My personal philosophy that developed over time was an admiration of OE design and quality, and with SoCal being Nazis on the mod crowd, the need to look sleeper became crucial.
The IS300 left N/A life in 2009. The heart of the turbo kit is a used Turbonetics bolt on kit, with the management ditched in favor of a TokenSolutions PNP Emanage Ultimate, and many other details and hardware changed to make the kit run 'better'.
The mod list is too long to go off the top of my head, but the goal is not a show or speed monster, but an IS300 that could be perceived as a car that came factory boosted and has minor BPUs added to it. Reliable, smooth, trackable, street-able and even smog friendly.
-Elements for reliability: EMU tunes via internal injector drivers giving control over fuel over the older methods of MAF scewing. The EMU has shown to have reliable timing retard and overall good performance. A TokenSolutions PWMC Gen II module will be employed via control from the EMU to control water/meth to further increase performance, both allowing for an increase of power beyond the 91 octane limit, but also increasing safety and reliability via preventing knock, ping and reducing carbon build up/hot spots. When/if the GE goes from progressively pushing the boost limit, a GTE swap or GE build via MAR performance will be used to make the block handle far more power than it should ever see. OE clutch has been retained to protect the weak OE W55 tranny, with future clutches to not exceed much over 320rwtq holding ability until an upgraded tranny can be installed. Further augmenting reliability is a Setrab oil cooler that greatly increases oil capacity, cooling and has a thermostat inline to prevent over-cooling- a shroud will be made to further increase the Setrab's efficiency. Mobil One 0-40 may be used for track days, with 0-30 for daily driving, or possibly 0-30 for both. To further augment cooling yet keeping an OE look, a carbon fiber hood along with OE BMW hood vents were used to make a vented hood painted OE onyx to allow for venting without looking obviously aftermarket. There are various other mods all making a small chip at increasing reliability or potential reliability.
-Smooth: I love grip. Have no qualms with the boys and girls that live "one 1/4 mile at a time", or the peeps that need to be hella flush and slammed, but grip driving is where its at for me. But to keep the car street-able and not have the modding snowball out of control into a creaking, non-compliant, teeth chattering, back breaking, road noise blaring ride from hell, compromises have to be made. Thankfully, there is not a proportionate and linear relationship with compromise between NVH and grip performance. Often one can alternate/exchange an aftermarket mod that causes extreme NVH issues with very little consequence to performance. In some cases its the amount one is will to pay and a quieter and smoother system actually performs better too. Thus far in this department, my IS300 has a few grip mods that can surely be further modified or swapped out with other makes that will reduce NVH at either a very minor cost to performance, or actually with a gain.
Firstly the Tein Flex currently on the car does not provide ride comfort of comparable coilovers that offer about the same performance if not more. The advantage of the Flex though, is the EDFC that does allow one to tune out some of this harshness. The Flex are also pillow-ball mount causing a lot of road noise transmission, that on a double wishbone suspension is just not necessary. Intended replacement is either to increase performance and delete the pillowball mounts via KW coilovers offered on TokenSolutions.net- these offer vastly improved valving and independent compression and rebound adjustment, and use the OE top hats keeping noise transmission down. Or a spring shock combo can be employed to make the car's road manners much better, retain the OE top hats and still maintain the ability to adjust shock valving when performance changes are needed.
Another dink to the smoothness goal is the 6 point roll cage from my autox days. I cannot bring myself to remove the cage as it makes such a huge difference to my tired chassis, and will help when engine torque reaches chassis tweaking numbers. The only thing to do here is build another one that is much less intrusive that hugs the interior lines much like Opra Tuning cages and also even uses extra interior panels to further hide it, making it seem almost as if the cage is there from the factory.
Yet another dink from the autox days are OE bushings that due to being overly soft from Lexus, are now breaking and causing creaking, squeaks and looseness to the driving feel. Hoping that a company makes a master upgrade kit for these soon. In the car's favor is retaining the OE ECU and the engine being an inline six, keeping engine smoothness intact. Further augmenting it is a custom prototype engine damper to reduce the engine movement in high load yet does not transfer vibration.
Track-able- With KWs, Figs rear MEGA control arms and the bushings addressed, a BBK such as the affordable Supra caliper upgrade will also be employed as the OE brakes though very good, are not rated for the speed/BTU dissipation needed when running over double the OE power in a harsh track environment. Light weight Wedsport rims are maintaining the factory 17" diameter and allowing for much wider tires up front and rear to further augment grip. To keep up with the V700 tires, a Hotchkis sway kit is used to further reduce roll, along with various bolt on body bracing systems.
Smog Friendly-- Where I stand out the most. Many simply upgrade power and eliminate all smog compliance along the way, for various reasons such as performance of the fact it is unjustly impossible to legalize aftermarket smog solutions. To be as green as possible with the machine making over twice the OE power, a high quality (read here- much more expensive than other brands due to the high content of actual catalyst material) 3" metal cat will be used, in conjunction with a properly working PCV/crank case ventilation system with the OE ECU still retaining a/f control via closed loop operation using the EMU for engine management. Furthermore it is one of very few boosted IS300s that retains BOTH primary o2s in their respective banks, thus retaining the OE ECU tuning functionality and more importantly for reliability, the ECU's diagnostic ability to trouble shoot for faulty injectors or other bank specific issues. Testing will be done to see if the 3" cat even does the job good enough to allow the downstream sensor to be used to keep tabs on it (and if not, another cat may be employed in series), making this turbo IS300 the only IS300 that I know that has retained full OBDII functionality (both primaries, no sim, no reset relay, no tricks).
Pics:
Figs MEGA arms
Cage with safety foam- Sparco buckets to be replaced with Sparco reclinables allowing for adjust-ability, comfort and interior trim matching while also maintaining an upgraded holding ability.
OE battery weight reduced, and moved to rear of car for better balance. Also will allow for relocation of ABS in the future.
EDFC allowing for damper tuning, OE looking rocker switch giving driver control to turn on radiator fans when needed (idling in an Autox line). B&M short shifter w/ TRD handle.
Non-fancy engine bay with Tnetics kit charge piping crinkly coated black. BOV will be relocated and out of site, air box around the air filter, heat shield over turbo among other mods to sleeper the engine bay further.
Carbon Fiber hood with OE style vents, painted to match the car. Looks OE, but is lighter, vents and has Figs hood props.
Setrab mounting and lines to look OE, the cooler itself looks OE as it is OE equipment on many high performance cars.
Modest yet capable intercooler, hidden behind OE bumper and trim, sleeper.
Sway bar, Flex, TRD underbody braces, A51 fstb, TRD solid rstb, Figs MEGA arms and Toms steering arms (very rare) just the beginning.
Sadly Magden no longer sells their car computer unit that would integrate the wideband, boost sensor, EGT and OBDII data into a touch screen I was going to put into the OE motorized nav housing, something that would operate very similar to the Skyline GT-R's setup and can be closed to make the interior look completely OE (short of the cage and seats
). Hopefully soon a replacement will be found or maybe the HKS system will be used.End game is to pass a smog sniffer, make around 400rwhp/tq, be quiet, smooth, grip in the 1G range and comfortable drive long distances much like OE'ish S2000s can drive to a track/road course event A/C blasting, radio blaring and yet keep up with the trailer queens.
