The Resurrected IS300

Hi everyone, this is my 2005 Lexus IS300 that I rescued from a friends backyard. Its not much of a looker but its a work in progress! I've been drifting for 2 years and regularly attend Lock City Drift in the New England area!

To give some backstory, this car belonged to a friend of mine and was his daily driver in 2019. Prior to his ownership, the car was owned by a local Toyota tech who was very old school and was the second owner. The car was well maintained and had a ton of modifications done to it during its long 8 year ownership. Unfortunately, bad luck seemed to follow the car as it was hit multiple times by unlucky accidents. Still the owner never gave up on the car and brought it back to the body shop every time.

The car in its glory days (peep the TTE front bumper):

The car was then sold to my friend and became his daily driver. Theres even a Youtube video of the car:

The car would suffer another unfortunate fate and crashed into a guardrail, leading my friend to take the car off the road. I always liked IS300s and was very amazed that the car was a factory manual. Unfortunately my friend was not ready to sell the car, so it sat in his backyard through the pandemic. It wasn't until 2022 that he reproached me, finally ready to sell the car that I had completely forgotten about.

The car was in rough shape, but I know it had good bones in it. Some of the notable mods that were still on the car were:

-Figs Engineering PPE Long Tube Headers

-Greddy Revolution RS Catback

-BC 264 Cams

-Titan Motorsports Exhaust Cam Gear

-LMS Intake

-Cusco Upper Control Arms

-Figs Engineering Front Lower Control Arm Bushings

-Figs Engineering Rear Lower Control Arms

-Figs Engineering Toe Links

-Stoptech Stainless Steel Braided Brake Lines

-Walboro 255 Fuel Pump

After doing some repairs to get the car up and running, I took it home in July of 2022. The car definitely fell from grace.

I picked up a set of Work Emotion CR Kais 18 x 8.5 +45 for cheap and threw them on the car.

The car needed a lot of love an maintenance. I ended dropping off the car to my friend's local drift car shop, Function Automotive in Easton, MA. There, the car received a ton of goodies to get it drift ready:

-Stance XR1 Coilovers 16k, 12k spring rate

-Welded Differential

-Spec Stage 2 Clutch (quickest clutch we could get at the time)

-SERIALNINE AK49 Drift Knuckles

-New rotors ands pads all around

-A good wash

And from there, I was off to my first even with the car.

Later I picked up an NRG Prisma seat off a friend for super cheap. It's not the seat I want to run in the long term, but it works and is large enough to let my friends drive the car as well.

Couple events in and I was started to get the hang of things. However, with my added angle, the front wheels started touching the front caster/tension arms.

Once winter came, I decided to take my time with fixing lingering issues:

The headers needed new gaskets and hardware where the front pipe/Y pipe used to be.

New caliper + JZX100 Upper control arms

Ditched the LMS intake because I didn't like worrying about water getting into the intake due to it being so far down near the fog light. So I switched to a HPS intake.

I then decided to switch to 17 inch wheels in the front for more clearance - Advan RGIIs 17x8.5 + 31 with 25mm spacer.

And the 2023 season started!

Eventually I upgraded the steering wheel to a Vertex 10 Star 330 MM wheel, which was a huge improvement for my hands.

At some point, my power steering pump overheated and blew the seals out of the pump, dumping fluid all on the ground. I replaced the pump but also decided to upgrade the OEM cooler with a transmission cooler.

I also finally managed to get the car to be all one color, which greatly improved its appearance. I brought the car to my friend Berg who runs his independent business @dumoulin_factory for some new lower ball joints and an alignment. There was also some SPL toe arms put in there at some point to replace the old Figs one which became frozen from age.

I ended up last second signing up to drive the Staggered Motorsports Festival , which was just super cool seeing my friends time attack around us while we drifted. During that weekend, I put in so many laps, eventually got bumped up to B group and drove Clubhouse course for the first time.

Wrapping up the year, I decided to part ways with the Greddy Revolution RS. Although it had the classic cannon look, I wasn't happy with the high pitch tin-y ness off it paired with the headers. I sold the exhaust and used the funds to pick up a Revel Medallion Touring S Catback for a more subtle look and hoping the car would sound more pleasant with a 2.5" exhaust.

I wasn't as productive this winter as I was last year, but still worked on a few things. I picked up a spare rear subframe that I will strip down, powder coat, and refresh all the bushings + arms. I also got a spare dash board that I refinished and will replace my existing sticky dash with.

The 2024 season is almost underway, and I'll update this as things get added. Thanks for reading!