Maniacs '87 Toyota MR2 Build Thread

A combination of being busy and lazy has contributed to me not making much headway in the last month and a half. I finally ordered my Jimi Throttle Bracket and received it today so I installed it. There are two purposes for this purchase one it makes the engine bay look much nicer but more importantly it replaces that throttle cable tripod thing on top of the engine which I had theorized was the root of my sticky throttle cable. Here's the old setup:

I installed it but found that the custom intake causes the AFM to be in the way of where the throttle cable routes. Temporarily I installed the AFM upside down to fix this issue. From what I understand this won't affect the function of the AFM. I am debating on redesigning the intake to move the AFM further out and placing it right side up. I would rather leave it where it is because I'll need as much room as possible for future turbo piping from the intercooler I'm just not 100% sure the AFM will perform properly upside down. Here's the installed pics I think the bracket looks very nice and I thank Jimi for continuing to support the MR2 community.

I just wish they made a similar throttle bracket for those of us who are retaining the cruise control :(

-Hans

In reply to hhaase:

One of the guys on the MR2 forum made this:

http://www.mr2.com/forums/threads/37713-Jimi-Throttle-Bracket/page2

Unfortunately not manufactured for you but at least it gives you a start for the design.

Spent some time today for Fathers Day on the MR2. Removed the old outer and inner tie rod ends so that I can replace them. The inners were a pain I rented a inner tie rod removal tool from O'reillys but still needed some extra torque. Here's the tool I break out when I really really need to turn a bolt. My buddy Damon nicknamed it God years ago. Its about 6 feet long with a tapered end that fits nicely over my biggest ratchet.

I removed the front subframe under the steering rack to clean it up and because I wanted to replace the white steering rack bushing. I popped out the old bushing and replaced it with a new OEM one.

I decided my steering rack brackets, Sway bar brackets and subframe were looking a bit nasty so I ground down the surface rust and hit it up with some rust reformed and some blue paint for that super awesome rally stylez. Its also easier to see bends, leaks, and scrapes if its painted a brighter color which I expect might be helpful. At the very least it looks pretty neat.

Finally I removed my front and rear motor mounts to fill them. The motor is supported by a floor jack and the side motor mounts. They are soaking in degreaser now so the fill sticks nicely.

I purchased new Inner and outer tie rod ends, front and rear lower ball joints, and the Matrix Garage rear tie rods. Should have this thing handling like a new car especially with the poly bushings. Later on I'll be looking for a set of coilovers to complete the package.

I have to compliment you on your choice of chips sir!

What are you going to fill the mounts with?

3M Window Urethane seems popular enough to give it a try. Easily available and the only real downside seems to be a long cure time which I've got plenty of time to let it dry. The chips came with lunch about 3 weeks ago and I never got around to eating them but I do enjoy those and cheddar and sour cream ruffles.

Spotted that a couple of the bolts that holds the tophats for the front struts are broken so there are only 3 holding them on. There's a hole for a fourth but nothing in it. I'm not finding any MR2s in the salvage yards around me. Are there any other vehicles that may use the same top hats that I can search for?

If anyone has one they can sell me feel free to contact me.

Busy week for me on the MR2. I got the inner and outer tie rod ends, front ball joints, and rear tie rods installed. I put back together all the pieces I took off to paint and I filled and then installed my motor mounts.

The car feels great now very tight but I needed to get an alignment done. I had some afternoon appointments today that canceled so I decided to load up my laptop and work from the waiting from of Action Gator while they did my alignment. The alignment went well but when I tried to restart my car to leave my key would not turn in the ignition cylinder. No amount of poking, prodding, beating or swearing would allow it to turn. I eventually took apart what little was installed of my steering column. I took off the wires and was able to start the car but the column lock was in place so I couldnt turn. Eventually I found the right combination of things to remove to get the entire assembly off so I could make it home. The carrier and bearing are removed so the steering wheel is just flopping around I had to start and turn off the car with a screwdriver. I will probably get a cheap ignition lock and a push button start and mount that where the center console was. Its good to have an easily accessible shut down so it was on my to do list.

Here's what I drove home with:

The offending piece:

Replaced the Ignition Cylinder with one that I ordered from Rock Auto. For some reason the one they sent me had the removal pin in a different position than my original one so I had to drill a small hole in the location of the new pin through the housing so that it could move freely and operate properly. I had read that all the ones from Rock Auto have the pin in the wrong place so they must have some cross reference for the parts just slightly off. Not a big deal and easily gotten around.

I put the rest of the column back together well what things I need for basic functionality and took the car out for a couple trips around the block. It feels great with the new alignment and suspension pieces. I have some sort of slight rubbing sound that seems to be coming from the back left. I'm a little worried about the hub bearings as that are still the old ones. I'll look to take a longer test drive this weekend for a good shakedown session. I also added a couple stickers on the interior bar that goes across the car under the windshield. One for obvious reasons it adds 5 horsepower. The other one I feel is a subtle hint to anyone that gets in the passenger seat what kind of car to expect.

This weekend was about some of the details. I have the basic function of the car in pretty good shape so I've been looking into the smaller things that I can improve or fix. I started by taking down a front strut to figure out why I don't have a stud for the top mounting points. Turns out its just flat broken off. I was hoping to try to drill a broken stud out and replace with another bolt but that's not possible. I'll be looking to replace the top hats on the front suspension.

My headlights which worked great in the garage ended up flickering on and off while traveling down the road. A bit of research and I found that the headlight switch needs to be resoldered occasionally and the dimmer knob cracks. I opened up the switch and took care of the soldering and super glued the cracked wheel.

I installed the other hood pin I had been running on one for quite awhile. I still don't have a solution in place to hold the trunk down for now I'm relying on the incredible down force generated by the spoiler. I told my kids they would be able to pick out a couple decals to put on the car. My daughter picked out a Hello Kitty "Yoda" and my son a BB8. I installed those where they wanted them along with some other hand picked stickers of my choice.

I still am having problems with a low rpm low load ping and I backfire when coming off high rpms. Some adjustment on the TPS brought that down to just two little pops. I know there are holes in the exhaust system the exhaust manifold has definitely seen better days. I still think timing is off so I'm going to invest in a quality timing light and see if I can dial it in better.

So its been 7 months since I've updated this. There is a reason for that. I bought another car to try to rallycross. It was a '91 Isuzu Impulse RS that was brought to my attention by GRM in fact. I took that car from a non runner to a running driving example changing out quite a few parts. I've driven it and then my MR2 back to back and... I like the MR2 more, its a happier more lively car, its like an 80's version of Herbie the Love Bug for me. I decided I am going to sell the Impulse and get the MR2 finished. My main thing keeping me off the rallycross course was the lowered suspension and broken studs on the front suspension.

I needed to get stock springs, buy new top hats, and I'm sure the struts were gone. So with my new found love I summoned the courage to drop some dough on a new set of coilovers. This addresses all my issues and even allows me to go higher than stock high. I bought a set of Godspeed Mono RS coilovers. These were cheap at $740 shipped and actually had some really good feedback from the civic, miata, and 240 guys.

Here's a before and after pic from the lowered to how she sits now:

I also plugged the giant hole in my trunk with some left over metal from a stove we got rid of. Might have been a washer or dryer as well I don't know I've been saving the panels for awhile now.

I cut it to size and then riveted it in place. It fills the gap and hopefully will keep some of the dirt out. Everything is in place for me to attend my first event Feb 25th at the Firm in FL. I know there's a couple people on the forum that will be attending and I look forward to meeting them all.

My Wabi Sabi MR2 as she sits right now:

Did some extra tweaking here and there on the coil overs had some clunking issues as well as some high speed instability. Lowering the car a bit, adding some preload helped this out quite a bit. I also took some negative camber out of the passenger front. Right now I'm just working with an eyeball alignment and whatever information I can glean from a level. Its not perfect but it tracks straight now. Last time I took the car in for an alignment they wanted an extra $120 for camber bolts and wouldn't agree that the car comes with stock adjustment (it does). Caster adjustment is pretty much frozen in place for now I may look towards getting some new track rods I hear Tokiko makes a nice set. Biggest news is that I paid for my entry at the Firms Rallyx on Feb 25th. I'll be out there tearing up the dirt in all my 98hp glory.

Very successful day of rallycrossing on Saturday. I met a ton of awesome people and had an amazing time. The MR2 took things pretty well. Throughout the day it became harder and harder to keep it idling so I will need to look into that. Also the throttle cable got stiffer and stiffer to the point it was hard to modulate from no throttle to low throttle you would need to stab at it to loosen it up and then could proceed from there. I will remove one of the return springs but I fear its because I used oil to loosen it up. There was likely residual oil in the cable and when the dirt started getting in there it turned to paste. I'll just have to experiment and see. My starter relay decided to fail right as I stalled it waiting for the guy to write down my results. I had to push the car out of the way, got it bump started from another driver and brought it back to the paddock. The relay got some shmoo in it and cleaning it up fixed that issue.

Overall we made 6 runs at just under 4 minutes each which is a lot of abuse on the car so I am very happy with how it behaved. The course was tight and I really like how the MR2 would rotate off throttle. I had a hard time coming out of the turns in the real loose stuff especially as I was on regular street tires. I was averaging around 3:45 but I did have one run in the 3:15 range which is very close to some of the real serious hardware that was out there. Overall I took 3rd in my class of Modified RWD out of around 7 or 8 drivers. My daughter was super excited to join me and cheered the loudest as I got my medal.

I have some in car footage from my runs in the morning session. Unfortunately user error kept us from getting the afternoon runs including my fastest. Forgive the camera angle we are still working out where we can put the go pro to have it out of the way but with a good view.

1st Rallycross Run Ever

2nd Run

3rd Run

My engine bay used to look pretty decent. Now its all gray. I took one of the return springs off and adjusted the idle screw that fixed my two issues from the rallycross. I'm waiting on my lights to come in as the next event is a night event on March 11th. Looking to prep my wifes new truck for trailer duty and get the lights installed this weekend.

Congrats. So cool to see you enjoying yourself with the Mister two and your daughter getting in on the enjoyment.

Sweet! The sense of accomplishment that comes from buying a disassembled vehicle and getting to hoon around with it is truly unbeatable.

Another MR2 is definitely on my must have list. I miss my 88 soooo bad. I think I need me a 2nd gen with turbo noises though.

1st gen with turbo noises is where I'm heading. Ultimate build will be something similar to what Yoshispeed in the MR2 community talks about. Basically a high compression low boost build. I'm hoping for something similar to my old Fiesta ST.

I'm still fighting a sticky throttle cable. Sometimes its fine sometimes its getting hard to drive. At least its no longer an issue with throttle return which is scary. Its just difficult to meter out low throttle changes. I've convinced myself I need a new one doing the research to see what I need to make my own since they are no longer made new.

This weekend I installed lights for the upcoming night event. The headlights are fairly dim and the switch is flaky and flickers when going over bumps. I can rerun the switch for the main headlights but that doesnt help much with the dimness. So I bought a set of 7" LED lightbars as the ez mode solution for the problem. They were $20 each and incredibly bright. I prefer the round "Hella" style lights for the 80s rally goodness but didn't want the price of the current draw those require. Here's what I ended up with. Bonus they are on the hood so I can lift the hood and go night hunting for owls or signal passenger jets.

2nd rallycross under my belt. This one was with SCCA Central Florida region at the Port St Lucie Fairgrounds. One of the main features of this even were night time runs. I was driving but I also had a 2nd driver for the car. This meant a ton of abuse on the MR2. It handled 5 runs and then broke down. It would start but not continue running. It ended up being fuel pump it was working but was only seeing 10 volts. I ran a jumper wire from my newly wired light switch to the fuel pump and taped it up. This let us finish the night missing only 1 of the 12 runs.

The night time runs were brutal. Even with the lights you could really only see 1 cone ahead. Because you are on dirt you have to be setting up for the next cones before you see them and then adjust your line once they come into view. Still my best run in the dark was only 5 seconds off my best run in the day so I'm pretty pleased with that.

You can see some excellent pics of the day time runs on Rallygirl's Site

While I was troubleshooting the car from the running issue I took the AFM off there was a lot more dirt in there than I would like to see. The current air filter just wasn't cutting it.

I made it a priority to get a better filtering method as other MR2 rallycrosses have horror stories of engine rebuilds from dirt getting in. I ended up with an AEM dry filter with a prefilter sock. I also sealed up the connection between the cone filter adapter and the AFM as it had a fairly inadequate rubber seal.

I may eventually run a 90 degree bend and mount the filter in the trunk although I still have plans for a trunk mounted turbo which will naturally solve that issue.

Registered for the next FIRM rallyx on April 1st. Planning on attending the SCCA rallyx on April 2nd at Port St Lucie as long as the car is still in 1 piece from the previous days activities. This weekend I'll be doing an oil change and rerunning the wiring for the fuel pump.

I've also messed a bit more with the throttle plate stop. I think one of my sticky throttle issues was the throttle body closing too far and butting up against the sides. I adjusted the plate to stay slightly open and then adjusted the idle down a bit to compensate. I'm not idling a little high but throttle no longer sticks. Up until now I was using the street tires to limit the amount of harshness the suspension goes through. In theory it gives me a time period to see if there are any weak points by sneaking up on them rather than bashing straight through.

After two events I don't seem to have any issues so I have changed over to my rally tires that came with the Impulse. These are VW wheels from I think a Rabbit with Silverstone Rallye tires on them. The tires have some cracks from age so I will be keeping an eye on them as the weekend goes through and I'll throw the street tires in the truck in case I need to swap them back in.

Sweet! My numbers came in. I got them from izoom they were recommended by a couple people on the thread. They are magnetic numbers and I got an extra 1 so I can easily swap with a co-driver. I think they look very dashing in red.

So I had the issue at the last event with the fuel pump. Basically it was too low voltage and the car wouldn't start. To get the car running for the event I jumpered a wire from the new created light switch to the fuel pump and that got me through the night.

I knew I couldnt keep the car like that so I got basically the same kit that I used for the lights. Its nice because it includes the relay, fuse, switch and enough wire to do the job for $10. The relay is rated for 40amps so I figured that would be plenty fine for the fuel pump.

We now have the fuel pump wired so that power for the relay comes directly from the battery. I have a ground at the relay and also one near the pump. The switch is wired to a 12v ignition source so I can keep the switch on most of the time and it will work like a normal fuel pump. But if I need to I can turn the switch off and kill the fuel which I figure is a pretty decent safety feature. My friend Damon came over and did the in car wiring he did excellent work. Eventually I will make a plate to go across but we wanted to get some time in on the Impulse to see if we could get it ready for next weekend for Damon to drive so ziptie engineering for now.

Did you use a fuse with the OEM rating for the pump?

The wiring is all new the fuse is lower than the capacity of the wiring but higher than the expected draw of the fuel pump. So if the pump fails or I get a short the fuse will blow before the wiring lights up. basically a 25 amp fuse on wiring that should be good to 40 amps at least. Pump should draw around 6-10 amps.