01 IS300 LS1 Drift Build

I found the source of my coolant leak; it was the upper radiator hose inlet to the water pump. I use spring clamps everywhere and I guess this one was too big. They are hard to find in the right size at the parts store so I ordered some from ebay. For now I got this one at the hardware store but I hate these worm style.

It will do the job for now though. It's a good thing it wasn't the thermostat housing as the replacement seal I ordered is late and won't come till tomorrow. The only other issue I really noticed is a tiny oil leak on the inlet to the motor. The an fittings there is really hard to tighten. I'm hoping it's just that but I may have to drain some oil and pull it off. I need to make a custom wrench to hold one of the fitting. At least the leak is tiny, it leaks about a drop of oil in 7 days. Still I want to fix it. The other drivable thing is the steering wheel isn't straight and I think I need to fix the toe. I borrowed some toe plates today so I can give it a quick alignment. I'm going to get it realigned and corner balanced after the tune. I drove it a mile or two to the grocery store Saturday and went to get gas today.

Yesterday I kinda babied it but today I put it in 3rd and floored it. It's quite a bit more powerful than it was. It's a little squirrelly in 1st and 2nd with the low grip in the rear but 3rd is nice. I’ve made a lot of progress on my screen. I came up with a pretty slick mount for it. One tab bolts to a free hole in the PCB.

The other point replaces the snow LED and locks into that spot.

I was expecting the screen I ordered to come with a ribbon cable unfortunately they just started adding the ribbon cable connector and I got an old revision. I will have to order a new one as the wires I added don’t clear the cluster housing.

I also got and Arduino Mega so I have tons of digital and analog input/outputs. For now I can finalize the mounting design and get the screen working the way I want. I’m going to laser cut a piece of black plastic to cover the 3d printed mount and give it a stock look. I also have space for two RGB LEDS I will add to indicate oil temp and pressure status. I can add a bunch of stuff to the screen too. I can’t wait to play with it more.

I've been driving my car a bit. I have about 140 miles on it and so far no big issues. I made some special tools and tightened up the leaking oil fitting.

After a week no more drips. It still looks a little wet around the edges of the fitting. I will keep monitoring it but I'll call it fixed for now.

I also got my new spring clamp for the upper rad line installed. I got coolant everywhere but it seems to be the right size and I don’t see a leak.

Also I overfilled the cooling system before so it's been spitting up coolant. I lost a bit swapping the clamp so hopefully it will be at the right level now. The clutch had a really long travel and the pedal was way above the brake. I adjusted it a bit so now it is inline with the other pedals. The only downside is it engages all the way at the bottom so you have to give it throttle immediately so not to stall. I still had the old fouled spark plugs in the motor so I swapped them out with brand new ones. They cleaned themselves up and look really good now but it seemed worthwhile.

I now have 2 full sets of used backups I guess. The cables for my O2 sensors were way to long and hard to route. I cut one of them short and repinned it. Unfortunately I only had 3 pins left so I couldn't do the other side. I will need to order more. These have all been pretty minor things. The last real jobs are the screen and accusump cable. I got a hole drilled through the firewall and the cable run. It won't really work where I want it so I will need to think about it for a bit.

I should have some updates for the screen soon. It is going pretty well. I found out last night my cluster isn't lighting up so I need to figure that out. I have no idea why it stopped working, I don't think I messed with that at all.

In terms of driving the car, the torque is amazing. I've never had a very powerful car and this thing is intoxicating. Above ~2500 rpm you can just step on it and goes. It also has no issues lighting up the tires which will be good for drifting. The diff ratio is not good. 1st gear is useless so I don't use it. It runs though the gears pretty quick and cruising at 70 it's around 3000 rpm. I know a while back I saw you could buy 3.5 gears or something. I will need to look into it, I'm not excited to swap the gears but it needs some change. Right now the car is getting about 10 mpg which is really painful in California where gas is almost $5. Hopefully the tune improves that a bit. I kinda forgot about the welded diff but it is what it is, just makes the car a little less enjoyable on the street but great for drifting. The last big thing is the electric power steering pump. It seems ok I haven't really had any issues. It's annoying to have to wait like 30 seconds after starting the car to let it get up to speed. It also has failed to turn on a few times and I had to reset the circuit breaker. That may be the breaker itself though. It provides good assistance but I will really test it when I go drifting. I had a 6 puck clutch before which was great on the track but sucked on the street. The stock clutch I have seems a little too soft. Hopefully when I fully break it in it will grab harder but I’m not sure about clutch kicks right now. All in it's a really fun car and worth the cost. It will be interesting after the tune. I have a few refinements left and a bunch of upgrades. With summer coming I need to figure out AC. This is one of those things that will never be done but it's nice to be able to finally drive it.

Rigel said:

I borrowed some toe plates today so I can give it a quick alignment

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I DIY alignments. Use a 4' level as a straight-edge. This way you can project the wheel-disc plane forward about 30", and also rearwards about 30"...This highly exaggerates the included angle between the wheels. I made some stand-offs that screw to the level, and touch off of the wheel lip. It creates a far better "qualified surface" than touching off of the sidewalls of the tires. I put the level up against the wheel, projecting forward and downward to the floor - then stick a piece of painters tape to the floor - then use the level as a straight-edge to make a line on the tape. Then flip the level so it's pointing rearward and downwards toward the floor... Next, measure across from front-left tape mark to front-right tape mark - and repeat for the rear-left to rear-right tape marks.

Highly advice using a metric-ruled tape measure for this. Trying to visually interpolate 32nds and 64ths of an inch, and then adding them together makes it really easy to make a mistake. Much, much easier to interpolate 1/2 millimeters; and it's about the perfect resolution for the process.

Using the same level, hold it upright against the wheel to get a camber measurement. I have a 12" electronic laser level I hold against the 4' level for this because my 4' level isn't electronic.

Also, the chassis points for the #2 caster arms and the rear subframe bolting points make for excellent chassis datums. I used the lathe to drill/tap the boltheads M4x0.5 (or thereabouts) so I could screw small eyelets into the boltheads. I hang plumb bobs from those eyelets and make tape-marks on the floor. Then I bisect those marks to construct a chassis-centerline. From there, you can do a proper setup of the alignment. Just food for thought.

Rigel said:

Right now the car is getting about 10 mpg

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Why? The IS300 is relatively light and pretty slippery in the air. LS engines return way, way better than 10mpg in far heavier and less aerodynamic vehicles. C5 and C6 corvettes can easily get 25mpg. Easy. The 5th and 6th gen Camaros easily get 20 or better. The IS300 isn't as light and slippery as a C5 or C6, but it's definitely lighter and at least as slippery as a Camaro.

I fixed a few things in preparation for the tune Tuesday. First the dash lights not illuminating was an easy one. I pulled off the trim and apparently I forgot to plug the brightness knob back in. I forgot I pulled this apart over winter to rekey the ignition.

I also found a pretty good oil leak coming from the 3 way valve I made. It seems like the oring wasn't being properly compressed where it seals against the lever.

The screw was still tight so it didn't back out. I added a copper washer behind the valve handle as it was all I had that fit.

That should compress the oring more but I'll keep my eye on it. It passed a pressure test initially so I'm not sure what went wrong. On a smaller note I updated my phone mount. In-between building this car I got a new phone that's a different size. I reprinted a new mount. The past ones were glued down but eventually the heat would get to them and they would break off. This time I bolted it down. I think it makes a really nice location to mount a phone. It also has a phone charger.

The fuel level sensor has also been an open question, it moves around a lot and I don't really trust it. It seems this has to do with how the Lexus calculates fuel level. I got down to a 1/4 tank and it then took 11 gallons of gas so I believe the radium jet pump is working. I did a little searching and it looks like a need to make the P1300 CEL simulator I found on the forums to fix the blinking fuel light and even out the needle. I think for now I won't let it go past a 1/4 tank. I also got the steering wheel pretty well aligned and finally got the accusump valve handle started. I printed some parts to attach it to the valve handle and mount it. I need to make a few changes but the engine at layout seems pretty easy.

Mounting it in the cabin is a little more difficult. I planned to put it on the left near where the coin holders are. The cable I got isn't long enough and just won't work there. I'm thinking about running it under the radio. It requires 5" of travel so I need a lot of space. It seems like it may fit really well there. I'll see what I can come up with. At least for now I don't have to pop the hood every time I start or stop the car to move the valve. Hopefully Tuesday goes well. I'm looking for 300 whp but I'd be happy with anything over 280 whp. I'd also like similar torque. Regardless whatever it's making right now is more than enough for rolling burnouts in 2nd and donuts. I'm sure it will be great on track.

Pnut00 said:

I am guessing you are still running both the fuel level floats on both sides of the tank?
Not that i will pretend to know anything lol, but after reading most other fuel gauge issues it often seems to come back to an issue with one of the float sensors on one side. Pretty sure yours will be different as you mentioned though?

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Yes I still have both floats and the fuel level I got to kinda confirms the jet pump is working. I haven't done much reading on this but here is how I understand it to work. Please correct me if I am wrong. When you start the car it pulls the fuel level from the float sensor. Then it switches over and starts calculated fuel used based on the MAF, injector pluses, ect. This is so that if fuel sloshes in the tank you don't see the needle move as it is no longer using those sensor or is using them as a backup. This seems to make sense to me especially for a stock car. As an engineer this is kinda solving a problem that doesn't really exist or matter but if it works right who cares. And it does work except when you modify the car. As I understand it if you remove the Lexus maf, the tank only works in 1/4 tank increments and is not very accurate. Thinking ahead I put the Lexus maf in the intake and wired it back to the ECU. It may not be reading totally correctly anymore but at least it's there. The part I am missing is the injector feedback. That can be added with some diodes and a transistor. Or at least that's what the internet says. This may only fix the blinking fuel light. It may need some fine tuning to actually get the tank to move correctly but I'd just like to get close. Right now when I start the car it will read say 3/4 tank. After driving for say 20 miles the needle will have quickly moved to say 1/2 tank. If I were to turn off the car and start it again it would read a little under 3/4 tank, denoting the fuel I actually used. I think when the needle is dropping while driving it's doing fuel flow/used calcs and they are obviously incorrect. Maybe I need to replace the MAF with a resistor that tricks it into calculating my average mpg. Or maybe it best to just intercept the float sensors and display it on my screen and skip the fuel gauge. I'm going to spend a little time on it but hopefully not get lost in the weeds. I'd really like the car to function normally but that may not be possible. I don't really want to jump into canbus so I will just try to simulate sensors to trick the ECU.