1986 Toyota MR2 - an uncontrollable evacuation of the bowels

[Sweetpea]

Thanks folks,

Glad you are enjoying it. I'm a bit tied up keeping my roof on the house at the moment (there is a link in my signature if you are interested) so the car is taking a back seat.
Clearly it's impossible for a car to fit in its back seat and the MR2 hasn't got one anyway. Good grief, I talk some rubbish.

Anyway, be a little patient because I'm expecting great thing for the car this summer... Fingers crossed.

James

[oukie]

Hi James, just read your entire great thread,

I'm seriously impressed with your bumper bar repair,

I too am an mr2 mk1 owner (been one for 17 year's now), in fact I currently own four,

I had ten at one point, it got a bit silly.

Keep up the great work.

[ToolsnTrack]

oukie, we should be friends... lol

[shielsy68]

great work

[georgeb]

Apr 22, 2015 11:26:37 GMT shielsy68 said:

great work

...if slow

[shielsy68]

slow is good

[georgeb]

Apr 22, 2015 12:45:07 GMT shielsy68 said:

slow is good

Here, slow is compulsory

[Sweetpea]

Apr 22, 2015 10:41:52 GMT oukie said:

Hi James, just read your entire great thread,

I'm seriously impressed with your bumper bar repair,

I too am an mr2 mk1 owner (been one for 17 year's now), in fact I currently own four,

I had ten at one point, it got a bit silly.

Keep up the great work.

Hi oukie,

Four?! Blimey one's enough for me. Must be like having four wives.

Apr 22, 2015 12:51:05 GMT georgeb said:

Apr 22, 2015 12:45:07 GMT shielsy68 said:

slow is good

Here, slow is compulsory

Thanks shielsy. Good to have you along.

George, no need to talk about Mr Tea like that! You'll be in his dog house. Which is probably utterly stunning...

[oukie]

Apr 22, 2015 15:23:13 GMT Sweetpea said:

Apr 22, 2015 10:41:52 GMT oukie said:

Hi James, just read your entire great thread,

I'm seriously impressed with your bumper bar repair,

I too am an mr2 mk1 owner (been one for 17 year's now), in fact I currently own four,

I had ten at one point, it got a bit silly.

Keep up the great work.

Hi oukie,

Four?! Blimey one's enough for me. Must be like having four wives.


Nah, way less work then my wife, I should point out only one is on the road, ones a project, ones a spares car, the other I'm still thinking about.

Chris.

[teaboy]

Apr 22, 2015 15:23:13 GMT Sweetpea said:

George, no need to talk about Mr Tea like that! You'll be in his dog house. Which is probably utterly stunning...

Did someone say slow?

[stevietuck]

Great thread, bookmarked.

[Sweetpea]

Great things are afoot…
Well they might be, just keep your fingers crossed. I'll explain…

I work for a corporate monster. It's often frustrating but at least they pay regularly. And I don't often have to do any work or anything distasteful like that. In the company I work for there aren't many perks left. There weren't many in the first place and what there were have been whittled away over the years.

There is one though. And I've just qualified for it…
If you manage to stick it out for 25 years (God help me - what a waste of a promising career) they figure that you are well on your way to terminal decline and that you should get out more. So they give you 5 weeks leave to take in that year. Yay! With that and annual leave and some accrued leave (etc, etc) I've got 3 months off!

Yippee!!!

I think the only reason they still give the 25 year bonus is because the upper management don't last for more than a few years so none of them have ever qualified for it. They don't realise it still happens.

I have several little projects that I need to do but the one of interest here is this.

I'm getting an MOT for the MR2. Well I'm going to try. It depends on how badly it fails but the hope is that it'll come from its little garage in Canterbury on a trailer and go back later in the year under its own steam.

I reckon there are three aspects to getting an MOT for the MR2.

1, It's got no front.
2, It's got half an engine.
3, It's as rotten as a peach.

So let's start at the front. For those of you not intimate with the front of an MR2 (how could you not be?) here's a drawing.




The bits with the red circles round them hold the nose cone on (blue arrow) so, logically, I can't put the front on if the attachments are trashed. Which they are.
The bit marked with the green arrow is the steel structural bit that I've, so far, spent 3 years repairing. It's not finished and the front can't go back on without it. But lets ignore that for a moment and worry about the small insignificant bits instead.

Here they are.




The two parts at the top are 2 of the same part. I need one of them. The top one is the original that was on my car. The one below is a replacement that I got somewhere along the line.
Interestingly the original appears to have been zinc plated or galvanised. The replacement is just painted.
So the original was made to last the 15 years or so the car was expected to be on the road. But replacements didn't need to last so long 'cos part of the cars useful life was already gone - so they just painted it. Crafty those Japs.




I had some bother getting the nuts off.
A sensible chap, pushed by a deadline would just buy some new ones. So that's exactly what I didn't do.




A trip through my home made blasting cabinet and then use the power file to grind the backs off the studs.




Then weld some stainless bolts in. The nuts on the front of some of them are effectively the spacers that you can see on the original one at the front. Yes, one survived!

Ready for paint now. If only I'd ordered some.

James

[georgeb]

Jul 8, 2015 19:15:30 GMT Sweetpea said:

Ready for paint now. If only I'd ordered some.

James

I totally agree. Three months should indeed see those in paint.

Great news on the time off though, James. That doesn't happen often, so knowing you'll make the most of it, I'll make another brew and look forward to a ton of updates.

It's made my morning seeing this at the top of my bookmarks.

[bstardchild]

Jul 8, 2015 20:06:08 GMT georgeb said:

Jul 8, 2015 19:15:30 GMT Sweetpea said:

Ready for paint now. If only I'd ordered some.

James

I totally agree. Three months should indeed see those in paint.

You sure.... I mean there is an awful lot of work there

Jul 8, 2015 20:06:08 GMT georgeb said:

Great news on the time off though, James. That doesn't happen often, so knowing you'll make the most of it, I'll make another brew and look forward to a ton of updates.

kettle on here too

Jul 8, 2015 20:06:08 GMT georgeb said:

It's made my morning seeing this at the top of my bookmarks.

I was surprised too

[georgeb]

Jul 9, 2015 10:26:37 GMT bstardchild said:

You sure.... I mean there is an awful lot of work there

Now then, got to keep the faith.

[Sweetpea]

Getting the kettle on? Excellent idea.

The project took an interesting turn today. It's got serious.
Up until now I've messed about in the garage but spent nothing. It wouldn't matter if I got bored with it, it hadn't cost anything much. Well, today I ordered a head gasket set, cambelt and a few other things. Not wishing to sound stingy (which I am) but that's nearly a £300 bill. Almost 4 times what the car cost!

Better get it running then.

James

[bstardchild]

Ahhhh now you have a stake in it - crack on James

[Sweetpea]

The stake is getting bigger!

Ordered some POR15 to paint the metal bits and another £300 (almost) of bits for the engine / cooling system. I think I've got enough bits ordered to give my pile of scrap a running engine. Apart from a few hose clips and gaskets anyway.

The head was built up on the bench to make sure it was likely to hold pressure. It's now stripped again and has gone off to be skimmed.

Ages ago I got a DIY suggestion for 'skimming' the head. somebody PM'd me with it. Actually it was something I'd already wondered about. You stick emery paper to a sheet of glass and rub the head on it. Now if it was a single cylinder head I'd have been tempted to give it a go simply 'cos I like off the wall ideas like that. But glass is remarkably flexible over the length of a 4A-GE head. And they do seem to have head gasket issues when you get 100,000 plus miles on them so I'm not messing about. It's gone off for a proper bloke with proper bloke tools.

Considering I've got 2 top priority projects and the MR2 is one of them I'm getting remarkably little done on it. It'll pick up soon.
Something else is becoming abundantly obvious during my time off. I'm nowhere near fit enough to retire! I'm knackered!

James

[tdipd]

Sanding a head is pretty normal, I've done it on many 4 cylinder heads, mainly 306 dturbo, and most recent was a wrx, so a 2 cylinder head, but it was running relatively big boost afterwards with no issues.

I only do it on a head which I am certain hasn't overheated from a blown headgasket, so should be pretty flat.

And use the edge of a thick steel ruler and feeler gauges to seek out and sand any high spots.

I just use a length of flat hardwood and 240-400 grit wet and dry paper.

The guy that showed me to do it years ago just uses 120grit, but I prefer to get it a little smoother.

[Sweetpea]

Interesting. I guess, in effect, you are taking gasket marks out of the surface and flattening any slights humps rather than any serious defects.
Do you have the wood and abrasive on the bench and rub the head on it using its own weight or have the head on the bench and move the abrasive over it?

Anyway mine had suffered a coolant loss and, worse still, had some pitting in the surface. Not around the bores but over the rest of the surface. It'll need a 'heavy' skim to clean it up so it was never a candidate for wet and dry paper.

The pitting is more or less visible in this photo.




James

PS. The only thing going through my brain while writing this was 'So, how do you rub your wood on the head and what are the effects?' but that's a question for an entirely different specialist forum.