Mrs Juular's V8 adventure

[hairnet]

the plum count is huge

friendly spanner gadge woulda been farmed that 

when is mrs j working on stuff again please post pics

 

[Schaefft]

Respect, definitely a job I would gladly pay a specialist for. Great to see this car receiving so much attention. Most people in the UK would just break it (as in sell the engine) and scrap the rest...

[GMcD]

Proper job. This car was lucky to find you! 

[juular]

13 hours ago, Schaefft said:

Respect, definitely a job I would gladly pay a specialist for. Great to see this car receiving so much attention. Most people in the UK would just break it (as in sell the engine) and scrap the rest...

Believe me, the desire was strong at some points, plus the 1UZ is a great fit in a 240..

I don't think I'd escape with my delicates intact if I damaged her Precious.

[juular]

Been working on this between the showers and snow.

The cutoff valves finally arrived, slightly damaged packaging so Mrs J asked for a £50 discount which they agreed to.

They work by closing a butterfly on the main pipe and opening one on a bypass pipe. They're controlled with a radio remote.

The original plan was to splice them into the Y pipe using sleeves.

This turned out to be impossible as the 2 inch sleeves only closed down to 2.25inch when clamped which was useless.

Instead I had to weld them on.

Insulation hacked out of the Y pipe.

Chop.

With some very careful arranging of the pipes under the car using axle stands and jacks, I ran some tacks in situ to hold it all together, then took it off the car and seam welded the joins.

Perfect fit on the car now.

 

The wiring is routed under some heat shielding and into the car via a floor grommet.

Engine bay reassembled and coolant added.

Super safe*

She lives..

The first blip is with the valves shut, the second two are open.

It's LOUD when open.

So.. glad to have this back on the road with a working engine and my gonads intact.

First impression - it's lovely and refined with the valves shut. A tiny bit louder than OEM as the butterfly is not 100 percent gas tight. 

Valves open, it is utterly monstrous. It's like having a muscle car button. It's hard to appreciate how insane it is over video, as it actually rumbles the chassis. In my view it's a bit too loud especially at 60mph, but it does have its place and I reckon it'll be quite fun pottering around with the roar of the V8 drowning out pretty much everything..

And of course, a few more BHP are gained in the details, in this case some lexus centre caps.

 

[GMcD]

That sounds AMAZING. 

Brilliant fabrication work to boot . 

[Missy Charm]

It sounds fabulous, in the sense of having the proper spine tingling V8 exhaust note.  I'd always assumed that an unsilenced one of those would have that fussy, warbling character of European V8 engines, but it doesn't.  Really nice car.  

[Jim Bell]

It sounds like war. 

Amazing work. 

[dome]

This.

Is.

Awesome!

 

[Dick Cheeseburger]

Damn, that sounds phenomenal. I love the way it transforms from polite and respectable into Keith Moon on a wild one at the mere click of a button. 

Valves open and right foot planted everywhere as standard from now, right?!

[Flat4]

That makes such a nice noise! Good work, sir!

[mercedade]

Great noises.

Nice bit of underfloor heating to get you through the winter too.

[juular]

27 minutes ago, mercedade said:

Great noises.

Nice bit of underfloor heating to get you through the winter too.

Looking at maybe getting a couple of stubby 90 degree elbows to deflect the flow down / out.

It's unfortunate the shape of the underside meant the valves had to go inside the Y. If they were on the outside the valve motors would be hanging way down and causing ground clearance problems. 

 

[anonymous user]

1 hour ago, juular said:

Looking at maybe getting a couple of stubby 90 degree elbows to deflect the flow down / out.

It's unfortunate the shape of the underside meant the valves had to go inside the Y. If they were on the outside the valve motors would be hanging way down and causing ground clearance problems. 

 

I had similar ones on my Chrysler 300c Hemi when I bought it. Ideal if I ever wanted to wake the occupants of the cemetery.  I had them removed after catching them a few times, the last time ripped the exhaust joint apart. I also found if I used it too much it set off the management light. 

[GingerNuttz]

There's only one thing that came make it sound even more epic ....

[loserone]

@Dick Longbridge

[juular]

Some more from the V8 with the noise holes activated.

 

[Bren]

I wish my 545 sounded like that. You don't seem to be able to get anything aftermarket for it unlike the 645.

[juular]

This has been parked up for a while, much to our neighbours' delight. The main issue was that we couldn't get to the bottom of an ABS fault, so much time was spent trying to get hold of some actual Lexus software (my DS210 clone didn't want to speak to the ABS module), then running diagnostics, trying to eliminate pretty much everything we could. Then the MOT ran out and the project was abandoned over the winter.

I've not really been involved since then, but Mrs has done an amazing amount of work tracking down and fixing the fault.   A copy of Techstream was acquired and it showed some faults that didn't show up on other OBD2 software.

The output from the ABS sensor was tested through the live data and seemed OK, plus, the fault occurred at a standstill which doesn't make any sense, as it won't be getting any reading from the sensor at that point. So she thought maybe the ECU was at fault. That got pulled apart and checked over.

All the obvious culprits checked out OK. Don't ask me how, this stuff is magic to me.

It was then noticed that connection to the wheel sensor was in fact intermittent, so it was that after all.  She pulled it out, or at least attempted to.

That'll be fucked then.

We'll just get a new one.  Oh.

At this point she didn't have much to lose, so started browsing for similar looking sensors for other Japanese cars. After all, it's just a hall effect sensor, right?

Turns out the one from an IS200 fits, just about. The plug is different and the wiring is backwards, but that is a minor point when the sensor is £20 vs £244.60.

Aaaand.. it worked! No more ABS and VSC warnings.

Boom!

It was at this point, driving it home, that the battery light came on. Because actually spending six months trying to fix something is too easy.

11.8V at the battery whilst running.

Alternator out. Fun fact, alternators are best tested in their native habitat of an unkempt garden.

Using magic, it was decided that both the rectifier and regulator were fried, and thus the alternator would not alternate.

Parts for these are a nightmare to find, and recon places weren't accepting this particular one for rebuild which is never a good sign.

Some part number trickery was done and replacement bits were eventually sourced, from who knows what model of Toyota.

There we go.

Finally, a mortal sin was committed.  She looked under trim.

Well, that's not quite so bad is it?

Now onto the front wings. Oh.

Screw fixing that. 

She found some replacement wings in good condition on eBay for a decent price. They were 300 odd miles away, but that's just an excuse for a road trip.

TLDR; One day we might drive this car again.

 

[cort1977]

Amazing persistence here, well worth it though as these cars are fantastic.

[Tomtation]

As a fellow Lexus Licker I've just read through this whole thread - bloody outstanding team effort that is! I wish I could get my other half interested in this stuff and help with the shite rectification burden...

I've not yet listened to the thunder pipe videos as I'm at work - but I'll look forward to that later when I have some privacy 😈

[Dick Cheeseburger]

I love the sound of this beast. The exhaust flaps are a brilliant idea too - Jonny Smith runs something similar on his Charger I think? I reckon I'd end up with it set to 'ASBO' 99.37% of the time. As for the alternator and sensors, it's part of the character*.  Great to see an update!