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Hey guys my name is Jimmy and i'm a 21 year old college student from Seattle.
My last car was a 97 Honda Prelude. I had AMR make me some custom coilovers for the car and I had one of the lowest Preludes in the states.
IMG_0869 by JFJBB6, on Flickr
I love Preludes but once I got a look at some VIP styled cars I knew that was what i wanted to do. I knew I wanted a 98-00 LS400 but I planned on keeping the Prelude for at least two more years before I picked up a Lexus.
In September of last year I just randomly decided that I was going to go after it one day. That night I started putting my car back to stock and selling parts. Within 4 days I completely parted out all my stuff and sold the car. In less than 48 hours after posting it for sale I already had a buyer lined up. Here is the car back to stock for the most part. So ugly haha.
About a week and a half later I picked up this '99 LS400 in great condition. 120k miles on the clock, all maintenance was done at Lexus of Bellevue since the day it was bought from there in 1999.
My first purchase for the car was a set of JP curtains and a Garson cupholder.
Then I had to fix those saggy curtains! No one likes saggy curtains.
Next I had to cover up the amber rear corners with some red vinyl
Put on a flush mount spoiler
Now for the fun part. I had ordered bags and they sat in my living room just waiting to be installed for a couple months. Since the weather in Seattle is terrible during the winter I was in no rush. My brother in law and I installed the bags in a weekend. My bag setup:
-UAS bags over stock struts (planned on doing bags over coils next summer, more on that in a bit)
-Accuair E-Level w rocker switch
-4 gallon aluminum tank
-Dual Viair 444c compressors
The install went pretty smooth for the most part. I'm so stoked to finally be on bags! Here are some install pics. I also got some Battle Version/Studio front camber adapters/RCAs. We put them on but they wouldnt work with the stock 16s so we had to take them off.
The next day I went to go get an alignment and get my camber maxed out. I maxed out at -6.3 in the rear. The fronts should be around -8 degrees after I get the battle versions on. This picture is obviously before the negative camber was achieved haha.
Test fitted my JP Vizage front lip that I had sitting in my living room for about 3 months haha
After I did the test fit I decided that side skirts were needed so that night I ordered some Auto Couture rep sides.
A few days later I went back over to my brother in law's place to:
-Cut holes in my shock towers (to get more clearance for my UCAs so I can go lower)
-Shave my rear fenders
-Re-install the camber adapters
-Put on my old 18 inch Lowenhart wheels from my Prelude (the only reason I was going to put these on is so that I could keep the front camber adapters on. Doing this would allow me to test fit some of my friends' wheels so I can figure out the exact specs I wanna go with when I order wheels.)
My plan is to keep the fenders as mint as possible. No pulling or body work. Stock body is the cleanest way to do a VIP car IMO.
The grinder caught an edge and I about chopped my thumb off
Then I test fitted my 18x9.5 +44 Lowenharts (with 51mm of spacers haha) effectively making them 18x9.5 -7. I think 18x9.5 -12 would have sat perfect.
We ran into a problem when we put my front wheels and camber adapters on: The smaller diameter of the wheels compared to stock along with the camber adapters lowering the car 1 inch made the car sit too low. This clearance picture was all the way aired up after that. And since I did UAS on stock struts I wasnt able to adjust where the bags sat to fix this problem.
I guess that means its time to order some coils to do coils over bags. It is sooner than I wanted to but it is probably better this way anyways. The adjustability will definitely be nice and these struts should hold up much better. Here is how the car sat aired down (the entire exhaust was touching the ground in this pic)
And damn that front camber looks dope!
After this I had to take the camber adapters back off and put the stock wheels back on so I could drive home. I have to wait until I get the coilovers installed to do some more test fits now which is a bummer. Im getting impatient. The coilovers came in on Tuesday. I will be going back down to my bros house to install them this sunday I cant wait!
My side skirts also came in and I did a test fit. Before and after.
I took the lip and sides to get painted on monday. I'm going to pick them up and install them tomorrow after class
Then on sunday when I get my bags installed I can finally do the test fit for the fronts and get everything dialed. I know the general specs i'll be going with but im waiting so I can get the offsets exact. Then I can finally order my wheels early next week! I'm still not set on which wheels I'll be ordering. I'm deciding between a few sets right now
Thanks for reading!
My last car was a 97 Honda Prelude. I had AMR make me some custom coilovers for the car and I had one of the lowest Preludes in the states.
IMG_0869 by JFJBB6, on Flickr
I love Preludes but once I got a look at some VIP styled cars I knew that was what i wanted to do. I knew I wanted a 98-00 LS400 but I planned on keeping the Prelude for at least two more years before I picked up a Lexus.
In September of last year I just randomly decided that I was going to go after it one day. That night I started putting my car back to stock and selling parts. Within 4 days I completely parted out all my stuff and sold the car. In less than 48 hours after posting it for sale I already had a buyer lined up. Here is the car back to stock for the most part. So ugly haha.
About a week and a half later I picked up this '99 LS400 in great condition. 120k miles on the clock, all maintenance was done at Lexus of Bellevue since the day it was bought from there in 1999.
My first purchase for the car was a set of JP curtains and a Garson cupholder.
Then I had to fix those saggy curtains! No one likes saggy curtains.
Next I had to cover up the amber rear corners with some red vinyl
Put on a flush mount spoiler
Now for the fun part. I had ordered bags and they sat in my living room just waiting to be installed for a couple months. Since the weather in Seattle is terrible during the winter I was in no rush. My brother in law and I installed the bags in a weekend. My bag setup:
-UAS bags over stock struts (planned on doing bags over coils next summer, more on that in a bit)
-Accuair E-Level w rocker switch
-4 gallon aluminum tank
-Dual Viair 444c compressors
The install went pretty smooth for the most part. I'm so stoked to finally be on bags! Here are some install pics. I also got some Battle Version/Studio front camber adapters/RCAs. We put them on but they wouldnt work with the stock 16s so we had to take them off.
The next day I went to go get an alignment and get my camber maxed out. I maxed out at -6.3 in the rear. The fronts should be around -8 degrees after I get the battle versions on. This picture is obviously before the negative camber was achieved haha.
Test fitted my JP Vizage front lip that I had sitting in my living room for about 3 months haha
After I did the test fit I decided that side skirts were needed so that night I ordered some Auto Couture rep sides.
A few days later I went back over to my brother in law's place to:
-Cut holes in my shock towers (to get more clearance for my UCAs so I can go lower)
-Shave my rear fenders
-Re-install the camber adapters
-Put on my old 18 inch Lowenhart wheels from my Prelude (the only reason I was going to put these on is so that I could keep the front camber adapters on. Doing this would allow me to test fit some of my friends' wheels so I can figure out the exact specs I wanna go with when I order wheels.)
My plan is to keep the fenders as mint as possible. No pulling or body work. Stock body is the cleanest way to do a VIP car IMO.
The grinder caught an edge and I about chopped my thumb off
Then I test fitted my 18x9.5 +44 Lowenharts (with 51mm of spacers haha) effectively making them 18x9.5 -7. I think 18x9.5 -12 would have sat perfect.
We ran into a problem when we put my front wheels and camber adapters on: The smaller diameter of the wheels compared to stock along with the camber adapters lowering the car 1 inch made the car sit too low. This clearance picture was all the way aired up after that. And since I did UAS on stock struts I wasnt able to adjust where the bags sat to fix this problem.
I guess that means its time to order some coils to do coils over bags. It is sooner than I wanted to but it is probably better this way anyways. The adjustability will definitely be nice and these struts should hold up much better. Here is how the car sat aired down (the entire exhaust was touching the ground in this pic)
And damn that front camber looks dope!
After this I had to take the camber adapters back off and put the stock wheels back on so I could drive home. I have to wait until I get the coilovers installed to do some more test fits now which is a bummer. Im getting impatient. The coilovers came in on Tuesday. I will be going back down to my bros house to install them this sunday I cant wait!
My side skirts also came in and I did a test fit. Before and after.
I took the lip and sides to get painted on monday. I'm going to pick them up and install them tomorrow after class
Then on sunday when I get my bags installed I can finally do the test fit for the fronts and get everything dialed. I know the general specs i'll be going with but im waiting so I can get the offsets exact. Then I can finally order my wheels early next week! I'm still not set on which wheels I'll be ordering. I'm deciding between a few sets right now
Thanks for reading!
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