IS300 - Where are they now and Not all W box shifters are the same
The last time you saw this car I had just fitted the kit and was happily touring around at events. That was like 3 or 4 years ago now. The car was mint, the body sorted, and I was super happy with how it drove. I loaded the car up and drove it 8hrs north to Raleigh to do a 2 day event and had one of the best times of my life with a huge group of mates.
Photos by @jayjankulovski
Shortly after this event the car shit a gearbox RIP W58. At this point I think it had done maybe 8 events, 2 of those being weekends up at Raleigh where it was not driven kindly, see footage below
Chase footage from Jackos S14 at Raleigh Raceway
So as all good mechanics do I parked the dog for almost 2 years refusing to pay any more than $1000 for a W series gearbox. Fast forward 18 months later and I had finally found one but it was a W57 (I believe) and direct shifter in unknown condition. Regardless I bought the box confident I would be able to figure out how to swap the rear housings over and get it going. Oh how wrong I was.
W series boxes, Remote vs Direct shifter
As soon as I picked the box up from my mate David I noticed something was wrong with the shifter. There was a remote linkage bolted to the direct housing. Not the end of the world I was swapping the rear housings anyway. I dropped the box and split the cases usings some convienent stands I had lying around.
The internals on the new box were pretty sad, surface rust on a lot and not much oil. Signs of reapplied RTV on the case and none in other spots. I cleaned as much up with some scotchbrite pads and tried to swap the housings over. No dice, I quickly found I had 2 main issues.
The reverse gear shafts are different diameters, which requires the shaft to be swapped from the other box as housing has no bearing, gear was the same
Roller bearing on output shaft slightly larger than on remote housing which requires swapping the bearing race over or replacing the bearing.
Bugger! I begrudginly searched up how much a direct shifter was going to cost (a lot!) and purchased the driftmotion kit for IS300 swaps. A few weeks go by and this beautiful piece of machined metal arrives at my house.
You can see how much shorter the correct position is compared to a remote shifter. They have adjusted the throw to allow for a extra long shifter without punching the dash. I think its the perfect amount of throw as I hate short shifter kits on these cars.
I throw the box back in and everything lines up perfect. Except when i go to do the first test drive the car still sounds cooked. Turns out I also decimated the pinion bearing in my diff. At this point crying I called up and bought another 86 diff and had it fitted by the next weekend. That was in 2024. The car is back to being daily duties but with the cost of tyres and events going up, I effectively retired … except for one little stint driving at Ebisu in japan.
Not the greatest driving but man it was a blast, I can’t recommend the guys and girls at SideX enough, if you just want a hasslefree turn up and drive experience.
This was the last photo I took of the car on my phone, the headlights need fixing, I have a broken rear tailight from a delaminated tyre I still havent fixed, my front bumper has been driven over twice and the paint is cracking all over it but other than that, good daily.