The MR2 Owner's Club of New Zealand

I'm going to use two key ways on the 9AGZE -- and one crank key looked a bit funny once I took the crank pulley off (just checking things over as I didnt put the crank pulley on). I decided to get the cam pulley off so I could take a better look (which is hard on a big miles 4age), but this has only done dyno miles.....I still needed to put some M8x1.25 threads so I could use a pulley puller. The first time was with the engine in the car (old engine) -- it works really well -- I don't know why Toyota don't just sell these pulleys like this!

Drilled and tapped mine to pull it off the crank , but its been on there for over 100 000 Km ( in the lasted 10 years) .

Painted some brackets and block water adapter black Drilled out alternator lower hole to 12mm and fits 12mm stainless bolt -- that was a bit scary holding the alternator by hand in my drill press
Top mount looks a bit shitty but I'll have another go later -- it can wait as its easy to do on the car. Decided to brace my 4A exhaust manifold (7A block also has bosses) with a simple system using stainless flat bar Next up I need to....

• redo the dipstick mount /bracket

• finish water pipe that goes from adapter on front of engine, underneath the exhaust manifold to electric pump near gearbox -- I made one already but it was not pretty enough for me

• retorque and reassemble all nuts and use with locktite on some

• attach gearbox

• put setup in car -- lots of reassembly

• build circuit to break out 2 ignition outputs plus two general purpose IO's to run 4 individual coils

the list goes on and on...but I'm closer.......end of year is the goal!

Add to the list:

• Remove the bottom alternator bolt and put in the other way so I can get the bloody thing out when I bloody need to, without bloody cutting it, because it's too bloody long and hits the bloody right hand chassis rail

Good point -- thankfully I haven't discovered this problem yet -- though I did have a few spare bolts LOL!

So it now starts -- though it does stumble in this vid (after initial flare) as I didnt realise the ECU has no after-start enrich numbers.

It's been a mission to get here. AND now the gearbox needs to come out! It's been worked on by two different people.

The first put an 'illegal combination' of bearing inner and outer race in the box -- thank goodness that was discovered by the second people to work on it, and they were working on it because I didn't trust the first job done on the gearbox after I discovered the 3-4 selector shaft was installed backwards (no detents for 3rd 4th, so could pop out) -- Murphys law...its the only selector shaft that can be installed two different ways!

Anyway so the latest drama : Got the car jacked up in the garage, finishing off, about to install drive shafts.......and the LHS axle wont go into the gearbox far enough -- it simply cant, as the LSD 'divider' in the middle of the diff wont let it slide in far enough, whereas on the RHS there is more than enough space for RHS half-shaft. So I'm currently confused -- looking at the diff I believe it can possibly be installed two ways, so maybe its flipped?

Just a quick road test - will post some more updates soon. I was a bit slow on the gear change because I was listening to the engine knock sensor through headphones and didn't sound like the engine was near the 7K redline I set LOL

My next mod is to up the ante a bit on the supercharger boost with about 13% more overdrive on the supercharger. Which should add roughly the same more or less to the mid range torque. The engine should be able to make around 290hp at redline with this pulley. The SC speed will peak at about 18K rpm!

I decided to swap out the outer part as the pulley system is modular....but the fasteners were so goddam tight I had to drill them all out. A low quality Allen key I had actually bent.....and a high quality one just rounded the inner hex of the Allen Keys....



The Head Bolt Trick
But I then had to lower the engine to get the pulley off using my head bolt trick.....the head bolt allows the drivers side of the engine to be lowered enough to get the crank pulley off, which keeping engine lined up in the correct location. (You just remove the two bolts from the front and rear gearbox torque mounts). Actually I also use this trick when removing the gearbox too.......
Finally - got the outer off......
New pulley vs. old Installed!

I like that head bolt trick

mknz wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 23, 2022 9:41 am

I like that head bolt trick

.......yeah, its such a time saver -- of course it doesn't need to be said, that this head bolt is not from the engine you are working on of course any old longish bolt with the right thread will work on the engine mount M10x1.25 from memory...

Some dodgy welding on my sump and a rush job installation has seen my sump weeping oil for some time -- so enough is enough -- I'm tired of cleaning oil off the driveway! So I decided to kill two birds and spoil the car and myself with an MRP sump, and at the same time re-do my SC oil drain - also I can now have a bit more confidence about not having oil starvation issues. So here is the bottom of the engine still looking brand new...

Had a small scare -- when I removed the oil intake bolt (which was really tight (not me :>( ) , out came some aluminium piece too - the thread was wrecked. So after being mad...I realised I could maybe get a thread reapir kit......but then I noticed the cap screw was quite short and not allowing for the thickness of the gridle....so the thread engagement was a lot less than it could have been. So out with the old M6 x 1 - 15mm's and after a quick check of the hole depth with a piece of welding wire, I went to the local fastener store and bought some 25mm long M6 cap screws. These were slightly too long, so I shortened then to around 23mm, and then I was able to use 8mm of undamaged oil pump housing thread (and some loctite......emergency averted!

Pre-install Post install Luckily the sump (4.8L) is similar enough that my exhaust fits, and the drivers side CV just clears the sump wing by about 10mm. Also added a bulkhead style stainless AN10 fitted (from Aliexpress) to serve as a new oil drain entry

This build is awesome man, love seeing the progress.
What ECU are you running her on?
And is tuned via speed density or alpha-n?

Must be a blast to drive

Thanks and yeah, its fun to drive! The ECU is home made (I've been working on it for 20+ years now) - there are a couple of short clips relating to it on my youtube channel. The ECU is surprisingly low tech -- using an 8-bit CPU (just like the Toyota original CPU!!) but its running a 24MHz and the code is written mostly in C except for a very small amount of some time critical stuff. My Windows based tuning app I wrote in C#. Screenshot below

Might make a video about it sometime. Speed Density is the tuning style - screen of actual VE map (Volumetric Efficiency).

So I'd been pushing out coolant into the overflow bottle for a while....like only 200mls, but every drive, and the coolant wasnt going back into the bottle, so I decided it could be combustion pressure getting into the coolant. I finally decided it is likely to be the head gasket (after fixing pinholes in my shabby aluminium welding in the coolant system)...so after about 6 months of procrastination I've bitten the bullet and took the head off. Note the gasket looks bad as all the sticky Viton stuff tears off the metal head gasket when removing the head. I could see nothing obvious to my untrained eye. I cleaned the head and block carefully with a blade from a Stanley knife, and then used a pot scourer on the block surface. Lots of bits..... I looked at the block -- I could not really see any stains indicating a leak through the the ring sealing area into a coolant jacket I cleaned the head....it had some indentations from the head gasket so I decided to get it skimmed. Here is the head after getting skimmed The new TRD 0.8mm gasket goes on....I need to very light 'Dremel' the stud holes as my head studs are 7/16" but its almost like the TRD gasket is made for this - the hole locations are very very precise - it surprised me. Kill pinholes with molten metal LOL! Lastly a couple of hours worth of reinstalling stuff So the car started immediately after reassembly, and interestingly when warm, I have to increase the idle air valve setting a little bit....might have sealed up something, somewhere a bit better....hmm....stand by for more update..