So i got married on Friday just gone, and my darling wife has spent the last 10 years enduring my obsession with cars and has driven what she's been given with little complaint. Much as she loves peugeots she's always wanted a 2-door japanese coupe, top of the list being an MR2. As luck would have it, my boss at work looks after a couple of MR2 race cars and back in December pointed out one of the parts cars that seemed a bit too good to break and so a plan for a secret wedding present was hatched. We checked the car ran, which it did astonishingly well considering it hasn't been started once in the four years since Shawn (the race car owner) bought it - cranked 6 or 7 times, fired and instantly idled smoothly. I had a quick check over for rust, which was thankfully confined to the usual rear sill/arch area each side (par for the course on these) then promptly bought it for the princely sum of £250. I've failed a bit throughout this project to get many pictures, partially because of the time constraints and partially because i didn't want Charli (wifey) accidentally spotting some pictures on my phone. However, this is what i have of when i first bought it - you can kind of see just how green it was in this first picture...
Obviously for that sort of money it was going to have a few issues, which we started assessing that same week. First order of business was fitting a working battery and drive it up and down the car park on the estate; i was delighted to discover an almost-total lack of disturbing noises although the battery light was on and brakes were sticking badly. I stuck it straight up on a ramp to better investigate the rust and start looking for other potential issues.
Proper jap car with regards to rust, no half measures here. Everything else seemed surprisingly solid despite copious amounts of surface rust on almost every component. This was around the time i left the battery connected overnight for the first time, which promptly went flat. Didn't have time to chase the issue at that point, so i went back to disconnecting it each night. I confirmed the alternator was dead and removed it (what a chronic ballache that was, driveshaft has to come out) with a plan to get it rebuilt, however when i got it down i discovered the housing was cracked, so that plan went out of the window.
Shawn came to the rescue and donated a spare he had no use for from another spares car on his driveway, which got sent off for a full rebuild. This was around the time i left the battery on my MR2 connected overnight for the first time, which promptly went flat. Didn't have time to chase the issue at that point, so i went back to disconnecting it each night. The next time it was on the ramp i left it connected and five minutes later was rewarded with what sounded a bit like a serious electrical fire starting! Dropping the car down in a panic, we quickly realised the radio had turned itself on (without the key in the ignition...) and was crackling and popping the speakers. Naturally i immediately tore it out and binned it, Charli has a lovely headunit that i bought her for her birthday last year, so that could go in once the car had been presented at the wedding.
In the meantime we set about fixing the brakes and removed them to assess the damage, the rears needed a liberal application of oxy-acetylene to persuade the handbrake cables to let go! Once free it was clear the handbrake cables were seized solid in their sheaths and would need replacing. Similarly, the amount of rubber fragments inside the caliper bodies suggested we would probably need new hoses too, so i ordered the lot. Thankfully the pipe unions all came undone with relative ease and all the caliper sliders freed up with some encouragement. The calipers themselves looked like they could be saved, so we got on with cleaning them up and rebuilding them with new seals and dust boots.
I gave it a full service including belts and fluids, the coolant was seriously manky and took quite some flushing. The leather of the drivers seat was split in a few places, luckily for me Jonny is rather handy with a needle and thread and stitched her up a treat. calipers, hoses and cables went back on and were filled with fresh dot4. Alternator came back and was fitted up, the threads in the manual tensioner then mostly came out when i removed the bolt to fit the new belt, that was quickly fixed by over-sizing the hole and cutting new threads for a larger bolt. Failed to get any pictures at all of this stage, so i'll move swiftly onwards.
The next problem to rear it's head was the ignition switch, on starting the car it would fire and then die immediately unless you wiggled the key just right. Once again Shawn's spares car came up trumps and provided a working replacement. Around about now we managed to get some spare time at work and the weekend to tackle the fairly serious welding, four layers of metal had rusted through on both sides, which took quite some reconstructing. Once again i failed with the pictures, this is how it looked after several hours work:
Then with a few layers of filler:
And finally with a nice coating of schultz, fantastic stuff for hiding a multitude of sins.
I think we were only about two weeks away from the wedding day at this point, so the pressure was on. Everything was put back together and we started to think about finishing touches, a damn good clean being top of the list. A blast with the hoover and a cloth left me feeling rather pleased with myself as the interior came up almost like new, no real wear to speak of besides the driver's seat issues mentioned above and a few rust stains where it had been left sat for years. My boss did a history check at this point and discovered it hasn't had a valid MOT for 8 years, we can only assume it hasn't been used since then which makes the smooth running engine all the more impressive. He also mentioned that Shawn's parts car had a full stainless janspeed system on it, which i immediately bought and fitted since the original part was blowing from every join, bolt holes and the flexi. A mate from work took on the mammoth task of renovating the paintwork, of which he did an impressive job considering what he was working with. It was jet-washed, handwashed, jetwash rinsed, mopped, jetwashed, handwashed, rinsed again and finally waxed. Proper job!
Partway through...
This brings us to the night before the wedding, when we decided that since we had a couple of spare hours left we might as well sort out the appallingly filthy and corroded alloys. Proper bodge job was done on these, really impressed with the end result considering all four went from on the car, through prep, painting and drying (rotary sander, single spray can for all four and heatgun LOL) to back on the car in about 2 hours. And the end result...
I will get some pictures of the moment of presentation at the wedding once all the pictures come through, safe to say Charli was absolutely made up and 5 days on still occasionally comes over to poke me and remind me she has an MR2 and it's beautiful. :
Of course there are some enduring issues, leaks, wonky speedo etc, but nothing that can't be overcome. The speedo has left me with this rather amusing photo (for clarity we were actually doing about 70mph, the speedo seems to be reporting kmh judging by our tests):
Got a brilliant 0-60 video thanks to the same, will upload another time as i'm tired now, but it managed a supercar-beating 5 seconds!! Bizarrely that issue has already fixed itself, the speedo reverted to normal yesterday morning and has been fine ever since, time will tell if it remains that way. No doubt i've forgotten a few bits of the story, will refresh the post when i remember details, but that's it for now.
Lastly i want to say a massive thanks to all who helped me make this project a reality, Phil (cambelt and MOT), Adrian (paintwork), Lee (my boss, who has helped us find the time to do it), Shawn (given me various parts and refused to take anything for them). Most of all i want to thank Jonny, without whom the project quite simply wouldn't have seen the deadline or even come close, he helped with pretty much every part of the project and sacrificed countless hours of free time to make my latest hare-brained scheme a reality, what a legend.
Obviously for that sort of money it was going to have a few issues, which we started assessing that same week. First order of business was fitting a working battery and drive it up and down the car park on the estate; i was delighted to discover an almost-total lack of disturbing noises although the battery light was on and brakes were sticking badly. I stuck it straight up on a ramp to better investigate the rust and start looking for other potential issues.
Proper jap car with regards to rust, no half measures here. Everything else seemed surprisingly solid despite copious amounts of surface rust on almost every component. This was around the time i left the battery connected overnight for the first time, which promptly went flat. Didn't have time to chase the issue at that point, so i went back to disconnecting it each night. I confirmed the alternator was dead and removed it (what a chronic ballache that was, driveshaft has to come out) with a plan to get it rebuilt, however when i got it down i discovered the housing was cracked, so that plan went out of the window.
Shawn came to the rescue and donated a spare he had no use for from another spares car on his driveway, which got sent off for a full rebuild. This was around the time i left the battery on my MR2 connected overnight for the first time, which promptly went flat. Didn't have time to chase the issue at that point, so i went back to disconnecting it each night. The next time it was on the ramp i left it connected and five minutes later was rewarded with what sounded a bit like a serious electrical fire starting! Dropping the car down in a panic, we quickly realised the radio had turned itself on (without the key in the ignition...) and was crackling and popping the speakers. Naturally i immediately tore it out and binned it, Charli has a lovely headunit that i bought her for her birthday last year, so that could go in once the car had been presented at the wedding.
In the meantime we set about fixing the brakes and removed them to assess the damage, the rears needed a liberal application of oxy-acetylene to persuade the handbrake cables to let go! Once free it was clear the handbrake cables were seized solid in their sheaths and would need replacing. Similarly, the amount of rubber fragments inside the caliper bodies suggested we would probably need new hoses too, so i ordered the lot. Thankfully the pipe unions all came undone with relative ease and all the caliper sliders freed up with some encouragement. The calipers themselves looked like they could be saved, so we got on with cleaning them up and rebuilding them with new seals and dust boots.
I gave it a full service including belts and fluids, the coolant was seriously manky and took quite some flushing. The leather of the drivers seat was split in a few places, luckily for me Jonny is rather handy with a needle and thread and stitched her up a treat. calipers, hoses and cables went back on and were filled with fresh dot4. Alternator came back and was fitted up, the threads in the manual tensioner then mostly came out when i removed the bolt to fit the new belt, that was quickly fixed by over-sizing the hole and cutting new threads for a larger bolt. Failed to get any pictures at all of this stage, so i'll move swiftly onwards.
The next problem to rear it's head was the ignition switch, on starting the car it would fire and then die immediately unless you wiggled the key just right. Once again Shawn's spares car came up trumps and provided a working replacement. Around about now we managed to get some spare time at work and the weekend to tackle the fairly serious welding, four layers of metal had rusted through on both sides, which took quite some reconstructing. Once again i failed with the pictures, this is how it looked after several hours work:
Then with a few layers of filler:
And finally with a nice coating of schultz, fantastic stuff for hiding a multitude of sins.
I think we were only about two weeks away from the wedding day at this point, so the pressure was on. Everything was put back together and we started to think about finishing touches, a damn good clean being top of the list. A blast with the hoover and a cloth left me feeling rather pleased with myself as the interior came up almost like new, no real wear to speak of besides the driver's seat issues mentioned above and a few rust stains where it had been left sat for years. My boss did a history check at this point and discovered it hasn't had a valid MOT for 8 years, we can only assume it hasn't been used since then which makes the smooth running engine all the more impressive. He also mentioned that Shawn's parts car had a full stainless janspeed system on it, which i immediately bought and fitted since the original part was blowing from every join, bolt holes and the flexi. A mate from work took on the mammoth task of renovating the paintwork, of which he did an impressive job considering what he was working with. It was jet-washed, handwashed, jetwash rinsed, mopped, jetwashed, handwashed, rinsed again and finally waxed. Proper job!
Partway through...
This brings us to the night before the wedding, when we decided that since we had a couple of spare hours left we might as well sort out the appallingly filthy and corroded alloys. Proper bodge job was done on these, really impressed with the end result considering all four went from on the car, through prep, painting and drying (rotary sander, single spray can for all four and heatgun LOL) to back on the car in about 2 hours. And the end result...
I will get some pictures of the moment of presentation at the wedding once all the pictures come through, safe to say Charli was absolutely made up and 5 days on still occasionally comes over to poke me and remind me she has an MR2 and it's beautiful. :
Of course there are some enduring issues, leaks, wonky speedo etc, but nothing that can't be overcome. The speedo has left me with this rather amusing photo (for clarity we were actually doing about 70mph, the speedo seems to be reporting kmh judging by our tests):Got a brilliant 0-60 video thanks to the same, will upload another time as i'm tired now, but it managed a supercar-beating 5 seconds!! Bizarrely that issue has already fixed itself, the speedo reverted to normal yesterday morning and has been fine ever since, time will tell if it remains that way. No doubt i've forgotten a few bits of the story, will refresh the post when i remember details, but that's it for now.
Lastly i want to say a massive thanks to all who helped me make this project a reality, Phil (cambelt and MOT), Adrian (paintwork), Lee (my boss, who has helped us find the time to do it), Shawn (given me various parts and refused to take anything for them). Most of all i want to thank Jonny, without whom the project quite simply wouldn't have seen the deadline or even come close, he helped with pretty much every part of the project and sacrificed countless hours of free time to make my latest hare-brained scheme a reality, what a legend.
![[Image: Ty8kl7b.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/Ty8kl7b.jpg)
![[Image: 17b33c2a-8471-4313-992e-0a4b324cf926_zps2e63812a.jpg]](http://s143.photobucket.com/user/matt-taylor/media/17b33c2a-8471-4313-992e-0a4b324cf926_zps2e63812a.jpg.html)
They were replaced with michelin pilot sports on the front and toyo proxes on the rear.