KING OF FITMENT

These will be in later this week, I think.

I just got the car back from the body shop a couple of days ago. A few months ago, another motorist tapped my rear bumper in his Mitsu Eclipse and left a hole — I finally had the time to get it fixed last week. It feels good to be riding in the Lexus again. :D

Ian (Studio), BiggVinh, Sean (both of goodfeeling), Young, and I hung out Friday night. Here are some photos from the mayhem that ensued:

Too awesome. Young and Ian helped me put in a Data Systems nav unlock on my car, so we had to tear our the stock head unit, which is scary on such an expensive car. I’m glad to say that I have no mishaps to report! :P

LULZ

I’ve decided: I’m getting the G-Answer Type-2 aerokit for this car. The cool thing is, it’s a front and rear half bumper, but uses the stock sideskirts, saving me some headache when it comes to shipping the damn thing halfway across the world.

The required photos:

I think I’m going to paint the vent mesh flat black, instead of a super flashy color like what their demo car is running. My friend Kyle also mentioned billet grilles… which would be cool if powdercoated in a color that matched my wheels. Yay ideas!

I got a cool mod today — Norman at VIP Tint in Murietta/Temecula helped me put in Llumar Air 80 tint on the Lexus. It was super expensive, but it’ll cut down on interior heat quite a bit. It looks stock, which is awesome and what I was looking for since I’m not a fan of dark tints.

So I’ve been looking into lip/half-bumper style kits for the LS, because I really want to run the JDM optional HID/LED fogs. Also, it’s because the Mode Parfume aero is helllllllllaaaa expensive.

I’ve been looking at the Junction Produce Sports lip kit:

I think it’s pretty slick, and it’s way less ubiquitous than the Wald. Thoughts?

So I just got back from my friend’s Lexus dealership (at 2:17 in the morning, haha). Turns out the harness is being weird on the Data Systems controller, and that’s why the car was throwing AFS/height sensor codes. The ECU wasn’t seeing a reading from the front height sensors. Interestingly enough, a quick multimeter read of the harness showed it was OK, and after we put everything back together, the error disappeared. Must’ve been a loose pin somewhere. Hmm.

We also put in the 10.1 navigation map update for this car. Holy shit. 22 pages of instructions and 1 hour later, we were done, haha. Here’s an in-progress shot:

The printed instructions are sitting on the roof of the car, the nav update special service tool is sitting on the ground by the driver’s side door, and that’s a battery tender hooked up to the trunk-mounted 12v battery.

FML. I can’t believe it took all that for a silly nav update.

Thoughts?

So I’ve been a huge fan of the Mode Parfume 600h (turns out a lot of hits to this site are from people searching for the car on Google). Tanabe/SSR just released some photos of the car on different wheels (I think it’s a Photoshop, though):

This is awesome because the Werfens in the photo look very similar to the Radenergie R5′s I have sitting in the garage (this is just a stock photo, not the actual set I own):

So now I know the wheels are going to look good on the car.

The other day, I also priced some AST coilovers for the car, and they’re not going to be cheap. But look at them, they’re beautiful:

Those are photos of AST’s 5000 series coilover — I think I’m going to spring for a set of those, without remote reservoir, single adjustable, and double tap. I don’t think I’d be able to find someone who could help me tune a double-adjustable shock on a VIP-styled car and it’s probably not worth it for a street cruiser.

Anyway, other than that, I picked up a new smart key card for the car. The previous owner had broken the one that came with the car. I need to get it programmed soon. Hmm. This is what it looks like:

So that’s all the progress on the car so far. Nothing too cool, huh?