The weekend of Import Carlisle, on Friday night, I was eating dinner with my wife and looking through FB marketplace as has become my practice searching for parts or projects. Not that I have any time for more projects and have not finished my V6 AW11 project, but sometimes a deal comes along and that makes you stop what you are working on and this was one of them.
Besides the horrible 80's bra and steel wheels with Pepboys wheel covers, this was a rust free, running, complete 87 AW11 MR2 with a nice interior and a clean history for $800. I quickly did the math and just parting it out for the excellent condition side skirts, engine, transmission, and interior was going to be worth the effort to get it to our house, so I contacted the seller (it had been listed for 2 hours), he did a video with me showing the car from all angles and confirming the rust free condition and I sent him the money. I had to pay to get it shipped to my house so my cost so far is $1,100.
Car arrived yesterday and I confirmed that it is indeed rust free. Pressure washed it today, paint is really bad, been repainted at some point but none of the normal AW11 rust areas have shown their ugly face yet. Interior is really in excellent condition, seats are great and the only body work I need to do is to replace one of the front valance pieces with a good one I already have from the other car. I spend my lunch today removing the Viper alarm system.
Car is running and as advertised, it starts and idles but won't rev (I did get it to rev by carefully playing with the throttle. Thinking TPS, timing or a vacuum leak, will start troubleshooting over the next few days. Goal is to get it drivable to evaluate the condition and then decide what I want to do with it. Body is too nice not to get it painted, so may get this one and the Black V6 car painted one after the other. I'll be looking for some wheels for it soon, should have kept the Rotas I pulled off the V6 car, but that was last week, how did I know another one would follow me home?
Not sure of my plans yet, could just get it running well and flip it, could keep it and restore it like I am doing to the black V6 car or do a more radical swap like a k-series.......