MR2 Update: Nasa would be proud

A little bit of a forward, my Dad had an afro. A literal and complete natural afro the likes of which would seem appropriate only in a movie where Samuel L. Jackson was in the credits. He was also white, but these two details never really mingled in my mind. So upon one saturday afternoon when he explained the term "afro-engineering", I didn't take it as a racist statement. It was just something my Dad did when he didn't want to do it right.


Behold the horror of what I fretted about earlier. Notice the thick piece of metal just dangling there?



Not good, eh? Among a litany of other things wrong in the front end, this was the most concerning. Dragging pieces of metal is very "no bueno".

Further inspection more or less explained why it was like that.

Ah yes. "Afro-Engineering". Weld the radiator support to the car. To be fair, the previous owner did mention he did something like this. For the life of me, why didn't he do the same on the other side if he was going to do it on the passenger side?

He did- or perhaps Toyota did. As far as I can tell, there are two small weld spots on the other side of the radiator support to hold it in. At some point in time, these welds failed thus leading me to the "OMGWTFBBQ" moment of yesterday.

I can fix it. I'll drill some holes and screw it in as it should. It might be a good time to get a welder and just fix it back the way Toyota may have designed. It's great that the principle problem isn't nearly as bad as I thought.

MR2 Update: *Jeopardy Tune*

What am I doing in this picture?

A. Fixing the AC.
B. Calibrating the parking brake.
C. Changing a fuel pump.
D. Porkchop sandwiches.

I don't think that I would have ever got to this point and still know what I was doing. I do, sort of. This has all been a progressive learning experience and, in retrospect, that one detail has exacerbated the time spent on the project. Hind sight is more than 20/20, it's down right painful.
I used to see pictures like this, or God forbid cars driving around like this, and think the owner must be some shade of insane. But here I am, neck deep in problems as I wade through 20 years of rust and abuse, grabbing each one of them singly by the throat before sorting it out. Every day in the garage is like a Boris Vallejo painting, only with car parts and my shirt stays on.
It's in this way that problems get sorted out as quickly as new ones are identified. I've never really came across a problem that made me stop and despair, rather plenty have been identified as either being necessary to the function of the car or not and whether or not it's going to be a learning experience.

Until today that is. While performing "C." in the above picture, a feat by itself that boggles the mind in its complexity and by itself drove me to anxiety, I noticed some items dangling in the front undercarriage of the car. Curious as to what it could be, as I had previously addressed some dangling wires, I inspected it to find a oddly sheared wiper fluid line... and some metal splinters. A casual brush against the steel radials of the passenger front tire revealed that it was a few miles from detonating.

'Awesome', I think to myself as I queued another item in the "prevents car from functioning" list. But the damage goes beyond that. The car was in an accident in the past that was never really fixed. Careful examination of the undercarriage like I had not done before was slowly revealing a Lovecraftian horror of missing parts and dangling support structures.

Literally, there are hanging suspension bits that I had not noticed before that were not anchoring to anything, at all for various reasons between accident damage, rust, and from what I can tell, simple neglect. How they are still on the car at all is worth scientific scrutiny.

At once, I felt this project was a mistake. I long ago was sold a bill of goods on the car. I came to terms on that. On paper, despite feeling jipped, I'm still ahead. I've been working at this like a second job since February when I thought this would be a few weekends and the car would be road worthy. I even knew there was some potential problems lurking in the front. And I was okay with this too cause it looked fine on casual inspection.
But one glance from underneath the car and the situation became sublime.

An elephantine load just emptied onto the "Prevents car from running" list.

"Fuck this", I said to myself, as I cleaned up the shops activities for the day and went inside to wash dishes. Later I'd crack open a Heineken and play some Company of Heroes.

Playing as the Wehrmacht and tangling with some Yanks, things got rough at one point- it could have been the beer slowing my actions. I had to adapt and reconsider my strategy. One option was giving in and starting over.

And despite playing as the Germans, I could hear R. Lee Ermey shouting about what a miserable sack of puke I was all the while I was considering what my life would be like if I just gave up in the face of adversity.

I don't just give in. I adapt and overcome. And despite being routed for the moment, and again it might have been the beer, I felt I could get over this as well. There are a lot of things I could have done differently in the past. But none of the wishful thinking of the past is going to fix the here and now. And that starts with action.

It's amazing what a few beers does for morale.

MR2 Update: PUSH IT TO THE LIMIT

Pictures and stuff.

The painful "no mi gusta" moment of putting the car back up on jacks.



***MONTAGE OF PSEUDO SWEARING AND FINDING EVERY BOLT HOLDING THE TRANSMISSION ON***




The transmission out.


Ah! There you are.


Let's see what we got here.


You're a bad clutch and you should feel bad.


The cavalry! A 6 puck ACT unsprung clutch kit and a Fidanza fly wheel. What a difference in weight the Fidanza is. The stock flywheel feels like it ways a veritable ton. I was grunting to get it out from under the car. The Fidanza, on the other hand, has all the weight of puppy dreams and wishes- maybe less (about 3-4lbs. ymmv). The difference is night and day.


Here it is mounted.


And now with the shiny clutch. Shame I hopefully won't see it again.

The transmission is almost on right now actually. Just a few more bolts and I should be set, of course if you've done this before (as I haven't) you might have noticed that Toyota uses a different bolt every single time. So it's been fun.

MR2 Update: VVVvvvvvoommmm Psht

Vindication came in the form of surprise. True enough, yesterday I went to the car and it started without a moments hesitation. So after I warmed it up, started it and stopped it a couple times, and tested out the car around the block, I went to correct something a friend had confirmed for me.

The gas was bad, real bad.

Incrementally I placed load on the engine so to test and eliminate potential misfiring that I had discovered inopportunely on its last voyage. It pulled hard at every opportunity. The next stop was the open road of Covington Pike and the gas station down the street.
Now, I must impress that my opinion of the project car is that something is wrong. Something is always wrong and I must test to find it. Failure of some form, for now, is the modus operandi.

Pulling out to Covington Pike, I let down the accelerator.

It was kinda like that.

It works! It pulls hard. Turbo wining and throwing me quite surprisingly into the back of the seat, my neck strained to move forward. I was out of breath. I'm not sure if it was because of the acceleration or from mere unadulterated surprise that there wasn't anything particularly wrong. But it worked! This was my second outing in a SW20, in a car in the post 200hp range, or in a turbo car at all, and I must say that the brief 5 minute drive was awesome.

My enthusiasm tempered when I fueled up though with the pungent aroma of a burning clutch. That's the least of my worries (and a planned contingency).

The part is already in route.

Of course it flooded and died again that evening, feet from the garage and at such an incline to make pushing it with the tractor necessary. That, I must confess, is more concerning.

MR2 Update: Sisyphian Prophecies

I talk about the car a lot, mostly cause it is original content, otherwise its just kinda slow. I had mentioned to a colleague earlier that day that the car had become something of an allegory to the pains Sisyphus would have endured. Little did I know that little allegorical drop into Greek myth would prove to be something of a prophecy.

The parts I needed to continue the work came in. Specifically, some new NGK spark plugs and new OEM cables. The cable from the distributor was all kinds of hosed, both not fitting right and suffering from just being cheap. Replacing it gave me consistent spark to the car, but it still would not start.

I had fuel too. The exhaust reeked of it. (Yes, I sniffed the tail pipe).
So, disappointed by a non-start but cautiously optimistic that there was progress being made, I removed all the plugs. And upon examining them, it was discovered that the spark plugs were literally dripping in gasoline. That follows considering there hasn't been proper spark to the car for awhile.

I replaced them with the NGK spec plugs Toyota recommends. And after a few false starts, the car struggles to life. I am thrilled.

After idling the car for awhile and slowly becoming confident that things are worked out through careful examination, I pull the car out. The parking cable I thought I properly calibrated is only 20% there- but still manageable. It took a ominous 15 degree incline to make that apparent.

Disaster is afoot.

So confident at this point am I that I offer to take the intrepid co-pilot Krusty on for a car ride (he's actually really well trained for this sort of thing). But upon putting him in the car I recall an error I made in the last trip. I didn't really secure the rear supports. They still aren't 100% secure.
Not again.

So I head back in to do it proper and button it up completely.

"Why aren't we going?"

So I take the dog in. Finish that work up. Pull the car back out and accidentally flood the car letting off the clutch in reverse to hold her on the incline. "Ooops" I think to myself over that inglorious sputter. It's not serious... right?

I grab Chip, cause he's excited, or perhaps just neglected. And put him in the car and crank it over. No dice.

Again. No dice.

Again. No dice.

Please? No dice.

Chip licks me, happy to be on a car ride.

The light dying outside and getting furtive glances from the neighborhood that my paranoid mind is painting as all potential car thieves, I was faced with having to troubleshoot it fast. At this point, I can't even roll up the windows to the car.
It's just a flooded engine... right? I keep asking myself that, not familiar with how to fix it. It was getting spark... timing is dead on... and the exhaust smells like gas.

But no. With every crank the car rolls a precipitous fraction of an inch forward and into the street and further away from my light and tools.

Like poor Sisyphus, despite the initial success, the car had to be pushed up the faint incline that made the car feel so much heavier than what it was. In fact, the tractor had to be pulled out to push and pull it most of the way.

MR2 Update: Liberate Tuteme

So I got the new ignitor yesterday and while installing it discovered why the old one was failing.



I'm stunned it ran at all actually.

Nonetheless, the car still doesn't start. I'm regressing on the project, and that my friends is incredibly aggravating. It fires, every now and then, once or twice but otherwise pretty consistently gives no spark.

Part of this I realized, is that the sender cable for the distributor is completely screwed. I had to repair it previously. I had to do it again tonight. Now with the engine buttoned up, there are 4-5 parts that have to be removed every time during the repair so I don't go all 'Event Horizon' on the car and my little dog eared companion Chip.



After firing buttoning it up again, guess what still didn't work? I was moments from speaking Latin and letting the car decide where we are going.
My assumption and gut instinct is that the distributor sender is still hosed. One of the wires, having severed right on the connector, is tenuously held at best.

I suppose its a bad sign that I'm using 'Event Horizon' quotes to reference my car. But really, I just like that movie.

MR2 Update: Go go Gadget ignitor coil!

After a hiatus from MR2s and dealing with MR2OC vendor MCS, I don't recommend either, my '2 is almost on the road!

As some of you may know, I used to have a rather nice low mileage AW11. I loved the car. But a ditz cut me off at an intersection and, ce la vi, caused more damage than I could rightly compensate for at the time. I mournfully sold her for parts and moved on to a '91 Silverado that served me phenomenally well till Memphis happened (stolen... from my own friggin driveway).

I always regretted letting the car go, but now that things are far more stable for me, I plunged back in with encouragement from the wife.

The new car I found was a greenish 91t that was on the outs in San Antonio. It had significant engine troubles, an owner that was unfamiliar with the car (and in retrospect was either a con or completely ignorant), and some collision damage. It was practically screaming for a little TLC to run free on the roads again.

And not unlike seeing a lonely puppy in the rain, I took her home.

As the 5SGTE MCS engine thing fell apart after more than a year, i picked up a 50k JDM motor from ebay that, i kid you not, arrived at my door the day after I ordered it and fired up fine outside of my own shenanigans. Just last friday she made her baby stepping trip around the block.



Pic is moments before its first trip. I figured if there was a moment for epic hilarity, it would be the moment it gets to the street. So I took this picture to compare the before and after effects of the supposed imminent carnage. Thankfully, it did fine.

Notice the "BriCk" TRD external parking retention device on the passenger side front. It's mad JDM tyte yo. I gotta fix that.

The ignitor coil failed on it just recently after tuning/dressing down the car from its trip. Though I'm grateful it did not leave me stranded, it's being replaced tonight with a brand new one from Lithia!

It's first real trip also took place that same day... but that's another story. One that opened my eyes to how the cops work around here, the retaining tension of license plate screws, and how a seemingly fine ignitor can develop problems the moment you need it.

MR2 Update: Anticipation

So yesterday I rebuilt the CV joints (what an odd mechanical rubik's cube those things are), finished up changing the valve cover gasket, and plugged some other non essentials up and tested them.

The engine is fine. The transmission is go. Electronics coming back crystal clear.

So I set upon the final items.
I started bolting up the remaining drivetrain and sealing up the engine. I'm at the brakes now. It's only a matter of time till it coasts, gently at first out of the garage where it will see day light again for the first time in years.

Whereupon I'm flushing the ever living hell out of the cooling system to get that rust out.

Unrelated picture:

Love the sound of those engines

There is a great crash at around 3:10. He lost traction on one rear wheel while attempting to pass when he should be braking. He did brake, but too late, and experienced a problem with most mid engine cars.
It's a great example of snap over steer.

MR2 Update: Tango de la Muerte

Assuming no other problems, I have to replace some CV boots and re-bolt everything in.

However, the coolant is brown and upon pulling out a sample and letting it settle, is afflicted with rust the likes of which I’ve never seen before (and what would appear to be some sort of cleaning agent from long ago). It’s hard to say, but flushing it until its clean is the modus operandi for now. I thought It might have been oil, but the particulates settle out and sink.

Second on the list, and discovered when testing this weekend, is that the car is burning a precipitous amount of oil. It went from full to near “E” in about an hour or so (with an audible change in engine tone when things got low). It’s not coming out of the exhaust, but rather, from the back side of the valve cover. I’ll replace it.
Apparently, this is somewhat common.

I pulled a sample of the oil too and let it settle. It stayed universally oil throughout the test period.

I’m just grateful that the oil and coolant aren’t throwing some post engine start up after party without me.

The last problem, and I think is kinda minor, is that the axles roll even when in “neutral”. It’s not moving much force and I can stop it with my hand. It remains to be seen if this is some residual force from the transmission or if it’s a problem.

MR2 Update: IT LIVES!

One of my waking fears, drenched in sweat and screaming from the waking nightmare, is that I might in fact be a n00b. I'm swapping a rev2 2nd gen JDM 3SGTE engine into my 91t. I have feared at times that it was a little beyond me and my "skillz0r" to accomplish. Soldiering on regardless, I hook the engine up to find that it would not start. It would crank, but there would be no spark. I tried my hand at everything I could think of (and at one time discovered not only that I did not plug in the distributor sending(?) wires, but later that they were broke anyway and required mending).

So when Ku-Sama made his thread about "no spark " on MR2OC, I politely and patiently followed what was happening and attempted to heed the sage advice of users Luni/Baktasht.

Instead of just replacing parts, which I was inclined to do, I sat down with the BGB and the suspect parts (ignitor, then distributors, caps, rotors... etc) and began testing them one by one. About 30 minutes in, it became apparent where the fault was. The USDM igniter coil did not have the proper resistance.

The JDM one did. It passed with flying colors. Mucho kudos to everyone on MR2OC that insists on, you know, following the instructions Toyota went out of their way to make. It's all there in the books.

Now, I've read before that the JDM one will work in this setup... but there are some extra tabs on the igniter that make it unable to plug in to the 91t USDM wiring harness. Dauntlessly, I shaved them off and hooked them up to the wiring harness. *queue A-Team theme and sandpaper montage*

Wincing at the epic explosion I might have caused by releasing the JDM powa, the car turns over, but did not actually start.

Bummer.

So continuing with the Luni/Baktasht line of troubleshooting, the next thing that might be bad is the ECU. I should pull codes. If anything it should code out that the RPM signal isn't there right? Which would indicate a bad distributor/wiring. Or nothing at all... and in that case the ECU is bad.

So I pin out the diagnostic pins... IT LIVES!

The timing is... bad, to say the least in that video. I was so surprised at first that the engine was running that I thought something had gone horribly horribly wrong. But in an hour of tuning it was mostly sound. There are some other things I need to troubleshoot later.

Seriously, I did nothing else other than pin out the diagnostics and the car started fine and every time there after (without the pinning).

MR2 Update: ...and I was grateful!

Engine mostly mounted. I converted all potential parts headaches to US model equivalents instead of dealing with potential Japanese parts orders. This ended up being a God-send of sorts, because closer inspection of the “better” Japanese equipment proved that even though they were shiny and visibly less tired, they were actually in poorer shape.

The A/C compressor for instance barely turned and had all the spinning ability of a rock and some sandpaper. The “used” US one was rebuilt in Texas and spins effortlessly.

Another surprise is the model year of new engine.
As I kept sorting through wiring shenanigans and making the best of the situation through common sense (JDM connector shenanigans), I noticed the distributor and igniter were different- way different. So upon researching the parts code of the igniter, I noticed that it was for a Gen2 (US year 94+) motor.

I was replacing a Gen1 (US year 91) motor.

And like a kaleidoscope of failure the problems became obvious. This kind of swap is still common, but it gives me a frame of reference for how to go about things moving forward (and kept me from making some hilarious mistakes).

It’s not the engine I wanted, It’s actually a bit better, and I can make do. It’s not the supplier’s fault either for shipping the wrong product. Because it is a 3SGTE engine like I ordered. It probably did come from an early gen MR2 SW20 like I need. And it does have all its parts. But the key here is what year are they referring to and from what country are they referencing, because the USDM motors lagged behind their JDM counter parts. A ’93 3SGTE motor means 2 different things depending on country.

Regardless, whether through ignorance or accident, I got a better engine than I bargained.

In a dream world, the car would be running given a few more hours of hard work and no mistakes. It’s about 5 radiator hoses, reassembling the fuse box, putting on the other engine mounts, attach the shift cables, attach the transaxle, and add fluids. I’m in the final mile.

The thing that amuses me the most is the anecdote I can distill from this. It's been cold lately, with snow all over the ground typically.

I can finally say, "In my day when we wanted a car we built it... out of parts... in the snow... AND WE WERE GRATEFUL!"


I'm not embellishing that much at all either.