99 GS3

iTrader: (14)

The Engine ecu does read the Key and they ARE required to match. The box your talking about under the dash is NOT the immobilizer it is just the RF transponder module that picks up the key and sends the key's ID to the ECU. You MUST either use a non-immobilizer Aristo ECU, OR have the car reprogrammed at the dealer or a Toyota factory certified mobile locksmith if you use an Immobilizer enabled Aristo ECU (unless you happen to get the matching key with the immobilized ecu, then you can move it's fob guts over to your key's blade). Those are the options when moving away from the GE ECU.

ParkersDad

"The computer doesnt read the key, the transponder does. The transponder sends the signal to the ecu saying its ok to start"
-taken directly from Lexus of Raleigh.

99 GS3

iTrader: (14)

You are quoting someone, but that doesn't mean you are understanding how it works. Because you claim that you can just throw a different immobilizer version Engine Ecu in a any GS and start the car. Which is simply just not the case, period.

If you want to get picky about wording, the actual 'reading/pickup' of the keys ID is done by the passive ignition cylinder winding ring , and that is in turn plugged into the transponder. You're fixated on some brief quote from some person from lexus but that is not a explanation of how it works.

ONLY if you have a NON-immobilizer ECU can you throw it in a start it. All the North American JZS160's have immoblizer engine ECU's. Some of the S160 and V161 cars had immobilizers in Japan but a large portion did not, same for the EUR models.

The transponder receives the rf id of the keyfob via the cylinder coil, and sure it the tells the engine ecu ok to start, but only if the immobilized engine ecu has been married to the keys rf id.. Therefore as stated "You MUST either use a non-immobilizer Aristo ECU, OR have the car reprogrammed at the dealer or a Toyota factory certified mobile locksmith if you use an Immobilizer enabled Aristo ECU (unless you happen to get the matching key with the immobilized ecu, then you can move it's fob guts over to your key's blade) ". I have helped quite a few members here work through this EXACT issue of getting an immobilized engine swap to start. And when using an aristo immobilized engine ecu you either get the matched set, or you get it flashed to marry the new/different ecu to the current key..

Not trying to be a **** to you, but you can believe what you want, but it doesn't make it true, and this forum has a terrible history of guys that have not ever done these swaps or had gs's completely disassembled, but they post false information/assumptions all over the place making it confusing to find definitive answers on here. Which too much conflicting information about the 01+ swaps here is likely why you are confused about how to wire an 03.

(P.S. Kyle, sorry for this topic littering up your build thread.)

Proamas

Kyle can you tell me where you got your power steering pump reservoir tank from? The one you have looks like its almost factory, i installed one that if a universal and cant stand the way it looks in the engine bay. Thanks

99 GS3

iTrader: (14)

He bought the full swap that came with an aristo ps reservoir and bracket, along with all the other parts to do an oem bolt-in swap.

Proamas

Did any of you use the Fuse box from your swap that goes with the Aristo or did you keep the fuse box from the GS300 installed?

KyleH

iTrader: (1)

Mike is correct. It all came with the kit. I retained the factory fuse box. No need to swap.

Dan75087

Found this PS reservoir on eBay, I hope it helps. https://www.ebay.com/itm/371853523979

surranman

oh nice, I'm still trying to find out if I can order just the bracket since I grabbed the reservoir out of a Camry when I was at the junkyard getting the throttle cable

KyleH

iTrader: (1)

I know I've been somewhat distant lately, but I am still around. I've been handling a lot of things in my life recently which has taken me away from my tinkering and toiling on the car. The GS is doing great! I've put about 10k on it now and it's running like a champ. Still a lot of fun to drive and I enjoy it daily.

I need to replace the AC compressor. It works most of the time, but I think it's just old and tired. Nothing to do with the swap, it's the original compressor with 200k miles and the trama of the swap was probably too much for it. The only other annoyance (again, nothing to do with the swap) is some slight slack in the steering leading to an intermittent vibration in the steering wheel at speeds over about 65. I've not isolated it yet, but suspect there is minor slack over 200k miles in either the steering shaft, steering rack, or inner tie rods as all other components are new.

tiger4life

iTrader: (16)

I would check the tie rods and make sure you have a road force balance on the wheels. My rack bushings were giving me a thump or clunk when I would turn the wheel back and forth at rest. I had changed the ENTIRE front end and the only thing left was the rack bushings and the intermediate steering shaft. I thought it was that shaft. Man I was relieved when the rack bushings got rid of my final clunk.

KyleH

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for the ideas. I don't suspect the balancing. I feel slack at speed which turns into an oscillation/vibration. So it's rack, shaft, or inner rods. I did the bushings on the rack when I did the motor swap so should be good there. Need to get it up in the air if possible and work with some guys to trouble shoot. Around town I don't even notice. Only on road trips does it even become apparent.

KyleH

iTrader: (1)

HNY, everyone. I figured I'd post a brief update. It seems like it's been a while.

As I posted in this thread sometime back, I've continued to have challenges with alignments on this car. It started from day one when I bought the car it had bald tires - to my surprise the alignment was way out. I had to do some grinding and cutting on the anchor points whenever I was changing the worn suspension components and compromised the ability to get the alignment - rear toe mostly - set correctly. This annoyed me. I decided to bite the bullet and fix it. There are probably a few ways to fix this but my approach was to replace the entire rear cross-member / subframe.

As you can tell from these two pictures, the flanges for the alignment bolts had been damaged due to (mostly, I assume) my prying and cutting around on the bolts/bushings that were seized within them.



Here is what it should look like:


Getting the old unit out took me (and remember, I'm pretty slow) probably about 4-5 hours. The slowest part was probably just my general lack of what all I needed to take apart. As usual, Mike was a good resource for me and gave me some good tips. Here's a quick rundown from what I recall that is necessary to drop the rear subframe with all components (diff, suspension - less strut/spring, hubs) included:

Lift Car - I put the car on jackstands as i'm not lucky enough to have a lift. I put it as high as the jackstands could go and I don't feel any lower would have worked. In addition to needing the rear high, you need the front high enough to get in there and get the shields around the drive shaft off and be able to take the exhaust off as well.

Disconnect driveshaft from yoke of rear diff - Mark the alignment ahead of time - not sure how necessary it would be, but I did it to be safe
Remove Exhaust
Remove rear wheels
Remove rear brake calipers
Remove rear rotors
Disassemble parking brake and remove parking brake cable from hub
Disconnect ABS sensors (be careful - they're probably really in there - just pry easily on them and try to loosen them up)
Disconnect sway bar
Remove lower strut bolt that connects strut to lower suspension arm
Optional - Parking brake cable brackets X2 - these are easy to remove and make it easier to get the parking brake free of the assembly when you remove it.
Optional - Drain rear diff fluid - this isn't required but since it's out it's easy to refill it so if it's close to needing it, might be a good time to do it

I did a lot of other stupid stuff like loosening the rear axles from the hub, etc. - DO NOT DO THIS - it's not necessary, as the axles, hub, and diff are all coming out as a unit and don't need to be disassembled.

After all of these items (and double check for yourself, I may have left something out) are loosened off / removed, it's time to drop the entire rear crossmemeber. I used a floorjack to drop it. I don't recommend that. I used a transmission jack to re-install and this worked much better. With a friend you can probably use a floor jack - just realize this entire piece is coming out and it's quite heavy and unwieldy. Add that to the fact that the clearance to get the thing out from under the car is very tight, and it's a recipe for danger if you are alone and not very diligent. I'm not sure how much this entire thing weighs but I underestimated the weight of the diff and axles... Maybe 250-350 lbs in total. You'll attach your jack under the differential (a little forward on the diff) and put enough pressure on it until you see the weight is off of the car and on your jack. At that point, loosen the 4 bolts that go up from the bottom of the cross-member into the car's body. On the front 2 you may have to remove a little triangular plate for access - I know I had to remove some little plates up there. After loosening all 4 a bit and validating that they're no longer holding weight (should be borne by the jack) then you can remove these, after which time it's all on the jack and your ability to get it down to the ground safely.

Here it is after I got it out of the car:


The next thing to do is basically take every component off of the old cross-member and re-attach it to the new one. I left the axles / diff in place and disconnected the cross-member from it because the cross-member is far lighter and easier to manage than the diff/axles/hub set.

After removing the cross-member from the diff/hub assembly, here's what you're left with:


So at this point just put the new cross-member over the differential and start bolting all the suspension arms and differential back to it.

Here's what they look like sitting side-by-side - old and new. Notice the lower arms I couldn't get off on the old unit:


New arm:


I didn't put the new arms I purchased for it until I got it back in the car. Reason for this is I didn't see any advantage to doing so. Additionally, I ordered struts thinking I would just do them at the same time. This was at the first of October. Needless to say I got tired of waiting (I'm still waiting) and decided to bolt it back together anyway.

A couple of pictures of the re-installation:



Parts ordered for this:
Cross-member/subframe - I picked mine up off ebay for less than 25% of new. I did a lot of research and I ended up getting one that came off an SC430... they share the same cross-member and those were produced for a good while longer than the 2nd Gen GS's were.
Rear sway bar bushings - good time to do this
Rear lower suspension arms - Original arms were seized to the cross-member
Rear lower suspension arm bolts - Lexus or your local bolt specialty shop - found cheapest from Lexus.

Reassembly was pretty straight forward. I had to drill and re-thread the bolts that hold the parking brake cable to the hub assembly - they corroded and snapped when I tried to take the out. If one were more careful and used penetrating oil you might avoid this hassle. I've done a lot of shade-tree work in my day but never tussled with parking brakes. I found these to be challenging but not insurmountable by any means. Getting the springs removed was more difficult than re-assembly - mostly due to my ignorance as to how to they worked. If you have a third hand willing and able, it would make it go quite a bit faster.

First order of business after bolting everything together was a sideways drive to the alignment shop. The car's alignment was TOTALLY shot as I left my house, given I had no frame of reference for re-assembly. Under no circumstances would I recommend driving the car without an alignment being completed. Given I have spent probably $300 or more on alignments since I got this car I went ahead and forked it over for a lifetime alignment from Firestone. I unfortunately am not super excited about the alignment - still pulls slightly to the right - but the good news is the mechanic's are no longer reporting to me that they cannot get it back within spec. At this point it sounds like everything is straight and square enough to get it right. With any luck I'll have some struts showing up in the next 60 days and following that installation I'll head back for another adjustment.

A couple of weeks ago I started seeing an intermittent battery light showing up. It started becoming more constant. I checked with my meter and it was showing close to 12.0 volts while idling which is low and likely why the light was coming on. Luckily I kept the original alternator off the original engine. I went ahead and swapped that on - easiest alternator change ever, I think - and back to good. Kind of nice to fix things with no out of pocket cost. I may look in to rebuilding the other unit as a spare. It's prettier anyway.

So here we are. Just passed 20k on the mileage meter since the engine change. Still running great. I received a toy for Christmas that allows me to plug a bluetooth linked OBD2 plug into the port and connect it with my Torque app on my iphone to read parameters off the ECU. It's a pretty novel gimmick. It has a GPS and speed sensor and can track your 0-60, 1/4 mile, etc. I was curious what the 0-60 would be. So I found a stretch of highway free of traffic and with a decent launch (and slight decline) that included building boost before stepping off the brake I was able to knock off a 5.1 trek to 60. Not bad for this old gal.

Cheers!

ELLeon

ooooh ok, this is nice

KyleH

iTrader: (1)

Can't believe 10 months have already passed since the last update. Not much to report. The wife picked up a new plug in hybrid that we carpool to work in. So since about May the Lexus has been spending most days in the garage. Kind of makes driving it more enjoyable in a way.

In my earlier post I mentioned that even after alignment I was getting a pull. I finally picked up two new front tires (previously had tires from rear that were buggered from poor alignment) and for the first time in the 3-year history of my ownership the car not only tracks straight, but also has zero vibration at highway speed. Feels like a new car. It's a wonderful feeling.

Oh, and now on month 12 waiting for Bilsteins...