Kevin's 93' Ls400 AYEEEE

[KEVIN.E]

The Ls has been sitting for 2 full years, rotting outside in the weather haha. In that time I sold the coils on it, let the wheels get oxidized, the fender rusted, and the paint peeled back on the few parts that had been spray painted, (grill, fender). I literally never touched it or even started. The car looked pretty dam shitty .I went through a few jobs in that time period, but nothing substantial. Last October I was lucky to get hired at FedEx Express as a driver with pretty good start pay. Eventually I got tired of walking past the Ls in shambles so I started accumulating parts slowly. This was about 6 months ago. And now I'm just trying to piece it back together. The first thing I needed was a new battery, as my redtop went to shit, and coilovers haha, because flares on struts with Tokico springs, with 8th gen Civic stocks is not tight. The timeline of events and what I did is out of order but yall get the idea.


Here's the new BC's with 22/20 Swifts. I was going to go with PBM's but they said it would take 3 months for them to be built and shipped, w/e haha. This is my second set of BC's haven't ridden anything else, but I do enjoy them. Was worried the 22/20 would be too stiff but I'm thinking I should have gotten 28/26. But the swifts in this spring rate are a huge improvement over my last set of BC's that were 12/10 I believe.



I also copped the Daizen poly bushing set for UCA and LCA, also the sway bushings. Very noticeable difference, I haven't installed the LCA bushings yet though


Daizen bushings vs worn out OEM









UCA's that I had previously replace with the Daizen bushings



The Daizen bushings are so much beefier



Couldn't wait and decided to put the rear coils on in the middle of the night



then finish the fronts







peep the gaping hole for UCA clearance haha



Accidentally went too far forward and off the front of the ramp and crushed my skirt. Surprisingly only broke some of the clips but the skirt itself didn't get damaged



I guess this isn't really depicting much, but I replaced the inner and outer tie rods and associated boots. And then got the car aligned

[coconutt]

Last I read up in this thread was when the accident happened... Good to see you've had courage all this time!

I've been debating myself to step up the spring rate on my car but I'm not sure yet. I love how comfortable I'm riding but the trade off is scraping too easily on bumps... Decisions decisions.

Can't wait to see more car pics anyway!

[KEVIN.E]

Last I read up in this thread was when the accident happened... Good to see you've had courage all this time!

I've been debating myself to step up the spring rate on my car but I'm not sure yet. I love how comfortable I'm riding but the trade off is scraping too easily on bumps... Decisions decisions.

Can't wait to see more car pics anyway!

Dude, 22/20 rides like just a lowered car to me, its not jarring or back breaking stiff. I was skeptical at first but I'm wishing I went a little stiffer, but then again this is a huge car haha

[coconutt]

Okay I'm convinced

I'll experiment with mid teen rates.

[KEVIN.E]

Finally got around to fixing the infamous burnt out climate control LCD. 40$ on ebay for the screen and some of the small bulbs. Solder it at home for free and its fixed.



I wanted to change the entire sound system, because I was rolling around with miscellaneous pieced togethor stuff, 5.25 Pioneer components up front a 4" coaxial Infinity Kappas in the rear and junk RCAs and mismatched amps. I've personally always liked Inifinity, but decided to try JL out because the 2 are always compared. With the Silk dome tweeters the JLs really are smoother and I'm happy with my set, wouldn't say that they are better than Infinity's Kappa line or Reference I think its just preference.

JL C2-525 components front and, C2-525s in the rear. The stock speaker pods needed to be enlarged to fit 5.25s as they originally came with 4s. That took awhile. I got this idea to use toilet rings to fill the gap since the new speakers were too tall for the pods, and I didn't want open air space (40$ for 4 what a bop). I also went with gold plated connectors to make me feel better, but I highly doubt it adds any noticeable change in conductivity.







I opted to keep the tweeters in the OEM spot, which is right behind the side mirrors above the door panels. It would have been better soundwise to cut the door panels and pop them in at an angle that would have the tweets pointing right at me but I already knew that, just wanted to keep the original look.



took a dremel to it and reshaped it so that the tweet pod would pop in









Crossover


Wires routed to crossover location


Was a real tight fit had to take a grinder to the backside of the door panel and also enlarge the existing cutout space


I ran all new OFC (oxygen free copper) true 4 gauge wire, and used knuconceptz Krystal RCAs for 2 and 4 chan amps. For amps I went with the Soundstream Reference line that they recently brought back, I remember when I was growing up the old Soundstream amps were the truth. But pretty much everything else Soundstream is bammer haha. So far I'm pleased with the 4 chan, sounds nice and crisp with the Jls, but iuno about the mono.

Reference 1000.1 and Reference 760.4 and my Alumapro 5 farad cap. I was told this is outdated and useless as people nowadays are just an extra battery in the trunk but w/e, its quality and I already have it so I'll run it for now.



Finishing up soldering all of the connections to the head unit, sick of this gay ass shift knob, one of the corniest, if not the wackest, things I have ever purchased and put on my car haha. Since the first gens don't use a regular shaft with thread pitch I decided to rip it out and swap it with a 95 ls gated shifter so that I could get a real knob.





Found a shift console on ebay for 60$ shipped and also ordered a Nardi knob to match the wheel



This is the original base plate, which I ground of all of the brackets and repainted it. You gotta do this in order to mount the new console on top of it


the new shaft that allows for side to side movement, had this welded up to the base plate


I felt like doing a full overhaul I guess and just kept tearing more things apart without finishing the previous, ordered a black leather kit for 1200$, its like 70% leather I think and the rest vinyl. Its pretty nice though, doesn't look or feel cheap, but its a btch to put on. I have never reupholstered or worked with leather before in my life. You need the finger strength of hercules and heat to get anything to work.



still have to run a heatgun over it and smooth out the wrinkles but you get the idea, pretty good I think, especially since I didn't refoam the seat



I have yet to finish the interior or the shift console project haha

[KEVIN.E]

In the last 2 years of my car sitting I occasionally thought about what I wanted to do to set my car apart and I came up with a sort of plan. I wanted something to make my car look more aggressive, but nothing too over the top. People think that I only used flares because I didn't want to, or couldn't, do the bodywork to fit the wheels. Truthfully I saw the flares as something I knew I could take on at home without ever have cut into a car before and I wanted to be the first to do it, and I knew it would look different and dope.

So I had this diffuser made for the rear, nothing crazy or special, I just wanted a simple fin diffuser to mount between my mufflers

[loekaaz]

I felt like doing a full overhaul I guess and just kept tearing more things apart without finishing the previous, ordered a black leather kit for 1200$, its like 70% leather I think and the rest vinyl. Its pretty nice though, doesn't look or feel cheap, but its a btch to put on. I have never reupholstered or worked with leather before in my life. You need the finger strength of hercules and heat to get anything to work.

still have to run a heatgun over it and smooth out the wrinkles but you get the idea, pretty good I think, especially since I didn't refoam the seat


I have yet to finish the interior or the shift console project haha

You can smooth out wrinkles with a heatgun? never heard of that...

[KEVIN.E]

You can smooth out wrinkles with a heatgun? never heard of that...

When the leather is cold it's stiffer and doesn't give much. Heat makes the leather more "malleable" and easier to stretch and pull tight, so to get the wrinkles out I would heat it up and pull it tighter and then use the hog rings to hold it in place. When I did the bench I did it in the sun but didn't use a heat gun and didn't get it as tight as I want to.

[SnazzyQ]

DAmn so nice to see this thing coming back.

[KEVIN.E]

Well I had just bought a brand new 225/35 Federal and it wouldn't hold air at all, so I said fck it and decided to start stripping the wheels down. I bought the dual voltage eastwood powder gun and picked up a portable sand blaster, even got an oven for cheap. But I never set the oven up, or used the gun. Anyways this was the worst fckin job ever, wasted tons of money on aircraft stripper and the metal tub, not to mention glass bead (wasn't sure if other media types were too abrasive and would dmg wheels). Thought it was a decent idea to buy a respirator after 3 hrs of wearing my sweater over my face inhaling glass bead. Goggles weren't enough as the bead is very tiny, it sucks ass having something that feels like a rock in your eye for hrs at a time, very hard to remove even with flushing, not to mention you're itchy af haha. The entire project was such a fail, but I prevailed in the end in about a 2 week period





If you're ever going to sandblast, get a blasting cabinet haha, don't be an idiot.









then I purchased some powder from prismatic powders, and sent my wheels out to be coated. The color is Card Black, it's like a satin black basically





then I put them back togethor, here's a front



then the sealing process, for some reason I can never get it right the first time, 1 wheel always leaks and I have to redo it. **** this sht



figured might as well replace the valve stem seals since I was doing this much, but they were impossible to find locally, valve stems and all. So I ended up going with straight vertical ones, no 90, in the shortest length I could find. No issues with it getting caught on anything but its a btch to air up or check tire pressure.

dry and worn



one more look haha



mounting time



like I said I had to reseal one of the rears again again, and also bought another new federal for the fronts. So now all 4 were holding air properly finally. Just keep throwing money and time at it until it works I guess haha. Rebuilt my wheels WRONG, I didn't pay too much attention I swear the faces were all the same and the barrels, I thought the only difference was in the lips. You can't tell but it was bowing the flare out a bit and the 2 were already touching but fck it I've waited 2 years for this sht haha. No way in hell I was gonna split these again and reseal, mount/dismount etc.



I think the cars a bit lower since the last time I really posted a pic of it, when I moved from 225/40s up front to 225/35s I also remounted the front flare like an inch lower so I got these extra holes in my fenders haha, and the rears are 235/40s. I forgot I also wrapped the trunk in satin black vinyl prior to installing the coils, better than the grey/blue, also here's the diffuser all mounted up. Riveted it to the bottom valence between the mufflers and then drilled through the spare wheel well and used long bolts to fasten it to the car. You can also see the brand new shitty DEPO tails, I **** these things, always bad seals and horrible cuts/fitment. I'm going back to OEM soon.



wanted to drive it FINALLY, but didn't have a shift console. oh well its automatic, just gotta grab the linkage and put it in drive manually haha.



At first I could see the flares bowing and flexing, the glory of fiberglass. And i hoped that overtime they would grind down and eventually stop rubbing. The only downside is that fiberglass gets dusted all over the rear of the car and wheels. I think it pretty much finally stopped by now.



looking pretty rough



finally washed, probably only had this treatment 6 times in the past 2 years haha. Also I got this 91 prelude SI with 4ws for dealsssss about 3 months ago. Mint interior and straight body with minimal dings, mostly rockchips on the front end. Only real downside is that its automatic, but still a blast to drive. Needs h22 and white regamasters haha. Quick side fact, I was really stoked on this prelude because I have had 2 red cars before this both corollas, and both faded to hell and PINK, felt sweet to finally have a real red car. Ironically I **** red, but it has since grown on me



idk why I never got this before, if you gottem you just gotta haha



mandatory oil change



more Depo garbage haha, this is my 3rd or 4th set of these, the ones that were on it had moss and sht growing in them from sitting. Had to put the corner light in to make it a little less haggard



Here's the fx16 GTS doeeee, should have never sold this car but I was jobless and needed brew hahaha. Car was also real fun to drive and had a lot of character, it was all stock except a 5zigen muffler that I bought it with, sht was loud af and also annoying and deafening. Always funny though









I slammed it on cut 8th gen Civic springs on the stock struts, it rode pretty stiff but then when you hit a bump it felt like the car was gonna snap in half haha. I drove this joint into the ground haha. I picked up these 13" eagle alloys for it, they had like a 5 inch lip but were only like 6.5 inches wide haha. Man with these wheels this car turned hella crazy and awkard haha but It was like rails I swear. I was planning on making some sheet metal flares for it and painting it, but then I sold it. Wish I still had it. When I owned it the car was more of a joke than anything, nothing about it was serious, but still a rad hooptie

mariokart





So I was carless for awhile because back then the lexus wasn't tabbed and I didn't want to drive it without the wheels and such. I picked this 90 corolla sedan up last November for 500$ from the original owner, runs like a champ. Still got it but such a downgrade from the Ls and so clownable.



And here's the prelude when I first got it. Clayed, polished and waxed. A much more comfortable daily, but now I got Honda problems haha.

[Paradi$e]

FUCK YES.

Ugh, i love you.

[scweet14]

yes, can't wait!

[keenan]

Looking good man. dont you ever have oil pan problems? i heard the ls's oil pans sit low

[mikey G]

Sick, is it the picture or did the paint on the driver rear lip get fucked up from rubbing the overs?

[KEVIN.E]

Looking good man. dont you ever have oil pan problems? i heard the ls's oil pans sit low

yeah theres not much clearance, the body sits higher than the frame and pan. i'll get some pics eventually, my pan is kinda banged up already.

Sick, is it the picture or did the paint on the driver rear lip get fucked up from rubbing the overs?

the flare rubbed off the pc on both outer edges of the rears yeah, but I don't mind it haha.