Bubbles

The supra TT leather seats bolt right on to my sc300. My seats didn't come with seat belt buckles so I took the stock seat buckles and they fit. The only problem is that there is a metal tab sticking out of the supra seat so it limits the travel of the buckle. Solution: took a hacksaw and 2 minutes later both seat buckles work great. Both seats are each 20 lbs less than stock sc300 leather w/ power no heat. The driver side has tilt slide and manual butt height adjustment. Passenger is all manual tilt slide. There's no memory features and it is a little difficult to plug the two wires from the supra onto the Lexus seat (there's 11 or so wires on the Lexus seat, but the wire colors are the same for supra and lexus). You have to take a thin flathead screwdriver and try to pry out the two pins from the supra seat so it'll just slide right into the lexus seat. I have some picture posted in the gallery. I think it's page 17? Ebay has a set of block cloth supra seats. I doubt they are power, but sell for $150. I got my 94ish seats with substantial wear for $100 pickup.

Moral of story: Look inside the box and compare to old parts before leaving dealership. It saves to compare prices between dealerships. It sucks leaving your car on jackstands on the street with your driveshaft dangling around. This weekend I brought my car to my uncle's house so he could replace the wheel bearings. My dad and I called up Fremont Toyota and Magnussen's Lexus for the pricing of the wheel bearings. Fremont Toyota quoted ~$170 while Lexus quoted $128! That's a good deal. So my dad went to the dealership while I stayed back guarding my car. My dad bought the wheel bearing, but the Lexus Tech insisted that he buy a new hub. My dad called my uncle and gives ok to buy it since you can always return it. So my dad buys the hub, but it doesn't come with any oil seals. My dad wants to buy the seals, but the parts dept. doesn't have it! Since he doesn't have the oil seals the Lexus shop can't press them in. He ends up going to a local shop and buys the seals for 20 bucks and goes to a machine shop to have them press old wheel bearings out and the new ones in. It ended up that the new wheel bearing is the wrong one! By that time the dealership closed at 5 pm. Now I have to leave my car parked outside overnight on jackstands! Next morning dad and I go to dealership. We return wheel bearings and ask for another one. The bearing was exchanged and since my dad bought the oil seals he asked the Lexus Tech if they could press them in. The tech guy was different than yesterday and said they won't press them in because of liability issues. Well that sucks, it's a Sunday.. all the machine shops are closed. Now I have to leave my car parked out in the sun and another night on jackstands! We then were on our way to my uncle's house and then he called and said to buy another bearing for the other side of the car. My dad goes back to the dealership and they say that they have one last one. The parts ringer hands the box to my dad and it's the same wrong one!

I just need to clarify that "drive by wire" is only on some new cars. That is the gas pedal has no direct link to the engine, but instead uses a computer to sense changes in the pedal and interprets the signal and acts from there. The sc400 is most likely the traditional drive by "metal braided wire", which is extremely similar to the brake lines on a bicycle.

Did you happen to get it here: http://www.intellexual.net/faq.html#10

Well I put the car up on jacks and set the rear wheels in motion. When you slow down one wheel (well... with the wheel off and a rag pushed against the rotor), the other wheel speeds up. Is that an open differential?

I'm not sure what red wing this is, but it looks nice. It's from AB-FLUG. This one is Type-1 Wing. Looks almost like the red one but not quite. I remember this wing runs at around $500 unpainted. Bozz Perfomance carries it, but their website is down or they are out of business. What color is your spoiler? I might want to buy it.

I was thinking of doing that a while ago, so I tested it on one of my old toyota filters. I layed the oil filter down sideways, and I could barely make a dent on the casing.

I went to an independent auto parts store and they had an oil filter wrench. It's not the ordinary universal wrench; it's the equivalent of a socket that fits right on the oil filter and you use a 3/8" ratchet to unbolt it. It worked on my toyota oil filter in 2 seconds. Problem is that the wrench is stuck on the oil filter. I don't know what oil filter you have, but try an bring a replica of the filter to a store and they'll try and test fit it. Good luck.

It might help to drain the coolant a bit, because you'll need to remove two coolant hoses that run into the throttle body. You'll also need a (hex bit / allen wrench) that will fit on those chrome bolts on the top head cover (there's four chrome bolts on the front and and back). Basically to take it off you'll need to remove the air hose from the throttle body, then unscrew 10 or so nuts. There are two or four tricky nuts because the thread is sticking out the of the screw so much that the ratchet tool w/socket I used couldn't get to the nut (because the ratchet extension would fill the gap in the socket and the thread would be jammed against the extension). What I did for that was to first put the socket on the nut, then with the extension connected to ratchet, I pushed the extension into the socket as much as I could (it won't go into the socket all the way), then I turned. It probably would help to loosen some tight nuts with a torque wrench or equivalent.

Strut bars usually work best when fitted with other suspension upgrades. Say if you had stiff springs and you turn hard, then more force would go to chassis and bend it a bit more.

Isn't it possible to buy used worn out struts? I'm sure there's lots of worn out trunk shocks. As for the hood struts, maybe you can go to a salvage yard and swing the hood up and down many times and you'll wear it out.

I read in the book How to Make Your Car Handle by Fred Puhn, and he wrote that the stabilzer bar is the best upgrade you can do. Awesome. BTW, I just learned how to use vernier calipers. Awesome.

That's awesome! Tell us how it feels. I read that the rear is 3-way adjustable. Does that mean it has 3 holes on each end? Do you mind taking a picture or two? What strikes me is that the Supra N/A and TT have the same diameter front stabilizer bar as the sc300/400, but the rear is slightly smaller than the sc's, yet I have heard that the supra's bars are much stiffer yet they are hollow. Let alone that, the sc has some very big stock bars compared to other cars like BMW or VW. BTW where'd you get the bars? Were they $500?

I believe turbo'ing the stock engine is less expensive than the 1jz-gte due to more components availible. The stock engine is basically identical in every way with the supra n/a.

That wheel probably has an engineering standpoint ages before the Romans made arches.

1992 SC300 5-Spd (I'm guessing it's a 92 because I see no passenger airbag) Car & Driver: (Note: C&D states 1st gear is 2.29:1 with a top speed of 50mph @ 6500 rpm. My 92 sc goes only to ~35mph in first gear) Standing start Acceleration (seconds) 0-30: 2.2 -40: 3.7 -50: 5.1 -60: 6.8 !!! -70: 9.4 -80: 11.9 -90: 15.4 -100: 19.3 -110: 24.1 -120: 34.7 -130: 48.0 Street Start (5-60mph): 7.4 sec; 30-50 top gear: 9.4; 50-70 top gear: 10.1 1/4 mile: 15.4 @ 90mph Top speed 139 mph Braking: 70-0: 175 ft. No brake fade. Handling: Lateral acceleration, 300 ft dia. skidpad: 0.85g; minimal understeer. Interior Sound Level: Idle: 40 dBA; Full throttle: 77dBA; 70 mph crusing and coasting: 69dBA Coast-Down Measurements (this is interesting, must look into more) Road horsepower @ 30 mph: 6hp; 50: 15 hp; 70: 33hp. (note: notice how the coast-down is squared the speed of vehicle)

I have no experience rebuilding engines, but do the internals in the auto 2jz-ge bolt onto the stick 2jz (I guess that would be the pistons, rods, block, and head) ?

Figure out how to take the headlights out; there's one bolt and two nuts attached to it. The bolt is on top the of the headlight, and the two nuts are behind the turn signal. To get to the two nuts you'll need to unscrew two or three screws in the wheel well cover to get access to the nuts. The nuts are 10mm, same goes for the bolt. Remember to masking tape the bumper to prevent scratching and it really helps if you take the battery out for the driver's side (you'll lose previous memory functions, and there's a special computer relearn procedure). Disconnect the three connectors to the headlight and if you take your time (up to 30 minutes, I suppose depending how new your bumper is), the headlight will come free. With the headlight free, you will see this hole near in the back of the headlight housing. It's supposed to look like a snake or whatnot. That hole is directly connected to the inner housing, where the fog is most likely at. What you should do is shake the headlight so the fog condensation starts picking up, and then try to tilt the headlight in a way so that the water drips out of it. When you get as much water out, leave the headlight out in the sun or a low humidity area and the water should dry out completely. Once you're done with that, use some clear drying caulk (at your local home improvement store, I believe I used tub caulk) and seal any spot you think there might be a hole (Usually it's the small crevices between the black rubber and the gray plastic; don't seal the snake tube). When you're done test it by spraying some water on it, if it works good and reinstall the headlight. Good luck.

My 92 sc300 had electrical ground problems. When you hit the brakes or the turn signal the headlights would dim and the radio would sometimes turn off. I ended up cleaning the battery terminals and the problem mostly disappeared. When I have the fan on and when I hit the brakes the fan slows down a bit. I think there are some other dirty electrical connections. BTW, my mirrors don't work, but the dimming function on the rearview mirror works.

There's a tread wear rating # on the tire. What number is it? The tire should say Treadwear ### Traction A Temperature A

Jeez. I'd have to say get a large to midsized family sedan, perhaps a camry/avalon/accord. The power is above average and since the car is fairly large you'll learn a lot about managing your space. I'd go with a 4-cylinder camry because you'll appreciate the better cars out there. It's kind of like a racing game- you progressivley move up the car classes, you don't just start driving the mclaren f1. You could also dish out $500 or so dollars in a highway survival course. You should also get a car with automatic with four wheel disc brakes w/abs.

Although the sc and supra are related, the body isn't. I'd have to say the best place to look at wings is here: http://www.intellexual.net/faq.html#06

On the sc300 there's two fuel filters. There's one in the tank, and one that is inline with the fuel lines. The Lexus/Toyota fuel filter costs about $40-50 and quite a bit of gas (the gas that leaks on ones fingers that gets frozen from the evaporating gas). 15k miles seems too short don't you think? I'm thinking 60k or even more.

lol. I'll try to remember that in 8 years.

TT calipers are nice, but you'll only need TT calipers if you're going to race. If you just put tt calipers in the back, then the abs will go crazy. Putting Big calipers doesn't mean you're stopping distance is shorter. The only way it will shorten the stopping distance is if the tire has more traction (wider tires), or the response of the brakes is faster so the pads bite into the rotor faster (by milliseconds). Those milliseconds translate to a couple of feet at 60 mph. What's interesting is that the TT rotor and calipers are lighter than the stock sc brakes. So that could a benfit.