A few new mods to the 98 Sc4 PIX!!
07-16-06, 09:55 PM
#16
Lexus Test Driver
Thread Starter
Originally Posted by UpInTheLex
The I see two main differences between the two bars, the carbing and the one jibbby uses.
1. The carbing bar has no spherical ball mounts like the other bar in comparison.
No piviot points= less flex.
2. The peices that mount to the strut towers on Jibbby's bar appear to be mild steel, at best wrought 6061 aluminum stock but they are not boxed together, they are long, and flexable.
That carbing bar is solid as a tank.
Is this the same bar which carbing offers for the MKIV supra?
I'm really curious to hear if you find any improvements from bracing the master cylinder. Is the stopper currently too short to reach the master cylinder or is too long?
Great Stuff
1. The carbing bar has no spherical ball mounts like the other bar in comparison.
No piviot points= less flex.
2. The peices that mount to the strut towers on Jibbby's bar appear to be mild steel, at best wrought 6061 aluminum stock but they are not boxed together, they are long, and flexable.
That carbing bar is solid as a tank.
Is this the same bar which carbing offers for the MKIV supra?
I'm really curious to hear if you find any improvements from bracing the master cylinder. Is the stopper currently too short to reach the master cylinder or is too long?
Great Stuff
Hey, thanx for the post.
1. Yea it's teh same bar as the mk4. They dont have the bar for the sc's specifically, but they fit.
2. the master cylinder is too long. so i need to shave some stuff down. Should be fun to fab
07-16-06, 10:16 PM
#17
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My tower bar is steel at the holding brackets, and the aircraft aluminum cross member when torqued down is very solid and not flexable...It is not the best tower bar, but it works I guess... Still like your beefy one better....
May I offer a suggestion to all the sc400 owners? My advice when modifing your car is to do the torque converter upgrade first if you can afford it.......It makes the world of difference for the cars true lowend performance and I promise you that mod will bring an instant smile to your face.........The Precision Dragon Torque Converter that I installed a year ago really gets the car moving from a dead stop....0-30moh times are dramatically increased....Best mod I did besides the NOS I kid you not....Gets the tire or tires spinning from a dead start...
In my opinion the stock torque converter stall rate on all the stock auto Lexus's is a crime...They designed these stock torque converters for old people whom don't want to get scared if they accidently hammer the gas from a stop. I guess the Lexus designers felt there might be multiple lawsuits from old people having heart attacks or something from too much excelleration at lowend RPM's...
May I offer a suggestion to all the sc400 owners? My advice when modifing your car is to do the torque converter upgrade first if you can afford it.......It makes the world of difference for the cars true lowend performance and I promise you that mod will bring an instant smile to your face.........The Precision Dragon Torque Converter that I installed a year ago really gets the car moving from a dead stop....0-30moh times are dramatically increased....Best mod I did besides the NOS I kid you not....Gets the tire or tires spinning from a dead start...
In my opinion the stock torque converter stall rate on all the stock auto Lexus's is a crime...They designed these stock torque converters for old people whom don't want to get scared if they accidently hammer the gas from a stop. I guess the Lexus designers felt there might be multiple lawsuits from old people having heart attacks or something from too much excelleration at lowend RPM's...
Last edited by jibbby; 07-17-06 at 04:48 PM.
07-16-06, 11:28 PM
#18
Lexus Test Driver
Thread Starter
Originally Posted by jibbby
My tower bar is steel at the holding brackers, and the aircraft aluminum cross member when torqued down is very solid and not flexable...It is not the bes tower bar t, but it works I guess... Still like the beefy one better....
May I offer a suggestion to all the sc400 owners? My advise when modifing your car is do the torque converter upgrade first if you can afford it.......It makes the world of difference for the cars true lowend performance and I promise you that mod will bring an instant smile to your face.........The Precision Dragon Torque Converter that I instlled a year ago really gets the car moving from a dead stop....0-30moh times are dramatically increased....Best mod I did besides the NOS I kid you not....Gets the tire or tires spinning from a dead start...
In my opinion the stock torque converter stall rate on all the stock auto Lexus's is a crime...They designed these stock torque converters for old people whom don't want to get scared if they accidently hammer the gas from a stop. I guess the Lexus designers felt there might be multiple lawsuits from old people having heart attacks or something from too much excelleration at lowend RPM's...
May I offer a suggestion to all the sc400 owners? My advise when modifing your car is do the torque converter upgrade first if you can afford it.......It makes the world of difference for the cars true lowend performance and I promise you that mod will bring an instant smile to your face.........The Precision Dragon Torque Converter that I instlled a year ago really gets the car moving from a dead stop....0-30moh times are dramatically increased....Best mod I did besides the NOS I kid you not....Gets the tire or tires spinning from a dead start...
In my opinion the stock torque converter stall rate on all the stock auto Lexus's is a crime...They designed these stock torque converters for old people whom don't want to get scared if they accidently hammer the gas from a stop. I guess the Lexus designers felt there might be multiple lawsuits from old people having heart attacks or something from too much excelleration at lowend RPM's...
LOL. Im considering the torque convertor, but i just dont wanna lose the highway mpg and speed. in terms of gas consumption, wut is ur standpoint and experience.
07-17-06, 09:23 AM
#19
I really want to install the converter that I got from Lextreme. It's 2800 stall... The dragon is probably a better unit but the cost was out of my range. I looked for a used one for a while to no avail.
I wonder if it will still utilize the lockup feature since it's basically a reworked stock converter.
Jibbby that was definately not a dis on your bar in anyway, just wanted you to know that those were my observations not a dis. But from an engineering standpoint, there is probably a reason why you felt little or no gain from the bar. Just grabbing it with your hands isn't enough force to acurately reproduce forces that it will recieve during hard cornering.
I assure you that those brackets that mount to your strut towers do bend slightly. Any give whatsoever is a loss. Think about leverage for a minute. Look how long those bracket peices are without any support inbetween them. They should be boxed together, connected so that they share the force. A bar like that might work for a honda, but this is a big heavy car and it's wider, more room for deflection.
Mild steel like that has a lot of ductility (able to bend and not break). Thats one of it's usefull properties but not what you look for in a tower brace obviously. To improve it you could strip off the paint or coating, and then have the ends heat treated so they become hardened. This improves the properties of the metal so it will be less ducticle but in turn it will make it more brittle.
Aluminum naturally has similar properties to hardened steel, not to the extreme because it's still a soft metal, but it is much more ductile that hardened steel, but as aluminum deflects it increases in strength exponentially (is has to do with the crystaline structure on the molecular level) so it will flex slightly and then become very solid, unlike un-treated mild steel. You can bend untreated mild steel back and forth many times without it breaking. Not so with Aluminum. It is very brittle, it's prone to cracking and easily work hardened. Thats why the plate on the carbing bar is 5mm, much thicker than your steel bar, which is probably about 3mm. it's tig welded, and if it would break anywhere it would mostly likely be on the weld site if not welded properly. These units look to be cnc machined and tig welded, mostly likely by machine since they are mass production peices. Very accurate. I doubt you'd see any problems.
Another much easier way to make your bar better would be to weld plate onto the top of the mounts so that the two long braces on the bracket are tied together. Like racers do when "boxing" in a control arm.
On another note, what can you tell me about your electrical upgrades, like new grounds and the current box you're using? I'd like to do this soon as well.
I wonder if it will still utilize the lockup feature since it's basically a reworked stock converter.
Jibbby that was definately not a dis on your bar in anyway, just wanted you to know that those were my observations not a dis. But from an engineering standpoint, there is probably a reason why you felt little or no gain from the bar. Just grabbing it with your hands isn't enough force to acurately reproduce forces that it will recieve during hard cornering.
I assure you that those brackets that mount to your strut towers do bend slightly. Any give whatsoever is a loss. Think about leverage for a minute. Look how long those bracket peices are without any support inbetween them. They should be boxed together, connected so that they share the force. A bar like that might work for a honda, but this is a big heavy car and it's wider, more room for deflection.
Mild steel like that has a lot of ductility (able to bend and not break). Thats one of it's usefull properties but not what you look for in a tower brace obviously. To improve it you could strip off the paint or coating, and then have the ends heat treated so they become hardened. This improves the properties of the metal so it will be less ducticle but in turn it will make it more brittle.
Aluminum naturally has similar properties to hardened steel, not to the extreme because it's still a soft metal, but it is much more ductile that hardened steel, but as aluminum deflects it increases in strength exponentially (is has to do with the crystaline structure on the molecular level) so it will flex slightly and then become very solid, unlike un-treated mild steel. You can bend untreated mild steel back and forth many times without it breaking. Not so with Aluminum. It is very brittle, it's prone to cracking and easily work hardened. Thats why the plate on the carbing bar is 5mm, much thicker than your steel bar, which is probably about 3mm. it's tig welded, and if it would break anywhere it would mostly likely be on the weld site if not welded properly. These units look to be cnc machined and tig welded, mostly likely by machine since they are mass production peices. Very accurate. I doubt you'd see any problems.
Another much easier way to make your bar better would be to weld plate onto the top of the mounts so that the two long braces on the bracket are tied together. Like racers do when "boxing" in a control arm.
On another note, what can you tell me about your electrical upgrades, like new grounds and the current box you're using? I'd like to do this soon as well.
07-17-06, 11:05 AM
#20
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Upin -- The Lextreme mail in your stock converter to get it recalibrated will work just fine...Congrats, you will be satisfied once installed........
Megadeath - For the record I don't see any decrease in fuel economy so I don't know where you heard that from...Simply not true....You do lose a bit of top end torque but not enough to warrant a fuel economy loss....No big deal, top speed does not change either....The piggy-back ECU I noticed a drop off in fuel economy but not the torque converter...
UPINtheLEx - Yeah your probably right about my tower bar, however my handling is as stiff as I would like it to be anyway with my New Supra LCA arms, Eibachs and Tomiko shocks and springs...The car handles very impressive compared to stock..(night and day).... I think tower bars in the SC don't make a big difference, but then again I am not a tower bar expert..
Electric mods that help make the car run better - Well on the newer models most electrical upgrades are not going to do much because the wiring and connections are relatively new....On the older models like mine (I would say 97 models and older), anyway, over time the ground cables get crispy and electric currents suffer (hp is lost with old ground cables and that is fact)...New battery cables and copper connectors are a good idea for your electric system....I also changed out my spark plug wires to a high performance set.. New plugs, caps and rotors, also installed a hyper voltage regulator which helped steady the batteries electrical current flow. .Also replacing the heavy stock battery to a more effecient and lighter in weight Optima battery can't hurt either....
The combination of all these changes got my electrical system running at an optimal level, no more dimming of headlights at idle and the car became more responsive....Nothing but smoothe electrical flow thoughout the car.....
Megadeath - For the record I don't see any decrease in fuel economy so I don't know where you heard that from...Simply not true....You do lose a bit of top end torque but not enough to warrant a fuel economy loss....No big deal, top speed does not change either....The piggy-back ECU I noticed a drop off in fuel economy but not the torque converter...
UPINtheLEx - Yeah your probably right about my tower bar, however my handling is as stiff as I would like it to be anyway with my New Supra LCA arms, Eibachs and Tomiko shocks and springs...The car handles very impressive compared to stock..(night and day).... I think tower bars in the SC don't make a big difference, but then again I am not a tower bar expert..
Electric mods that help make the car run better - Well on the newer models most electrical upgrades are not going to do much because the wiring and connections are relatively new....On the older models like mine (I would say 97 models and older), anyway, over time the ground cables get crispy and electric currents suffer (hp is lost with old ground cables and that is fact)...New battery cables and copper connectors are a good idea for your electric system....I also changed out my spark plug wires to a high performance set.. New plugs, caps and rotors, also installed a hyper voltage regulator which helped steady the batteries electrical current flow. .Also replacing the heavy stock battery to a more effecient and lighter in weight Optima battery can't hurt either....
The combination of all these changes got my electrical system running at an optimal level, no more dimming of headlights at idle and the car became more responsive....Nothing but smoothe electrical flow thoughout the car.....
Last edited by jibbby; 07-17-06 at 04:53 PM.
07-17-06, 04:23 PM
#22
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Read the thread called "result of mods on SC400" on the lextreme.com forum ( under the sc400 section) and you will really get an education on how to modify your SC4... I listed everything I did with results, pros and cons, etc.....It's a long read but should be educational for most......I also posted that same thread on the Lexus Owners Club forum under the SC400 section just yesterday. That post can be viewed on the front page of that forum and you can't miss it.........
I decided to share top secret CIA Lexus info and save people some haedaches and decision making. It took me two years of reading, learning, etc..too fully figure out all this mod crap and what really makes the car faster. I think I got it right ...Alot of trial and error, especially with the exhaust and electric fan swap........ I give info like what works and what doesn't work, what is the best and what isn't.. pricing, etc...You know all that kind of fun stuff........
I didn't get into engine internal mod details, just external stuff, that internal mod stuff is a whole different beast, like forged pistons and rods, head work, cams, block bore, tranny builds, etc..
I decided to share top secret CIA Lexus info and save people some haedaches and decision making. It took me two years of reading, learning, etc..too fully figure out all this mod crap and what really makes the car faster. I think I got it right ...Alot of trial and error, especially with the exhaust and electric fan swap........ I give info like what works and what doesn't work, what is the best and what isn't.. pricing, etc...You know all that kind of fun stuff........
I didn't get into engine internal mod details, just external stuff, that internal mod stuff is a whole different beast, like forged pistons and rods, head work, cams, block bore, tranny builds, etc..
Last edited by jibbby; 07-18-06 at 12:23 AM.
07-17-06, 09:35 PM
#23
Lexus Test Driver
Thread Starter
Originally Posted by jibbby
Read the thread called "result of mods on SC400" on the lextreme.com forum ( under the sc400 section) and you will really get an education on how to modify your SC4... I listed everything I did with results, pros and cons, etc.....It's a long read but should be educational for most......I also posted that same thread on the Lexus Owners Club forum under the SC400 section just yesterday. That post can be viewed on the front page of that forum and you can't miss it.........
I decided to share top secret CIA Lexus info and save people some haedaches and decision making. It took me two years of reading, learning, etc..too fully figure out all this mod crap and what really makes the car faster. I think I got it right ...Alot of trial and error, especially with the exhaust and electric fan swap........ I give info like what works and what doesn't work, what is the best and what isn't.. pricing, etc...You know all that kind of fun stuff........
I didn't get into engine internal mod details, just external stuff, that internal mod stuff is whole different beast, like forged pistons and rods, head work, cams, block bore, tranny builds, etc..
I decided to share top secret CIA Lexus info and save people some haedaches and decision making. It took me two years of reading, learning, etc..too fully figure out all this mod crap and what really makes the car faster. I think I got it right ...Alot of trial and error, especially with the exhaust and electric fan swap........ I give info like what works and what doesn't work, what is the best and what isn't.. pricing, etc...You know all that kind of fun stuff........
I didn't get into engine internal mod details, just external stuff, that internal mod stuff is whole different beast, like forged pistons and rods, head work, cams, block bore, tranny builds, etc..
TITE, thx for the info.
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