The Beginning

The Altezza GTR really started off when I bought my daily driver a Lexus IS300, powered by a Supra NA engine. I was always on the lookout for bodykits. Martin Ffrench from Ireland had been working on Carbon Fibre shelled Altezza with a Rotary engine. He was building four Altezza's at the time. Needing extra funds to finish other projects he decided to sell the carbon fibre kit. When I spotted it on Driftworks I got in touch straight away, agreed a price and met up with him and picked up the kit and a 1UZ-FE (Lexus V8 engine).

Base car

My own daily driver the IS300 is absolutely mint, and converting a £7k base car into a track day car seemed like a waste when I could pick up lower spec IS200's a lot cheaper. So I went ahead and found a low mileage IS200 with 67k on the clock, it was pretty fugly green exterior with cream interior, whoever chose those colour options when the car was new really should have gone to Specsavers. The IS200 has what I can only describe as a limp engine compared to the 1G-FE, it's a Straight 6 with around 150bhp. Not anywhere near the power I'm used to running on my cars, and in NA, it would be expensive to modify and tune.

V8 Engine

So with plans of removing the 1GFE engine before I even took delivery of the car, what was going to take it's place? Sticking with Lexus engines for compatibility and discussing it with several tunes I was pointed towards the 1UZ-FE, which to you or me is the Lexus V8 engine used to power the Lexus LS400. Thor Racing provide all the kit necessary to get this engine into the IS200 shell.However with costs of the conversion kit + manual gearbox + shift position conversion it was amounting to almost £2700. The engine was only £350, so paying nine times the amount for the transmission alone didn't seem right. Thor Racing are trying to recoup their development costs in the prices of kits, which I think is the wrong strategy as the cost will turn off a lot of people who would attempt this themselves. It's not a negative reflection on Thor Racing they were extremely helpful, just a little too pricey when there are other options. Furthermore after all that cost with only 250bhp in stock form and similar amounts of torque getting more power out of an NA would require a turbo conversion and that doesn't come cheap. So after much consideration I sold the 1UZ-FE, it's going to be installed into the back of a Porsche. The day the Lexus 1UZ-FE engine went off, the same day my new engine arrived:

R34 GTR Twin Turbo Engine

This engine was sourced by GTBitz from an accident damaged R34 GTR Vspec. Hom, who owns and runs GT Bitz also provided the base IS200 car really cheap. So I couldn't recommend them anymore.With the engine I got ECU, engine wiring loom, Gearbox Wiring loom for an RB25DET. So engine was put on a stand, in the corner of my garage awaiting the existing 1G-FE engine to come out and for it to sit in its place. At the time there was only one company in the world that had installed the RB26 into a Lexus, at the time of writing there are two, and I'll be the third.

Stripping Interior

Bodywork needed to be complete first, within hours of the Lexus being pulled up on the drive, We (I mean the Team GTR here, Warren, Rich, myself) had stripped the front bumper, wings, and started ripping out the interior. You wouldn't beleive how much sound deadening, and other stuff that we removed from the car leaving a shell and two front seats (for now). I could of put it all on eBay, but since the condition of the stuff wasn't great I just took it all down to the local recycling center and got rid of it all.

Now with a semi-bare shell it was time to prep the body of the car removing any traces of rust

The front arches and front bumper were by far the simplest part of the install. The bonnet needed underbracing, and the rear arches needed to be cut away.

Suspension

On stock suspension, you'd think I was building a rally car, not a track day car. A few days later I ordered a set of HSD coilovers from Driftworks just so I could get the car sitting at the right ride height. At first When I installed them at first I thought to myself, these aren't low enough. Then friend of a Ray (RMS Jap Works) came around and pointed out that I had the suspension wound up too tight.

Bodywork

The boot skin was removed and replaced with the carbon fibre skin, retaining the steel bracing inside, the boot is so light now, the boot lid needs to be held down before pulling the boot release otherwise it could knock someone out. The majority of the next few weeks we worked on cutting the rear arches, and refitting the kit. This was a long process taking away parts of the exterior shell and ensuring structural rigidity. Progressing on to cutting off the rear door skin to make way for the Carbon Fibre version, the car was starting to take shape.

Tubbing rear arches

We decided to tub the arches in Aluminium firstly as it's lighter, secondly it's more maleable to work with. Downside with ally, is that it can't be welded to steel. We've spent plenty of time watching shows on Dave and Quest and picked up some tips how to roll large sheets. We rolled the flat ally on a spare tire, back and forth bending it into the shape we needed. Rich here admiring our handy work after the ally tubbing was installed. There aren't any plans to tub the front arches as there is very little room under the front to turn the wheels at this ride height, something I'll have to take into consideration when getting the front wheels.

Work Equip wheels

I ordered the Work Equip 18x10J from Japan after spending months looking for wheels with a low offset. The Work Equip's are 18x10J with an ET18, they don't fill the arches, but I definetely want to use a set of Work Equips on the car. It's the closest wheel I can get to the Veilside Andrew V used in the Veilside Fortune RX7.

Engine Removal

With the bodywork 90% complete it was time to take out the 1g-FE engine, it's amazing that a 2 litre straight 6 only produces 160 BHP. Definetely not powerful enough for a track day car Starting from the left: Shah, Rich, Tim and Erhan. Tasha behind the cam.

Subframe issues

With the engine in place, it sat far too high and was fouling on the subframe meaning the gearbox was pointing at the floor and the bonnet couldn't be shut. It meant we had to cut away at the subframe to make space for the RB engine.