Duy's 1994 mr2 build

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Duy's 1994 mr2 build

Postby driftingsw21 » Wed Aug 20, 2014 11:41 am

Call me crazy I got another one. The spyder has been in Jack stand hell for so long I kinda lost all motivation to poke at it much. So when a chance to buy a good 94 came along I had to jump on it. At the price I paid one would be nuts not to buy it. Only bad part car has been sitting for 4 years, yes 4 very long years the Tabs expired in 2010. Miles are on the high side 217000 miles on the clock already. Is this car a cream puff, no, will it ever be a show car never, will I do things "cause race car" absolutely not, will it be a very comfortable and capable street car yes. The main focus as of now is to make it reliable 4 years is a long time to be sitting so there are lots of little things that I have to fix with the car.

Story of buying the car.
As few of you guys know I've always loved the mk2 body. It's a very elegant design that aged very well and still looks good today. So for the past few months I kept an eye out for another one. This time it had to be one of the later year models, I wanted the little things the factory did in those years vs the early models. I had a very inflated budget and was willing to go any place in the country to find one. How ironic it turns out what I was looking for was just down the street from where I live, being sold by an old friend I used to do track days with when I had my turbo. Funny thing in the picture below the two cars in the middle used to be owned by the people me and Alex used to do track days with. The sad part is that Alex now owns the hardtop 91 in the middle and I now own the the t-top 94 just to the right of it. These two cars seem fated to stick together.

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I bought the car about a month ago but wasn't home to well take the car home. I called the previous owner said I'll take it and that was it. There was no test drive, I actually didn't even open the doors to look inside. Since I know the previous owner so well we came up with a fair price and things were done. The rest of the time we just caught up on things with each other and didn't even bother talking about the car. I bought the car more or less as a shell/base platform to restore and modify to suit my taste.

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Mods on the Car at Purchase


Poly Bushings, OEM outboard tie rod ends, OEM Balljoints, Goodridge SS Brakelines, Axxis Ultimate Brake pads, SpeedBleeders on the brake calipers, Bedell Racing Master Cylinder brace, Alignment (-1.9° front & -2.5° rear), High and Tight swaybar endlinks,Koni Yellow inserts, KYB bumpstops/strut boots, SpeedSource SS Clutchline, Urethane Kirkasorus engine bushings, Speedsource shifter bushings (from TwosRus), Pro-1 Headers w/custom Magnaflow catalytic converter at the end of the b-pipe, ACT HD clutch with OEM disc, Fidanza lightweight flywheel.

Day 1 of ownership
Got 2 sets of wheels with the car a set of OEM 15's and 300zx wheels, too bad none of the wheels had tires. So first things first get some rubber.

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Day 2 of ownership
FML battery died leaving me struck at the DOL. Got a jump from some random guy in the parking lot then off to the Dealership for a new OEM battery. I thought that would be the fix for things, as the car did sit undriven for 4 years. Sadly no, it was the alternator that was the issue, found that out the hard way driving home at night and the low battery warning turns on and my headlights started to dim.

Day 3 D-Day
Since well I have to take off so much stuff to get to the alternator, I thought might as well shot gun the car maintence wise. Few hundred dollars at the dealership later I now have new seals, timing belt, AC and drive belts, and so many more parts I forget to mention all in hopes that engine wont leak too much oil. I then start to tear apart the car to find out the new boshe alternator doesn't fit. Oh well least I've done more maintenance in 3 days with the car then it's ever seen in it's life.

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Working on the car right now
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Look Duncan I have a Cat for once, so no more spitting god knows what out the back onto your cars.
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Valve Cover off to install new seals, and working on the timing belt
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Re: Duy's 1994 mr2 build

Postby vindicator » Thu Aug 21, 2014 3:01 am

immorality wrote:Pics now or :BanHim:
I miss Canada.. :(
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Re: Duy's 1994 mr2 build

Postby driftingsw21 » Fri Aug 22, 2014 1:39 am

Day 5

Another day more parts to be tracked down. The car had more then a few interior parts that I wanted to replace. Good thing I happen to know of a parts car that has just what I needed.

Parts I grab: glove box, passenger side storage box with lock, driver's side storage box lid, firewall plastic trim, black sun visors, black dome light cover, turbo center storage box, and ebrake cables. Now to just find time to put all this stuff in.

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Progress, well the crank pulley is off finally had to rent a pulley puller as it was stuck on there. Note to self use anti seize on pulley when reinstalling. Had to reorder the Alternator for the 3rd time. There are apparently 5 different alternators for the mr2. We couldn't really tell which one till I brought in the core. On the plus side was able to track down a new Toyota alternator. Looked over the car and found out it's been prewired for fog lights. Not going to go OEM for the fog lights but decided to do something more "industrial grade". Sad part, had the car for less then a week and already spent over a thousand dollars in parts.
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Re: Duy's 1994 mr2 build

Postby macatak » Fri Aug 22, 2014 8:35 am

Look Duncan I have a Cat for once
No worries, Duy, you can just follow my'91 for a while (ask Martin or Russ).
That will be payback enough :P
Nice looking car.You going to be bringing it to any of the meets?
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'91 Turbo,
'99 Maxima ES - lump
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Re: Duy's 1994 mr2 build

Postby vindicator » Fri Aug 22, 2014 11:22 am

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I miss Canada.. :(
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Re: Duy's 1994 mr2 build

Postby driftingsw21 » Fri Aug 22, 2014 2:07 pm

Once it's drivable I'll gladly make out to the meets if I'm in town. Leaving the west coast again and traveling again :bash: to the east coast for roughly 2 weeks. Should be back to make it to the meet on the 10th maybe. If not I don't mind I'll just drive up to canada just because when I have time and it's done.
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Re: Duy's 1994 mr2 build

Postby Goopi » Fri Aug 22, 2014 6:40 pm

Love the first picture, same colour MR2s, but all 3 tops. Any more of those? =P
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Re: Duy's 1994 mr2 build

Postby driftingsw21 » Sat Aug 23, 2014 12:09 pm

Goopi wrote:Love the first picture, same colour MR2s, but all 3 tops. Any more of those? =P


I have a few more of all four cars together. Yet if you look really hard you would notice a smg turbo in the background.
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Re: Duy's 1994 mr2 build

Postby eggroller » Mon Aug 25, 2014 11:16 am

I had to register to defend my negligence... :D
  • Yes, I was the previous owner.
  • Yes, those are MY pictures! :P Duy - who said you could use my pictures on a forum?!? Kiddding, man. Fun seeing the comments on them.
  • My daughter is 2.917 years old. Yup, it sat a lot since my wife got pregnant. Our 1st kid. The Honey-Do list was more important to take care of. Happy wife. happy life, right?

Now that Duy is traveling for work, again. I can spew some BS about him, right? :P All seriousness, glad the car went to someone who can give it the attention it deserves. It will get driven in anger occasionally, like it should be.

Sidebar
  • About the group picture, there were 2 more N/A MR2s (dark green early models) that we usually end up on the track with not in the picture. They ran R-Compound tires and stripped the car down. Unfortunately they had to leave earlier. From Left to right: 95 hardtop, 91 hardtop, 94 T-Top, 91 sunroof. Background is the SMG 92 Turbo, an instructor/runs the trackday operation drives. So at some points during the trackdays there were 7 MR2s chasing each other!!! Glorious!
  • The 95 hardtop did have a BEAMS swap for a while. He took it out and put back in the 5SFE because it was not as fun without slicing and dicing with the rest of us. What an amazing engine to have in the MR2. That prompted me to buy the Gen3 3SGE that Alex now has.
  • The owner of the 91 hardtop did have a yellow 91 Turbo previously. He sold it to get the hardtop. That Alex now owns.
  • The 91 sunroof spent most of it's 1st life on the track. It was rarely driven on the street.
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Re: Duy's 1994 mr2 build

Postby driftingsw21 » Mon Aug 25, 2014 12:53 pm

Ray I couldn't be happier with the car. I fully knew what I was getting myself into when it comes to this car. It's nothing aganst the previous owner, the car all things considered is in very good condition. The paint is in good shape, the body doesn't have any major dings. Engine before I decided to do all the maintence actually had a good bit of pull. I was rather suprised much faster then a standard NA, just lacking that top end pull of a turbo above 100 mph.

Looking at the places Ray did fiddle with the workmanship is very good. The little things that most people neglect to do he did spend time to make sure it was right. Don't worry about the photos I'll have many more coming soon once I'm back home to button up the last few things.

Will I track this car like the previous owner, unlikely got a spyder I to build for that. Yet will it be driven with a sense of urgency every chance I get. Ray don't worry the car is in good hands, it'll get the TLC I know you wanted to give it before "life".
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Re: Duy's 1994 mr2 build

Postby eggroller » Mon Aug 25, 2014 12:59 pm

awww, come on man. I was just joking around! :D

BTW Nice write up!
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Re: Duy's 1994 mr2 build

Postby driftingsw21 » Mon Aug 25, 2014 3:23 pm

Don't worry it's all good Ray :lol: Just wanted people to know you didn't used to own a POS and that it's actually a very good car.

BTW I have zero idea why the previous previous owner wired up piaa fog lights. It was a nightmare tracking down every last wire there and ripping things out. Found out the car has been wired the factory for Fogs. This as dumb as it sounds was a big part in me deciding on which car to buy. I don't see myself running factory fogs, while as nice as they look they fail in the practical sense. I decided to go with a more Rigid :wink: route when it comes to fogs. Should be able to rival the suns Alex dumped into his car. Have no idea how it will look, ugly more likely but I need lights for night driving. Also wiring up a special "stealth" switch so please don't ask what does the wmd switch in my car does.
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Re: Duy's 1994 mr2 build

Postby eggroller » Mon Aug 25, 2014 3:45 pm

I was dreaming about a low rise quad HID bi-xenon setup for a while. Never spent the time to really design it. I even had an extra set of pop-up headlights to mock up the new setup!

BTW You no longer have to have the largest lights to get lots of light. There are tiny projectors which can double as driving lights from TheRetrofitSource.com they are called Matchbox projectors http://www.theretrofitsource.com/compon ... ctors.html
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Re: Duy's 1994 mr2 build

Postby driftingsw21 » Tue Aug 26, 2014 1:57 pm

More Photos from Ray, I'm off in NYC so no time to work on the car or clean it up. Soon there will be a proper photo shoot with the car. Need to button up things and give the car a good clay bar and waxing.

Side view of the cars I remember seeing a photo like this but with Ferrari's
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MR2 in it's natural environment
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Not MR2 related but GTO spotting in the wild not inside some museum can't help but drool
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For those that can't appreciate the GTO goodness I'll add an Enzo
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