fooby's Green IS200 SE

[fooby]

Hello everyone! I picked up my first IS200 SE last week for the princely sum of £650. She has 97,000 miles, one owner, full history and lovely in every way apart from the bodywork. My plans are to slowly restore it to a nice standard. Primarily lots of small bodywork and paint repairs including the seriously scuffed alloys.

 

PLANS

 

• Remove major scratches and minor dents.
• Repair deep dent on rear panel.
• Deep polish to remove the pretty bad swirl marks.
• Alloy repair and respray.
• Tint rear windows.
• Spray chrome rear light inserts red (sorry, not a fan of lexus lights).
• Make sure everything is fully rust proof and pristine for longevity.
• Cruise Control retrofit (if possible).
• Wire folding mirrors to central locking.

 

[dougie175]

Looks a bargain buy well done. Keep us updated on future progress, look forward to seeing the restoration and modifications begin!

[fooby]

I spent the afternoon doing some paint correction. Clayed the whole car and polished out all the scratches that weren't so deep before applying a layer of wax. Made a big difference! I also picked up some body filler to do the deep scratches and the dent above the rear light, along with the alloys.

 

Rear bumper before:

And after...

 

I've also been experiencing a wobble from around 50-60mph from the passenger front wheel. I took it off and turns out there's a chunk missing, also looks like it's missing some balancing weights. I put the spare on which seems to have made it better, but not irradiated it completely. Any ideas?

[Farqui]

Wow, you managed to polish that bumper and get those results... impressive.

 

The remaining wheel wobble may be due to a badly balanced other wheel?

[dougie175]

Great results on the polishing!

When does the steering wobble if you let us know at what speeds and under what scenario should help work out where to start looking, as Lee says wheel balance is the most common cause of steering wheel wobble, wobble through the cars body would be something different though

[fooby]

To be honest the wheels are in pretty terrible shape, wouldn't surprise me at all if the spare is also unbalanced. Before it seemed to wobble around 50-60mph, now it's a less violent wobble around 60. Definitely seems like the spare made a difference, so perhaps they're both just unbalanced. Will get the whole set balanced after the refurb. Might also swap the fronts with the rears to make sure it's not anything else.

[fooby]

Along with the rear bumper, the front came up nice too! Compare to the original picture.  I used poorboys medium abrasive compound by hand.

[dougie175]

Yeah a good amount of the paint transfer has come off on the front bumper looks much better

[AdeIS200]

I'll be watching this with interest, great work so far.

I'm sure I saw this car advertised somewhere, was it the one that had one lady owner?

[fooby]

8 hours ago, AdeIS200 said:

I'll be watching this with interest, great work so far.

I'm sure I saw this car advertised somewhere, was it the one that had one lady owner?

That'll be the one! She said it was too big for her. Picked it up from a part of town full of tiny streets so that explains the bodywork. 

[AdeIS200]

That'll be the one! She said it was too big for her. Picked it up from a part of town full of tiny streets so that explains the bodywork. 

 

Ahh, I was going to buy it but you beat me to that one then! Well played sir [emoji106]

[fooby]

21 minutes ago, AdeIS200 said:

 

Ahh, I was going to buy it but you beat me to that one then! Well played sir

Ah sorry mate  You Newcastle too then?

[AdeIS200]

No worries pal. Nah I'm over in Merseyside.

[Spacewagon52]

Is that a Toyota camper (Hiace?) you have at the back?

[fooby]

3 hours ago, Spacewagon52 said:

Is that a Toyota camper (Hiace?) you have at the back?

It's a relatives Nissan Vannette. Very interesting thing.