All good things come in pairs - 700hp IS300TT sequential build
Whether it’s peanut butter and jelly, bacon and eggs, or mac and cheese… everyone has a favorite pair or combination. For me, my favorite pairing ventured away from lactose intolerance and nut allergies and towards some inexplicable need to try something new with a sequential two-way twin turbo setup on the 2JZ.
The idea for the update of the turbo setup came over 10 years ago before I had my 92 Toyota Aristo, while I still had my Aristo, and then took form when I purchased my IS300 8 years ago. Although it feels a bit like the story of Benjamin Button by starting a build thread when the car is currently road worthy and running, I figure no time like the present to start capturing the background and even the future of my IS300 project given that there are still a lot of mods to try on the car.
Anyway, I’ll start out with some blather back on the Aristo when I started playing with the sequential system and then get more into the IS and the build details.
The Aristo ended up a really good platform to get used to the 2JZ GTE and the sequential system. I hooked up LEDs to the sequential solenoids, took videos of the basic operation, and found a few areas that differed or expanded upon ‘common knowledge’ of the era. The overall package of somewhat heavy 4 door sedan, with 4 speed automatic and long and painful 1st gear was also really good motivation to improve on torque from 2000rpms+. In completely stock form, the best I could manage was 0-60mph in the 6 second range and 1/4mile around 15 seconds flat. It was what I imagined would happen if you combined all the potential of Ben Johnson and ruined it by putting that might into the body of Rosie Odonnell.
Although I could have cried myself to sleep with the disappointment of the out of the box performance I instead just kept doing tweaks on the car until it finally reached mid 4s on the 0-60 time, and ran a low 13 1/4mile nearing 109-110mph at Castrol on the stock ceramic twins.
It was a good daily car for a few years, but I was doing a lot of highway driving on single lane highways at the time, and wanted a lighter/more nimble/modern platform as well as LHD and 4 doors. Needless to say, in order to keep 2JZ, I was keeping an eye out for IS300.
The first manual car that I ended up finding was a lightly modified but somewhat abused IS300. It was so cheap back then, that most of the similarly aged IS300s for sale now are still more expensive. The car came fresh with Eibach springs, sway bars, factory Torsen LSD, sunroof, leather, a 5 speed manual… but lots to be desired in the form of minor damage on front bumper, rear bumper, rear door, roof, trunk spoiler, terribly painted random interior pieces, etc.. Some of the color scheme was so hideous, I was worried it would break my camera and never properly captured the hideous-ness. But.. on the bright side, in the dark shadows from far away, it didn’t look so bad.
So why start with an abused car as a project car? A valid question and one that I asked myself 8 years ago that led to me buying a second IS300 that was in pristine condition everywhere. The second one came up a little after, and was also a 5 speed manual, but lacked a sunroof, leather, etc... My plan was basically to execute an episode of wife swap with the two cars by trying to take good things from both cars and move forward in a positive way with my new pristine life/ride…
I briefly started on the, but quickly decided that I wanted my ratty old wife… I mean ride. I figured that since I was going to change out pretty much every part anyway (and because I couldn’t live without the sunroof), the rough around the edges version should be the winner. At the time, I still manage to do some baseline 0-60 tests, and engine logs on both vehicles for timing settings, cam, etc. Long story short, the pristine IS300 was easy to sell and with that settled, it was time to come up with some goals and focus on the car I now had.
The goal list started basically on the amount of horsepower, and then it was a matter of figuring out all of the supporting mods. On the IS300, this list unfortunately becomes a lot more involved as the IS300 is no Supra in stock form,. Even goals that involve a reasonable amount of power, you’ll find that your list is going to involve more than a reasonable amount of modifications. The 5 speed W55/W58 is weaker than either the R154 or the V160, the radiator is thinner/smaller, the tires are smaller, the brakes are not 4 pots and are smaller diameter, the differential gearing is higher and the diff is much smaller, fuel system has no return and lines are undersized, the engine bay is smaller, engine control is more complicated with lots of factory defined safeties in conjunction with the electronic throttle control is, etc.. Basically all the good and wonderful things about a boosted car… Toyota managed to not incorporate with the IS.
I should probably stop myself there as its getting long enough for a few post. I’ll get into the supporting mods, and start going through pics of the build next time.
In the meantime, some current pics of the car after a few rounds of wet sand 1500, 3000, 5000, cut, cut, cut, polish, polish and a few other things to ponder
Last edited by whatthe; 08-14-2016 at 01:22 PM.
IS300 - 2JZ-GTE, DIY custom sequential 31psi at 2800rpms, yeehaw.