years and he told me what he shop he used for big jobs like the timing belt service, trans service, cooling system service, etc. I'm still working on getting copies of service records from the shops that worked on this car but overall it looks like this was a well maintained example that just needs little things to be perfect.

So from this point on I'll be covering the "making it right" portion on this car, including repairs and very subtle modifications. My goal at the end is to have a clean good looking SC that can be enjoyed for what it is, a great grand tourer.

 

So this past weekend I got the car up on the lift to look it over and take care of some things.

First up, this car had a little driveline clunk during sharp on/off throttle input. A lot of what I read pointed to the transmission mount being the most likely culprit so I picked up an OEM toyota mount on ebay. The old mount didn't look terrible but it was certainly sunk lower and did have some stress cracking towards the edges of the rubber. Hopefully this will solve my problem, the guibos look like they were replaced not too long ago.



The car overall is very clean underneath, I plan on giving it a steam clean just to monitor for leaks. I do see some seepage in areas but I haven't seen any drops on the ground.





First up was front brakes. I tossed around the idea of the LS400 brake swap but I did not want to run into a potential chance of my wheels no longer fitting, so I just kept the factory setup with centric pads and rotors. I will say these front rotors are freaking thick, lots of thermal capacity for a 11.7" rotor







Now here comes the fun part, the rears. The last service history I have related to rear brakes was Lexus of Tacoma in 2015 turning the rear rotors before listing the car for sale at 89,000 miles. I suspect owner 2 had a shop do a rear brake job but can't 100% confirm that yet, however the car has centric pads so its clearly not from the dealer. Maybe owner 1 had this done at the shop he used, will have to investigate.



This is where I got stopped in my tracks. The rotors are different sizes! Did rockauto send me the wrong size rotor???



Well, after some measuring and cross referencing, it turns out this car for whatever reason has a full SC300 rear brake setup installed. If I had to guess, the last brake job it had it "needed" reman calipers, and they bought the cheapest setup from a supplier.



So I now have reman SC400 rear calipers coming from rock auto and will put this car back to how it should be. Honestly the brakes were not bad on the trip so I have to imagine they'll only get better with the proper sized rear rotors.

The last thing I took care of was a couple of burnt out bulbs to make sure I pass safety inspection. The drivers front marker was burnt out as was the drivers fog light, both taken care of. Funny enough the drivers fog light still had the factory bulb, I bet the pass side still does.






So this is where I left off, plan for this weekend is to finish the rear brakes, bleed the system (DOT3 in the system looks as black as the car which is impressive since it can't be more than 5 years old), do a trans pan drop and filter swap and I'll finally get around to installing the cabin air filter. I have to then take it in for a safety inspection then in a few weeks I'll carry on from there including sending the HVAC panel out to Tanin for a rebuild and getting the front bumper repainted to take care of some scrapes.

 

Beautiful restoration beginnings and great road trip! Thank you for sharing! That other SC driver you came across seems pretty cool too. Love her license plate!

Weird that you had the rear SC300 rear brake setup on there. It probably was due to it being the cheaper of the two rear caliper setups. SC300's had smaller front and rear calipers until the 1998 model year when they got the same brakes front and rear as the SC400's. The only other reason that people change them out on an SC400 is if they have a JZ swapped drag car and want the smaller rear caliper setup in order to run set of a small diameter rear wheels that are wide and throw beefy drag slicks onto them... and that's not the case with your car so the previous owner probably did cheapen out. Did the rear dust shields conform correctly to the larger and correct size rear rotors?

 

Nice find for sure... I would agree with most as it is getting harder and harder to find clean ones.. I've seen very few clean ones in the Bay area... I try to hide mine whenever I can, but my other car has the shade while I work on it...

 

Looks absolutely killer! I love more and more people getting their hands on these, cleaning them up, and enjoying them. Can't wait to watch your progress!

 

Nice find and sweet car. I cannot believe you have a lift in your garage. Can you adopt me?

 

The dust shields fit the larger rotors perfectly, so I'm with you on the "cheap brake job" theory.

Over here in the north east it seems like they get pretty bad subframe rust. Anywhere I've looked in the US it seems like most have clearcoat fade by now as well.

Thanks, I'll do my best to show some progress then haha

to be fair I only have a one car garage on the condo I live at currently, I have to drive two hours north to use the lift haha. I usually keep my other cars there over the winter and rotate things out in the warm weather months.

 

Nice find, man!!! Good to see these cars getting the treatment they deserve.

Cheers!

 

Small update, only got to work on the car a couple hours today but I'm aiming to have it on the road and home this weekend (still have winter tires on my DD 330i so I kinda need this car back haha)

Calipers arrived, test fit and thankfully they fit!



I dug a 11 year old duplicolor caliper paint kit out of my basement and decided to freshen everything up, I hated the brown front calipers and it was even worse now with the new rear calipers. Basically at this point I painted it all up, mounted the rear brackets and left it all to try til I can finish the car this weekend.








Exciting stuff I know, aside from some paint I had my new hubcentric rings arrived and confirmed fitment. I also threw new oil & a filter on the engine and ran it for a bit. Small progress is progress none the less!

 

Great work and those hub centric rings will save you a lot of headaches.

 

Slowly but surely!!

 

Well the car is back on the road. Wrapped up the caliper install, went ahead and bled the brakes + ABS/TRAC system as well. Surprisingly the fluid that came out wasn't bad at all, the master cylinder tank looks black inside but the fluid that came out was dark gold. I guess when the dealer did the front brake calipers in 2015 they flushed out the whole system so I was glad to see that.





I went ahead and threw the cabin air filter in the hvac box and of course half a pine tree came out



All wrapped up outside. Still need to wash and buff it. Parked here with my E39 M5




So next step is going to be suspension bushings. The car came with some for the control arms so I'm going to pop those in since I still have a shake on the highway as well as a knock on really rough roads. I'm also still going back and forth in my mind if I go back to a stock stereo or do I put a nice pioneer double din touch screen in the car since the car is wired for a pioneer radio already. I've read about doing a pioneer to nakamichi conversion and since I'd need the radio + amp, that could be an option as well.

 

Looking good! If you ever feel the need to dump the e39 M5, hit me up. I LOVE those cars. (Even considered a five-speed swap on my SC400.)

New bushings and both control arms will do a world of good. FWIW, I stuck with the Nakamichi and added a bluetooth module for my Iphone.

 

Time for a small update.

The car has been sitting up at a friends house in CT while I do some work to it. So far it looks like a new set of front struts (drivers is blown), steering rack bushings, and a front wheel bearing should get this car driving correct. From what I can tell all of the suspension bushings look pretty sound. I'll learn more once it all comes apart.

So far I did an overhaul on the ignition system which to my surprise was all original parts. Considering the plugs are supposed to be done every 60k and with how much maintenance this car has had, I'm surprised nobody ever did anything. So I threw in new Denso iridium plugs, Denso plug wires and Bosch caps & rotors.




Also gave it a quick wash. One of the last things I'll be doing before bringing it home is a complete cut/buff.



Parked with my friends E38 750iL




I also managed to pick up a complete pioneer audio system from a guy who parts out SC's in the Philly area. Once the mechanicals are sorted I'm going to work on getting the radio back to factory which I feel like is going to be a (not)fun job. The other issue that I have to diag which the car only started doing after it got to CT is it likes to trigger the ABS when coming to a slow stop. I see this seems to be a reoccurring issue with some other Lexus models, usually related to the tone ring, so I'll have to dig into this one more.

 

Looks absolutely killer - stay after it! Not sure about the ABS light - I've always heard of guys with SC's having issues bleeding the brakes and getting fluid into the ABS block... However, I've bled my brakes manually and through a vacuum bleeder countless times after track days and have yet to have such an issue.