my latest project - I bought a damaged LEXUS LS430

[Hoss Cartright]

I have wanted a Lexus for a long time. (A "Japanese Mercedes" is what I call them) I've been driving Toyotas for more than 30 years...Anyhoo. These big LS sedans cost about $60,000.00 new.. I've been looking for a minor damage one for several years.

Back in June, I found this 2003 LS430 here in Indiana. It's a one owner garaged car. Has 83,000 miles, standing on almost new Michelins.
So, I bought it for a very good price, and in fact drove it home more than 100 miles. I knew Lexus parts were expensive no different than any luxury car brand. I had planned on straightening the drivers side fender as it had very minor damage. But I needed the left xenon headlight assembly as well as the hood. There are also some little parts that are broken and bent behind the headlight as well as some damage on the top radiator support area.
I found that the hood was more than $1000.00 and the headlight was almost $1200.00. Just those two pieces. There are some headlights on eBay but they are selling for about $400.00 and usually have some imperfection. Finding used front end parts turned-out to be very difficult. Finally, after about two months of searching, I found a complete "front cut" in Orlando Florida, and in fact it was the same color as my car! It was from a Lexus that was hit hard in the rear.
So, I arranged to buy this front-cut and have it trucked to me here in Indiana. The good thing about this is that I now have every little thing that I will need and a bunch of stuff leftover to re-sell. I ended-up buying this front cut and paying for the truck freight and still came out with less invested than buying the hood and headlight new from Lexus!
Anyhoo, I do plan on doing some paint-work on the car after it is back together, but when it is all said and done, I'll be in this car for about $5,000.00 under current loan value.

And yes, it will have a "rebuilt salvage" title. But my plan is to keep this for the rest of my life anyway, so I don't care. This will not be a daily driver. It will sit in my man-cave with my collector cars, when the wife and I want to use it, it will be there. This series is the highest rated luxury car, I've been studying these for quite some time, and looking at them on dealership lots, test driving them etc.. I see them all the time with more than 200,000 miles and still going with no problems.

Here are some images I thought you all might enjoy. You can clearly see my plans.

[Bikes42]

Congratulations! Your persistence paid off big time! With my luck, I'd have rushed out to get the parts, then found the front cut!

That will look great once you have worked your magic on it.

Tad

[Hoss Cartright]

She's up and running. All I have left to do is put the hood on. Then a police VIN check, send the paperwork to the state etc...
I am very glad to have bought the "front cut" instead of trying to piece it together.  There were a few little brackets and sensors that were bent/broken. All those little clips and hardware pieces made the job super easy. (Plus I had the identical car in that "cut" and it gave me the location and arrangement of everything. I took a bunch of photos of these things to be sure how and in what order, the car went back together.)
The alignment of the inner structure that I grafted onto the car was absolutely perfect. (In the one image, my friend John and myself are using a 'tram gauge' to precisely check the front inner structure for "square" before I welded-up the pieces. It was square to the millimeter!)
 Other than the left headlamp support panel and the center radiator upper tie bar, there was no inner structure damage.
And the color match of the used parts is amazingly close! (For being metallic silver BC/CC, it is an incredible match)
In the end, I did change-out the A/C condenser so will have to charge the system.

I'm going to farm-out the little bit of paint-work to a friend down the road who owns a body shop. But first, I'm going to plate it and drive it some to be sure it's a 100%. Even though I painted cars for many years, nowadays without a paint booth, it's too much of a hassle to cover everything in this big room to prevent over-spray and get everything ready to spray urethane BC/CC.

Some images from the past few days.

[schwinnman67]

Looks great!

[JenniferC]

Nice job Jim, that's a lot of matching up hoses and wires.

[Hoss Cartright]

All systems are done, waiting for the 'rebuilt salvage' title to arrive and I can go buy the plates and start driving my baby....

Been studying the inch-thick owners manual to figure out how everything works. Doing some final tinkering. Changing-out the cabin air filter, and the seat heater/cooling filters, checking the pressure in the spare, changing the oil, etc. Still have to charge the A/C.

Haven't done any paint-work yet. In the angle view image you can see a slight difference in the color at the fender/door transition. But actually it is a very close match, it seems that the metallic in these two panels lays a little different in some light conditions. The front fender, front bumper and hood are from the parts clip I bought from Florida. I'm going to drive it for a while, and when winter sets-in I'll do the final paint work as it will not be winter driven anyway.

[Echo_Delta]

looks GREAT!!!!   Congrats!

[Hoss Cartright]

I'm rolling, and I love this car! WOW!