I have learned a lot from this car / deal. Most importantly - look for a good deal on a great car not a great deal on a good car. I won't be buying any more vehicles that have aftermarket electronics on them.

Anyway I picked this up for $5,000 from nice guy who had beat it up pretty well. 99 GS300 with 107k on the clock... stolen stereo and mangled driver's key entry - brakes not working right electrical issues and cosmetic issues as you can see in the pics. I put a new master cylinder / ABS unit in it and the pedal still went to the floor. Thinking it just needed to be bled "with the computer" I took it to a local shop who diagnosed it as an alternator problem. It was putting out a half wave form with a bad diode. After changing the alternator I had to buy another master cylinder / ABS unit and then the brakes firmed up. Long story short I dumped some money into it and had some hassles but at this point my wife has been driving it for over a year (13000+ miles) and we are happy with the performance. My only complaint is the door lock issue detailed in a thread below this one.

When I got it he had 20" rims which would have stayed if they were alloys but I couldn't stand the look of the chrome. I switched back to factory and had to fix 2 ball joints and a tie rod.





I am cheap (and poor) so I didn't want to pay for new fenders. And besides, new fenders would require me to blend the paint to the doors which is more work so I bondoed the fenders and blended the paint half way back across them. I have a single car garage that is full of junk but I emptied some of the junk into my living room so I could shoot the paint. Not shown here was a good scrape down the driver's quarter panel so I had to shoot that with the car in the garage. Since it was November I used a propane ready heater to heat it up which probably wasn't too far from exploding the fumes which were so thick it looked like Seatle in the morning.







Not too bad for a few hundred dollars of materials and a weekend's work.

 

looks much better with the factory rims

 

Thanks. Rides better too. 1" of rubber is NOT enough and I find the curb way too often to keep wheels like that looking presentable. I sold the wheels / tires for $500 and bought the factory ones with almost bald tires for $200. Got some good Michelins on it now and it handles great.... feels like a sports car since I'm used to the 97 4Runner. : )

 

Nice work on the fender. Looks good!