Playing catchup here,

During the snow season in Australia I organised a few weekend trips which involved a 4-5 hour drive after work arriving at the accommodation around midnight. The lexus had done one trip already all racked up but the 2nd time wasn’t so lucky. The night before we left I had just put on some 25mm rear spacers with my AVS 6 which were sitting at 17x8 +10 and with a fair bit of camber wound on, It wasn’t the nicest drive down but it did look pretty hot.

About an hour away from the hotel I struck a wombat at about 120km/hr which took out my lower rad support, new radiator :( , and my condenser. Not much I could do at the time so we parked it up and got picked up by one of my other mates and enjoyed the weekend away.

I had most of the front end stripped the night I hit the wombat while waiting for a pickup, it was a little bit chilly in Bredbo at night but I put my snow jacket on and while I was working it didn’t even feel like 2° C. I was lucky that my dad was willing to drive down and drop off my spare radiator and some tools, he even pulled the front out with his ute so when I came back on sunday I just had to fit it all up and top it up so I could drive it home.

Was a good a time as any to do a timing kit on the car with half the front missing. HKS cam gear and timing belt as well as a new waterpump as the fans had pushed into the old one and bent the pump shaft. Replaced the radiator with another Worley ebay special and got a new AC condenser in through dads suppliers.

The lower rad support, bonnet latch support and jack points were all toast. I had a friend recommend a fabricator and I decided to get the lower support tubed with thick stainless tube so I could also safely jack the car up from it.

This is how it looks at the moment, tubed lower with custom mounts for rad and condenser. Added on some mounts for a small power steering cooler but I can go larger later if required. The latch piece had to be replaced and the top support segment had to be straightened as it was 16mm higher on one side according to the fabricator. There just happened to be a wrecked IS200 at the local pick a part which meant I could replace my washer bottle at the same time, as mine had always leaked. I also pinched some bulb holders from the tails so I could make make the foglights into brakelights as well.

Something else I had wanted to do for a long while was modify a set of stock taillights into clear lenses. Followed a few guides for cutting lenses on youtube and asked a few people on where to cut and this was my result.

Cutting the lens I used a dremel tool and a cutting disc. The inner plastic is held in by 3 soft pegs and a screw on the back. There is 1 peg on the corner and two on the flat vertical side.

I just used some RTV to glue the glass lens into the old lens. Originally painted the red ring black but changed my mind and went with silver.

Using some Philips LED bulbs and with the foglight brake mod I’m pretty happy with the end result.