Russ' 1994 Hardtop 2GRFE V6 MR2

[immorality]

I've been sitting on these for quite a while now, and I thought it would be a good time to get under there and swap them out. I don't think I need to go right to a new shaft, but if I do I'll just get some made locally. Which 2gr guy sheared an axle? The only failure that I recall is Elliot's car at the drags and it was a result of the cage exploding. Same thing happened to Martin(gtfour77)'s turbo, cage exploded.

[immorality]

CRW LSD axles have been in for a little while now. Just finished up replacing the steering rack with a power steering rack that includes a quick ratio pinion. It's set up as manual steering still, and it's really not much more effort than it was before, and it's a huge difference in steering feel. Whenever I try to park I keep smacking against the stops in the rack because I'm used to having to turn the wheel more. I just did my own toe measurements to try and get it close, but I'll get it in for a proper alignment soon. It still creeps me out whenever I have to take the airbag off, in this case to center the wheel.

[immorality]

After the beach event I took a couple of days to drive down the US coastline. I took a long route trying to seek out some great scenery and great roads. I managed approximately 2000km, over 4 days. I drove dowm the remaining coast of Washington, the coast of Oregon (with a couple hours detour) and then into California and the Redwood forest before coming back up I5 and visiting Aaron & Tracy @ Lithia Toyota of Springfield and the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville. Here's the approximate route.

A couple more pics:

Somewhere around Astoria:






Cannon Beach:



...and what did I see in the parking lot there?

[immorality]

Sunrise at Beverly Beach, just north of Newport, Oregon:

[immorality]

When on the road, one has to eat, and if you're spending long hours driving you need to keep things simple, and since everyone likes a hot meal at the end on the day, and what to engines make the most of...? HEAT! So, might as well put that heat to good use, and since I have custom headers without heat shields, I have a great source to draw heat from (learn from me turbo people, you can do this too). Here's lunch from day 1:

What's that wire?


Someone fishing?


Lunchtime, hot dogs, fresh off the headers!

[immorality]

More random pics from along the way:

[immorality]

Now, a piece of advice... if you think that, that road on google maps looks awesome, but doesn't appear on your GPS, it's probably because you specified the routes to NOT take unpaved roads. Anyhow, before you try taking that unpaved road that seemed in good shape when you first got on it, and thought, this isn't bad, I'll just follow it for a few minutes (hoping that it will come back to pavement [let's call that ~9km]), turns out that it doesn't turn back to pavement ANYTIME SOON! Unless you know this road, cut your losses and head back to the land of pavement, don't follow the dream of curvy paved roads. Your MR2, is NOT made for rough unpaved roads. Here's the evidence of roughly 18km of hopeless dreams:

[Goopi]

I can't tell what you did with the wire from the engine bay and the food, but it sounds creative.

Lol at your dirty engine bay, easy work with an air compressor by blowing it all away.

[immorality]

Oh, I just wrapped up a couple of sausages in tin foil and hung them over one of the headers. I slept in today and did some grocery shopping, so I'll get into the car cleaning tomorrow.

[bbarnumboy]

Well , did you find yourself along the way of this lonesome trip?

[immorality]

Nah, not enough time, drugs or liquor for that search.

[bbarnumboy]

Maybe next time.

[immorality]

My clutch pedal is quite loose and engagement is very low, so I took a look under there and found that the bearing that Chico supplies with their clutch clevis kit has basically disintegrated

[oasis]

Granny shiftin' not double clutchin' like you should

[immorality]

haha, yes. Anyways, since I had some time off last week, I decided to do some cleaning:

Remove each fender, clean everything: