Along came a Spyder: Diving into SCCA E/Street

Hmmm, kind of an interesting development on that transmission noise. I decided to put it up on a lift and run it in the air and listen to it with a stethoscope and make sure the noise was absolutely in the transmission. I've seen and heard weird inexplicable things in my career as a mechanic and would hate to put in a $1500 transmission and $400 worth of clutch stuff, and then find out it was a wheel bearing with weird symptoms.

Well, I have my coworker get underneath, run it up and I can hear the noise and he goes "Hey, the left wheel doesn't turn." Well, duh, it's an open differential. They don't always spin both wheels when up in the air. He goes "No, I mean, I physically can barely turn that wheel, even with my hands. I think you've got a stuck caliper." It hasn't seemed to get hot, or smoke, or made a ton of brake dust, so I hadn't noticed.

He did say the noise came from the differential area of the transaxle, and now we're wondering if maybe the dragging caliper is causing some weird loading on the open differential, since it's pretty much forcing it to send all the power to the right, and the weird noise I'm hearing, which is almost like a clattery gear backlash kind of noise, is the spider gears. Could it be as simple as just replacing a caliper? We'll find out.

I also learned that apparently, rear calipers are kind of hard to source. I wanted to get one ASAP, and didn't want to wait for Rock Auto to ship one, and then have to ship back the core to Rock Auto, so I went to the local stores, a rarity for me. First I went to Federated Auto Parts, because they usually can get stuff the fastest and they have really good prices, and they said the only option they had was to send my caliper to Cardone, have it rebuilt, and have it shipped back, with a 6-8 week turnaround time. Nope. As I'm headed back, I go by NAPA, so I stop. They can get me the left rear, and that's literally the only caliper they can get for it, and it's $107 plus a $132 core charge. They really want that core back.

So, I have one on the way, should be here Monday. Fingers crossed

One thing I remember from MR2 Spyder ownership back in the day, and totally unrelated to your issue at the moment - is that the emergency brake lines will freeze easily in the winter, causing the pads to drag. When you're working on that rear caliper, spray something in there to keep that from happening to you (even though it'll be in storage over the winter).

I've enjoyed reading through your posts, it brings back good memories of my ownership. 

Well, I got my caliper and left rear axle installed. No photos because I was doing them on my lunch break at work. As I figured, they didn't fix the noise, so it looks like I'm doing a transmission swap next spring.

Also, Addco has not shipped my sway bar, nearly two weeks after I ordered it. My friend Lawrence has also not received his and he ordered it in mid- to late-August. Their wesbite said "In stock" when I ordered it, and then I got an e-mail that said my order was "in process" and that I "would receive an e-mail when it shipped". I e-mailed them again this Monday, asking when it was going to ship and was told "The part will ship by this Friday." Well, Friday came and went and I never got confirmation that it shipped. I'm almost tempted to cancel my order and try to get one of those Paul Brown bars over the winter, since the Addco one isn't going to make it in time for the last event. Lawrence and I are both pretty irritated.

Since I need every advantage that I can get, I did take it down to work today, and put it up on the alignment rack, to see where the alignment was at.

Wow, good thing I checked. It didn't drive that bad, but it's got that circle track alignment on it. Considering it had 18 year old front tires and 13 year old rear tires, I wonder when that last time it was aligned was.

Much better. I'll need to get crash bolts to futz with the camber, but that can wait until next spring.

Now I can't blame my alignment for how I do tomorrow. But I still have "340tw tires", "no Addco sway bar", and "my transmission is making a noise" in my back pocket, ready to go.

I just pulled the drivetrain from my 01 spyder if you are looking for a replacement transmission. I'm all the way in wisconsin though

In reply to Mrfurzzy :

I appreciate the offer, but, yeah, that's pretty far for me. I'm just going to get the Moneky Wrench Racing rebuilt transmissions, and that way I know it has all new bearings, seals, etc. and don't run the risk of putting a used transmission in, and then the output shaft bearings getting noisy a couple thousand miles down the road. Plus I can get the taller fifth gear for an extra $169 and make it more pleasant on the open road.

So, a belated update on my Spyder's first autocross, and the last autocross of my 2023 season.

The morning started off really foggy. Karl (the gentleman that lent me his E30 at the last event) and I were doing course design and setup and all of a sudden the fog set in to the point that you couldn't see much more than 100 feet. 

Fortunately by the time we got to running, that had burned off. Unlike my Miata, the Spyder is not one of those "some assembly required" race cars to get it ready. I unloaded my helmet and stuff and, well, that was it. I even left the tire pressures at the factory 26psi front/31 psi rear setting.

We actually had four MR2 Spyders on the property. This is the three in E/Street. The other was in STR, and so it was parked farther down. It actually ended up setting FTD and Top PAX with an insane 40.2xx second run that no one even got remotely close too. The dark blue car is my friend Mark's, which is the car I got my first, and only, overall win in. The read car is my friend Lawrence's, whose the guy that found me my Spyder.

I started off running a 46.869 right out of the gate, which wasn't me taking it easy on it either. Lots of body roll, but it felt pretty good otherwise. The Continentals had an amazing amount of grip for "just" 340tw. Transmission was still making noise, but didn't seem to have gotten discernably worse (I had already talked to Mark and said that if it got noticeably worse, I might park my car and drive his Spyder for the remainder.) It was also really nice to be racing a car that had ABS.

On my second run, I shaved off nearly a second and a half and hoofed it to a 45.466. I think that on a hard 1-2 shift though that I felt some clutch slip, which means that even if the transmission didn't need replacing, I'd be pulling it before a full season of racing. Dropping down to a 45.366 put me in PAX 1/Raw 1.

The third run, I don't really recall, but I slowed down to 45.730. I believe that I got late in one of the slaloms.

On the fourth run, I took my best friend along, and despite the fact that a passenger typically acts like an anchor in an E/Street car, I cracked off a 44.941, ending my morning runs in PAX 1. I was in Run Group 1 though, so by the time Run Group 2 finished their morning runs, I had slid back to 10th overall.

Coming back in the afternoon, conditions had warmed up to mid-to-high 70s. I went out for my first run, and took my best friend's girlfriend along for the ride. Halfway into the run, I made a hard stop, got ABS activation, and then lost power steering. I finished the run, but as I headed back to the pits, I noticed the ABS light was on and flashing as well, and the speedometer was going from 20mph to below 0, then back up. I pulled into the pits, cycled the key, and all of a sudden have no juice to anything, no lights, no starter, nothing. Huh. Pop the engine cover and the negative cable had hopped completely off the terminal because it was loose. Put it back on, tightened everything, and everything was fine again. But, I did slow to a 45.619. The photo below is me coming back into the pits with no power steering, and a million thoughts running through my mind. Kait had a great time though.

The second (or sixth) run picked it up to a 44.401, my best of the day and good for 3rd out of 6th in Pro and 10th overall. The car felt great, considering it had a stock front sway bar, struts old enough to drink, crumbly blue cheese bumpstops and 340tw tire.

The third run felt terrific, but as I came around I saw a course worker resetting a cone. Unfortunate because it was a 43.717, which would have been my best. I didn't center punch the cone either, I just ticked with with a rear tire, so it wasn't like I was straight-lining an element and gaining a massive speed advantage.

The final run, the tires must have gotten overheated, because the car was just loose everywhere, even though I let two psi of air out of the tires, and it slowed to a 44.744. At that point, I was sitting in 10th still, and I basically just had to sit by and let Run Group 2 go out and see where things shook out.

I ultimately ended up 13th out of 31 overall and 5th out of 6 in Pro. Not bad for a car that isn't even remotely close to being properly setup, and a lot of very stiff competition. If that 43.717 had been clean, or I could have replicated it, that would have put me in 10th as well.

We do a percentage-based scoring, and with Top PAX having a 33.421 after PAX and me having a 35.165, I ended up earning 95.04, which was my second best finish of the season. My completely un-setup, untested MR2 Spyder grabbed me more points than every event I used the Miata in, as well as the events I drove the EV Mini and the E30. The only event I scored more points than this one? My overall win in Mark's MR2 Spyder.

So, not a bad way to finish the season, and a good baseline for next year. I also learned that when news broke about me getting an MR2 Spyder to run in E/Street, apparently it caused some sleepless nights for some of my competitors, which is fun to learn.

Also, this Tuesday I got confirmation from Addco that my sway bar shipped and should be hear this Friday. Really?! You couldn't ship it just one week earlier?

Alright, so my Addco bar showed up last Friday. I was busy over the weekend, so I couldn't get to it then, but on Monday I took the car to work and decided to install it at work.

You'll need to remove both front wheels, as well as all the frunk plastics and the spare tire wheel, and a lift makes this much easier. But it can be done in an hour if you know what you're doing. There are two endlinks, both use a 14mm nut on the retaining nuts. The bottom one comes right off, the upper one you might have to hold the stud with a 5mm Allen socket. Or, hold the 14mm nut and turn the 5mm allen stud out, whichever suits you.

There are then two 12mm bolts per side holding the bar to the chassis. I cracked them loose and then ran them out with a 12mm socket on my 1/4" drive air socket.

To get the bar itself out, I had to rotate it and slide it partway out the driver's side wheel well, then angle the other end up and pull the whole thing out through the frunk opening. It's a little bit of a hassle, and you have to just fiddle with it until you get it right.

Comparison of the two bars, Addco on top and stock on bottom. The Addco bar is 22mm, while stock is 20mm. Aside from the harder-to-get Saner or Paul Brown bars, the Addco one is the stiffest. If you want an adjustable one though, you'll have to go with Whiteline. That Addco bar is a seriously hefty piece too, although I don't have a scale to compare weights.

Also, make sure that your endlink bolts fit through the sway bar. I got mine in the car, then couldn't get the second endlink to feed through the bar end. Turns out that whole had a bunch of powdercoating in it that I had to ream out. But it made me panic for a second, thinking that the hole was drilled wrong or something. Much easier to do before you install it in the car.

Make sure to grease up the supplied bushings, and Addco provides larger washers to put under the factory bolts to work with the Addco provided brackets.

Installation is the reverse, you drop the driver's side end down through the frunk, slide it out the driver's wheel well and then kind of wingle-wangle it until you can slide the thing back into place. Then bolt it up to the chassis and install your new end links. I used TwosRUs's endlinks and checked the option for a longer bolt to install on heavier sway bars.

Then reinstall all your frunk plastics (I now need to buy a bunch of the stupid plastic retainer clips, because 21 year old plastic push pins explode at a stern glance), and bolt on the wheels and you're done.

How does it drive? Uhhh, no clue. I have a three-mile commute in a straight line home, and the weather has been garbo, so I put it together and drove straight home and haven't driven it since. This car, with these tires, is so competent that you really have to push it hard to find the limits, so I don't know how well I'd be able to tell the difference on a public road anyways

NickD said:

thatsnowinnebago said:

Why use Miata wheels up front and Koenig heliums in the rear?

SCCA Street requires stock width wheels, plus or minus an inch in diameter. There's not a ton of lightweight wheel options in 15x6 or 15x6.5. For the 15x6s, unless you want to hunt down a set of rare-as-hen's-teeth 949Racing 6ULs (I think they made one run of those) or shell out crazy money for SSRs, the NB1 hollow-spokes are as light as it gets. The 15x6.5s in the rear are a really weird size and Konig Heliums are about it, in terms of a quality lightweight wheel. I think they're 4lbs lighter per wheel versus the stock MR2 wheels.

Soooooo, about those 949Racing wheels.... I am headed down to Altoona, Hollidaysburg, and Reading, PA this weekend, and realized that I would go by Planet Miata headed from Reading home to New York, and thought, hey, I should call them and see if they have any NB1 wheels that I could grab on the way home. Well, then, I checked Facebook and a For Sale post popped up in E/Street Chat of a guy selling a full set of 15x6 6ULs with nearly-new 205/50R15 Bridgestone RE71RSs for $900. Hmm. And the guy is in Downingtown, PA, which is only 45 minutes from Reading.

Just the Bridgestones alone are $760-ish, and these only have three events/eighteen runs on them. Essentially I'm getting a set of tires, plus 4 wheels for an additional $140. I can only run two of them, so my friend Lawrence has offered to buy the other two wheels, sans tires. Then I just have to get a set of Konig Heliums for the rear to mount the tires on.

So, now I'm meeting the guy Friday night to pick them up.

In reply to NickD :

Why can't you run all four?

In reply to Recon1342 :

SCCA E/Street requires you to run stock width wheels, although you can go up or down in diameter by one inch. The 2000-2002 MR2 Spyders run 15x6s in the front but 15x6.5s in the rear, while the 2003-2005s run 15x6s in the front and 15x7s in the rear. So neither pre- or post-facelift cars can run the 15x6s all the way around. One one hand, you could make the case that running a narrower than stock wheel doesn't really have an advantage, but then again, there is an unsprung weight savings to be had.

pretty sure the later spyders used a 16" rear wheel

In reply to clutchmaster :

Whoops, correct, they use a 16x7 rear on the post-facelift models, but everyone steps down to a 15x7

The eagles have landed. Even included Tire Rack tire bags too. 

One of them is a different finish, supposedly. Three are Beryllium and one is Charcoal, but I sure can't tell the difference. One is also missing a center cap, but I can either get another or just not run them

So right now, to get it ready for winter storage, I have the 15x7 bronze Advanti Storms with 4 year old Conti ExtremeContactSports on the Spyder, which are the summer wheels and tires for my Yaris (having three cars with the same bolt pattern is great!)

They look pretty good, but again, not E/Street legal

Then I test-fit one of the 949Racing 6ULs on the front.

And then test fit one on the rear as well, just because. This is likely the only time I'll see it with them front and rears, since I'll be selling two of the bare wheels

I placed the Spyder in winter storage last weekend. Since I only have a single-stall garage, which is occupied by the Miata, a friend of mine offered to let me store it in his rather large barn. That's his 1969 Firebird parked ahead of it, which he bought with a 455/TH400/12-bolt about as long ago as I bought my Miata. The 455 was always giving him grief, and it had rather steep rear gears with the TH400, and despite being a hardcore Pontiac guy, he finally threw in the towel and installed a 6.2L LS crate engine, 4L60E and a Ford 9".

I also had to take two of the 6UL wheels down to my work to strip the tires off before I sell them to my friend Lawrence. I decided to also throw in one of the factory front wheels and put them on a scale and see how much weight they saved. Now, while they both have 205/50R15 tires on them, the factory wheels have Continental ECS 02s, while the 6ULs have RE71RS, which could also have different weights, so it wasn't an apples-to-apples comparison. But not apples-to-oranges. More like apples-to-pears. The scale also may not have been the most accurate. But according to it, the stock wheels with tires weighed 32lbs per assembly, while the 6ULs with tires weighed 28lbs per assembly, about on par with what I expected. So that's 8lbs of unsprung weight off the front axle.

Thanks to you I've been keeping track of these on Marketplace.  There is has been some crazy good deals going since everyone around here panics in late fall to sell their convertible.  I'm tempted to buy one, enjoy it this spring and re-sell since they hold value so well.

Edit: This one could be a good flip candidate if could be bought in the $4-5k range:  2001 toyota mr2 for sale by owner - Pittsburgh, PA - craigslist

Stock for stock, how does this compare to a Miata?   

In reply to Scotty Con Queso :

Ohhh, that one already has the 2ZZ from the Celica GTS/Corolla XRS/Matrix XRS/Vibe GT swapped in (about a 40hp gain alone), plus a turbo, so that should be a pretty spicey meatball. 

In my opinion, stock for stock, when being used for sporty driving, the MR2 is the better car.

It just feels faster and lighter and more playful to me, even if it isn't. And while the Miata is a damn good sports car, to me the MR2 just feels more "special", I don't know hard to describe it. When I drive a stock early Miata, my mind is going "Well, it needs this, this and this", while driving a stock Spyder, I don't get any of that. The Spyder does have more headroom, which I like as a tall person. I can wear a helmet in the Spyder with the top up and have room, while I have to have my Miata's top down to wear a helmet. The power steering feels is excellent, the shifter is great and much easier to hit Third gear when driven in anger, and there's something to be said about Toyota build quality and reliability. My MR2 is all original and has just over 99k and the engine doesn't like a single drop. The engine in my Miata was completely rebuilt 4 years and 30k miles ago and leaks oil everywhere.

The Miata does have some advantages. It's easier to work on. It has actual storage/luggage space, unlike the MR2 which only has a pair of lockers behind the seat. There's better replacement part supplies. There's more aftermarket upgrades available. The Miata is much more common, and tends to be cheaper. The average Spyder will run you over $7500 and likely need an engine or a top, or even both, or it will be a $17-$25k museum piece. The Miata has better styling. I don't hate the Spyder's looks, like a lot of people do, but it's not traditionally attractive. The pre-facelift Spyders definitely look better in my opinion. The Miata interior has also aged much better.

So, I promise I haven't forgotten about this thread, there just hadn't been many developments lately. The car was stuck over in storage at my friend's because every single time we would get enough rain to clean the salt off the roads and I would start thinking about moving it home, it would snow half an inch and the state of New York would salt the ever-living bejeezus out of the roads. Which turned into a huge issue, because our first autocross is the weekend of April 27th, I had to put a transmission in it (and could only use the shop Saturdays 9-2pm), and I was out of town on April 20th.

So, finally on April 12th, the stars aligned enough to go get it out of storage. At which point I realized that I've owned it for about 7 and a half months, but hadn't actually seen the car in 6 months.

I hooked the battery back up, aired the tires up, and it started up and I drove it home. I also noticed that the transmission was pretty loud. I hadn't driven it much after the October 1st autocross, pretty much just to work and back once and then over to storage, but I was pretty sure then that the transmission had gotten markedly louder from that one autocross.

The next day, Friday April 13th, we had a slow afternoon at work, so I got permission to, after lunch, pull the Spyder in and begin the transmission removal. I was trying to get as much done as possible and didn't have time to take detailed photos of every step, but the process actually wasn't that bad.

Some tips:

• When it comes to the shifter cables, there are metal clips that hold the cables to a bracket. The internet says "just destroy the clips and get new ones". Yeah, you can do that, but that's a hack move. Instead lift up on the cable while spinning the color that the clips hold it in by and it will pop out when you twist it just right.
• The right rear axle has a carrier bearing. Don't try to split the axle off the intermediate axle. Loosen the two bolts that hold the carrier bearing in the bracket, hit the bolts with a hammer, and the whole axle will pop out as an assembly.
• Be prepared to fight with the left axle. It clips in there hard. It took me an hour of wrestling with it trying to get it to release. You can't get a hood spot to hit or pry on it.
• Make sure to eat your Wheaties that morning. A lot of the bolts use a lock fastener and are tighter than hell. You really have to put some muscle on them and you can't always get power tools on them.

The clutch was smoked, right down to the rivets, and the pressure plate and flywheel had some bad hot spots. I had ordered new ones in advance, anticipating that, as well as ARP bolts for the flywheel and pressure plate. Also, upon removing the transmission and flywheel, I discovered that this doesn't use a pilot bearing. Except, on Wednesday, I had collected all my parts, and realized that neither the clutch kit or the flywheel came with a pilot bearing and had overnighted one from RockAuto. I have no clue what that bearing goes to, but it's not an '02 Spyder. Lack of a pilot bearing does make it easier to get the trans lined up though.

All told, with a lift, and minimal use of power tools, plus wasting about an hour on the axles, I had the whole thing out in approximately 5 hours. I then got a ride home from a coworker.