1986 Toyota MR2 - I had to go for it.

[Sweetpea]

The problem is that I spend all my time reading about your cars and never start my own thread. Well here we go.

This project has been trundling along for a while now and I've been documenting it on another forum. You have to join to see it though and although I understand why it's run that way and feel privileged to be a member I've always felt that info on the net should be freely available. Hence I've joined up.

I've also been inspired by so many of the threads here. Consider this project as my thanks to you all.

The first few posts will be bringing the story up to date.
We start back in Jan 2011.

But soft! What light from yonder garage breaks? It is the East and the MR2 is from the land of the rising sun...

[Sweetpea]

Who'd have thought the writings of Shakespeare would be so relevant 400 years later.

So, here she is.




A 1985 MK1a in Black.

I was looking for a project car due to my looming mid life crisis and this belonged to a friend of a friend of a friend... Or something like that.
Ian, the first friend in the list, was going to pinch some bits off it for his MR2 powered kit car (photo later) and the rest was to be crushed. Fortunately one of the other friends in that list lost the keys for a while and so the car had a stay of execution.

Looks good doesn't it?

Well not from this angle.




And it's not much better from the back either.




Add to that the fact that the engine is dead too and you have to wonder if it was worth saving. It rather depends of the state of it structurally.

[Sweetpea]

Feb 2011...
So I beetled off to look at it one evening after work and it looked ok. Well, it looked a mess but there were positive points.

The front structure (around the front suspension) looked solid. The bottoms of the sills looked good as did the rear suspension structure.
The interior looked fairly clean and tidy, there was no mold or damp in it. (Apart from the boot which has leaked due to the smashed rear quarter.)

There is rust (rot really) on the front wings and the bottoms of the A pillars but the rear wheel arches didn't look too bad.
The engine had been compression tested 3 years earlier and had blown the head gasket between 3 and 4 cylinders.

Worth a second look then. I went back with Ian with a set of ramps, jacks and tools for a proper ferret.




Looking a bit sorry for herself.

So the engine is all there and has additional compost to boot. We compression tested it and found no compression on any cylinder. But it's not moved for probably 3 years so that's not a big surprise. The cams were turning though so the cam belt didn't break. The alternator didn't turn however. Put that on the list for later.




The boot is good. Just damp from where the rear wing is bent.




And the frunk looks like it was made yesterday.




Front wings are both rusty in the usual places.







But the end of the sill in the picture above looks ok. My current thought is to replace both wings with plastic ones.

The drivers side sill has a blister half way down. One day I'll poke that and find out how big the hole becomes.




Drivers side rear arch... It's been jacked up just in front of the wheel at some point.







I think the arch has either been repaired or replaced at some point as it looks solid. I may change my mind when I start grinding it back though.

[Sweetpea]

Different story on the left though.




This arch has been replaced, i can see the weld where the filler has cracked off. Not that that matters much now.




As you can see there is very little rust on this car... But there are some sizable holes where the rust fell out.

This wing also has a problem round the light switch...




And, of all places, the door striker plate!?




And lastly here is a photo of a Post Office Number 6 screwdriver poked through a hole in the drivers floor pan...




But notice how solid the sill appears to be.

More later. Don't want to give you all "rust overload".

[tubthumper]

That's a brave resto you have on your hands, and should keep you busy for a while. Good luck though.

[Sweetpea]

Nah, it's not brave. It's ignorance and stupidity. I saw TonyBMWs threads and thought "I could have a crack at that". I haven't a clue if I can but I guess I'll find out.

So, to carry on from where I left off...
The bottoms of the A pillars need love.







The front structure looks solid and has a nice metallic ring when hit with a screwdriver.




Although this side needs the rust stopping.




Here is a small hole in the back of the boot lid.




And the beginnings of trouble in the windscreen aperture.




There is a story behind this.







Three years ago it was a daily driver. It apparently came off the motorway and overheated as soon as it got into London traffic. The head gasket blew and that's where it stopped.
Friends went out to recover it and tied onto the hooks under the bumper. That's when they discovered the rotten strengthening bar. Annoyingly when the nose tore off it bent the front wing and one of the headlamp covers.

See the water on the floor on the photo above? When we jacked the back up it ran out if the radiator.




You have to wonder if that small hole led to the cars demise.

[Sweetpea]

It seems Billy Shakespeare had more to say about car restoration...

"To rust, or not to rust, that is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the crusty wheel arches of outrageous corrosion,
Or to take the grinder against a sea of oxidisation...."

Firstly a couple of photos of the bumper that got torn off.







As you can see the newness has worn off. Perhaps it'll look better if I polish it???

Inside, however, it's all much nicer.
A door card that just needs a clean.




I couldn't believe how good the seats were since they are 25 years old...





"And think of the summers of the past,
Adjust the base and let the Alpine blast" - Will Smith.




No shortage of culture in this thread. Shakespeare and Will Smith...

Not sure what to do with the radio to be honest. I fancy a 90s Toyota RDS set. I think it wouldn't look out of place in there. But the period Alpine... How could you get rid of a period Alpine? Opinions please...

The only "faults" in here are that one hinge has dropped off the glovebox and the gear stick leather is a bit cruddy. Other than that it just needs cleaning.

So could it be saved or does it deserved to be crushed.
Well, obviously it needs to be saved so some time later I hired a trailer and took the Delica for a ride to west london.




Ian, who'd put me onto the car in the first place, followed me back to Kent in his MR2 powered kit car. (The little red thing in the photo below.) You know it doesn't have electric windows... Barely has doors come to think of it.




He had the joy of helping me push the MR2 into the garage at Canterbury with 4 fairly flat tyres. Well it's only fair. It's all his fault really!
All this cost me £60 for the trailer, a tank of diesel and an undisclosed amount for the car that's roughly "beer money". I don't drink so it won't be missed.

Next, the work starts...

[Sweetpea]

Feb 2012...

This week I as mostly been decorating the bathroom... Which is a big job involving moving walls and all sorts. Partly explains why it's been a while.

So, back before Christmas the car was finally garaged and I fancied a little job to start off with.
"Let's get the alternator freed off." said I, "That'll be easy!" So off I went to Canterbury with a load of tools and started work.

First off, I'd forgotten how pokey the engine bay is on a car with a transverse engine. All my cars have been front engine, rear wheel drive for the last 10 years. Putting your transverse engine in the middle of the car hasn't made things easier either.

This is an excuse for the fact that after an hour and a half I'd got the belt off, the top bolt out and the wires off but the long bottom bolt would not come out and there wasn't enough room to hit it.




After much bad language I went home and left it firmly attached to the car.

A few days later I went for another go. This time I took the bracket off the engine and found the next problem which is that the alternator is too big to drop past the drive shaft. Arrgh! So that had to come off.

Got it! Yay!




Cracked!? Eh? How?

While I was at it I took the air filter box home too.




The filter box looked fine apart from some strange rust on the front edge.




Looking inside it's completely rotted one of the stays off.




The battery is just in front of this and I reckon battery acid got it.

The plan is to repair this but at the moment it's beyond my skills. So for the time being it's had a clean up and a coat of paint.




Looks good doesn't it. Maybe I won't worry about the rest of the rust and just paint over it.

[Sweetpea]

Also back in Feb 2012...

You may be wondering why I'd consider repairing the air filter box rather than skip it and get one off a dead car. Good question.

Well it's because I want to learn how to do something new. If I take the welder to it and turn it into a molten piece of twisted scrap that's fine and I'll be happy. At least I'll have tried. You never know what you can do (or can't do) until you try.

The cracked alternator is clearly scrap. Well, there is time for an experiment first.

First strip it into a load of dirty pieces...




Which get cleaned.




Notice I've taken the stator winding out of the cracked housing. Well don't bother if you don't have to.

Now I believe this alternator has been refurbished at some point and that the stator winding was replaced. Well the reason for the crack is that water had got between the winding and the housing. This caused the aluminium to corrode, which let in water, which froze, etc. There was a millimeter thickness of corroded alu by the crack.

Anyway, cleaned up and out with the glue. No really.




The glue in question is called JB Weld and I've been told it's been used to repair castings successfully. I'm told you can drill and tap a thread into it. Not sure I believe that.

Since I had some I thought i'd put it to the test. Time will tell and if it breaks again I haven't lost anything.




And with a painted end cap.




Just need a working engine to put it back onto...

[luckyseven]

Wow, you've got some work ahead of you there I think it's just as well you seem to have the GSOH of legend, lol. "Newness seems to have worn off" made me chuckle

Since you like your Shakespeare, perhaps As You Like It has the perfect vignette for the rise and decay of classic cars;
"And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot:
And thereby hangs the tale"

At least you've already got the obligatory MR2 alternator timebomb out of the way. They all do that, sir

[zircon]

I take my hat off to you sir for saving that little car.

Black Mk1's are not very common at all.

Good luck, and if you ever feel like scrapping it, just imagine the car is Shakespeare's Sister singing 'Stay with me' (tenuous link but I needed it out of my head!)

[79cord]

Looks like quite a project ahead of you.
But beware, no matter how unusual it is, one you've committed to it there's a good chance another irresistible/deserving example will present itself, or have you managed to avoid such temptations.

[Deleted]

the little red thing...isn't that a silva mojo???
always liked the mr2.......just a shame in 6-2 tall and they are only big enough for a person no taller than 5ft

[Sweetpea]

Hi folks,

The "newness has warn off" was actually stolen from a chap that I knew in a past life known as Tenko. Credit where it's due.

Only yesterday the missus said "there's a D reg Corolla GL with a dead engine if it's any use to you...". I smiled the "grin of wonder" as my brain went through a few ideas. You'd think she'd know better. Fortunately I don't have room for more than one dead car.

And, yes, Ian's little red car is a Mojo. Quite an early one apparently. It has an MR2 engine and electrics but uses a De Dion rear axle which I believe is unusual. I'm sure Ian said it had been featured in a mag at some point in the past.

James

[darrenh]

i like your style sweatpea

was wondering about the cracked ALT housing, could it have been struck from th3 inside by misshapen rotor asssembly?

[Sweetpea]

I don't think that the rota hit the stator although I did wonder exactly that when I first saw the crack. I figured we'd done it when we compression tested the engine.
However there are no marks on the inside of the stator and the crack was corroded so it had been there for some time. I'm pretty convinced it was water getting between the stator and the housing and causing substantial corrosion.

Fear not, the alternator wasn't finished with me yet. It'll make a repeat appearance when I get this more up to date.

So... It's March 2012 which means that Christmas had been. Santa was most generous. I must have been in the "nice" list.







I'm not going to bore you with welding experiments. Needless to say I'm having problems with penetration. (Ooh er missus.)


Remember that smashed rear wing? That'll be replaced with this one...




I needed a rear light and a mirror too.




Really should have turned that over before I took a snap of it.
Just need a new bumper for the front...




Ooh Santa! Metal bit too...




Clearly the one on the left is my old one. The one on the right isn't perfect but it'll form the basis of some tin bashing and welding practice. (I need all the practice I can get!) That'll be in a later post.

And lastly I got one step closer to taking the head off. Trundled off to Canterbury and came back with this lot.




Bit of cleaning to do there.

[Sweetpea]

So, time to make something... Off to a steel place and came home with some sheet and some angle.




Chop chop. (Look a hack saw that works without having to push it...)
Weld weld. (Note to self... Turn the saturation down on the camera you muppet. The reds are too red.)




Can you tell what it is yet?

It's a TonyBMW open source bender!




In the next thrilling installment there'll be metal in the bender and we'll see if I can hit it in the right direction...

James

[darrenh]

cool ! i have a 151TE and it will struggle with thick stuff. it looks like its welded but if you lever them apart it kind of tears a chunk out of the parent metal like layers of onion skin. someone told me to clamp the pieces and pre heat with a plumbers butane lamp, and blow me i was penetrating a combined 10mm when the set is only supposed to do 6! on the other hand no problems with anything car body or chassis related, same for the 110

p.s the best thing i ever did was buy one of these

www.weldequip.com/argonmix-conversion-kit-se.htm

and one of these

www.adamsgas.co.uk/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.pbv.v5.tpl&product_id=72&category_id=22&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=54

3 times the price of a disposable, but 20 times the gas

[Sweetpea]

It's the thin stuff I'm having bother with. I either lay a bead on the top with little penetration or I blow it to bits. No happy medium yet.
I'm using CO2 at the moment but have a baby bottle of Argon mix to try. And I was looking at the Mig forum last night to get some tips.

Adams Gas is next on the list when I get to the big stuff.

James

[Rev. Dick Deluxe]

May 21, 2013 19:24:05 GMT Sweetpea said:

It's the thin stuff I'm having bother with. I either lay a bead on the top with little penetration or I blow it to bits. No happy medium yet.
I'm using CO2 at the moment but have a baby bottle of Argon mix to try. And I was looking at the Mig forum last night to get some tips.

Adams Gas is next on the list when I get to the big stuff.

James

Short bursts is the answer. Don't try to lay down a single seam but do lots of short pulses allowing a second or two for cooling in between.