TigerFish

And keep in mind the centre caps for the Sport wheels are rare as rocking horse sh*t, so if any do a bunk (or get nicked by someone else who has missing ones) it could be a mission to replace them. The guy who bought my mk1 (I put the mk2 sport wheels on it to sell it so that I could keep the mk1 sport wheels) had one of the caps nicked a few days after buying the car. He had no luck finding a replacement before he sold it later. And probably the exact reason there are three missing for the original poster, the seller couldn't find any replacements (and may well have blagged that they can be replaced easily as part of the sales blurb)

Never had stock 17's on any of my GS's, only 18's. I've never had any issue with ride quality in the 18's though. I've swapped out the mk2 Sport wheels for the mk1 Sport wheels with the 10" rears on both my mk2's, no problem with those either.

They are the wheels off a mk2 GS Sport (300 and 430). The centre caps are no longer available through Lexus so your best bet is to keep an eye out on eBay as they appear from time to time. Last set of 4 went for £90. They do come up singly as well occasionally as I picked one up for 99p.

I think it depends also on how long you are disconnected for.

Procedure was the same as the GS300 when I changed the battery on my GS430.

No idea on an ISF specifically. I would guess it is the front position bulb it refers to, with a wedge base. The other two bulbs will be the main/dip beams.

No problem. They are well worth the money, and super bright.

No idea what a decat will do on the IS power wise, on my VW Corrado VR6, it frees up another 10bhp or there abouts so I'm told. I've never bothered to fit the decat myself (although I have one), but not that big a deal to swap around for the MOT. There are ways of fooling the O2 sensor at the cat and keep the EML out, a resistor to fake a good reading is one of them iirc.

I'm at work at the moment so can't do any of my sidelights. It was a video on YouTube that swayed me to stump up the money having tried many cheap LEDs and all of them being on the blue side of white. I'll try and find a link a little later if you can't find it (iirc the video was of a Volvo) Edit: try this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5wUyGIxPks&feature=youtube_gdata_player

If you really meant bank 1 sensor 2 for the 2nd sensor you mentioned, then that is the sensor by the cat.

I bought Philips Vision LED 4000k for my GS430 sidelights. They are not particularly cheap (£20'ish), but they are spot on with the headlamps

Hard to get a full grasp of position, but looks like the expansion tank over flow pipe. If it is topped up too far, it will vent off through that pipe as the coolant heats up and expands.

Depends. For me it was the arb bushes, for ghosty, it was the top mounts. For price and ease, I would do the arb bushes first.

Yeah, I agree that a 5 minute drive isn't enough to fully top up a slowly depleting battery level. A better run each week should sort it.

Sorry, I kinda derailed your thread, it was more noby76 insistance on the 2JZ I was commending.

That's not a feature of ect/pwr, It'll hold on all the way to the max rpm in normal mode too if you plant the pedal into the carpet. What??? you dont beleive me ? put you car in snow mode before moving off drive till about 30mph and turn if off your rear wheels will feel like some weigh has been lifted off it and become more free in motion! drive at the same speed about 30mph trn ECT-PWR on and keep dipping the throttle pedal quckly like up down motion and feel the rear wheels or the whole car respond instantly to your foot. turn it off and try the same thing again by dipping thotle pedal quicky in up down manner and although it will respond wont be as sharp. and yes you right car will still rev to 6300 when ect-pwr is off but wont shift agressively between gears thats both on up shift and kick down... i have tested all this and can feel the difference so no toyota/Lexus will note have a feature if it doesnt really do anything when it comes to performance of a car ever little helps and this helps free the car up a bit! just like trc off button turn it off and see your car will send more torque to the rear wheels (drift) when handled agressivly. so that button really works. just like VVT-i although one does not notice any difference in performance but its working by either advacing or retarding the cams to give the engine the best performance in any rev or speed. so these things do work so it will not give an IS200 0-62 in 6 secs when its on but mid range acceleration will be enjoyed when its on. The reason you feel what you feel when you switch from snow mode to normal is that in snow mode the throttle is desensitised for want of a better word. i.e. with the same movement of the pedal, you don't get the same throttle response. So, if you move along at 30 with snow mode on, and turn it off, the throttle sensitivity resturns to normal and the same position of the pedal has more throttle. Hence the feeling of suddenly unlocking something. The change in throttle feel in ect/pwr mode is because when you blip the thottle in pwr mode, the gearbox is more likely to change a cog or two, and hence feels more responsive.... that's the point of the switch. On none of the Lexus have I noticed a change of "aggression" of the gear change, but you can make it feel more aggressive as when you let off the throttle when you have got to the speed you wanted, the car may have to change more gears in one go to get back to cruising, and vice-versa. I understand vvti - it works all the time, in snow, normal or ect/pwr mode. Not quite sure what you are saying regarding trc. With it on or off, the car will send the same amount of power to the rear wheels, the only difference is with trc off, it wont cut that power when traction is lost. There is nothing magical about the diff, no electricary going on with it. With all that above, in all three cars I've had, the etc/pwr button worked better on some than others IMO. My Mk1 GS300 Sport I always had etc/pwr on. It made the car much more responsive in normal conditions, with it off, I found I had to kick down too hard to get a gear change which normally resulted in much higher acceleration than I actually wanted for the situation. On the Mk2 GS300 Sport, I actually couldn't tell that much difference to be fair, no where near as much as the mk1. In my Mk2 GS430 Sport, I think the other electronic wizardry has dulled the point of the switch down. The 430 apparently (so Ive read) has intelligent shifting whereby if it feels the engine can deliver the power it thinks you want from the throttle position you are in, it won't change gear. Which leads to having to give more thottle than you actually want to get the gear you really want - or use the selector instead which is what I tend to do now. As you rightly say, it won't give a 0-60 of anything better, but it won't improve mid range either on full throttle, it will make the car "seem" more responsive though purely due to the gear it has selected. As I said, on my Mk1, that made the car much more pleasant to drive, but no quicker in any scenario if you wanted to drive fast.

Got to admire your dedication to the 2JZ, but if you follow your principal of sticking to normally aspirated bigger capacity engines as the way forward, then forget the 2JZ and go for the 3UZ

That's not a feature of ect/pwr, It'll hold on all the way to the max rpm in normal mode too if you plant the pedal into the carpet. What???

The ect/pwr button just changes the shift behaviour of the gear box when not full throttling it. On full throttle, it will b the same, holding the gears to the last second. No extra power is given either way

I have done the photos and submitted the stuff as a "How to" guide. As soon as the guide is approved, I'll add a link from here to it mate. The "how to" link http://www.lexusownersclub.co.uk/forum/index.php?app=tutorials&article=174

I can say without a shadow of a doubt, that the M5 driver must've had no legs and was pressing the accelerator with his limp d*ck. The M5 would kill an is300, without any effort at all. My GS430 will leave an is300 for dust in a straight line, and I would still get murdered by an M5.

There are two in the engine bay, one in each manifold (one manifold is on the front 3 cylinders - bank 1, the other on the rear 3 cylinders - bank 2). You want the front one of those two, may be hidden under the heatshields on top of the manifolds (I don't have an IS so can't look). There is also one sensor under the car under the front seat area - which is not the one you are after.

Bank 1 sensor 1 is the front most one of the two in the exhaust manifolds.

If power isn't a consideration, then the year of the 300 may make a difference. I have the Nav in my 430, it is ok, but not something I would take into account as a deal clincher. The 430 is definately a better car, but the 300 if it is new enough (2001 onwards I think) has shift buttons on the steering wheel which Lexus for some reason decided wasn't a feature they would do on the 430. Plus, the ride height and wheels on the Sport do look better than the SE. Unfortunately, the "Sport" pictured doesn't have the TTE front lip, which makes a massive difference to the sporty look IMO, but may not be a consideration.

Yeah, looking at the later parts diagrams, the GS ones are built into the fan cowling too (just looks like the are sitting on the radiator). There must be other differences in that case as the part numbers for mk1 and mk2 radiators are different.