Bubbles

The front lower control arm bushings usually get worn out. There are 5 options that I know of. There are replacement bushings with 3 available products ranging from around 100-300 dollars parts only. Labor is probably 6 hours. You can also buy new lower control arms for less than $1000, or you could try Toyota Supra LCA which seem to be the same. Engine motor mounts also seem to wear out. I'm not sure about sagging doors, but you can adjust the bracket that the door locks onto. Just remember that these items aren't mandatory to replace, but it may improve performance, ride quality, and reduce wear on other parts.

Oh yeah, that happened to me too. Such a pain... The reason why it was so hard for me was because I couldn't find a position to fit my torque wrench on it (I use my torque wrench to take off those super tight bolts because the bar is longer than a combination wrench). So what I did was jack the car up higher and I finally got the torque wrench in place and I used my leg to push on the wrench.

To change the brake pads, you'll need to take off the bolt with the rubber boot along the same axis. Just take the top bolt off and loosen the bottom one so you can pivot the brake pads out. This picture is on an sc300 and it's rotor and possibly the caliper is smaller. The bolt right under the " I " is the one. DISREGARD the arrows, that will only lead you to 1.5 pounds of dirt! To fit the thicker brake pads you can get a c-clamp and press the pistons in. I doubt many people have a c-clamp. However, if you do that the brake fluid level in the reservoir will rise, so you'll have to suck some of that out (just don't let any dirt drop in.

Yes the supra eibachs will work on supra shock absorbers. Supposedly anything dropped more than an inch will make the alignment go out of spec, and I'm guessing you can't get it back to spec unless you buy a camber kit. I believe Daizen Sport Tuning makes it.

I hear that the sc400 is a lot better than sc300 in stock form. People just want the sc300 because it's the Supra's cousin and boosting is more possible, and the 300 is about 200 pounds lighter. Although I've never driven the 400, I feel that the sc400 should last a lot longer if driven by the right person. It has gobs of torque so it doesn't have to rev high all the time. Also, the engine should be the same one on the LS400. When Lexus first appeared, they needed a straight quality record to compete against the Europeans.

I bought the used springs and shocks from a person. Occasionally you'll see an ad on www.thepartstrader.com , and there's quite a few ads on www.supraforums.com , but you have to register (it's "free" though). But you have to be careful on this, the shocks were on a supra. So just look for ads in your area and email them or call them up. Actually it feels as if my car is softer now. Yesterday I was on the highway and there's this bump that always gets me, but this time my car seems to glide over it. I remember reading that someone said the spring rates in the rear are softer to cope with the stiffness of the anti-roll bar. I guess that means a rear bar is next.

OMG, my brother's computer is screwed up! His keyboard is jammed or something... Front Pass:..... 10/32 inches or 0.3125 Front Driv:...... 12/32 in ..........0.375 Front Bumper:. 9/32 ...............0.28125 Rear (both): ....19/32 .............0.59375 As you can see, the rears dropped quite a bit- almost 3/5 an inch! However the fronts didn't drop much, which is probably because the rears dropped so much that the center of mass shifted back and less weight is on the front, which would also explain why the fronts and the front bumper gained heigh from the initial drop. So... if you want that raked appearance then these springs aren't for you. It may work if you get front Eibach's and use the Supra rear springs - the springs rates are similar on average. Oh well, I did my objective description. The subjective part is up to you.

Final Update: Well during the week the springs started to settle. After two days the fronts almost dropped half an inch! But to my amazement, the front springs gained a little height from that. There may have been some errors such as +/- gallon of gas, friction in suspension, +/- 3 degrees F, blah blah blah, well here's the readings:

BFI does it all. http://www.planetsoarer.com/#BFI Search the forums for some tips on making it. As for the chip I have no idea.

ECT stands for Electronically Controled Transmission.

OH whoops, I wrote it wrong. Drag actually quadruples as speed doubles. Yeah 200 mph seems a little high. Most Ferrari's won't touch that, not even if it fell off a plane.

Wait a minute, do you leave your left foot right above the brake pedal at all times? Or do you keep it on the dead pedal, and when things get dicey, the foot reaches over? I use right foot. My left foot is too busy. Talking about heel-toe, does anyone heel toe with their left foot? Like left toe on brake and heel on clutch?

I think it's 100 mph. Anything over 100 and your fine doubles, I'm not sure about the point scale. This was as of last year. A good rule of thumb is that the drag doubles as speed doubles, so top speed might not be at the rev limit. At 135 mph you probably had about 15-30 hp left, let alone that peak horsepower is at around 6000 rpm.

For those who are spending countless hours shaving off weight, you can give this a try. I am not sure there will be 3 pounds of dirt on every car; my car was previously owned in Fresno, CA and it seems that there's muddy roads and what not during the rainy season. I found some old pictures that I took and I tried my best: 1. Take off 2 screws and 2 bolts that hold the wheel well cover in the area behind the tire. 2. Now remove 4 or 5 screws that hold the black rubber trim. The dirt's behind this panel :whistles: !!! 3. Now try to get an opening in the cover and start digging! No more pictures, but I found a bunch of leaves and lots of clotted up dirt. It seems that after 11 years dirty water accumulates there and starts building up. You never know, you might find some pennies that the tires picked up on the street!

Doing the fronts only actually did raise the rear end a bit. It makes sense if you think of a car facing downhill, the center of mass shifts forward and the front looks lower than the rear. Well's here my measurements. I follow up in a week or so because the rubber insulator probably still needs some time warping in. Height lowered: Front Passenger: 1/4 inch - .25 Front Driver: 3/8 inch - .375 Front Bumper: 11/32 inch - .34375 Rear Passenger: 15/32 inch - .46875 Rear Driver: 13/32 inch - ..40625 So basically the front's lowered the car a tad over a quarter of an inch, and the rears lowered a little less than half an inch. It doesn't seem much, and it probably isn't, but there's only 3 inches that you could possibly lower until the car is useless (unless you are behind your car and want to stop bullets ricocheting from the ground). If you just do the fronts, the front will be lowered 7/16 inch (14/32 P, 13/32 D), the bumper lowered 21/64 inch, and the rears raise 1/4 inch (3/8 P, 3/32 D) I would personally like this setup because the car will be more aerodynamic and the front wheel gap is larger than the rear stock, so this would even things out more. *Just remember that this may take some time to settle.*

I found an add online for a set of 93 supra tt shocks/springs. I paid $65 and picked it up locally. The front shocks say KYB and the rears say Tokico. That's odd because they both have Toyota and a part number on it. Well so far I've done the fronts only. Before I installed them I measured the height at 5 different points: 1 point slight above the highest point of each wheel well, and the tip of the bumper right above the air intake. After doing the front springs the height dropped (.4375) inches on the Front Passenger wheel well, (0.40625) inches on the Front Driver's, and 1/32 of an inch in the back. All measurements are +/- 1/32inch or .03125. I test drove the car around and the steering response is helluvalot quicker. Ride quality is barely worse if it even is. The front shocks are of the same height, but the front springs are the difference; the supra's are roughly 3/4 an inch lower, but they both have the same number of coils. To the naked eye, coil thickness is the same. Hopefully I'll be done with the rears tommorow. Note: However, my data may be a completely wrong for the back because I wrote 27 13/32 inches for initial height and then after the swap I got 27 25/32 inches, which would then increase the rear height by 12/32 inches, which doesn't make sense, so I must have written 27 13/32 instead of 27 13/16

Does Jiffy Lube have that 15 minute guarantee? If that's true, then the workers have a time limit and they won't drain as much oil as a shop that takes a bit more time. But for a gs300, the engine is a 2jz so it should be similar to my sc300. If you reconsider, you can change the oil without having the car up (you just need long arms, a ratchet, socket of certain diameter, oil pan, oil filter, and oil. The hardest part would to take off the oil filter. If you do that, the first time would take 1.5 hours at most, given that you spend 30 minutes trying to get that oil filter off. After a few times you can change the oil in about 15 minutes after the car cools down from a spirited drive.

I remember that the BFI made the car accelerate faster. I made that in Summer of last year. I still remember that the tachometer would rise quicker. For sure I got at the minimum of 2 hp increase, to a max of around 10 hp. The creator of the idea (Peter Scott @ http://www.planetsoarer.com used somewhat sketchy data, but the calculations got ~13 hp increase on an sc400.

damn...i made that sh*t

OMG I must have been too dizzy to see it was on the top. My bad. As a matter of fact, why don't you put the gallery as a forum section?

I'm getting dizzy from scrolling up and down the forums to look for it. What happended? Did it go away?

The orange eclipse concept reminds me of a slug, in the way that the rear end is big and round. The windows are angled and taper off quite a bit in the rear so it gives you the fat look in the back. From what I remember the eclipse has an all window roof, which seems cool, but I doubt build quality will go up from that. The Volta concept looks very, very nice, but the front end could use a more muscular hood and a different windshield shape. The wheel/tire looks out of proportion to the rest of the body. Like the eclipse and just about every new car coming out, the side windows taper off and make the back end look fat. The profile almost resembles a Ferrari 360 Modena, but the Volta is very rounded off, especially on the side near the rear window. Plus that BIG FAT T logo is annoying. Just like the sc, it looks like it'll suck up 10 horsepower at top speed. Have you seen the new Lexus Concepts? That L is huge! Same goes for the honda accord.

Nice and shiny. Did you happen to weigh the mufflers? The stock ones are 15lbs each.

Sometimes the rotor gets frozen onto the hub. In that case the bolt thread thing should work. My uncle did a shortcut by taking a hammer and wacking the edges of the rotor, it's similar to hitting the cap of a jar to loosen it up.

Oh btw, I had this annoying rear noise in the back, and it happened to be a faulty wheel bearing. Thanks to my uncle the noise is gone now. How much hp do you think a faulty wheel bearing might rob? If you get thinner economy tires (i.e. from a prius), there'll be less rolling resistance and definitely takes up less hp. Aerodynamics also help. A rear spoiler will reduce drag from .32 to .31, so .1/.32 is about a 3% reduction in drag.