Well, this is going to be my project thread for my TL i guess. I have put in black ceramic coated headers, intake(thermal wrapped), UR pulley, TB and mani spacers w/thermal gaskets, and bypassed both coolant ports in the TB assemblies. This is an 03 TL-S...I've been gradually doing various small mods to make the car a little bit more personalized. I've installed switchback turn signals, cleared the headlights, put in purple angel eyes, 12,000K bulbs, UV LED dome and door lights, super bright white LED map lights, Chrome coated amber rear turn signals, UV LED reverse lights, and LED bulbs in pretty much all the lights on the rear like the tails and brakes. Next thing I plan on doing is a coolant flush and put in a better mix of 75% distilled water and 25% Prestone w/a bottle of Redline Water Wetter. Soon after I get back to NY I may do a custom exhaust and high-flow cat.

Well I don't have pic of everything I've done, but eventually I'll put more up...here's the pics I've got for now. Feedback very welcome...

Headers...a little dirty (I thermal wrapped the alternator cables and closest fan wiring so there'd be no melting of any sort)


Here's a pic of the TB spacer installed w/thermal gaskets, I don't have a mani spacer pic as I didn't think of getting one while I was installing...I coated all the gaskets with copper spray to help sealing and heat transfer... So far, after beating on it for a good 1/2 hr I was able to touch the valve cover and TB w/no problem and it was just marginally hotter than luke warm...which was not the case before the spacers and coolant bypasses. There's a little more space under the upper mani/plenum now for a little more heat to disperse, also with the spacer the runners are now lengthened by about 1/3" which should help with some low-mid range toque production, however marginal it may be lol.


Here's how the intake sits, I made the intake with mandrel bent aluminum piping, then I wrapped it in thermal wrapping, the difference in temperature when you touch it is enormous since the wrapping. As you can see the blue vacuum hose is ghetto rigged for now so I could drive it without the possibility of the metal part touching the battery terminals. I'll be mounting it differently later. I was able to completely re-route the coolant hoses so that they no longer even sit close to the TB assembly or intake. The large metal vacuum line(with the blue hose attached) has a metal coolant line welded to it which tended to heat up the intake tract as well, so I bypassed it while I was doing the other ones, now there's nothing extra to heat up the intake tract. I choose function over form any day under the hood, for those that think, like me, that the thermal wrap is kinda fugly.



A pic of the new flasher I picked up at autozone to bring my blinkers back to normal rate...


Here's a link to what the switchbacks look like in action
http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/m...0626082022.flv

Some headlight pics



Pic of the cleared lights



Some angel eyes pics (with the orange bulbs in the markers)



The halos with the headlights on...looks pretty mean


Daytime pic with the orange finally out

 

Oh my God that's BRIGHT!!!

 

Very nice! I wish I had all the performance mods you got..haha

 

More PICS!!!








Close-up of one of the switchbacks





One of the UV lights in the door, it's hard to take a pic of


I have to get an installed pic, but here are a few pics of when I was putting the pulley on

 

you got links to where you got all your lights I want to know prices so I can do similar.

 

V-LEDS is a big one, but Ebay, Ebay, Ebay lol. I got 98% of it on Ebay.

 

it feels like lots of people are doing the switchback LED now....


now i need something different...

 

What kind of LEDs are on the parking brake light?

 

Man you really love lights! hahaha. Looks cool. I'm just not diggin' that much purple. Does anyone know if there are any switchbacks that don't alternate between the white/amber... like when the signal is on, it only blinks amber. To me, the switchbacks look too much like a siren when they alternate between the white/amber.

 

What kind of header is that? And you would see much better gains from the intake if it were a cold air. These cars don't hardly benefit from a short ram.

 

I've essentially dropped my intake air charge by as much as a cold air would have, without the risk of the filter sitting so low. The inner fender is completely open, I have no fender lining or plastic under the engine, so there's plenty of cold air that it can get from down there. I plan on making a little duct to bring more of it up to the filter with the starting point the little slots under the fogs I'm opening up.

 

I just got done installing a PLX wideband and guage in the beast and I noticed that it runs pretty rich during heavy throttle, otherwise it's pretty spot on. I'm thinking of picking up something to fine tune the afr's soon. Under full throttle I saw it dip down to about 11.5:1....maybe if I were boosting that'd be ok, but I see now why the TL is a gas hog around town. I think I'll lean it out a little soon and see if I can get it around 12.5:1-13.5:1 under full throttle. I'll get pics up tomorrow

 

Just got pics of the new stuff, black headlight housing and plx wideband...yeah, the car's gonna get cleaned this week, just been busy.

 

btw, the cheap ass gauge pod is only a temp item, I wanted to hook it all up cause I was excited about it....the plx wideband and gauge are going into my 240 anyway so the whole thing in there is only temp to begin with.

 

love the black housing.