'04 IS300 - Project (Not Really) Nice Daily

[Goodspeed]

Thank you Cabell and Lee for the pic - that does look pretty sharp!

i love IS300's so i'm going to act like i won't check this thread a lot despite you crushing my soul with your unacceptable transmission choice.

seriously though, want. i drove an '04, 5 speed charcoal IS in 2007 and still remember how much i liked it. it was just out of my budget at the time.

defintely go for that axleback exhaust. those engines sound too smooth and beautiful to stifle.

I’ve really been enjoying driving this around - it’s just the right size, easy to see out of, has enough shove and handles very sharply. I was truly surprised on the test drive how tight and composed it feels through the wheel…every bit as impressive as the E46 3-series I drove a while back.

And definitely going for the exhaust…the stocker looks bad and sounds bad (and should feel bad. Piece of sh!t.) Aftermarket piece sounds titillating:

[youtube]psWXWYMkOT8[/youtube]

When I first saw these swaps my jimmies were surprisingly un-rustled. It is just so badass. The angel on my left shoulder though…



Hey so new addition to the list of proposed ideas (if there is bench racing, is there bench building?). I was walking around the car today and realized there is a subtle set of factory side and rear skirts (you can see them in the stock photo in the 1st post) but nothing to match on the front, and thus the car looks kind of “high” in the front. It still looks great to my eye but balancing it out a bit might be nice too.

The internet showed me a plethora of lips, and I quite like this one. It’s polyurethane and about $70 shipped from the auction site. Reading up on it revealed there is a semi-elusive right way and an easily-done wrong way to mount it, so might be more trouble than it’s worth if the cost to mount (and paint) it is high. But for an initial 70 bucks for test fitting…worth a shot?

Stock:



Lip:





I love the authentic TRD lip for these but 13 (yes, 13) were made for the USDM. Not sure if any decent reps exist.



Edit: yes there is, VIS:



About $300 though. I got more important stuff to do with $300 but I'll keep it in mind.