This year will be my fith year in a row attending the supra nationals. Last year it was the 700hp mr2 the year before that I was running 9's in black hardtop supra. This year I'm attemping something new. I plan to be the first with an LSX powered IS300. I've been daily driving this lexus for the last year and honestly its a fun car in 100% stock form. You can drift around turns with ease or beat the local honda turd in a drag race. But when it comes to having ***** it has NONE.

I plan to change that and do it in 16 Calender days. Wish me luck!

Old motor is out.....now I need somewhere to put it.

Engine Fits but needs a GTO oil pan and some cutting

Fits pretty damn good

Found some time this weekend to weld the oil pan. Inside and out


Fabbed up some mounts today. Now I still need to do the trans mount.

The Mr2 looking sad waiting to be picked up.


Coilovers and clutch hydraulics came in .

 

Today I made some brackets for the abs unit I relocated and found a spot to hide teh ecu. I also dove into the wiring a little. It looks bad but it should be easy and just really time consuming. I plan to spend 3-4 days on wiring alone. Good news is it looks like the stock radiator will work and the fans run on their own circuit.

Its a ton of wires on the wrong side of the engine bay. (the stock ecu was here)

Lucky me...I had some fitting left over from the ls1 rx7 that will work. russel makes these 16mm fittings for a camaro.

I plan to make a nice cover to hide all this stuff

Pray for me....headers will be a fun 30+ hours of fab. BTW those are the stock IS mounts

With less than 1 inch to spare


More parts cam in. I have the stainless head flanges now I just need the pipe!


Consider my engine bay tucked. That was a long day of hard work.


I've lived by a Naval Air Force base most of my life so I've always seen jets and other cool aircraft flying over but its been a long time since I've spent 10 hours in the driveway. I took some cool pics of a low flying plane. I could almost walk to the air force base from my house.

 

Another day and some more progress. The beginning of my day was spent tying up loose ends here and there. Then I received a box of parts from Figs engineering so I installed the DBA SupraTT rotors, Figs Big Brake Brackets and some hawk pads.

Ruturn line from the FPR

After loading the lexus on the trailer I hauled it to Protuningperformance.com where I keep my Tig welder and other fab tools. I will be working for ptp after the Texas meet.

275/40/17 Nitto NT05s installed. Sorry for the bad pic....more will come.

Have faith this will be headers soon

The radiator hose was very close to the water pump pulley since it was resting against the coolant reservoir. I dicided to cut the reservoir off of the Fan shroud. I will build a aluminum reservoir in its place. You can also see where I drilled and tapped the water pump for the steam vent.

Rolled the fenders and a beer ended the night.


I've got another treat for ya. My friend "who passed at the first of the year" made this video after the 2008 nationals. This is what I took to houston YouTube - Qb2productions Tx2k8 - Episode 1 "ATSMATT"

I pulled the transmission to inspect the clutc, install a new release beaing and a remote bleeding system.


Cleaned up some of the visible wiring.

Motor is back in with all the wiring installed. I need to send 2-3 wires inside and wirng will be done. The heater lines might suck. Not sure what to do about that yet.

 

I built the transmission mount today but no pics yet.

Mounted the clutch master and fuel pressure regulator today. Gotta love that prolite hose and black fittings.

In case any of you were wondering about hood clearance. Oh and the oil pan is not lower then the front K member.


Heater lines, radiator hoses, GTO dipstick, throttle cable and power steering lines are all done.


I made some real progress today. I finished the fuel pump install and return setup. Main power wiring and engine grounds are finished. I also did a bunch of small stuff here and there but I feel it was a very productive day.

Battery box is installed and solid.

Thanks to Fort worth gear and axle my driveshaft was built with a 24 hour turn around time.

This rear joint is off some Toyota truck. It looks beefy as hell. Plus with 3inch tube this shaft should be Viagra strong.

I installed coilovers on all four corners, sway bars and new ball joints. The old ones had almost a quarter inch of play...eek!


Installed all the fender liners and the front bumper. I also did a quick buff on my headlights, they were getting pretty nasty.

Not much flying around today. This transport helicopter flew over. I used to see these a lot as a kid.

 

Most of my day was spent fabbing the drivers side header. It was really my fist time making headers around a steering shaft. Clearances were verytight. It was a time consuming job but I think they turned out ok. The passenger side should be much easier.

Welds turned out good. I'm a little out of practice.

Just before I started the collector welding.

Seems like the exhaust should be somewhat easy.


I did a quick startup last night.

 

Today I was at the shop for 18 hours straight. I'm dedicated to getting this car to houston and I want it to look professonal at the same time.
During my 18 hour lock in I filled all the fuilds and changed the rear diff fluid out with some Royal Purple 75w 90. Between both headers and the full exhaust I have over 30 hours invested and keep in mind I did it in 3 days.

After filling all the fuilds I built a coolant tank and cut up a mr2 TRD radiator cap for the fill. I also make the aluminum weld on cap fittings for the mr2 .

304 stainless Y-pipe. 2.5 to 3 inch this actually took a really long time.

Little hanger for the muffler. This slips into a stock rubber mount.

Just before I finished the last weld on the exhaust I realized I was breaking tradition. The last four years I've ran an aluminum exhaust on my cars in houston. I couldnt forget my signature move so I made a new rear section out of some intercooler piping I had at the shop.


Not bad for 2:00 in the morning.



A little Jonny Cash at 4:00 A.M.



Here is a quick vid of my mr2 idle



Well today was all about tying up loose ends. Bleed the brake and clutch. I made a ecu/abs cover leaving the ends open for air flow. Made a quick shifter hole filler. I finished wiring up the the obd-2 port, CEL, tach converter and started playing with the scan gauge. I also installed the Figs hood prop kit and I must say the install was a breeze, it took me about 10 minutes. I was watching the scan gauge when the radiator fans kicked on. It looks like lexus has them set to come on at 205 F.

Hopfully I will get my front tires for the other fiske wheels and some piping to make an intake with. I plan to get the car aligned and corner balance tomorrow. Wednesday I plan to take it to the dyno for a couple pulls. My 5 speed brake pedal should be here at noon. Looks like I'll be cutting it close. Hope I dont have any issues.......I guess it will be a test of my build quality. I trust myself enough to where I plan to drive it to houston on thrusday. I trailer my cars every year so this will be a first.

 

So I put the car on the scales last night and did a corner balance. I was suprized by how light it was 3280 with a half tank of gas.

I also made a nice 4 inch intake. Since the MAF is 3.5 inch I welded some 4 inch aluminum to it.....with a welder you can do anything.





The ls1 setup is lighter compared to a 2jz setup.

Today I drove the car about 100 miles. Everything seems to be working perfect. I'm very happy with the car. It pulls hard and handles great. Brakes are way better than stock and the coilovers ride better than stock.


Car made decent power for being stock with only headers, exhaust and intake.


Quick vid. I was tapping the brakes since the dyno brakes were not working very well.


found on supraforums




Here is a vid of the 12.7 run

YouTube - TX2K10 Supra Nationals, Drag race. Vette's, Camaro, and Lexus IS 300 with an LS motor.

Actually it was a really good start check out the slip. I wasnt worried about my R/T mainly because I wanted to be at the correct rpm to keep the tires planted.



The coolant and mpg gauge doesnt work but everything else does. I have a neat little gauge that uses the signal coming from the obd-2 port to display a handful of different things. Scangauge.com



1320 video took some good pics of my car on the dyno.




That is me on the left side.

 

It started to get hot here in Texas so I spent a couple days on the A/C system this week. I'm proud to say I now have some cold A/C and I'm ready to face 105 degree days.

Hoses- This was the easy part. All I did was take the Trans AM compressor side fittings and the IS300 body side ac fittings to the local hydraulic hose shop and had them braze on some hose fittings. Then after a test fit and some measuring I had them crimp the hoses.







Wiring was a tough one. I honestly don't agree with the way I did it but I wasn't left with many choices. The problem lies with the stock is300 A/C button since it only works with the climate control ecu and the engine ECU. Since I couldn't get anything to work with the stock button I was left with the task of finding a button that will work and fit in with the interior. I tried to use the Trac button but it didnt seem to work the way a normal momentary switch does. So I went to the local junk yard and got a button for heated seats. Now it just looks like I have 3 heated seats.

I'm using the heated seat button to switch the relay ground after it passes through the stock IS low/high pressure safety switch. Other then that its pretty simple power to the relay and then power to the compressor from the relay. The bad part about this is the climate control doesn't work so when the car cools off I have to hit the A/C button.

Wow the flash will really make your interior look 100 times more dirty then it really is

 

wow bro, nice... i would love to have an LSx s2000

 

u have been on it...awesome work

 

I'm going to be the 1st tool in this thread to say it (because there always has to be at least 1 in this kind of thread)... putting an American engine in a Japanese car isn't my thing... There I said it, but that is badass man. Minus the Corvette covers, it looks like that was meant to be in that chassis. Super clean job too.

 

niceee work.

 

very nice and like your work.

 

Thanks everyone. I know a lot of people dont agree with the swap. I built turbo Honda back in the day and grew out of that, started building Toyota's went out and rans some 9's then I decided it was time for something tame I can drive everyday with A/C. The dream was born....what better then a easy 400hp N/A getting 24mpg on the highway. Even the stock 3jz got 20-22 mpg. Parts are cheap and easy to find and nothing is more reliable than an N/A.

 

nice work, keep it up

 

Quality work! I'm glad to see its not another lsx-240sx. Bad ***

 

I love it. Nice to see someone put a LS in something other then a Rx7 and 240. Any plans for a turbo? haha

 

Very cool, and awesome to see its not just another LS1 in a rx7 or whatnot like said above.

Quality work and quickly done too... even took time to take lots of pics!!!

 

wow you have some serious skills!

 

awesome im subscribed

 

awesome work!

 

Nice work man...you were bustin *** big time.

 

great project, thanks for sharing

m.

 

nice work man, **** looks good

 

Any plans for making a conversion kit?