2021 4IS Style Bumper Conversion and Headlights

[ahmed24]

Some of you may know i've owned my 2006 IS250 for a very long time since approximately 2007 and in that time i've done quite a few facelift changes and mods to it. The most recent facelift was my 3IS custom bumper conversion back in 2015. 

Back in 2021 the chinese made a 4IS style conversion bumper for the 2IS. And after seeing this I was sold on getting one. Specially considering the 4IS isn't available in Europe/UK so it makes the design a lot more unique. I managed to get hold of a bumper from China and through a contact using their business shipping container. Finally managed to get the installation done and thought i'd share photos of my new facelift.

I've also upgraded my OEM LED DRL Headlights to the new 4IS inspired design to compliment the front end design. There are quite a few new headlight designs from china for the IS250. The most popular being the version 1 VLAND headlights. I wasn't too keen on them because of square chrome bezels around the projector LED's. Then came out HC motion version which had an animated check/tick LED on top. I wasn't too keen on them either as the check mark didn't quite flow with anything. Then came the latest version which has the check mark full length running all the way down to the kink of the bumper spindle grille corner. I loved the look of this and had to get a pair. Wasn't very easy to source this particular design of headlight as it's too new and most sellers only have the LHD beam pattern version of these headlights. Eventually I found a factory that sold me a pair of RHD beam patterns.

Few other things before the pics and video:

• I imported an OEM lexus short plate holder that comes as standard on the 2021 IS350 in america to mount onto this new bumper. 
• I modified the OEM parking sensor and drilled hole on the bumper to get a flush parking sensor fitment
• I installed universal side splitters that fit this bumper perfectly. Purchased them for about £20 from eBay and had them painted even though it came in gloss black.
• I got fitment pretty much perfect. In my opinion it's sitting better than some OEM bumpers i've worked on for the IS250. It required quite a bit of adjustments to get it fitting perfect. And I had to order a specific headlight mounting bracket from the 2009-2010 IS250. This is the only bracket that works with this bumper.
• I've got some subtle eyebrows colour coded that I will be installing to give the headlights a slimmer look. The last two photos shows an example of the eyebrows temporarily placed on on headlight.

I dont always get time to post on here. If you want to stay up-to-date with my work, you can check out my Instagram page where I have all my mods as story highlights. That's where I usually post most of my updates. My instagram link is at the bottom of my signature.

Anyway, enough talking. Video highlight below, followed by some photos:

 

 

Unfortuantely, even thought the bumper was inside a wooden casing, it still suffered a bit of damage where one corner got deformed. I managed to salvage this by re-forming ti with heat and getting the shape identical to the opposite side. 

 

Here a few pics of the universal front splitters:

 

Here is a picture of the imported OEM Lexus 2021 IS350 plate holder from America.

 

And here are the new headlights. Headlight video demo can be seen in my video demo above.

 

Crash bar painted black so that I don't see any silver through the gaps

 

Installed OEM foam strip on the corners

 

[H3XME]

16 minutes ago, ahmed24 said:

The most recent facelift was my 3IS custom bumper conversion back in 2015. 

That's really nice! I was going to get it until I saw that the shipping costs as much as the bumper and by the time you have it at home it's another ~£200 worth of import fees.. put me off. Looks amazing though, I'm jealous! Good info on the headlight brackets. I wouldn't of thought of that when struggling to fit it 😂

Will you be selling your 3IS bumper? I'd be happy to get that before I buy a new one myself for my second IS250. 

[Mr Vlad]

Fantastic work you've done on your stunning looking car Ahmed. 👌👍👏

[ahmed24]

22 minutes ago, H3XME said:

That's really nice! I was going to get it until I saw that the shipping costs as much as the bumper and by the time you have it at home it's another ~£200 worth of import fees.. put me off. Looks amazing though, I'm jealous! Good info on the headlight brackets. I wouldn't of thought of that when struggling to fit it 😂

Will you be selling your 3IS bumper? I'd be happy to get that before I buy a new one myself for my second IS250. 

Yeh because of the size of the item it's extremely difficult to ship. I managed to get the entire thing for just over £500 including all the customs clearance as I used a friends shipping container. 

The old 3IS bumper is already sold and fitted to another car sorry

[ahmed24]

13 minutes ago, Mr Vlad said:

Fantastic work you've done on your stunning looking car Ahmed. 👌👍👏

Thank you mate 🙂 

[H3XME]

Just now, ahmed24 said:

Yeh because of the size of the item it's extremely difficult to ship. I managed to get the entire thing for just over £500 including all the customs clearance as I used a friends shipping container. 

The old 3IS bumper is already sold and fitted to another car sorry

Oh, that's a no brainer then! Really lucky with that price. 

[normski2]

Another quite stunning piece of work Ahmed. 

 

 

[ahmed24]

33 minutes ago, normski2 said:

Another quite stunning piece of work Ahmed. 

 

 

Thank you as always for your kind words and support 🙂 

[scudney]

Well done, very nice, excellent job as always 👏 👍 

[ahmed24]

9 minutes ago, scudney said:

Well done, very nice, excellent job as always 👏 👍 

Thank you 🙂 

[J Henderson]

Looks great. Those headlights really complete the look. 👍

[james250]

Wow. An amazing transformation. Do you not rest? 😴

Honestly I’m amazed it looks so good. Good point you mentioned that the 4IS didn’t come to UK which will make this design stay modern and unique for a while. 

Them headlights definitely compliment the look very well. Looking at the photo where you test fitted the unpainted bumper with original lights it just didn’t work as well as how it works with the new lights. 

Keep up the great work. Looking forward to seeing what you will wow us with next 🤔

[ahmed24]

2 hours ago, james250 said:

Wow. An amazing transformation. Do you not rest? 😴

Honestly I’m amazed it looks so good. Good point you mentioned that the 4IS didn’t come to UK which will make this design stay modern and unique for a while. 

Them headlights definitely compliment the look very well. Looking at the photo where you test fitted the unpainted bumper with original lights it just didn’t work as well as how it works with the new lights. 

Keep up the great work. Looking forward to seeing what you will wow us with next 🤔

 

3 hours ago, J Henderson said:

Looks great. Those headlights really complete the look. 👍

Thank you. Yes the headlights really do compliment this bumper which is why I had to make the switch. 

[McShmoopy]

Looks amazing, arguably one of the best looking 2IS's in the UK! 

[ahmed24]

8 hours ago, McShmoopy said:

Looks amazing, arguably one of the best looking 2IS's in the UK! 

Thank you 😀 

[F.A.]

I wasn’t a fan of your 3IS conversion but this is stunning. Fantastic work and as mentioned above, the lights finish it off nicely.

Out of interest, how well do these lights perform in the dark, compared to the OEM DRL lights ? 

[ahmed24]

41 minutes ago, F.A. said:

I wasn’t a fan of your 3IS conversion but this is stunning. Fantastic work and as mentioned above, the lights finish it off nicely.

Out of interest, how well do these lights perform in the dark, compared to the OEM DRL lights ? 

 

Thank you 🙂 

These lights have really good output compared to the OEM DRL headlights I had. They are way better than the VLAND headlights that became quite popular and the DRL check/tick works in the full brightness DRL and dim parking mode too just like OEM.

[dephrank]

Man just transformed his car’s front end from Law abiding citizen to an Anti Lane Hogger 😃

[AFlex]

Sick! 

You must be the first person I've seen in the UK to fit the 4IS bumper. Partly because it's not easily available to purchase over here.

Out of interest, what did you do about the fog lights? I haven't really seen any off-the-shelf solutions. Looks like it would need to be a custom job like these thin LED custom lights by @lexus.trilogy:

[ahmed24]

4 hours ago, AFlex said:

Sick! 

You must be the first person I've seen in the UK to fit the 4IS bumper. Partly because it's not easily available to purchase over here.

Out of interest, what did you do about the fog lights? I haven't really seen any off-the-shelf solutions. Looks like it would need to be a custom job like these thin LED custom lights by @lexus.trilogy:

I was going to do what lexus.trilogy did but then decided against it as speaking to some of the chinese suppliers they have hinted that an aftermarket fog may be in the works. Currently the 4IS doesn't have fog lights at all hence why the clone doesn't have it either. 

Took a few more photos today after washing and sealing the car. Still need to do some final finishing touches of the installation. Pics below

[AFlex]

I love the wheels - really goes with the 4IS design. Are they 19" ISF wheels?

Did your old headlights have AFS? I know you are a perfectionist Ahmed so you wouldn't have done a bodged job by pulling the AFS fuse or taping over the dashboard AFS error light... 

That's the only thing keeping me from upgrading to those HC motion lights - I can't figure out how I would make them work with autolevelling and my 2007 model doesn't have a manual headlight height adjuster.

[H3XME]

7 hours ago, AFlex said:

I love the wheels - really goes with the 4IS design. Are they 19" ISF wheels?

Did your old headlights have AFS? I know you are a perfectionist Ahmed so you wouldn't have done a bodged job by pulling the AFS fuse or taping over the dashboard AFS error light... 

That's the only thing keeping me from upgrading to those HC motion lights - I can't figure out how I would make them work with autolevelling and my 2007 model doesn't have a manual headlight height adjuster.

It does, it's a rod connected to your control arm. If you bypass it by pulling a fuse etc, you can adjust that way. It's only really needed on a lowered car tbh. My friend has a facelift that's really low (stock lights) and AFS is playing up because of it. I never had the issue on my old one because I didn't have AFS (and I had Vlands), but my current one has it, so it's yet to be seen. Though you can turn AFS off via those buttons under your steering wheel where you set the RPM & Speed warning light. 

[ahmed24]

9 hours ago, AFlex said:

I love the wheels - really goes with the 4IS design. Are they 19" ISF wheels?

Did your old headlights have AFS? I know you are a perfectionist Ahmed so you wouldn't have done a bodged job by pulling the AFS fuse or taping over the dashboard AFS error light... 

That's the only thing keeping me from upgrading to those HC motion lights - I can't figure out how I would make them work with autolevelling and my 2007 model doesn't have a manual headlight height adjuster.

 

Yes they are the OEM 19" ISF Wheels.

The headlights I have got are not the HC Motion ones. The HC Motion ones with the shorter check/tick DRL LED on top does have the 3 pins for the levelling motor however it's for the manual levelling adjustment switch system. It's not for the automatic height levelling system. The automatic levelling system uses 4 pins (pin 12, 13, 14 & 15) The headlights I got do not have any motorised levelling system at all. Therefore, the beam verical and horizontol adjustments need to be done using a hex socket. Basically they are very simple, they only have the essential pins which i've attached a picture of the pinout below. I used this for bench testing the lights.

 

Regarding the AFS, when I installed the OEM DRL headlights back in 2012, removing the fuse to disable AFS wasn't an option because removing the fuse essentially disables auto-levelling and seeing as the OEM headlights have auto-levelling, I didn't want to lose that function so I did in fact disable the LED for the AFS on the cluster. But now that I have the new headlights which don't even have self-levelling system, I could potentially pull-out the fuse as I dont have the adaptive cruise control anyway. If I had adaptive cruise control then that fuse will also disable that. I'm working on the 3IS cluster project which will be going in soon and that cluster doesn't have any AFS errors anyway. Sneak peak below at the cluster project in the works.

 

[H3XME]

36 minutes ago, ahmed24 said:

 

 

This looks interesting.. I'd be up for that. Get it working and I'll pay you to wire it up on mine😁

[AFlex]

13 hours ago, H3XME said:

This looks interesting.. I'd be up for that. Get it working and I'll pay you to wire it up on mine😁

likewise - i am totally speechless.... This retrofit speedo cluster is yet another thing that was 'impossible' to crack and you've only gone and done it 

As for AFS - don't care about the swivel left and right, I just don't like the idea of my headlights not going up and down when I start the car or autolevelling if I have a fat friend in the back :D

Might be possible to mod the 4IS design lights, since someone managed to do it on the 3IS VLAN design: