Babs Project Aristo - there's no boost like nostalgia boost

[itsnotagsr]

Boooo. Buying an already modified car means a shorter build thread! :D

[Babalouie]

So, licking my wounds we eagerly awaited the next week's auction cars, and like the previous fortnight, a few suitable cars popped up.

By this time I was a bit gunshy about chasing the unicorn cars; sure it seemed like the clean low mileage Aristos were not in short supply and there were always a few worth bidding on each week (which would be an impossible scenario with a Chaser or Supra). By by now I decided to set my sights a little lower, and decided not to look at the sub 50,000km examples. Which is when this car popped up.


Grade 4.5B, 68,000km and with the black cloth trim.


It's a V300 Vertex Edition, which basically means the top trim level of the twin turbo models. The base model got brown wood, tan trim, no boot spoiler and 16in wheels. The Vertex Edition came with black cloth, charcoal wood trim, rear wing and the option of leather.


The wheels are an unusual one, they're Lock Smice Dukes, which you pronounce as Lock-smiss-dooku. In the 90s a Tokyo-based brand of bodykit manufacturer called Kenstyle was pretty big in the VIP-style van scene, and in the early 2000s they decided to get into the wheel game. Outsourcing to Weds and Rays, they made a few models mainly for big vans and MPVs and by all accounts did reasonably well until the decided to exit the game in 2009 or so. And while I wasn't immediately a fan (...still smarting over how nice last week's forged Advan wheels were) they are growing on me. They're actually a good fitment and go well with the bodykit. Kenstyle is still kicking around today, still doing blingy bodykits for the wagonist scene.


Speaking of bodykit, it took me forever to work out what it was. I trawled through my VIP magazines, and Hyper Rev had nothing. Until I noticed it on the back page of the Aristo factory brochure. It's the dealer-fitted optional bodykit, which is surprisingly deep for a factory thing. The mesh grille is part of the package and I think is the same as the TRD and Netz items. The dealer bodykit is reasonably rare and I haven't seen more than a couple of other cars with the full set. Although it's not uncommon to see an Aristo with just the front lip.


Anyway it's stock and the only mod are the wheels and some D'Cuatro lowering springs on the stock shocks.


Iron Chef inspected it and gave it their thumbs up of approval, I gave them a budget and...its mine :-)


Super-clean and the report was that it was very neat and tidy all over.




No underbonnet mods as far as we know...


...and even the exhaust is stock


Auction won, it was spirited away to the Iron Chef bunker to await its berth on a vessel, which will arrive early next month. So with any luck I'll be driving it out of compliancer in early Sept. The final price was Y695,000 which will work out to about AUD$17,500 landed and complied. Geez, if you lived in Japan, these things are dirt cheap.

Naturally this means that we have far, far too much time in which to do some damage. Luckily the week I won the auction, an LSD popped up for sale for $900 so I quickly grabbed it. The Aristo was available with a torsen LSD but it was a really rare option; but it's the same as Supra non-turbo and Soarer. But as luck would have it, Baldwin Imports in Newcastle was parting out a JZS147 Aristo and it had the factory torsen, which is now mine.


I was also about to buy a Trust Spec LS FMIC, when a kit appeared locally for sale. It was listed in used condition on Yahoo auctions and a few months later, somehow an JZS161 FMIC ended up in Brisbane, but it was definitely for my car, although the hotside piping had been modded for a single turbo, so I'll have to remake some of that. And clean it up big time.


Other bits so far are an HKS EVC7, Koyorad (you'll notice the one in the car is going brown, so is not long for the world), HKS Hipermax coilovers and a Kakimoto R exhaust have been procured in advance. Plus a little care package from Amayama of hoses, belts, filters and some other little things.

It's going to be a long month, methinks, but the process is fun as always and Iron Chef is awesome to deal with :-)

[richzx]

I'll be honest, I liked the silver one more.

[Babalouie]

I'll be honest, I liked the silver one more.

So did I, but we don't have any say in that anymore now do we :-)

[JGTC]

This gon be good, should be a bit more rewarding per $ spent compared to the ISF?

[trent from punchy]

order this:

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Kinugawa...oAAOSwLS5bOcsj

[Babalouie]

This gon be good, should be a bit more rewarding per $ spent compared to the ISF?

No idea, I haven't even seen it yet!

But I'm expecting that the ISF will be more capable and faster all round. The Aristo will cost a fortune to keep modding, I'd forgotten how fast the costs pile up when you're adding up all the doodads for modding a turbo. This will scream up to $30k cost without pausing for breath.

I think the Aristo may possibly be more fun in a "omg this is trying to kill you" kind of way

[Babalouie]

order this:

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Kinugawa...oAAOSwLS5bOcsj

404 error HKS logo not loading

[(Locky)]

So have these just been able to import under the new rules or just not many people bother?

AS thoght thats why the early model imports seemed common and in aus these were all NA GS300?

[Babalouie]

So have these just been able to import under the new rules or just not many people bother?

AS thoght thats why the early model imports seemed common and in aus these were all NA GS300?

They were approved for SEVS in April or May I think. I think you’ll see way more of them now, as they’re pretty good value.

and yeah the earlier model was importable ages ago but the only ones of my generation Aristo here were the NA Lexus GS300.

[bboy]

Pics not working on post #32

This is going to be a fun project

[Baron Von Furrypants]

No PC brigade here so the two pictures which encapsulated my feels in their entirety as I read this thread (having caught up on ISF build thread)


and



looking forward to the clean up the MOST - thanks for sharing that link with the auction cars, I been looking up Aristos too - owned JZS147s back a few years ago but moved onto the JZX however completely agree that it's only clapped out JZX examples (in my price range lol).

I can wait for the update but keen to know what your plan is for the head unit? Will you replace it with a double din? or try source the English buttons from Murica and work out a way to update maps into English?

[Norbie]

Pics not working on post #32

Yeah same, other pics seem to be fine though?

I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. They're a great looking car IMO and the addition of boosty goodness can only make them better.

[Mr Purple]

A grade 4.5 Vertex Edition came up a few days ago:

https://prestigemotorsport.com.au/20...URBO+Aristo%29

You probably didn't want to know that though.

Either way I'm sure we'll be all happy where this ends up given your attention to detail?

Do you take requests? I'd like to see your skill wasted on something entirely undeserving of them. An early Camira or something.

[Ribfeast]

Looks like a mint example, nice purchase!
Can't find any specs on these, what do they do 0-100 and quarter mile stock?
Do they have stability control etc or just traction control?