Found a low miles 2002 Spyder seems like a good deal, but it's an auto trans. For a fun car that handles like a skate, I may not care. Shocked to say that but I'll get over it.
What should I know about these? Timing belt or chain? Any areas of concern?
If I recall correctly, there were some issues with oil consumption due to pre-cat failure. So check for low compression, sooty tail pipe and blue smoke on cold start. The only issue I ever found with the car itself is there is almost ZERO storage. (Literally a couple shoe box sized bins and that's it)
Timing chain.
Cats can clog and take out engines.
wheelsmithy said:Timing chain.
Cats can clog and take out engines.
I have always been confused by that. How can something in the exhaust "take out" the engine?
Are there aftermarket exhaust options, if the 16 year old cat(s) aren't great? Car has only 59k miles..
No to the auto trans. Everything else on the car is great or can be addressed. But the auto is actually a computer controlled manual and is pretty bad even when functioning 100%. Get around 100k miles on it and expensive parts start failing. I just parted out a wrecked smt (the auto) car and made over $1500 selling just the smt control stuff. However!! That opens an opportunity for you. If you buy the car cheap you can convert the existing transmission to manual shift and sell the smt parts for more than it costs to do the manual conversion. You can even do that with the transmission in the car no need to pull engine or trans. It’s tight and it’s definitely a project so if you’re just looking for a fun car to buy and drive I recommend passing. But f you’re happy to wrench on it for a few hours and sell some excess parts on eBay you might be golden!
the cats — there are two tiny close coupled cats that are just a few inches from the cylinder head. They break apart and clog up the main cat. That then lets some pressure build up in the exhaust and when the motor is shut off a tiny bit of catalyst can be blown back into the exhaust passages of the cylinder head. Those flecks of ceramic then work their way into the cylinders which leads to catastrophic oil consumption and rod knock. I bought my first one with it already having achieved that amazing feat and then parted out the wrecked smt car to fix the blown motor manual car. I don’t tend to do things the easy way.
The fix for the cats is to take the catalyst out of the close coupled cats. It’ll still have the main cat so you will pass OBD tests and emissions tests. Alternatively you can replace them every 100k miles that should prevent the issue.
They look awesome with wheels and a hardtop.
dculberson said:No to the auto trans. Everything else on the car is great or can be addressed. But the auto is actually a computer controlled manual and is pretty bad even when functioning 100%. Get around 100k miles on it and expensive parts start failing. I just parted out a wrecked smt (the auto) car and made over $1500 selling just the smt control stuff. However!! That opens an opportunity for you. If you buy the car cheap you can convert the existing transmission to manual shift and sell the smt parts for more than it costs to do the manual conversion. You can even do that with the transmission in the car no need to pull engine or trans. It’s tight and it’s definitely a project so if you’re just looking for a fun car to buy and drive I recommend passing. But f you’re happy to wrench on it for a few hours and sell some excess parts on eBay you might be golden!
the cats — there are two tiny close coupled cats that are just a few inches from the cylinder head. They break apart and clog up the main cat. That then lets some pressure build up in the exhaust and when the motor is shut off a tiny bit of catalyst can be blown back into the exhaust passages of the cylinder head. Those flecks of ceramic then work their way into the cylinders which leads to catastrophic oil consumption and rod knock. I bought my first one with it already having achieved that amazing feat and then parted out the wrecked smt car to fix the blown motor manual car. I don’t tend to do things the easy way.
The fix for the cats is to take the catalyst out of the close coupled cats. It’ll still have the main cat so you will pass OBD tests and emissions tests. Alternatively you can replace them every 100k miles that should prevent the issue.
I'm glad someone posted this already. The Auto/SMT transmissions should be avoided particularly for scarcity of parts, despite the car going out of production ~10 years ago.
The real question is: what do you want from the car? What will you do with it? Spyders arguably have the best handling of any "cheap" car made within the last decade but they completely lack any storage space- a Miata is legitimately a more practical car. But if you have time and money to burn, a Spyder can easily be turned into a cheap Elise provided you really dig into that suspension.
note the hardtops are significantly more expensive than miata hard tops. We are talking $2k+.
Appleseed said:They look awesome with wheels and a hardtop.
And a widebody kit lol.
I've got an interesting/sick one for sale, hit me up if you're interested. Also cheap
Um, add auto mr2 spyders to my list of want cars.
I have come into possession of a basketcase 2zz and now i am also vaguely looking for Spyders.
the other problem is NO aftermarket support. You are literally on your own to develop that car. We did the SMT conversion and was planning on the 2ZZ swap but there just isnt enough support or interest. I went back to the usual answer: Miata(now on my 15th since 1994). YMMV
There is monkeywrenchracing.com . They aren't cheap but are good support. They sell everything you need to convert the SMT into a clutched and h-pattern manual transmission, and have the parts you need for a 2zz swap.
I love Miatas but the Spyder definitely has a more "exotic" look and feel. They only sold 28,000 or so in the US so they're never going to be common. Plus the mid-engine thing makes for interesting proportions.
Carbon said:I've got an interesting/sick one for sale, hit me up if you're interested. Also cheap
Are you selling your turbo track car??
whenry said:the other problem is NO aftermarket support. You are literally on your own to develop that car. We did the SMT conversion and was planning on the 2ZZ swap but there just isnt enough support or interest. I went back to the usual answer: Miata(now on my 15th since 1994). YMMV
TwosRUs and PRIME MR2 both supply aftermarket parts for the MR-S Spyder.
dculberson said:Carbon said:I've got an interesting/sick one for sale, hit me up if you're interested. Also cheap
Are you selling your turbo track car??
Nope, liked that one so much I built a silver clone, that's for sale. Track one is 2zz turbo now, gone kinda nuts on it :)
In other news.....The no aftermarket support thing is absolute bullE36 M3.
What's a good price for one these days? There's a 2001 on CL locally for just over $3k. Not a lot in my area
I always love the idea of turning one into a cheap Elise
3K is amazing- in the Midwest they never go for less than $5,000.
Of course, I also don't know if they sell, either. The MR-S is a bit of an odd one in the land of bro-dozers and the only one I ever saw in the wild was by UNO and was covered in weaboo anime girl stickers. We kept heckling him with the ambulance's PA.
Found this one today, down in Texas:
https://elpaso.craigslist.org/cto/d/2000-toyota-mr2-spyder/6515102498.html
$3500, with a worn out 1zz, but includes a hardtop. That seems like the makings of something great
Found another with a hardtop and 2zz in great shape for around $9k.
So the one I eluded to earlier in the thread is a 00 with 99k on it with a haas turbo setup tuned on an emanage blue. It makes 240ish whp (feels super strong compared to the white car with a similar setup). and has springs, bracing, and cusco front and rear bars. The body is very good as is the interior, top is mint. On stock wheels I'll do $5k, with the oz ultraleggeras, I'll do $5500. It lost oil pressure momentarily on track due to a failed oil feed line, so I bearing slapped the rods and replaced the tty rod bolts with all oem parts. Might last a million miles, might get loud on the ride home but that's why it's dirt cheap to my beloved grm homies. It's a very sorted little car, got 29.8mpg over the last tank of fairly hard use.
In reply to Bytes :
hardtop alone is worth like $2k
In reply to mr2slow10 :
Post up in the for sale section. 
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