High(ish) Millage Hero - 2006 IS250 SE-L

[Thracing-44]

After almost buying an IS a few years back, a couple of cars between, I now have one! I’ve had 2 Celica’s in the past so really wanted to get back to some Japanese reliability after 2 years owning a terrible Volvo. 

I now own an Auto 2006 IS250 SE-L with 155,000 miles. I’ve owned it since October and it’s been fantastic so far. 

I wasn’t put off by the millage as the car came with FSH and only one owner, previous guy had it from 10,000 miles. 

I’ve got some mods I’d like to do in the coming year, it came with a custom stainless back box system fortunately, which sounds lovely & a K&N Filter. 

Mods I have in mind to do:

- Tein or BC Coilovers

- GS450/IS350 Brake upgrade

- Bola or similar designed alloys

- Possibly a custom mid pipe

- Polybush ARB bushes

- Boot Duck tail spoiler 

But first of all I’ve been working away doing some service items. So far I’ve done:

- Engine Oil & Oil Filter

- Diff Oil 

- Spark Plugs and new gaskets for the inlet, cleaned the throttle body at the same time

- Lower control arm bushes 

- LED side lights. 

Parts I have but yet to do:

- Full transmission service kit, filter and new gaskets etc

- Drop Links

- Front, Rear & Hand/foot Brake service 

I plan to keep the car for a good while so want to make sure it’ll get me to 200,000 miles and more! 

a few shots below of Car & some of the work done so far! 
 

New bushes ordered from Japan

 

New side lights, also had the chrome grille surround off to spray black.

 

Hopefully I’ll keep the updates coming. 

[Mr Vlad]

Hi Tom. Welcome to is250 ownership. You really k ow what your doing so I doff my cap to you. You've done some excellent work on your car and plan to carry on too. You'll have no problem getting 200k miles out of it. That car will go well beyond. 

Since you took the inlet manifold off did you notice any carbon build up in the ports?

[Thracing-44]

1 hour ago, Mr Vlad said:

Hi Tom. Welcome to is250 ownership. You really k ow what your doing so I doff my cap to you. You've done some excellent work on your car and plan to carry on too. You'll have no problem getting 200k miles out of it. That car will go well beyond. 

Since you took the inlet manifold off did you notice any carbon build up in the ports?

Cheers! I’d have kept my old Gen 7 Celica if rust didn’t take hold of it, the engine was bullet proof. 
 

Didn't have a great deal of carbon build up, nothing too bad. I did have some oil in 2 of the spark plug ports though, so I’ll need to do the rocker/valve cover gasket at some point soon. 

[H3XME]

On 1/20/2024 at 9:07 PM, Thracing-44 said:

 

I’ve got some mods I’d like to do in the coming year, it came with a custom stainless back box system fortunately, which sounds lovely & a K&N Filter. 

Mods I have in mind to do:

- Tein or BC Coilovers

- GS450/IS350 Brake upgrade

- Bola or similar designed alloys

- Possibly a custom mid pipe

- Polybush ARB bushes

- Boot Duck tail spoiler 

Welcome. Nice plan. A friendly advice..

I strongly advise against BC Racing coils on this car. I had both TEIN Flex Z and BCs and the TEINs were a lot better to live with as it's quite a heavy car. 

Again, BOLA wheels and other replica wheels like JR or ROTA.. They are cheaper versions of genuine wheels from brands such as RAYS, BBS, WORK etc. While this may not make that much of a difference on stock cars, the poor quality of those wheels shows when you're on a lower, stiffer suspension that has less suspension travel and puts more stress on the wheels on 💩roads. They are basically easy to crack when you hit a sneaky pot hole. (Ask me how I found out. Lol) but it's up to you whether you wanna risk it. They'll be OK otherwise.. Never had a problem on genuine wheels after years of use. 

Bushes on sway bars don't do much of a difference at all. Coils will reduce the body roll a lot, but you ideally need uprated thicker sway bars to help with body roll.

[Mr Vlad]

Tom. Do take heed of the advice from Lucas. He's done many mods to his is250's and he knows his stuff.

[H3XME]

3 hours ago, Mr Vlad said:

Tom. Do take heed of the advice from Lucas. He's done many mods to his is250's and he knows his stuff.

Thanks Vlad. He's free to do what he wants haha.. It's just advice as I don't know how much experience he has. I wish someone told me about cheap parts & "expensive" parts when I was younger.

People often think that cheap wheels or coilovers are the same as branded ones, you just don't have to pay extra for the name. It's not always true, especially when it comes to suspension or wheels. The two things that are under the most amount of stress.. This is a forum, we should share the knowledge we have. If you choose to listen or not is up to you 😅

Also just to clarify, not saying BC Coils are on the same level as eBay chinesium. Both TEIN and BC Racing coilovers are entry level budget coilovers but Teins are more suited for the streets. BC would perform better on the track.

[Thracing-44]

On 1/22/2024 at 6:40 AM, H3XME said:

Thanks Vlad. He's free to do what he wants haha.. It's just advice as I don't know how much experience he has. I wish someone told me about cheap parts & "expensive" parts when I was younger.

People often think that cheap wheels or coilovers are the same as branded ones, you just don't have to pay extra for the name. It's not always true, especially when it comes to suspension or wheels. The two things that are under the most amount of stress.. This is a forum, we should share the knowledge we have. If you choose to listen or not is up to you 😅

Also just to clarify, not saying BC Coils are on the same level as eBay chinesium. Both TEIN and BC Racing coilovers are entry level budget coilovers but Teins are more suited for the streets. BC would perform better on the track.

Shall definitely be taking on advice, back when I had my Gen 7 Celica I was on that forum as well, had so much good advice from the well in the know chaps on there.

Having seen your thread before It made me keen on the 350z alloys, ideally will still get a set of those as the ET etc is all spot on. Steering towards Tein on the coils as they're a bit more cost effective, either the street basis or the flex z's if funds will allow!

 

[H3XME]

22 minutes ago, Thracing-44 said:

Shall definitely be taking on advice, back when I had my Gen 7 Celica I was on that forum as well, had so much good advice from the well in the know chaps on there.

Having seen your thread before It made me keen on the 350z alloys, ideally will still get a set of those as the ET etc is all spot on. Steering towards Tein on the coils as they're a bit more cost effective, either the street basis or the flex z's if funds will allow!

TEIN Flex Z (£876) are more forgiving, therefore good street setup. BC Racing are more track focused, but unfortunately thanks to their clever marketing, every YouTuber and his dog uses them on everything and everyone who follows them buys BC too.. Hype / Clout. 

TEIN Street Basis (£552) do not come with top mounts, they are not damping adjustable and they do not go as low as Flex Z. (Flex Z are top of the range).. The damping adjustability makes a difference because you can set it up so you have a lower car without sacrificing comfort.

If the budget won't allow for Flex Z, I would quite happily go for TEIN Street Advance Z for £684 as they are similar to the Flex Z. They don't come with top mounts and go only up to 91mm lower in the front and 60mm lower in the rear vs Flex Z's 97mm front and 141mm rear. But that doesn't really matter because the camber cannot be adjusted through top mounts like on some other cars, so just swap top mounts from your stock suspension on those TEIN shocks are you're good. The height adjustment range is plenty too. I was roughly 60mm lower myself so wouldn't really need more even though the Flex Z allowed it.

You know I'm not a fan of those 350Z wheels. I think it's the dimples in the spokes that make them look a bit ugly in my opinion, but this is subjective. It's hard to ignore the fact they're forged (light & strong).. It's what you want in a perfect world. Strong but less unsprung weight. 

Take your time mate, there's no rush.. It took me 3 years or so to "build" the black one.. money's always a factor.

I've now found a Black IS250 after months of scouting the marketplace, eBay & Autotrader and will be picking up next month. I've already started buying parts for the car.. Got pretty much everything except wheels. I'm gonna try 19x10 square setup this time round. I won't say much more. I'll update my thread when I get the car.

[Thracing-44]

2 hours ago, H3XME said:

TEIN Flex Z (£876) are more forgiving, therefore good street setup. BC Racing are more track focused, but unfortunately thanks to their clever marketing, every YouTuber and his dog uses them on everything and everyone who follows them buys BC too.. Hype / Clout. 

TEIN Street Basis (£552) do not come with top mounts, they are not damping adjustable and they do not go as low as Flex Z. (Flex Z are top of the range).. The damping adjustability makes a difference because you can set it up so you have a lower car without sacrificing comfort.

If the budget won't allow for Flex Z, I would quite happily go for TEIN Street Advance Z for £684 as they are similar to the Flex Z. They don't come with top mounts and go only up to 91mm

Ah yeah, the Street Advance is what i was thinking of, forgot they had a mid range set. I think for what i'd use the car for they're my best option. 

I do agree on the 350z wheels, i like the look of them from afar, but dont like the dimples either, just hard to ignore the cost of a set on Market place and their good fitment. I absolutely hate the standard alloys on the car, but they run true and the tyres are decent so i'm not in a rush to change them up just yet. Ideally i'd like a set of these:

 Like the idea of Bronze wheels on a black car. 

 

My old Celica took me a good 4 years to get to where i wanted it, only for the rust to get a bit too much so i cut my losses and broke it for parts, that was almost to a track spec with fully adjustable Meister R's and polybush front and rear suspension components, great fun as a daily driver haha. Shall defintely take my time with this one, the wife wouldnt be best pleased if i spent all my money on bike racing and parts for cars 😄

torque189.5bronze.jpg.crdownload

[Thracing-44]

Fitted the Grille this afternoon. Hoping the paint should be fairly durable, I gave it 3 coats of black primer, 3 coats of gloss black paint, then sanded back with 1200grit and applied 3 coats of lacquer. 
 

Does look a hell of a lot better!

[H3XME]

50 minutes ago, Thracing-44 said:

 Like the idea of Bronze wheels on a black car. 

Yeah, those would look good in that colour. Can't wait to see it.

I'm glad you left the badge alone! This is the best the standard grille will look. 3 coats will be plenty to keep it on for a while. I think mine started chipping off after a year or so but even then it wasn't anything too bad.

[morgan_sa]

That black grille surround looks great!

[Thracing-44]

Managed to dodge the rain this weekend to get my Transmission Service done. The oil that came out was rather black, so hoping some fresh fluid will do it some good. 
 

Now at 155569 I’m not sure if it’s ever been done, possible just a flush through previously.
 

Overall it wasn’t such a bad job, hardest part was cutting and grinding off an exhaust bolt so I could release the crossbrace bracket for the exhaust as it was covering some of the bolts I needed to get at to remove the pan.

I don’t have Techstream so did the trans temp sequence with pins 4 & 13 connected, which worked well. 
 

 

 

 

Fitted new bolts and gaskets for all the drain/fill plugs.

 

[Thracing-44]

Had a free-ish weekend so spent a few hours fitting some new rear discs/pads and wheels to the Lexus. 

I picked up some Tesla Model 3 wheels with 4 almost new Michelin Pilot sport 5's on for a steal, I quite like the design of them without the standard wheel covers, fitted the style I was after on this car. The tyres are 235/45/18's slightly bigger than I'd have wanted, but couldn't pass up on the deal.  The ET on the wheels are slightly better than standard, the rear may benefit from 20mm spacer to get them perfectly in the arch, but for now I feel they look far better!

 

   

 

Reason for doing the rear discs was after a trip up to my brothers I noticed the rear left was very hot, thought it must be the slider pins. Turns out the slider pin that usually causes issues was perfectly fine, fortunately someone has definitely looked after the car in the past. I left the bottom pin in place, cleaned and applied plenty of new grease, the top slider on both sides I replaced with a new pin and boot. The left caliper piston had been pretty tough to push back in, I attempted to free it up as much as possible without actually taking it out, after a short trip with the new set up I noticed the disc still get very hot, so the piston's definitely sticking. New rear caliper is on its way, gives me a reason to change out to rear lines for a braided set I got with the car and to get some new fluid in the lines, hoping to have that sorted this weekend. 

Fair to say the old discs had served their time 😄

    

The next issue to sort with be a CEL I've sporadically had since owning the car. Of recent its been a P0420, but has also been a P0137 both for Bank 1, sensor 2. After doing a bit of research it could well be a leak prior to or around the downstream sensor and my mid pipe to cat exhaust flange isn't looking great at all, for how well preserved the underside of the car is, the exhaust flanges have taken a beating haha. Thinking it may need to go to an exhaust shop to get them to cut and weld on 2 new flanges and the cheaper option, or I get a custom mid pipe made at the same time. 

That being said the cars driving well with the new alloys/tyres on, it's already eliminated a pulling to the right I had with the old alloys. Still going strong at 157,000 miles!

[BkS]

Car is looking great fella. P0420 is the cats, usually there's a leak before the second lambda sensor around the flanges like you've said. I get it here and there, nout to worry about, car will still drive fine 😄

[H3XME]

You guys @BkS @Thracing-44 wanna meet up at C&M (Stratford) on a Daikoku night in May? 1st May. My car should be ready by then

[Thracing-44]

On 3/18/2024 at 8:01 AM, H3XME said:

You guys @BkS @Thracing-44 wanna meet up at C&M (Stratford) on a Daikoku night in May? 1st May. My car should be ready by then

Would definitely be up for a meet at some point, never been to C&M myself. Weekday evenings don't work too well for me with work. I may try and get along to a JDM weekend at Castle Combe as that's close to me. Thinking of taking the Lexus to Shed Fest as well haha. 

[H3XME]

11 minutes ago, Thracing-44 said:

Would definitely be up for a meet at some point, never been to C&M myself. Weekday evenings don't work too well for me with work. I may try and get along to a JDM weekend at Castle Combe as that's close to me. Thinking of taking the Lexus to Shed Fest as well haha. 

Yeah, well I normally leave work a couple of hours early to get there, so I don't go often.

[BkS]

On 3/18/2024 at 8:01 AM, H3XME said:

You guys @BkS @Thracing-44 wanna meet up at C&M (Stratford) on a Daikoku night in May? 1st May. My car should be ready by then

Sorry mate, only just seeing this, I should come on the forums more frequently 😅

I'd be up for meeting though it's a long trek from Scotland for me hahaha. If there's anything going on Sept/Oct time I'd be down, should have new wheels by then. 

[McShmoopy]

On 3/11/2024 at 1:53 PM, Thracing-44 said:

Had a free-ish weekend so spent a few hours fitting some new rear discs/pads and wheels to the Lexus. 

I picked up some Tesla Model 3 wheels with 4 almost new Michelin Pilot sport 5's on for a steal, I quite like the design of them without the standard wheel covers, fitted the style I was after on this car. The tyres are 235/45/18's slightly bigger than I'd have wanted, but couldn't pass up on the deal.  The ET on the wheels are slightly better than standard, the rear may benefit from 20mm spacer to get them perfectly in the arch, but for now I feel they look far better!

 

   

 

Reason for doing the rear discs was after a trip up to my brothers I noticed the rear left was very hot, thought it must be the slider pins. Turns out the slider pin that usually causes issues was perfectly fine, fortunately someone has definitely looked after the car in the past. I left the bottom pin in place, cleaned and applied plenty of new grease, the top slider on both sides I replaced with a new pin and boot. The left caliper piston had been pretty tough to push back in, I attempted to free it up as much as possible without actually taking it out, after a short trip with the new set up I noticed the disc still get very hot, so the piston's definitely sticking. New rear caliper is on its way, gives me a reason to change out to rear lines for a braided set I got with the car and to get some new fluid in the lines, hoping to have that sorted this weekend. 

Fair to say the old discs had served their time 😄

    

The next issue to sort with be a CEL I've sporadically had since owning the car. Of recent its been a P0420, but has also been a P0137 both for Bank 1, sensor 2. After doing a bit of research it could well be a leak prior to or around the downstream sensor and my mid pipe to cat exhaust flange isn't looking great at all, for how well preserved the underside of the car is, the exhaust flanges have taken a beating haha. Thinking it may need to go to an exhaust shop to get them to cut and weld on 2 new flanges and the cheaper option, or I get a custom mid pipe made at the same time. 

That being said the cars driving well with the new alloys/tyres on, it's already eliminated a pulling to the right I had with the old alloys. Still going strong at 157,000 miles!

How have you gotten on with the seized piston? Turns out this is an issue on my rear right calliper so I've opted to buy a piston rebuild kit and replace mine as it was extremely hard to push in so I imagine it's corroded or seized up. 

[McShmoopy]

On 5/10/2024 at 12:08 AM, McShmoopy said:

How have you gotten on with the seized piston? Turns out this is an issue on my rear right calliper so I've opted to buy a piston rebuild kit and replace mine as it was extremely hard to push in so I imagine it's corroded or seized up. 

Just on this,I  did a calliper rebuild with the new piston and seems to be behaving great now. I had to get my brother to assist with depressing the brakes while I inspected and had to open the master cylinder reservoir and it took 5 minutes as the brake piston was very seized up, when the piston was freed I very quickly clamped the brake line using some brake line clamps from Hilka. Cleaned out the area where the piston was with brake cleaner, removed old seals and used the provided red lube on the piston and seals, using a regular piston tool this went in like butter in comparison to the old and bled the brakes after. No more heat kicking out from the rear brakes now! 

[Thracing-44]

On 5/12/2024 at 9:29 PM, McShmoopy said:

Just on this,I  did a calliper rebuild with the new piston and seems to be behaving great now. I had to get my brother to assist with depressing the brakes while I inspected and had to open the master cylinder reservoir and it took 5 minutes as the brake piston was very seized up, when the piston was freed I very quickly clamped the brake line using some brake line clamps from Hilka. Cleaned out the area where the piston was with brake cleaner, removed old seals and used the provided red lube on the piston and seals, using a regular piston tool this went in like butter in comparison to the old and bled the brakes after. No more heat kicking out from the rear brakes now! 

Mine seems to be playing ball now. Haven't yet fitted the new caliper, but I'm not getting hot brake discs any longer on the rear, think the new discs/pads must have been bedding it a bit or the calliper has freed up slightly as i gave it a good clean and grease on the part of the piston I could when I changed the discs. Since changing the rear discs my MPG on my route to work has gone from Av 18/19 to 24 average. I'll get round to changing the caliper soon as I have new rear brake lines to fit, so may as well do them both at the same time. 

Currently in the midst of a kitchen renovation at home, so any work on the car has taken a step back at the moment 😄 saying that thought, the Lexus is the first car i've had since my Celica where I'm not having to constantly change parts, it just works even with the mileage its got. 

[Thracing-44]

The Lexus has been sold!

Had genuinely planned to keep this car for a long time, but with my job being so close to home, me having the Lexus, a Van & a motorbike on the road, something had to give so i gave up the Lexus. The money will be put to good use on the house so not a complete waste. 

Easily the best/most reliable car I've owned and wouldn't hesitate to get one again. I'll be without a "car" of my own for a year or so, I'm keeping the van as it's handy for my bike racing I do and the cycling my wife does. in a year or so once we've sorted the house & if I've got the fund I think I'm going to have a look at get a Subaru Legacy estate, either an STI or Spec B 6 Cylinder. 

 

All the best!