Brennan

Have being doing a lot of stuff recently to try get this ready for beachop.

The doors now open electronically with the small spring loaded knobs next to the window.

And lock using the factory lexus Remote.

Door Rubbers are all on. Window rubbers are all glued up. Bitumen sound deadening in the doors. Is much more of a pleasure to drive. Even with the door cards off.

Reversing Lights added and wired in.

Have moved on to version2 of the boss air struts.

Such a better product. No welding the bush onto the bottom, they come with a threaded boss on the bottom and a range of Threaded mount options.

Also a 1/8 female npt hole for the air supply. Instead of the Hydraulic style male fitting and hose they had before.

Made it to the last southwards Cars and Coffee in Kapiti. Excellent morning out with lots of cool cars to see.

Matts & mine were easily the lowest cars present.

Had forgotten about the 1954 210 inside. Was a nice surprise. 

Have also put a false floor in the trunk. With a 4 channel amp beneath that. On top of the space saver.

Wired into the parcel shelf speakers and ready to wire into the front door speakers this weekend.

Have an infinity Bluetooth Amp adapter to wire in, instead of a headunit. (despite costing more than a decent headunit)

Also next up is to get some gas struts onto the hood. in place where the springs would of been.

As at highway speed the hood likes to lift and float around. And is quite disheartening at 100kmh.

Few things have been happening over the last year.

It now has side windows. So I needed a way to get in. These knobs are pulled up, spring loaded they trigger a switch to open the door. 

Hopefully eventually hooked into the lexus central locking.

A pair of component speakers were fitted to the parcel shelf with a couple of our speaker covers next to the freshly polished high stop light.

I Ordered a aluminium, laser 3d printed mirror spacer from pcbway to replace my PLA printed one.

Polished up really nice. And the print was super accurate and clean.

Had the urge to replace the coils, leads and distributors. So brought the whole lot in NGK from rockauto.

Luckily i did as one distributor crumpled in my hands as I removed it. 

A new dual 2inch exhaust was also fitted. Most of it purchased from STA. So affordable. And sounds more like it should now.

Also purchased some very very nice, but rather pricey kuryakyn Headlight visors.

So much nicer than the cheap generic ones. 

Stage 1 is complete.
She has a Certification, 3 year WOF and a Years Rego.

Time to drive it. Figure out what needs to be changed. and slowly fix/change things over the next few years.

First up will be side windows. and a way to open the doors from the outside.
As well as finishing the gas struts to hold the bonnet open and closed.

Has started the Certification and Compliance process.

So far its needed:

The front bearings replaced.

A hose on the petrol filler overflow/drain, that I forgot.

And the rear seatbelts changed out for retractable belts. (from fixed 3 point belts. Was told these wold be fine a year or two back, but things have changed)

So started cutting up the rear seat to fit some Retractable belts in.

worked well enough, The covers for the belts didn't fit however.

Also cut up and temporarily fitted the factory carpet. made it feel a lot more cosy. 

Have also laser cut a few temporary switch panels for the demister and air suspension.

Front replacement bearings should arrive from rockauto this week. And then it will be back for a recheck.

Been Driving it a bit. Fixing a few things. Ran some new Shielded instrument cable for the air bag sensors. As they were giving quite noisy readings due to interference.

Also picked up some new wheels for the Chevy to sit beneath the moon discs.

While most strive to find the lowest possible offset with the most dish, in a rim.

Not this car. These are +58 15x6 from a JDM Toyota Progress.

Progress happen to use the same brakes as early ls400. So the calipers fit beneath these beautifully snug.

And tuck the tyres in beneath the guards plentiful to allow for that extra angle in the steering while low on the air suspension.

The new strut to lower control arm mount. Incorporating the bump stops, as they didn’t really work inside the airbags.

And on the modified rear lower control arm with incorporated bump stop. And relocated swaybar. #ls400 #celsior

Been Working on Front and rear bumpstops.

Didnt want them/ didnt work inside the airbag. 

So a bit of engineering to get some externaly on the lower control arms.

Here she is after driving outside.

My Dad managed to find another transmission through the hotrod club.

Slightly earlier A341 without the temperature sensor inside. and smaller connector.

So swapped the loom over.

Have all the gears including reverse now.

Made a Rigid PVC panel to go over the b pillar. And fitted the front seatbelts along with the front seats.

Work well.

Fired it up again. Still took a while of turning over.

Then drove it off the hoist and out of the garage and around the driveway.

The Transmission. Despite being opened up by a professional and checked over.
Has no reverse. And neutral drives forward.

So going to try find another new transmission again. 
As that seems to be the common fix to this particular problem.

Front Air bag struts also don't have enough travel and their Air bag is too small. So that will be something else to purchase and rejig, hopefully successfully.

Over the past few months most things have been sorted.

Here is the 3d printed lexus tail light adapters.

The new strut tops with heavy duty bearings. And the new White wall tyres.

Today, it started for the first time. Took quite a while. Lots of turning over. Then a large backfire out the k&n and she was away. And now seems to be idling nicely.

Power steering is noisy and foaming. And hopefully bleeds up ok.

Air conditioning compressor fills the air tank so fast. Easily 10x faster than the viar. 

Seatbelts. Seats. and some more fuel and air line clamps and it should be good for a drive.

Fitted the rest of the moon discs. To hide the 15x6 alloy wheels.
 

Real White wall tyres will be purchased soon, to replace the snow tyres.
 

Wiring is well underway. Just waiting on a few components to finish up the air suspension side.
 

Battery and back up compressor all mounted and working.

New park light lenses on the front too.

Sandblasted, and painted the Chevy factory park light enclosure.

Drilled out the 50s bulb holder and epoxy glued the Lexus bulb holder with plug in.

New Park Light lenses are on there way from America.

Wired in the h4 plug and pilot light into the Narva 7inch buckets, with their new ABS 3d printed adapters.

And just waiting on some pilot light bulbs to fully assemble.

Have also Wired the Davis Craig fans into the Lexus loom. And mounted through the Radiator with m4 allthread.

Been printing some tail light plates to adapt the lexus bulb holders to the 54 chevy tail light.

This would be version 3 or 4. In PETG and handles the heat fine.

Also Made some sheet metal caps to cover up the loom and main 50mm² battery cable.

Will be carpeted over eventually.

Still need to extend it up a bit further beside the rear seat.

Finally found the confidence to attack some of the many wire looms too. This one was stereo, air conditioning, trunk release, cd changer etc etc etc.

This pic is from halfway through, with some stuff already removed.

All done and wrapped up. (more was removed since this photo)

What had been removed.

In the trunk, i made a battery floor and shelf to hold the Viair compressor.

Stainless strap down the front to hold the battery in. That matches the fuel and air tanks.

Realized i never put these photos up on here almost a year ago.

decided to give some aliexpress gauges ago. Visually they look great. Time will tell if they are any good.

Although it seems its not to hard to be better then expensive American branded gauges.

Yet to decide what finish the boss kit and dash insert will end up being. Thinking shot blasted or tumbled. Not likely to be polished.

Also picked up some titanium bolts for the steering wheel. Mostly due to the shape and finish on them.

Heaps of other progress has been happening too since the last update.

Mostly electrical stuff that isn't too fun to photograph.

Air tank is in, with fittings connected and sealed.

Wiring loom is pulled back through too.

Fenders Painted and Fitted Up.

Fitted up a moon disc to the alloy wheel too.

And the Painted peaked bonnet.