I would think an Esprit would be a walk in the park to work on compared to a Midget or Sprite. I swear the people who assembled those were midgets (er, little people) who had only 2 fingers and a thumb on each hand.
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Jan. 8, 2009 9:49 a.m. Jensenman UltimaDork
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Jan. 8, 2009 10:10 a.m. RobL New Reader
Dr. Hess wrote:
The Mk1 has to have the engine supported too. It only connects to the frame by the front mount, which will rotate up and down on you. The other 3 powertrain mounts are on the transmission. I could do a Mk1 in a day if I tried, or 2 days of easy wrenchin', which I prefer.
I've only had the engine out of the MKI once so far. I thought the front (car not engine) mount might have attached to the engine.
What would take you or me a couple of days of easy wrenching, would take the average 20 something on MR2OC a week. Hence the best $850 they would spend is to have someone else do it. Plus they wouldn't be out of their DD for more than a couple of days.
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Jan. 8, 2009 10:29 a.m. Carson HalfDork
I'm not too worried about it, I'm actually taking my time and I'm pretty far into it. Nothing is dificult, it's just a lot of removing things.
I still maintain that I am a 20 something
and I can see this project only taking a weekend, but it's a side project so I'm only doing a bit at a time. So in this case, Rob, you're right, it'll probably take this 20 something a week to do! 
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Jan. 8, 2009 10:35 a.m. Dr. Hess PowerDork
Yeah, that whole "front" v. "right" thing gets confusing in a transverse mounted engine setup. I mean the one over in the right of the pic that you can't really see 'cause it's too dark. Everything else is either transmission or bell housing. I swapped in a Fidanza flywheel and ACT clutch in this one in about 2 days while it was about 20F out in my unheated garage, so that limited wrench time because of the required "warm up" time.
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Jan. 8, 2009 2:32 p.m. gjz30075 New Reader
Another forum for MR2's is www.toyotanation.com It covers all Toyotas and has an MR2 forum. Not really recommended though.
That said, however, my son just swapped in a V6 Camry motor into his MkII and found a similar UK forum for just this kind of thing. Pretty helpful. We did have an issue with the Camry motor and the Gen 3 Camry forum on Toyotanation was quite helpful.
The Camry motor seems to give the engine compartment plenty of room because of no turbo and shorter (front to back) block. He did a fantastic job; car runs terrific and it all looks very oem.
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Jan. 8, 2009 3:14 p.m. Tyler H Dork
I disagree that a clutch on an SW20/21 is a E36 M3ty job...at least no E36 M3tier than a lot of other FWD applications. After putting a downpipe and upipe on my WRX last week, I miss how well thought-out the Toyota is. If you read up on a clutch job for the WRX, you'll see that this is also harder than an MR2.
Here is how I would do a clutch on an MR2 SW20, and it sounds worse than it is:
Put the front wheels on boards, at least 6" high and 24" long. Remove trunklid, engine lid and side covers and get them out of the way. It takes literally less than 5 minutes to do.
Remove rear bumper cover
Remove the exhaust
Hang brake calipers to the fender well,
Unbolt AC compressor and hang it (don't undo lines)
Disconnect radiator and heater hoses and clutch line at rear firewall
Disconnect the shift cables from the tranny.
Disconnect throttle cable at throttle body.
Disconnect engine->body harness from ecu in trunk
Remove the airbox, etc.
Attach a cherrypicker to the engine hooks
Unbolt the "strut rods" from the chassis
Unbolt driver and passenger side engine mounts
Pull the struts.
Unbolt the lower subframe
Lower the ENTIRE drivetrain and rear suspension onto the garage floor, onto a piece of plywood, or the top of a rubbermaid container, or onto a furniture dolly.
Unbolt the cherrypicker from the engine and bolt it to the recovery hooks on the rear of the chassis (this is why you remove the bumper cover. If your paint is crap, you might not care.)
Lift the arse end of the car into the sky and slide the entire drivertrain right out from under the car.
Now you have the luxury to comfortably replace the clutch and perform any other maintenance with ease. When you're done, roll 'er back under there.
It sounds complicated, but it's not. It takes about an hour and a half to do all that, if you're experience at wrenching and have a good tool kit, including air tools. 3-4 extra hours total.
You don't have to do it that way. You can pull the axles and tranny while the engine is in the car. Then you can spend three hours or more cursing, trying to deal with flywheel bolts and aligning a clutch and transmission on your back, in the dark.
If you're comfortable, you'll do better work and be less likely to get hurt. I have a sequence of pictures of most of this.
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Jan. 8, 2009 5:05 p.m. 93celicaGT2 Reader
Tyler H wrote:
Count me out on the 5s, but I'm not a hater. They are cheap and plentiful at least. No sporting engine should run out of breath under 5k rpm. They are torquey.
I always thought the ae92 was a underappreciated car, though.
You can fix the top end problem fairly easily... but i agree with you as a whole. :)
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Jan. 8, 2009 7:26 p.m. Carson HalfDork
Carson wrote:
I do have a real question now for the SW20 know-it-alls:
Mine is a T-Bar car, I want to know where the drains for the top are supposed to empty. On the passenger side, the water comes out of the quarter window vent louver. It doesn't do this on the driver's side. Normal? Seems strange to me.
Short of making a new, dedicated topic, does anyone know the answer to this? Here's a pic of where the water currently comes out, see the clean streak?
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Jan. 8, 2009 9:18 p.m. Tyler H Dork
As far as I know those are not drains. They bolt to the unibody from inside the cabin with 1 10mm bolt. There is a little rubber flapper behind it. I think the TTops drain down the a-pillars.
If the top leaks, there is a toyota part for eccentric latch pin bushings.
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Jan. 8, 2009 9:32 p.m. Carson HalfDork
Ok, I knew it seemed really strange. The driver's side drain down the a-pillar. Maybe I have a clog and it's routing the water above the quarter window molding.
