ndk83

From a business pt of view, yea its not. If i had a tuning shop i wouldnt sell a supercharger for the IS crowd either. We are lucky people are still trying wtih headers.

But from a consumer pt of view, one cannot judge and or generalize on whats feasible/cost effective and what isnt. You cant put a price on personal satisfaction. ( u can, but its diff for everyone)

projectdna

iTrader: (56)

wow, really? way to represent the tuner mentality.

lost in all the discussion is the fact that here in the US we currently have ZERO mass production options for forced induction for the 2is.

as that's the case, boosting a 2is is a bragging right, that the boosted 2is crowd was more willing to spend the money to go that route and less concerned with long-term reliability issues.

what the boosted 2is crowd is doing is impressive, but i think you will agree with me when i say that it's an exclusive membership that requires an inordinate amount of an entry fee to get in. i am impressed with those willing to blaze the trail for future 2is owners looking for a forced induction option, but i don't care so much about their willingness to buy their way into the club.

if i have to be impressed with how much money a boosted 2is owner spent to go that route, then i'd rather be the poser impressed with the F.

ndk83

Haha, u know what i meant. lol obviously its not ONLY posers (and i use the word lightly) that like the F.


It has nothing to do with the amount of money spent to get boosted really, I didnt even mean for it to sound like that. Its really about the fact that everyone says it cant be done, or its too expensive to be done and voila, its been done. its more of that in ur face factor that will impress u. I couldnt care les how expensive it was to do it. For example Isuxels LMS blown car is more impressive than the TOM'S one (Which is alot more expensive). same goes for that dude in china who custom built everything. Hats off to those guys. Yes the car is less reliable now, but im sure the owners thought about it, weight the pros and cons and came to the conclusion that eff it, its worth it.

And obviuosly not only posers will appreciate an IS-F, all enthusiasts will, i do, very much. But for some reason i just have a tendancy to value a lesser car tuned to the **** over a better faster stock car that anyone can go out and buy.

I would like to see a race between a boosted IS350 and an F.

Kurtz

iTrader: (1)

Because there's about 5 LMS kits in the world. You might see one a year get sold (for less than MSRP). I don't think I've ever seen a used TOMs kit for sale. Otherwise you're cobbling something together on your own and likely paying a lot of $ for it. Unless you're getting it for $2500 or less you're paying a lot more than I did per hp.

Versus a used tanabe exhaust that you see on sale weekly.

Please do. Given you get ~7 on a dyno from just the exhaust, and ~5 from just the intake I'd love to see you show me dynos where they lose power. (no short ram intakes please, apples to apples only).

I'd appreciate if you didn't lump me in with your generalization of what you assumed. I actually did a fair bit of research before buying my car, and was well aware there was almost nothing worthwhile mod-wise for it. It's one of the reasons I bought the thing actually, given past cars where I continually added (relatively) cheap power (usually at the cost of reliability or making the car obnoxious to drive). My last car, which I actually put a ton of work into versus just slapping on a blower kit, would've embarrassed a blown IS350 or an IS-F at the track... there's a reason I sold it and bought a Lexus instead.

If someone ever does magically come up with a decent, emissions-passing, mod for the car that manages $50/hp or less, I'll be quite interested... so far I've done the only 2 mods available that fit that criteria (and only because I paid half price for em). Until then I'm happy enough to have a dead reliable quiet car that'll still run low 13s on street tires.
financial decisions based on their situation.


Except the IS-F makes a lot more sense, financially. You gain about double the hp, a better transmission, full warranty and reliability, for about the same cost as the TOMs kit. I can't speak to the "tuner mentatlity" as you perceive it... but I can speak as someone who has owned a lot of modded cars (including supras and some of the aforementioned chevy 350 vehicles), all of whom offered fantastically good bang/buck compared to trying to shoehorn forced induction onto a car that's not really meant for it. It's not impossible, it just doesn't make a ton of sense.


There's lots of kit cars that'd make you happy then, since you actually build those.

Most of the forced induction ISes I've seen though have been something they bought, and bolted on to the car they also bought. It's not like people are doing engine transplants or rebuilding their motors with their own two hands for lower compression, custom designing dished pistons, etc... slapping a supercharger kit on a car isn't really a ton of work.

Now, if someone gets some personal satisfaction out of having one of the very few blown 2ISes, even if they paid more than an IS-F would've cost em to get less power and reliability, well, great for them but the math still makes no sense to me. (and isuxel apparently got his kit in trade for some magic beans, so he'd be an exception to the cost equation I guess )

Maxx250awd

I wonder how many recalls it has?

JoshIS408

iTrader: (11)

Kurtz - Where can i get these so called "Magic Beans"?!?!?!

Ahaha j/k i have to agree. :P

Kingdavid

iTrader: (1)

Any chance for a thread resurrection here? Foxmarketing is another FI'd is who I think has one fo the best set-ups. I'm slowly gathering the parts to (pretty much) duplicate their design. Like isuxel, FM's ISC is running around 8 lbs of boost and after speaking with the guy who actually drives the car it seems a boosted IS350 can take stock ISF's and M3's all day long. This guy actually works AT Foxmarketing so he's got access to resources the average guy doesn't. (especially someone who isn't buddies with any tuners like me). but the costs were more realistic than $15,000. Which is pretty much the only reason I keep any hope (that and I have a few friends in japan who are willing to get me an HKS F-con once I have the cash)

Kurtz

iTrader: (1)

Foxmarketing posted here a couple years ago to say he was "designing this awesome SC kit" for SEMA and that it'd be on sale soon after (this was after the turbochargers.com FI kit he was "working on for SEMA" turned out to be a scam)

Then he copied the LMS design but with a bigger intercooler, even reusing the actual LMS mounting bracket, flat out made up fake dyno numbers for the SEMA press release (405 hp) since he admitted he hadn't ACTUALLY dynoed the car, couple weeks AFTER SEMA he posted a bizarre looking 319 hp dyno sheet (though he mentions they're dynoing in 3rd gear for some bizare reason and can't figure out how to avoid the car downshifting, making the overall result kinda useless...), and then never released anything at all for sale despite promises it'd be on the market January 2010.

So you'll excuse me if I'm a little dubious about his claims at this point. A lot dubious really.

You should be a bit dubious about iSuxels boost claims too. See here for example:
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/per...for-2is-3.html

(tying these together, it's a thread about "whatever happened to that fox marketing supercharger" thread, but on page 3 it gets into how much boost iSuxeL is really running... but he never actually addresses the points raised regarding his claim he went from 5 to 7 psi by changing the intercooler, but not anything else (including not changing the SC pulley)

JYOO

This thread proves it....

KURTZ.... shooting down all yalls silly boosted 2IS wet dreams since 199.....well every since ive been back to Club Lexus.

Kingdavid

iTrader: (1)

Proves what exactly?

What I don't get is why they would lie, or even exaggerate? Especially when isuxel is on this forum all the time? I mean it's right there in black and white (thanks for the link kurtz) but I mean what gives? What benefit does it give him or FM to fabricate numbers? I mean it's YOU guys on the forums I look to for advise or bounce ideas off of when it comes to modding. I'm (slowly) putting together a S/C kit for my 350 and when I'm (finally) ready to install I'm going to be barraging this forum with questions about what to do and what to avoid, tips, pitfalls etc. and once it's complete I can't think of anything else I'd rather do than help other guys with their builds with good HONEST and encouraging advice.

As for the FM guy copying and using parts of other kits for his build...I don't really care. I'm pretty much carbon copying HIS build anyway. I WOULD be copying HKS350's build save his part list isn't posted (that I know of) and I don't have the funds to copy it nor the technical skills required to emulate his programming which means I'd have to beg him to post his maps so I could copy them.

TL;DR I gives a F^&% about what/who I copy if the results are good. Emulation is the highest form of flattery after all.

Kingdavid

iTrader: (1)

furthermore
big intercooler=more boost WTF?

This does not compute for me. There are two reasons an S/C is valuable,

1:instant boost (no turbo lag)

2: Mechanical drive= no/minimal parasitic heating..

So how would a larger cooling system make any real difference to power levels?

From what was said over the phone, he achieved higher levelks of boost by using larger gauge plumbing. I didn't understand this because well...it doesn't make sense; the c-2 head unit is capable of pushing out WAY more boost than a 2gr-fse could ever use/handle so pipe diameter shouldn't have any affect really. (barring extreme, out-of-left-field sizes). As Kurtz has made abundantly clear its our A/f that is the issue (which is why the HKS F-con is such a critical piece) so that claim was a little sketch.

Kurtz

iTrader: (1)

As suggested in that other thread, folks who insist they make "more boost" with a basic plumbing change and nothing else might well be measuring it at the wrong location.

In the case of Fox marketing and why they might be... less than entirely forthright... well, the word marketing is right there in the name after all. He's not making $ selling a supercharger kit (and I don't believe he ever intended to despite his claims)... he makes money generating hype and getting people talking about him and his projects and making a splash at car shows. Nobody at SEMA actually ever checks what you put in the press release after all. (And it's not like it's just him... HKS has a boosted IS250 like 4 or 5 years back... the press release claimed 380 hp with both FI and nitrous. Meanwhile in real life the car never ran properly and after a few car shows was destroyed.




In the case of iSuxel, I don't know him personally, but he seems a lot more interested in how his car looks and how modded it's described as, than the details of performance. I've asked him in several threads what kind of A/F ratios he's seeing, Lobuxracer asked where he's measuring his claimed boost from, others have asked for more specifics on dynos, etc... and he generally doesn't provide any answers. That's certainly his choice, be it because he doesn't know the answers, doesn't care about the answers, or just has other things to do...and it's his car, he can focus on whatever aspects of it he likes.

I'm just saying that it might not be the best route to copy if your own goals are more toward realistic performance gains for reasonable costs.


As things stand now, just as they have since 2005 when the 2IS came on the market, with rare exception, the best, most reliable, way to make an IS faster is to trade it in for the next model up.... at least until you get into an IS-F... from there you'll need to travel outside the IS (or Lexus line entirely) to go much faster.

The stuff HKS350 is doing with the F-con, or 06isdriver is planning with the MAPECU3, might help with this a bit... but you'll still be limited by the high compression ratio... so you're still not going to be seeing folks cruising around on 10-15 psi all day like the IS300 guys.... 6 is certainly doable and has been done by many... anything past 7 is really pushing things though unless you're going with water or meth injection or something... and nobody's doing it cheap.

jadu

iTrader: (42)

very sexy i want

Gville350

iTrader: (10)

Basically it boils down to this is really uncharted territory and there is very limited info on doing this...and doing it right. There are ways around the high-compression "problem", but it can surely be done and done well with enough time/money/trial and error/research.

My brother to the north, don't let the lack of positivity get you down. When the time comes to ask questions we'll be here to help as best as possible. Now...get on with it! Lol

leek

iTrader: (4)

Ha! I spit out my drink at this one...