Who... does... Mister Two... work... for?!

Recently picked up an AW11 MR2 for the princely sum of $500.
$250 in title, tabs, plates and an exhaust later, she's almost to the point where I'll risk the life of someone I know in there with me.

Around town everything is fine.
Once the needle passes 45... not so much.
The steering wheel shakes and the car is flighty, seems to float around the lane.
Not unmanageable but not confidence inspiring or even relaxing to drive. (Even in the dry)

Got up under the front, tried to move everything by hand, nothing seems unduly loose or otherwise out of spec.
Three of the four corners respond positively to the 'push down and let go' test, the back left seems to have a shot strut.
Going to try a spare set of shoes tomorrow, see if a poor alignment is partially to blame...

short of throwing a full compliment of fresh components at the front end, thoughts on where to start?

Bonus related question: OEM or fancier shocks if I bite the bullet and replace all four corners?
Plan is DD, maybe occasional autocross, pondering rallycross because MR RWD and bone stock.

bent wheel? bad wheel balance? bad alignment?

My 85 would steer it's self at speed when I needed new wheel bears. But it was at the failure point. It was " how am I still alive" bad.

amg_rx7 wrote: bent wheel? bad wheel balance? bad alignment?

+1. Also, sometimes worn components don't respond to simple hand pressure and need a pry-bar to leverage past the weight or spring pressure to show wear.

Where to start? Go with whats cheapest/easiest to fix first. Like jacking the car up and shaking each wheel back and forth to check for bad bearings and tie rods. use pry bar leverage on other components per Ian F. go from there.

Are your front tires a v-tread pattern?
See my comments here

http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/help-me-beat-the-winter-sad-and-pick-wheels-for-my/97694/page2/

And you are positive the chassis is square?

Wrong toe is going to make the car darty and so will any component that is worn and creating dynamic toe changes.

Do you know how to check balljoints? Cold it be as simple as a broken spring? It it purley speed sensitive or doe it require a turn or bump to start the amusement ride?

How old are the tires? Are they a reputable brand? (Not that good brands can't make a bad tire). I've come across more than few tires with an internal defect that causes a front end shake recently, including the 2 year old name brand tires on my work truck. About half the faulty tires that I've seen had a visible external clue that they were faulty, some, like the tires on my truck look fine, but even a rebalance doesn't help.

Sounds like too much front toe-out or tramlining caused by unequal caster and/or camber between the front wheels.

how long did it have to sit to be $500?

first look for me is tires.

Rotate tires frount to rear.

Then chk toe. Bad rear strut can cause the car to do it bye to one corner dipping lower than the other putting the front out of alignment making it do weird things. The car I teeder toddering on the diagonal axis. Not condusive to good driving dynamics and it will be magnified by the motor being mid ships.

So in short fix the rear struts then alignment if tire rotation does not change things.

Is that #6?

My titanic muscles might not be enough, pry bar, check.

Being owned by a high school boy and little things like no exhaust and a rebuilt/salvage title contributed to the price, she's actually pretty solid outside of the concerns that precipitated this thread.

My guess is struts are blown. I owned a number of these and had an IT race version. They are VERY sensitive to struts. In my opinion, the only ones that I found that work decent on there are Konis. They do not need a lot of compression as it makes them darty as well, and a lot of the cheaper struts work by loading up the compression.

These cars are very sensitive to alignment and tires. Anything that can effect alignment needs to be checked as well (ball joints, tie rods, control arm bushings, etc.). Put some known good tires on the thing and multipiont it, then align. If youre on here you are presumably going to at least attempt to drive it quickly, this stuff is a no-brainer on a recent purchase if that is the case (or otherwise) especially if it drives berkleyey'd up.

The Koni's I put on mine were great. Not cheap, but great. Note that there is an early and late version on the struts, and the Koni's are a cartridge, so you have to have the correct version.

May have just set a new PR for 'Most GRM thing I've done' by dropping almost $600 on shocks for a car I had $750 into.

Back under a car with some leverage in a bit, going to toss on a set of old (balanced) wheels from the miata see if it makes a difference.

And yes, I realize that the 'even more GRM' move would have been to fab my own (improved) suspension on some ridiculously small budget, in my garage, with fancy math and welding and awesomeness.
Sorry to let the collective down.

I spent one large on shocks, springs and TRD bushings on my $100 MR2. There's no shame there. Go for it.

Two birds with one stone, tossed my summer/AX wheels on the miata, and the miata's all-seasons on the MR2.

Much fresher/known to be balanced rubber may have contributed, but the discovery that the MR2 came with one tire that was a different size than the other is probably more of where the problem was coming from.
3 190/60's, 1 185/65... yay high school kids!

Much better behaved at freeway speeds, fresh alignment first thing after the new struts go on.

@op Obviously he works for Mr. #1

dean1484 wrote: @op Obviously he works for Mr. #1

I guess I may be the only one here that thinks the title of this thread comes from classic show, The Prisoner, from which Austin Powers gave us a potty joke and easter egg in one.

Spent many, many hours on these cars. Love em! Post up some pics

100% Austin Powers reference.

What year is it? I still have a pretty good dash for a 86.