I'm just going to copy/pasta my build thread. I started in November of 2008 when I purchased my Legend. She's gone thru a few changes. Currently I'm working on swapping the taupe interior out for a JDM black interior. After that I'm going to work on her stance some more and start on small cosmetics to freshen her up. I had some body work done in '09 and unfortunately the clear has failed so she's in need of some paint currently.
~Jen
I bought her November of 2008 with no plans of making any changes. Little did I realize this car was a POS and the previous owner fibbed a little....ok maybe a lot....when he sold her to me. The car overheated before I was even a mile away from his house >.< So that week I dropped her at my mechanic (yup, I used to have a mechanic lol) and paid $942 for a new water pump and timing belt. Still overheating. New t-stat then a new radiator. Still overheating. Changed every sensor on the cooling system. Finally I snapped out of denial and realized I had a blown head gasket lol
So while chasing the overheating problem I made a couple of upgrades. I ordered some Ksport coilovers, swapped out the fake wood for burlwood, had all of the rust taken care of and peeling paint taken care of and added an oem spoiler...
Before
After
Then I added JDM headlights, clear bumper signals and Hella fogs
and this
I bought another set of is300 wheels because the original agreement was the po would get his wheels back and give me the ugly stock ones unless I wanted to pay for those. Of course after I found out that he blatently lied to me about the blown headgasket....I sold his wheels and bought my jdm interior lol
Once I knew that motor was trash, I tried to blow it up. Tried everything. Took her to autox, drove her to Chicago overheating, everything. She wasn't going to let go before it was swap time lol
So here we go, from beginning to end. Wish me luck!
Arrival of my 3.5 from a 2003 RL with 53k
Goody box compliments of Alperovich and some of the parts I ordered from AoS. The yellow notepad you see contains weeks worth of notes from reading and asking questions. Us girls are organized like that :giggle:
And today I spent all afternoon prepping the valve covers. I'll spend the entire day down at the body shop finishing those and working on the intake manifold. Kyle, owner of Kirk Kustoms, has been so gracious as to let me come into his shop and do my own work and taking his time to instruct me on how to go about with this project.
It doesn't look like a lot, but it took up most of my day
I went down and finish prepping the valve covers for color and went over to the place to order what I needed. Then I came home and took apart the intake manifold and proceeded to clean it up along with the underside of the valve covers. The gaskets were a &*$#% to get off but I finally got every last bit off. I realized I wouldn't be able to get the top portion of the manifold clean enough to make me happy so it's over at a machine shop right now.Before:
After:
The rest of the manifold should be done tomorrow afternoon or Friday and the best part of my build is being delivered on Friday
I'll post another update then...Go big or go home. What good is my 3.5 without a 6mt?? No more auto!!!
