Can you get anything back from the old shop? That's bullE36 M3.
Can you get anything back from the old shop? That's bullE36 M3.
Shop is out of business and the problem didn't show up until the 60 day period on the credit card had expired because I hadn't driven it that much at that point. I'm normally not someone who does credit card chargebacks but given what we found so far, I would have made an exception.
Ah well, a grand to create the problem and another grand to fix it...
That sucks a big one man... I've done a timing belt and head gasket on my '91 myself. No problems thus far... wish you were closer and I'd gladly help get it right!
Thanks Dan.
I got it back from the Toyota dealer on Saturday and had to drive to the Bay Area on Sunday, figured that it'll either blow up or stay fixed. So far it looks like it staid fixed. Phew.
Indeed there was. Not much has happened since August. I've been chasing a few parts, plus I've had family over from Europe so furnishing the house so they had something to sleep on took priority.
I've managed to find a rear TRD strut bar (discontinued and not easy to find) that should be with me next week. It needs a bit of paint but otherwise looks like it is in good shape. One of the brain farts is that I don't have any "normal" tires for it so I can't really drive it much in winter. I guess I'm just going to fit the Moroso oil pan that's been on the shelf for a while, change the gearbox oil and then put it into the hangar until early spring and/or until I can afford a refurb gearbox. The one in the car works but has a leak on the input shaft seal. So far no local shop will touch a manual trans and the advice I got from a local SCCA guy who also runs an MR2 was to hit up CRW for a refurbed box.
That is, unless someone on here knows/can recommend a reliable gearbox rebuilder who can put a Quaife into an E153 at the same time. Unfortunately the whole box is built around the input shaft seal so I may as well get it refreshed while it's out.
What's the plan for this car now? Track day toy?
Track capable toy, mainly. I'm not going nuts on it, but I'm planning to add some choice parts (like nice wheels) and some track related mods like an upgraded stock mount intercooler, possibly an oil cooler to it. And a better radio, it's got the nice OEM system but the tape player is broken 
so I can't listen to the GRM podcast while driving.
The basic theme is "middle age salary man builds Wangan sleeper".
I may have a line on a set of stock wheels, I'll let you know what I find ;-)
Appreciate it!
Rough stuff. Hope it keeps getting better from here. Like the car.
I finally had a bit more time earlier this month to go work on it. I still haven't done any of the big stuff but some progress counts, right?
First, time to replace the ignition components to get a good baseline. I also took the time to replace the air and oil filters with fresh NAPA Gold parts, partially because it was running a Fram filter and I don't like those.
Everything went reasonably smoothly apart from the spark plugs having been tightened by Ook, the gorilla wivva toothache. Yay, aluminium head engine. Fortunately the threads in the head staid in the head.
The first oddity I found was that the distributor cap seemed to have been off center at some point. You can just about see that two of the posts have been worn away by the rotor whereas the other two look OK(ish). Oddly enough the rotor didn't look too badly damaged. I think I took reasonable care putting the cap back on, but I'll check in a thousand miles or so to verify that it's not doing the same thing again.
The engine started on the button again after changing out the parts, but then again it didn't have any issues starting prior to the ignition service. I haven't had time to drive it yet to see if the slight hesitation at part throttle has improved, although I have a suspicion that there's another reason for that...
Ever since I had the car, I noticed the sucky sound of what I think may be a vacuum leak. In reality it's not as noticeable as it is in the video, but it's there. No CELs or anything like that, but it bothers me and if it is indeed a leak and not just normal, I certainly don't want to Auto-X or track it as is. Can any of the MR2 gurus comment?
http://youtu.be/MZVwiJC5Rwo
To the powers that be - can we pretty please have the ability to embed youtube videos? It looks like your code is blocking iframes which is fair enough, but that's a little annoying.
Best laid plans and all that...
Today I was planning to fit the Moroso oil pan I have for it and change the gearbox oil - PO put Redline MTL in the gearbox (and overfilled it), which is not the gearbox oil Redline recommends.
Plans were thwarted by a battery that's as dead as a door nail despite me charging it when I last worked on the car about 4-5 weeks ago. Looks like it's really a lump of useless lead as even my "I don't know what it is, but I'll charge it anyway" charger so far has failed to make an impression on the battery. Looks like the alarm killed it off for good. It's also a cheapo Wallymart special and I have no receipt for it (PO bought it) so I guess I'll have to wander down to Costco and get a new Interstate battery.
Gack. I seem to have worse than my usual luck with this thing. At least on the positive side I managed to find a reasonably price front TRD strut brace to go with the rear one I already have.
In reply to BoxheadTim:
This won't help you directly - but if you need counsel, advice, etc on the MR2 - call Prime Performance in NJ. They know MR2's inside and out, all gen engines (though they specialize in Gen4's).
http://www.primemr2.com/, 862-258-3346 - talk to Justin.
(full disclosure - I'm his Dad ... but search around the interwebs for their name and you'll see that they are "the" driveable/trackable MR2 guys :-))
and no ... I don't get a commission - just paying it forward :D
Some more progress, finally. On Christmas Eve, I decided that I had enough of the big box sitting in my home office, so I went from this:
Via this, with the pleasant find of a quarter that brought down the cost of the car (every little bit helps!):
To this - matching seats, yay!
The Nagisa rails are great at getting you sitting lower, I just need to modify the trunk release cover a little to get full movement on the rail. At the moment the rail hits the cover just about where I want to sit so I'll be OK, but it's details like that which tend to annoy me over time so I'll have to get the Dremel out at some point.
The next day I decided to drop in the battery again to see if the Battery Tender was fibbing or if three weeks on the regular charger and then the Battery Tender had indeed revived the battery. Admire the clean frunk:
A bit of cleanup, minor victory - picture was taken with the car running, so the battery did have enough juice to get it going again:
The less amusing part was that even with a fully charged battery, the alarm is now AWOL (OK, that's not necessarily a big issue) but more importantly, the alternator is pumping out between 15.15V and 15.20V. Bah. Looks like another fried voltage regulator, methinks. I guess it's alternator quarter here - first the CRX, now the MR2...
I think I should also go and change the clutch fluid:
The odd thing is that the brake fluid is only a few months old, seems to be a bit dark for that. Nothing in comparison to the black stuff that pretends to be the clutch fluid, mind.
To celebrate the running car again I took it around the block, which tends to include a road or two in an industrial area that's a couple of block south of us and tends to have very empty roads on a holiday 
.
Wanna get rid of the old seats???
Not really, I'm keeping them for when/if I sell the car so I can pull the Recaros.
Long time no update...
Booked the first event of the season (two-day PDX/CT/TT event with my local SCCA chapter at Thunderhill), then realized that I wouldn't have the time to finish the car for the event, so I had to enlist the help of one of the few mechanics around here that I can trust.
Going to get it back tomorrow with the Moroso oil pan fitted (wouldn't go on the track without it), some EBC Yellow Stuff pads (yuck, but they are the only street + track pads I can find for it) and some fresh lubricant in the gearbox.
So here's me with a car I've never driven in anger on the track or at an Auto-X, going to a track that I haven't run (T-Hill West) taking part in proper motorsports competition for the first time. Wish me luck, I think I need heaps of it.
Aaaaand ... I'm back. With both me and the car still in one piece.
Summary of the weekend - competition is fun even when you come in last 
- and the West course at Thunderhill is a lot of fun. Can't compare it to the established course (yet) as I haven't run that, but it's pretty technical, which I like, and seems to reward momentum cars if you get it right.
The car mostly behaved itself apart from developing some clunk either in the suspension or steering (it feels like it has a bit of play in the steering that wasn't there before) so I ended up sitting out the last two CT session on Sunday in an attempt to not needlessly break the car. Front suspension and steering clunks aren't exactly unknown on MR2s; I'll have to see if I can figure out on Sunday what the problem is.
The other issue I ran into is a certain lack of forward movement - it would be nice if the pegged boost gauge would somehow translate into some acceleration. It proved pretty pointless to rev past 6k rpm even under full boost so I ended up riding the torque up to about 5500-6000 rpm most of the time before shifting. The exhaust on these is known to be pretty restrictive so it may just be an issue with the engine having a hard time to exhale properly. At this point in time it didn't feel much faster than my almost stock Miata used to feel like .
I'll try to get it on the dyno at the local race shop in the next few weeks to get a better idea of the health of the engine - as stock as this thing is, we should see about 150 WHP. Trouble is it didn't feel like all those horsies have been accounted for so far.
Other than that I'm obviously still trying to get used to the car. I'm not enamoured with the way it turns, although I did manage to improve that by softening the front suspension a little. Still seems to be a bit reluctant to turn (or at least less eager than I had hoped for/expected) so I'll need to work on that a bit more or get used to it.
Oh, and I'll probably start trailering it to the events that are further away. That way, I don't have to worry quite as much about breaking something and then getting home. Already have a line on a trailer from a fellow club member who's switching to an enclosed trailer.
Found the cause of the drivers side suspension clunk:
Admittedly I took the nut off completely for dramatic effect but it only had about two turns left before it would have fallen off 
all by itself. Refitted with some blue Loctite for now, but the links are on their last legs - the bottom joint on this one has lost a lot of grease and I couldn't check the tightness on the passenger side links because the balljoint itself was spinning when I tried to tighten it. I think we can safely say that they've both had it.
Also not very happy with the state of the strut gaiters - these have about 1k miles on it, if that:
I guess when I do the endlinks I'll heat them up with a hairdryer and see if I can work out the kink.
I'm currently debating if I should leave the OEM sway bars on or use this as an excuse to upgrade them "while I'm in there". I'm vaguely hoping that having adjustable sway bars might help with the turn-in...
Regarding no thrust with boost, those cars have a baby turbo thats out of steam at 6k or so on top of the measly stock intercooler (which id upgrade first). I had to upgrade both on my old mr2 turbo and it made it a whole lot more fun. Also the downpipe sucks and theres cheap decent upgrade on ebay
I know they like some breathing mods so an upgraded downpipe and intercooler are on the shopping list. Already have managed to find a less restrictive intake, too.
So far I'm not planning to upgrade the turbo, my preference is to optimize what's there first.
Take it to Prime. Have them do the Gen4 swap.
Two slight flaws in that plan:
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