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5 minute(s) of a 59 minute read
8-28-2013
Picked up the car tonight from being tuned. He just did driveability on the street and I'll take it back to do a couple WOT dyno pulls.
The car drives well except I have a "noise" that I can't figure out. It sounds like a pop, almost like when a car sits for a while and the brakes stick, but it does it in every gear under light to moderate acceleration. And it doesn't do it just once, it will continue to do it as long as it is under load. I can't pin point it though. The guy that tuned it is thinking clutch/trans but I can't feel anything in the clutch pedal or the shifter when it happens. It sounds to me like it is in the rear end.
Any ideas? I'm running the stock Lexus IRS with a factory LSD diff
It is hard to say for sure but it definitely sounds like rear end to me.
9-1-2013
The car got washed yesterday and the dash/trim pieces were all re-installed. I messed with the cutout a bit but don't have a reliable 12v source yet so that will get finished up this week. I did install my homemade baffle and while it helps I think I am still going to look into a 1/4 frequency side branch resonator to cut out the drone around the 2k area.
My buddy that helped me with the swap came over early this morning and we took the car to Caffeine & Octane. It may not have been the loudest, brightest, cleanest car there but it had a crowd pretty much all morning. I got a couple pictures between waves.
I've got some more little odds and ends to wrap up this week and then we are off to LS Fest next weekend!
9-4-2013
I had an exciting night with the car tonight. When I backed it into the garage after work I saw steam or smoke or something similar from the grill. I popped the hood to find flames under the drivers side header. After grabbing the extinguisher and putting out the fire I discovered that mt return line from the power steering rack to the cooler had been sitting on a header tube. As it turns out power steering fluid is VERY flammable.
I ended up getting a slightly longer piece of hose and wrapping it in a thermal sleeve, then routed it under the header.
This was the first time I've lit a car on fire (smoke from wires don't count), and I don't want to experience that again.
9-11-2013
So I'm still recovering from the lack of sleep after LS Fest this past weekend. My buddy that built the car with me took off after work Friday and drove the car up to Bowling Green for the show (roughly 300 miles). The ride up was fine, spent Saturday morning enjoying the show and talking to people about the car, as well as theirs and the event in general.
Just before lunch the guys from Holley and LSXTV.com stopped me for an interview about the car. They put a mic on me, got some video and photos, spent about 30 minutes getting what they needed for a video that I'm hoping to see posted soon.
Upon returning from lunch I could not get the car in gear. Looking under the car there was fluid leaking form the bell housing. A couple guys helped push the car over to the pits and the guys from SAM Racing were incredibly generous and let us borrow a jack and four stands, plus a few other odd ball tools. It took about 7 hours to drop the transmission out of the car with the motor still in. One of the guys that helped push was kind enough to drive me to the parts store to get a new slave cylinder/throw out bearing, and one of the racers hooked us up with his generator and lights to work past dark. Sometime around midnight we discovered the pilot bearing was done for too.
Sunday morning we made our way back to the part store with the final piece. Four hours later we had the car back together and driving under it's own power. We were able to drive the car all the way back home with no other incidents, even got 23 mpg.
As much as I hate breaking down I could not have hoped for a better place to do so, or more helpful/generous people to offer up rides, tools, parts, light, and moral support. It may have changed our plans for the trip but certainly didn't kill the weekend. My buddy and I are already planning on returning next year and he is talking about his own swap before then too.
Nice car, sorry to see it got wrecked :(
Posted by MPower on 10/12/20 @ 1:55:01 PM