Some people have such a strong connection with older cars that find it worth spending new car money to have them restored. That’s exactly what The Car Care Nut did with a 600,000-mile (965,606 km) Lexus LS 430 that was bought sight unseen, and to say the results are impressive would be an understatement.
This video is one of just many in an in-depth series detailing the Lexus’s restoration. It all started with buying the LS 430, making it safe to drive, and fixing any and all mechanical issues with it. In this video, The Car Care Nut and the team at Chicago Auto Pros did a complete interior restoration, stripping away every component, thoroughly cleaning them, then reassembling the whole package.
The process began with disassembly, which saw the car get stripped of every single interior component until all that was left was bare metal. The team then worked on meticulously cleaning both the components and the bare interior, doing their best to erase 22 years’ worth of dirt and grime. Looking at the finished product of this process, it appeared as though it was fresh from the factory.
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Once that was done, it was time to reassemble the car, which proved to be a laborious task. As you could imagine, the rebuild process took a long time, and was especially complicated due to the unique design of components like the HVAC system. The first step in the process was to install all the roof-mounted parts like the sunroof, headliner, visors, and electronics. Next up was the dashboard/firewall area, which started with the HVAC system, then covered components such as the steering column, pedals, and central trim panels.
Following that, the Lexus‘s interior started to look habitable again as the carpeting, seatbelts, insulation, and rear seats were all reinstalled. They then pivoted to the front, putting back the driver’s seat, center console, radio, screen, and climate controls along with the gauge cluster, steering wheel, and weather stripping. Finally, the interior was complete with the installation of the passenger seat, glovebox, and door cards. In the midst of all this, wiring proved to be a continuous challenge, but that’s to be expected when essentially reinstalling the car’s entire nervous system from scratch.
There’s still a little more work to be done to modernize the car, but it’s now a fully assembled, driving vehicle. Not only was the knowledge to clean like this an extremely impressive skill to have, but so was the expertise to reassemble it properly. And aside from things like minor wrinkles in the leather, the Lexus looks as though it could’ve just rolled off the showroom floor despite having enough mileage to circle the earth 24 times over.