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!

Not a huge amount of mods so far, but have good plans for the future with further subtle mods. Do very much like the look of the Tesla alloys on the 250, need some spacers and lowering ideally but that’s all to come.

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.

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.

I used this on mine, works a treat. Fairly straight forward to install with a few tools and gentle hands.

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!

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.

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!

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

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!

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.

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.

Thanks for the info dude, very helpful. I think I’ll definitely go down the RockAuto route. Really does look like a good upgrade. I was planning to run some Mtec grooved discs with the yellow stuff pads. I’ve had Mtec’s on my previous Celica’s and couldn’t fault them.

Very nice and well kept looking IS! Recently bought myself an IS250, I think I may follow your route of getting fresh calipers from Rock Auto, by the looks of it all the taxes/duty etc is calculated at the payment stage, did you have to pay anything additional? currently it's looking cheaper from them posted than actually buying second hand tatty calipers on eBay haha.

Just ordered some, cheers for the heads up dude. Once the weather lets up over a weekend I should have a fair bet to keep me busy on the IS.