Since the engine block was delivered we have spent a fair bit of time working on it. I don’t think that you can appreciate how much work goes into building one of these up even if you have had a block built by someone else. It is taking all the parts off the old engine Read the rest of this entry »

Today we started on the suspension and braking system replacement on the car. The old Brembos came off without to much trouble and it was pretty simple to remove the existing front shocks at the same time. After removal of the shocks I adjusted the new Tein ones to about the same height as a starting point. They are fully adjustable but I wanted a bass line to start with once the engine had been re fitted. The stoptech big brakes come with pretty good detailed instructions. I have to say that the quality of the parts and the attention to detail on them is really nice. The installation was fairly slow on the first one mainly due to fully reading the instructions and following them step by step. A good Taque wrench is essential for all the work on this car but was especially useful when installing these brakes.

The next step of the job was to underseal the whole car, we are fortunate that it is a very solid car underneath being a Jap import. We really wanted to keep it that way as well. We prepaired all the areas to be treated, primarily this is inside of the doors, the sills, rear wheel arches and the whole underneath of the car. The stuff goes everywhere when you spray it on, and it is a real sod to get off as well. We did the front end first then the rear of the car. Finally we did inside of the rear wheel arches and inside of both the doors. A little tip here is to make sure you put masking tape over the holes in the bottom of the doors, this means it will stop it coming out onto your paintwork.

I ordered most of this stuff back in September but it was all well worth the wait. I can now start putting my engine together now!.

We took the interior out the car today toget it ready to waxoyl in the doors, the rear quarter panels and floor. When we have done this we are also undersealing the whole car as well. This should give it a real good protection from the elements for many years to come. While all the trim is out we are looking at getting it re trimmed by a well respected local company. Basically at the moment we just have a rolling shell. There is an awful lot of work ahead of us at the moment but I do think we are probably around the half way mark.

The car was delivered home today after having the respray done, im very pleased with the colour and finnish. The whole task ahead looks somewhat daunting at the moment though.

The pictures dont really do the car any justice at the moment as they were taken in poor light with a phone. But it gives an indication of just how good the car looks and what a nice paint job it has.

I went into banburys http://www.banburys.net/ today to drop in a bolt for the seatbelt that had broken when it had been removed. To my astonishment the car was in the oven and about to be painted today!. All the door shuts and bumpers have already been done so by Wednesday it should be completed after it has been baked in the oven and polished.  The pearl looks really nice and im really pleased with how bright the actual Lexus white is,  its not to in your face so its a very good match for the car in as much as sometimes “less is more” as a lot of people tend to go to far when customising cars and they end up being really nasty and tacky looking.

Banburys http://www.banburys.net/ have been doing fantastic work on the painting side of things. The car has had a lot of it taken back to bare metal. All the windows have been taken out and the Bumpers, Doors, Bonnett, and Tailgate have also been taken off.  I would give them 11 out of 10 for what they have done so far and I am a very very picky person. I went down to drop some bits off and I managed to have a look at the progress. All the door shuts have been painted and the colour is lovely. The “Arctic pearl white”  is absolutely great, its a very sharp colour used on the new lexus. You can see how sharp it is colour wise when you look at the original cream white that was on the car.    

I had the Plenham and throttle bodies done at GS polishing http://www.gspolishing.co.uk/index.html they cost around £450 to do and took around a month to complete. I sent them up there and he posted them back. The chap was no trouble at all and he turned out to be reliable. As we got the engine apart there Read the rest of this entry »