K&N indiction kit upgrade

[Johnlex]

11 minutes ago, m4rkw said:

Scotty Kilmer talks sense 😄

But in all seriousness if you want to do it then do it, life is short, have fun.

yeah i see this last week when i was looking lol but this K&N one is specifaclly enginered for the lexus is 250 engine its not some cheap bolt on 

[m4rkw]

5 minutes ago, Johnlex said:

yeah i see this last week when i was looking lol

I do understand the urge to make a car better. I went through the same thing when I had an E39 BMW with a big thumping V8 in it. I loved that car and spent silly amounts of money on modifications. These days though I've come to believe that these cars, particularly Lexus, are engineered so well from the factory that anything I do is just going to make it worse. So now instead of trying to make it "better" I try to keep it as close to how it was when it was new as possible, because that's what I now see as the best the car could be. Service it regularly, put good quality tyres on it, change the transmission fluid and use OEM parts where it's not financially insane to do so. I think you get more out of these cars by doing that than slapping things like this on. But hey people like different things and I certainly went through the mod phase too. Get a Quaife LSD next, those are fun as hell 😄

[ciao_chao]

10 minutes ago, Johnlex said:

@ColinBarber yes i would be buying new and direct from supplier. the filter is good for 10000 miles. but i guess it would get filthy as its exposed and not boxed in like the oem from new

IIRC K&N filters usually can be “washed” and reoiled. Sounds great, but god it’s waaaay too much effort, I kept on putting that job off, it’s really not a pleasant job to clean 10k’s worth of filth and grime from a filter. 

[Johnlex]

11 minutes ago, ciao_chao said:

IIRC K&N filters usually can be “washed” and reoiled. Sounds great, but god it’s waaaay too much effort, I kept on putting that job off, it’s really not a pleasant job to clean 10k’s worth of filth and grime from a filter. 

that sounds like a headache 

 

11 minutes ago, ciao_chao said:

IIRC K&N filters usually can be “washed” and reoiled. Sounds great, but god it’s waaaay too much effort, I kept on putting that job off, it’s really not a pleasant job to clean 10k’s worth of filth and grime from a filter. 

 

12 minutes ago, m4rkw said:

I do understand the urge to make a car better. I went through the same thing when I had an E39 BMW with a big thumping V8 in it. I loved that car and spent silly amounts of money on modifications. These days though I've come to believe that these cars, particularly Lexus, are engineered so well from the factory that anything I do is just going to make it worse. So now instead of trying to make it "better" I try to keep it as close to how it was when it was new as possible, because that's what I now see as the best the car could be. Service it regularly, put good quality tyres on it, change the transmission fluid and use OEM parts where it's not financially insane to do so. I think you get more out of these cars by doing that than slapping things like this on. But hey people like different things and I certainly went through the mod phase too. Get a Quaife LSD next, those are fun as hell 😄

yeah i think you could be right, I've done all this way back from Vauxhall corsa to mercedes 190 and even my hyundai coupe but i did keep my mercedes omg clk 320 factory. it has full service history and I've still got extended warranty till 2023 so don't want to make it void either. think I'm just old trying to be young be youthful through cars. lol i am only 37 lol

[Mr Vlad]

After reading this thread,again, a few hours ago I looked on eBay to price these cold air intakes. Sure enough KnN effing expensive. Scroll down some and blow me £56 for summat identical from America????? OK £60 pnp but its a no brained. Ok nowt wrong with wanting more noise from an induction kit. But no way spend over £300. Get the yank ones at half the price. Actually it's something I'll look into later in the year.

[Johnlex]

8 minutes ago, Mr Vlad said:

After reading this thread,again, a few hours ago I looked on ebay to price these cold air intakes. Sure enough KnN effing expensive. Scroll down some and blow me £56 for summat identical from America????? OK £60 pnp but its a no brained. Ok nowt wrong with wanting more noise from an induction kit. But no way spend over £300. Get the yank ones at half the price. Actually it's something I'll look into later in the year.

you get what you pay for , those £60 ones are probably crap they may look the same but i always think buy cheap buy twice or more 

[ciao_chao]

@Johnlexhave you thought about going to Japan for parts? You might need a crash course in Japanese, but Blitz do a number of pod style filters for the 4GR engines. Price isn't bad either

[Mr Vlad]

John I doubt very much those 60 quid ones are crap. They're probably made by Chinkychong Industries who manufacture them and put different labels on. Just coz KnN is a well known brand They're very well marketed. Like I've said sometime before I bought a KnN induction kit for a Ford Focus I once had. It was ok at first but after a week I got sick of it and went back to standard. A friend had the same car but bought a 'cheap' one and guess what. The only difference was the label.

[rich1068]

3 hours ago, Mr Vlad said:

Chinkychong Industries

Come on Vlad. Let's not.

[m4rkw]

Oblig 

 

[m4rkw]

Here you go John: https://www.rr-racing.com/RR-Racing-Supercharger-Kit-for-Lexus-IS250-RWD-p/is2scr2002.htm

You won't get better bang for buck than that 🙂

[DanATR]

Thats expencive. When I had mine in the ATR, it did increase the performance. Overall all my mods increased the performance from 212hp to near 235/240hp.

Some of the guys who dyno theirs had it shown on paper. So went off those claims lol. But on track I was quicker then most ATRs.

Over all, imo, this would have minimal effect on a car that has not been re-tuned and is cloged up with carbon. But getting more air into the cylinder is definitly a yes. It really depends on what you want to do really. If you want to spend less and have a simular but less effect, get the K&N panel filter. If you want to go full on performance, why are you asking, get K&N over anything, any day.

Things to remember, regually clean the filter.
If it comes with the cover, put it on if you can. After a while I took mine off.

The pipe and filter are also designed to make airflow less terbulent unlike the stock one. Most items on the Lexus are made for cost cutting, regulations and production. Mine for example can run at 204hp and yet get better fuel mpg, so why is it at 177hp? Money, regulations and Sales. I mean, look at my alloys, there crap lol (pains falling off).

Over all, if you have the money, get it, then look at getting an uprages Stainless Steal Exhust from the manifold back with a 200cell cat. (meow) Also, put in RaceX Oil as this will also ensure your engine runs smooth and well.

Other things to remember, brakes do stick and catch and slow you up, so free them up 1 time a year easily. Get better HT leads too... stock ones are crap.

[Linas.P]

I am fairly confident that there are no IS250 making anywhere near 240hp.

The standard mods like less restrictive air-intake and exhaust... that at most gives 5% of extra performance... so we talking 10hp at very top of rev range making it maybe ~214hp... probably single most effective mod would be new headers, because factory ones are really puny and bad flowing... but here we talking £1000 for custom headers for few hp gain. So after spending £3000 on all these mods one may expect ~220hp. Unless you enjoy the process of modifying car so much, I really see no way how one could justify wasting so much money for no gain.

Not only that, but this isn't even straight gain, it is compromise and is delivered at loss of low end torque which to be fair is much more important day-to-day than top end hp.

The only way to push IS250 past ~220hp mark is supercharger/turbocharger and then the sky (or rather rods) are the limit.

[Johnlex]

I’ve just ordered the oem fsport intake kit .... it’s arriving Monday! I went against the k&n for the cleaning and Lexus giving me grief with my extended warranty if something  failed  @Linas.P @DanATR

[DanATR]

  

On 6/3/2021 at 10:29 AM, Linas.P said:

I am fairly confident that there are no IS250 making anywhere near 240hp.

The standard mods like less restrictive air-intake and exhaust... that at most gives 5% of extra performance... so we talking 10hp at very top of rev range making it maybe ~214hp... probably single most effective mod would be new headers, because factory ones are really puny and bad flowing... but here we talking £1000 for custom headers for few hp gain. So after spending £3000 on all these mods one may expect ~220hp. Unless you enjoy the process of modifying car so much, I really see no way how one could justify wasting so much money for no gain.

Not only that, but this isn't even straight gain, it is compromise and is delivered at loss of low end torque which to be fair is much more important day-to-day than top end hp.

The only way to push IS250 past ~220hp mark is supercharger/turbocharger and then the sky (or rather rods) are the limit.

I was compering against my ATR.... (the car in my profile photo)

Also, it would cost you around the £500/£650 mark for a custom made Stainless Steal exhust system header for the Lexus to the CAT.

But if you want an easy, free way to increase the 0-60 of your lexus.... take all the seats out, and all the sound proffing and install 2 bucket seats. Sorted... thats 2seconds gain right there easy.

 

[Linas.P]

Customs SS headers can certainly be made for £500/650, however I am not confident they would be better flowing than even terrible factory ones. And that is for what? 8hp maybe? My £1000 claim was for HKS/Greddy headers which were properly engineered and have some graphs suggesting this "8hp" gains. To be fair they cost more than that and you won't find them anywhere anymore anyway, so it is moot point... and even the gain is easy to fake even on dyno. What I am saying is that in - in theory it is possible, in practice is quite unlikely and certainly it won't matter. 

Weight of the car obviously contributes to acceleration, however I doubt that removing seats and sound proofing would give you 2 second advantage. We are talking about like 100kg here... I have no such chubby friends, but having 2 people in the car certainly does not add 2 seconds to 60, so I doubt removing equivalent weight would make such significant difference either. Just to be clear what we are talking about - official IS250 0-60 is 8.1s... holding the brake for little boost before launching achieves ~7.5s already. So if what you saying would be true, then IS250 should be 5.5s to 60 with -100kg? No I don't think that is realistic... That is faster than IS350 with 306hp which only manages 5.7s and it would be just a second slower than IS-F with 470hp. Sure it would make car faster by maybe 0.2s, but not 2s!

Even if you strip the car to bare shell, with engine, wheels and single seat.... I doubt IS250 would ever do 0-60 in under 6s. Just not enough power, not right gearing etc.

[Linas.P]

On 6/3/2021 at 9:55 PM, Johnlex said:

I’ve just ordered the oem fsport intake kit .... it’s arriving Monday! I went against the k&n for the cleaning and Lexus giving me grief with my extended warranty if something  failed  @Linas.P @DanATR

Just to note here - F-Sport intake adds absolutely no power and it is identical to standard intake, bar breather tube which sends some intake sound into cabin.  

[Linas.P]

On 6/4/2021 at 11:39 AM, DanATR said:

But if you want an easy, free way to increase the 0-60 of your lexus.... take all the seats out, and all the sound proffing and install 2 bucket seats. Sorted... thats 2seconds gain right there easy.

Just a coincidence buy perfect video to prove my point was uploaded recently by ChrisFix.

So indeed the seats weights ~80kg and what is or isn't "sound proofing" is little bit move vague, but generally things which just unclips or can be removed easily wasn't that much more ~56kg... So as I said total weight saving around 100kg... for this beemer in particular it was 136kg. 

Later he stripped the car almost to bare shell and even that was just around 200kg, he had few more pieces to remove... so say "bare shell" would give you 250kg weight saving at most...

And result - 0.8s... so as you can see just seats and sound insulation out would never get you 2s faster acceleration.

 

[H3XME]

On 6/5/2021 at 8:59 PM, Linas.P said:

Customs SS headers can certainly be made for £500/650, however I am not confident they would be better flowing than even terrible factory ones. And that is for what? 8hp maybe? My £1000 claim was for HKS/Greddy headers which were properly engineered and have some graphs suggesting this "8hp" gains. To be fair they cost more than that and you won't find them anywhere anymore anyway, so it is moot point... and even the gain is easy to fake even on dyno. What I am saying is that in - in theory it is possible, in practice is quite unlikely and certainly it won't matter. 

Weight of the car obviously contributes to acceleration, however I doubt that removing seats and sound proofing would give you 2 second advantage. We are talking about like 100kg here... I have no such chubby friends, but having 2 people in the car certainly does not add 2 seconds to 60, so I doubt removing equivalent weight would make such significant difference either. Just to be clear what we are talking about - official IS250 0-60 is 8.1s... holding the brake for little boost before launching achieves ~7.5s already. So if what you saying would be true, then IS250 should be 5.5s to 60 with -100kg? No I don't think that is realistic... That is faster than IS350 with 306hp which only manages 5.7s and it would be just a second slower than IS-F with 470hp. Sure it would make car faster by maybe 0.2s, but not 2s!

Even if you strip the car to bare shell, with engine, wheels and single seat.... I doubt IS250 would ever do 0-60 in under 6s. Just not enough power, not right gearing etc.

Don't forget, these gains everybody claims - such as 8hp increase from going with different headers is a stand alone gain. You change intake and headers to catless system which you then take to a tuner. That's where the real gains appear. Induction kit is waste of money performance wise, it just looks pretty and sounds better. Exhaust (cat-less system and headers) on the other hand, you can easily see 25hp gain on a car like this with a correct tune, not to mention significant torque increase. I'm eyeing up some headers from the states, and I will get them once I find someone capable of tuning this car. And that's the only problem in the UK. There just isn't really anybody who messes with these cars so getting a tune is difficult considering how locked this ECU is. Bottom line, it is doable and it is worth it for the NA gains. If you were to go through so much money on a turbo car and you'd get barely 30hp, that's disappointing for sure, but NA game is just difficult/restricted. And yes, the ECU is "self-learning" to a point, all modern cars are like this, but changing headers and ditching cats will throw CEL because the car doesn't know what to do - it's too much of a change and not something the car would just learn on it's own. My GT86 is a perfect example of this. Same 12.5:1 compression ratio, direct injection engine that's already producing 185bhp from the factory. By installing cat-less headers, you can feel car is more responsive as it breathes better, but the real gains come in to play when you actually have it remapped/tuned. Then you go from 185bhp to 220ish with an increase of 40lbs/ft of torque. 

Someone said "if this and that worked, the manufacturer would've done it" no, that's not right. You find most cars being restricted on power due to massive cats that choke the performance purely so they pass emissions. It's all about Greta and polar bears these days. Remove your cats and get it tuned, you'll have gain on every modern car.

[DanATR]

22 hours ago, Linas.P said:

Just a coincidence buy perfect video to prove my point was uploaded recently by ChrisFix.

So indeed the seats weights ~80kg and what is or isn't "sound proofing" is little bit move vague, but generally things which just unclips or can be removed easily wasn't that much more ~56kg... So as I said total weight saving around 100kg... for this beemer in particular it was 136kg. 

Later he stripped the car almost to bare shell and even that was just around 200kg, he had few more pieces to remove... so say "bare shell" would give you 250kg weight saving at most...

And result - 0.8s... so as you can see just seats and sound insulation out would never get you 2s faster acceleration.

 

Well, with all the upgrades and removal of the seats from my ATR, which are much lighter then the seats in the Lexus, over all gave me a 2second increase. Fact. it went from 7.2seconds down to 5.1seconds. (This is with an Accord Type R here, not a 250 Lexus)

Your talking to some one whos done this and done loads of track time. If you did a standing start or 2 laps around a track, with two identical cars, one with and one with out all the junk, I can assure you, you WILL see a diffrence. 0.6 seconds is LOADS!

[H3XME]

6 minutes ago, DanATR said:

Well, with all the upgrades and removal of the seats from my ATR, which are much lighter then the seats in the Lexus, over all gave me a 2second increase. Fact. it went from 7.2seconds down to 5.1seconds. (This is with an Accord Type R here, not a 250 Lexus)

Your talking to some one whos done this and done loads of track time. If you did a standing start or 2 laps around a track, with two identical cars, one with and one with out all the junk, I can assure you, you WILL see a diffrence. 0.6 seconds is LOADS!

100% agree. Standstill acceleration doesn't mean anything, losing 150kg will make a massive difference around a track. Later braking, better cornering, the lot.

[Linas.P]

On 6/7/2021 at 4:11 PM, H3XME said:

Don't forget, these gains everybody claims - such as 8hp increase from going with different headers is a stand alone gain. You change intake and headers to catless system which you then take to a tuner.

Taking NA cars to tuner is a thing which is far over blown... there isn't much to be gained from engine like 4GR-FSE, especially on stock engine without substantial mods. Sure if you supercharged it or turbocharged, then taking new set-up to the tuner will matter a lot!

When it comes to racing cars and where keeping car "road legal" is not required I imagine there are more gains which can be made. Again - claim was "take seats out and sound proofing and your car is 2s faster to 60". As I said that is just around 100kg, and removing 100kg in the car won't matter much on 0-60. If we go step further and gut the car entirely to bare shell (say -250kg) and then do other track mods, light wheels, slicks, lightened flywheel (on MT), different ratio diffs etc. Sure with such extensive modifications you will shave 2s, maybe more. But clearly that is not what was said, that is not just taking the seats out!

As for lightening the car for track use - I absolutely agree, reduced weight will make massive difference over the lap, even if just standstill accelerations does not change that much. But we talking cross purposes here - the OP wanted to gain few HP on IS250C, nobody is making bare rolling shell for a race car from it.

That "cold air intake" makes no difference I agree, certainly not as sole modification. For what 4GR-FSE needs the standard airbox is more than sufficient and even if one gains 1hp, this won't be noticeable. F-sport airbox is again - absolutely the same + little tube which transfers some intake noise to interior if properly installed. That is all!

[H3XME]

2 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

Taking NA cars to tuner is a thing which is far over blown... there isn't much to be gained from engine like 4GR-FSE, especially on stock engine without substantial mods. Sure if you supercharged it or turbocharged, then taking new set-up to the tuner will matter a lot!

Well, taking a stock NA car to a tuner is pointless, yes. However, like I said, headers and mainly full de-cat is the most substantial mod you can do to any car if you want power. Even on 4GR-FSE engine. We have 4 cats in these cars, remove them, get a tune and you can easily get 20hp increase. Nevermind the horse power, the torque increase is the most noticeable thing, for that alone it's worth spending the money + tune can increase the throttle response which isn't great on this car. It's a common thing, but I'm not surprised people don't do this on these cars - I mean look at the clientele. It's not exactly a sports car and people don't buy it to get any sporty feeling out of it - I might be one of the few curious ones. But that doesn't mean you can't get a little bit of something out of it with the correct mods.

I got an IS250 to explore the platform. It's cheap, reliable, sounds good, rwd, manual, 200bhp and most importantly has LSD. Can't really get anything like that for similar money. I'm gonna have a go at installing front camber arms from a different Toyota this weekend. I'm surprised there is nobody in the UK that goes to such extent (with suspension mods) with these cars yet - considering IS200/300s became quite popular to modify. Sure, many have lowered it and what not, but trying suspension components from other Toyota's is kind of an unexplored territory and it's exciting to try these things. Many parts are cross compatible but if nobody tries it, we'll never know. I'm not here to preach about what you should or shouldn't do, but saying that something doesn't work etc when it does is wrong. 

[Linas.P]

One... is the clientele - as you said it is not a sports car, but secondly it is 100% illegal and immoral to do that on road car. 

[DannyM]

This may also be an option for people looking for an increase in engine noise without spending a fortune.

I'd looked into the OEM Fsport intake myself but couldn't justify the price considering it's only purpose is to increase noise. Did a bit of research and from what I found the major difference is between the standard lower airbox which on the Fsport intake has an additional opening and has no ribbing inside the box. I didn't want to just cut a hole in the airbox so I took to SolidWorks and my 3D printer and replicated the Fsport lower airbox design by printing a flange similar to the Fsport design. This cost me nothing as I have all this to hand but could be an option for those who want a neater solution than a cut up airbox and something less costly than a full induction kit if you can get someone to print the flange. Does exactly what I want, increase in engine noise from 3.5-4.5k+ rpm under load and just like factory everywhere else.