Black IS250 F Sport Basic Mods and Tweaks d

[Jamescokell]

On 4/11/2021 at 11:54 PM, McShmoopy said:

Nice suggestion there,  my 2010 came with bluetooth as standard but for anyone pre 2009 this should work nicely. 

Hi There,

Unfortunately the link doesn't work anymore, any chance you could let me know what the device was as i am very interested in getting one. this worked n a pre-facelift version right?

 

Thanks

James

[zoricib]

3 hours ago, Jamescokell said:

Hi There,

Unfortunately the link doesn't work anymore, any chance you could let me know what the device was as i am very interested in getting one. this worked n a pre-facelift version right?

 

Thanks

James

here you go 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/264004475652?epid=6025037608&hash=item3d77e49b04:g:KGIAAOSwVFJbzvUu

[McShmoopy]

Hey everyone, been a while since I've had some updates for the car. Quite a few little things have been done and a few big things. 

One of the main things done was changing out the boot struts, the OEM ones had seemed to worn out so I had to use quite alot of force to open them up every time. I wanted to have these open up on their own and I opted with a replacement favoured by many of us on LOC, the following provided by SGS Engineering.

https://www.sgs-engineering.com/gsc2655-lexus-is300-boot-strut

I have seen some people on the inter webs replace these with a BMW strut on just one side or sometimes both in order to either save some money as the SGS ones arent the cheapest, or to open up their boots automatically. However I've found through research this presents a few issues. The force for the BMW struts is excessive so while it does open the boot with ease, it takes alot of effort to close the boot also. Secondly especially if only one side is changed, there is unbalanced forces on both sides and this can cause excessive wear of the struts but the boot also doesnt close completely which does not correctly seal the boot from the elements. The benefit of the SGS engineering ones are that its just about enough force to open it and this makes it easy to close, the boot doesn't automatically open but with the addition of springs this is possible. 

Following on with some advice from Ahmed, I ordered some heavy compression springs as well as some M8 Penny washers. The sizes that fit the SGS struts perfectly were the following.

Outside Diameter: 22mm
Inside Diameter: 11mm
Length: 60mm
Blue: (This was for light loads I believe)

Penny Washers: M8 x 20mm

I got mine from the following eBay links and if you wish to do so you can grab them for there also! 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/223830215262

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/163939882420

After I got these I simply unscrewed the ends of the SGS struts and slotted in some the springs with washers on both ends. 

Replacing these was fairly simple if not a bit fiddly, the interior ceiling of the boot liner has to come apart slightly via 4 clips. I was able to use my car trim removal kits clip pry tool to unfasten the boot struts with ease and my new ones seemed fit on with some persuasion. Its worth noting that the SGS engineering ones are slightly longer than the OEM so the way to get these to fit is to push the suspended boot a little more further to accommodate the length. 

Once in, the results speak for themselves. It does open a little slow on my vehicle but I put that down to the spoiler giving the additional weight, I may try adding some new more powerful strings but if it isnt broken I suppose theres no need to fix it 😂

[McShmoopy]

The next thing I did was something a little more aesthetic focussed, I noticed Ahmed was selling some of his Lexus F Door Project lights and placed an order for them and I thought this would be a good opportunity to also upgrade my standard F Sport Sills to the Illuminated Lexus Sills.  These are how my standard F Sport sills look.

It is worth noting that with my car being a Facelift vehicle, the standard sills for this are white and not blue. However the only two ways to get these illuminated sills is either second hand from breakers or to go direct to Lexus and pay an absurd amount of money, on top of this there are very few SE-L facelift vehicles being broken so finding sills is difficult so I opted to get Blue as this would match my overall aesthetic with the projector lights. 

I first started off with the projector lights, its fairly simple to swap these in with a trim removal tool, just be careful not to snag the connectors. Once in itll work straight away however its not exactly noticeable until dark. 

Next were the sills, now thanks to the contribution of a fellow member on LOC UK, I know that the F sport vehicles happen to have the wiring looms for the illuminated still in place as a standard. All I needed to do was just pop the connectors in and we're good to go. I did however run into a bit of a snag, those connectors were there but the placement of them rendered the connectors on my illuminated sills to damn short! I am fairly handy with electrics so I did a jerry rigged DIY solution using some block connectors and automative electrical cable I had lying around. I simply spliced the ends of the wire and joined them into a block and gave it more length then I needed and simply coiled them up. 

After testing it worked, I managed to transfer some of the trim clips onto my sills as some of the F Sport ones broke while trying to yank it off. I did unfortunately managed to dent them but when I get time I'll try and get them out with a suction cup!  Overall I was very happy with the overall look of the sills and projector lights together, the sills fade in which is a very nice touch instead of an instant on /off and by a happy coincidence they seem to match up with the older F logo on my steering wheel perfectly! 

I would like to revisit this project again but to instead get projector lights in the rear passenger doors as well as illuminate those door sills as I managed to acquire two more illuminated sills for next to nothing. This will require some wiring and creativity so I'll attempt that perhaps in the summer. 

[McShmoopy]

Following on from the project lights, was another visual and somewhat practical mod. When I originally got the car, the original drivers mat had worn all the way through to even the original carpet underneath and I suspected this was due to the single owner and largely motorway driving. At first I got a basic cheap plate cover to conceal the damage and give your foot a place to rest as well as look a bit smarter. 

This was absolutely fine, but a few months down the line my mum was moaning she didnt have mats in her IS250C and I saw an opportunity to donate my mats (which pretty much fit the same with the exception of the rear passengers) and get myself something a little snazzier seeing as I didnt want to get any generic eBay ones or go direct to Lexus either. 

I happened to come across someone on Facebook selling custom car mats, its the style of those Manicci or Diamond mats you can get but with customised logos. I suspected these were simply cheap Chinese made ones I could have gotten for fairly cheap but I was intrigued to see if I could get a Custom F Logo similar to both my steering wheel and my new projector lights. 

Using the above sample photos as a reference and providing a high quality F Logo which matched my IS250 exactly, I placed the order and after around 2 weeks or so the European chap popped around to my house and fitted the mats for me. He charged me around £140 and knowing what I know now, I could have probably done this myself and gotten them at possibly half the cost off of Aliexpress but all in all it looks very smart and I'm quite pleased with the overall look. The drivers side does come with the plate to protect the mats from wear while driving so that covers me in that regard. 

These mats should be far easier to clean compared to the OEM ones, plus at some point when I've got some spare cash I may go for an option in the boot to have that lined in a similar style mat but I'm in no particular rush at this point. 

[McShmoopy]

Few other things I got done for the car, one long overdue thing was a dashcam. I had a cheapo cheap and cheerful Chinese dash cam but I had a few issues with it. 

The first being that it was quite distracting due it having a screen, the second being that it was wired to the cigarette lighter which is normally fine but I was wanting to have it hard wired to the car and something fairly cheap without an official hardwire kit I wasn't very comfortable using.

Enter the Road Angel 3 Halo Pro, this was a Dash Cam I spotted on amazon and it fulfilled the following criteria for me.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07HXKXLLY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07LB66WCM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

1) It didnt have a screen and was fairly slim so not only was it discrete, it wouldnt be distracting me mid drive.

2) The quality was pretty decent and it provided a rear camera also which also had acceptable quality.

3) It has available an official hardwire kit as an option which was very important to me. 

Other features include a winter mode as well as Wi-Fi, but truth be told from what I've read and my general usage the App is pretty unintuitive and not great to use and the speeds were pretty bad. However for my needs I'm quite happy to pop the SD card out and take it to my computer to obtain footage. I will apologise that I don't have many photos of hard wiring the camera up as I only managed to do this months after purchasing this. I'll include a video of an IS F Member who wired his dash cam in a similar manner to mine.  I will include the fuses below I used to wire into via Fuse taps that the hardwire kit came with for good measure. 

1

FR P/SEAT LH

30 A

Power seat

12

ECU-IG LH

10 A

Cruise control, air conditioning system, power steering, rain sensor, antiglare inside rear view mirror, shift lock system, moon roof, tire inflation pressure warning system, (& VSC (2011-2013

Once installed and configured for hard wire mod in the pretty awful Halo Pro app, the dash cam seemed to work great. I've got audio notifications of when the dashcam is operational, GPS is connected and when it shuts down to protect the car Battery from draining. The footage seems to be quite good also both at night time and day time, and you do have the option to record audio as well as not use it. Not to mention it is fairly discreet and you wouldnt notice it aside from the blinking LED which could always be disabled in the settings.  I'll include some of the footage below for your viewing pleasure.

     

 

[McShmoopy]

Since my accident, I noticed my front and rear plates were a little mismatched and my OCD naturally kicking in I felt the need to replace these. On top of this I always found the oversized plate provided by Lexus for the back never looked quite right. I took the opportunity to order some fresh Aluminium pressed plates from https://www.number1plates.com/ . They were reasonably priced and I managed to get a few pounds off and they arrived a few days after. 

I also wanted to get a number plate surround as I hated the look of the number plate screws and wanted to have something cleaner. I have noticed that people have many different branded Number Plate surrounds and there was one available for Lexus's too, however I never really took to that as it had the additional L logos which I didn't think were necessary or symmetrical. I'll link that below incase anyone Is interested in it. 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174213889416?hash=item288ff4fd88:g:UiIAAOSwr9BfHAz8

This one I did spot on eBay and it really caught my eye for obvious reasons.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/323883042039

It had the F sport motif, it wasn't too in your face and I liked the simplicity to it. Once ordered it arrived a few days later and it was onto fitting it alongside my new pressed plates. 

Unfortunately I didnt quite read the instructions and I managed to break the tabs a little on the new surround, Doh! Aside from that getting the rear plates on was extremely difficult as the original plastic screws broke off and I ended up drilling new holes. There was alot of adhesive stuck behind the old plates so it required alot of persuasion to eventually get it off and the new surround on. With the front I had to break the old plate just to get it off as one of the screw heads managed to break off also. This was easier to secure however as it just took a 10mm screw / nut. 

Once on they looked absolutely great, you can just about notice where I broke the number plate surrounds but its not worth me ordering a replacement! I'll perhaps get some plastic weld or super glue and sort that out when I get a few moments spare... At the very least if I need to swap the plates it is a heck of alot easier in the future, plus I think they look far smarter and cleaner. 

[McShmoopy]

Onto the final major mod I've done recently, you'll notice in the above photo I managed to fit some VLAND headlights and this was done quite some months ago in October. Unfortunately I ordered some VLAND tail lights to go alongside these and to this day I have still yet to receive them! I'm currently needing to chase those up but in the meantime I spotted a new set of tail lights on the market in America and China, namely the HC Motion Tail Lights. What was special about these was not only did it have an animation when the headlights come on, but they were also sequential indicators unlike the VLAND tail lights. There is a cool little comparison video of all the tail lights lights available for the second gen IS  I'll link below. 

After I spotted this I managed to order them from Ali Express and I received them a few days ago. Took around 2 months for shipping from China and I opted for the Smoked versions as I figured with a black car these would look great. I won't bore you with the details of how to fit them, but I will include videos from Tuner with Kids for the tail lights and Marty Motoring for the VLANDS in terms of how the fitting was done. 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003445550208.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.0.0.21ef1802awR4Qt

I did attempt to add some T shaped weather seal for the HC motion tail lights as they don't come with that, however the ones I purchased were a catastrophic fail. The original adhesive on this T shaped seal was too weak, so I used my own 3M foam backed adhesive and it ended up way too thick for the tail lights outer potion so I ended up peeling it back off. Most people tend to remove the seals from the OEM tail lights but I didnt want to as this may affect their resale value and incase I had to revert back to them. All this means is that grime and water can accumulate in that area making it more difficult to clean, as far as I'm aware this shouldn't cause any long standing issues or damage to the tail lights. In any case I will have to revisit this when I get time.

 

After wasting a few hours I managed to fit the HC motion tail lights with relative ease, it is rather fiddly and far less stressful than fitting the original VLAND headlights but the results are fantastic. I'll include the footage of my fitment of the VLAND headlights also. 

   

Overall both the combo of these headlights and tail lights really helps to modernise the look of the 2IS, the only other thing you could do is a bumper conversion but not only is it quite expensive it does require alot of prep in terms of painting and what not. 

The HC Motions depending on your year of vehicle may require the usage of resistors, the reason being that in an older vehicle without LED tail lights you can have all sorts of error codes thrown up such as VSC check engine light etc, HC motion thankfully throw these in for you but as my car is a facelift vehicle with the newer LED tail lights this wasn't a requirement for me. The only other prep as I mentioned earlier are the weather seal gaskets which you will need to add on yourself. The boot lid portion still has the gaskets I left on however this is quite noticeable so I will come back to this and redo all the seals then possible. 

Out of the box the VLANDs do require adjustment of their beams as this doesnt have auto levelling in them compared to the OEM headlights, not to mention AFS will not work so a fuse will need to be pulled to remove that error. The adjustment can be made without dismantling the entire bumper if required, the bolt that is responsible for the height adjustment can be accessed from above with a fairly long flathead and rotating the gear like grooves will increase or decrease the height. Mine could do with further adjusting but that'll be done when I have a bit more free time. Overall the light output seems to be better than the HIDs my car came with but the high beam is a little weak, thankfully I dont need it all that often so its a tradeoff for better aesthetics. 

[zoricib]

very informative posts! and great mods!

[McShmoopy]

28 minutes ago, zoricib said:

very informative posts! and great mods!

Cheers mate, I had been wanting to post a few updates for a while but just been so busy recently! Hopefully I’ll be more on it with posting going forward 

[H3XME]

Coming along nicely, just needs some good pics of the outside 😉

[McShmoopy]

47 minutes ago, H3XME said:

Coming along nicely, just needs some good pics of the outside 😉

Cheers mate, honestly the weather has been so bad and I've had so little time to clean the car so it does look horrendous! I'm planning on doing some paint correction and applying a ceramic coating in the future so when that happens it'll definitely be photoshoot time. 😏