The MR2 Owner's Club of New Zealand

flying_wedge wrote:

GDII wrote:Reverse light switch. Tells the reverse light circuit to come on when you put it in reverse if the name isn't clear.

It's never been plugged in with any AW11 I've had, but reverse lights have always worked ok. Odd?

Maybe it's not then. I know very little about AW11s but it just seemed logical that it's what it is in the position it's in. My Corolla and Starlet both have wires coming from there for that purpose.

Hmm.. I did a bit of researching and it seems it is the back up switch. I tried searching before using part diagrams but was looking in the wrong section.

Its Toyota part number is: 84210-60021

TNR wrote:Hmm.. I did a bit of researching and it seems it is the back up switch. I tried searching before using part diagrams but was looking in the wrong section.

Its Toyota part number is: 84210-60021

Yeah it's under 8401 Switch Relay Computer as it's an electronic switch.

Curious to know how flying_wedge got his reverse lights working without this plugged in.

I thought I better check the ITB adapter to make sure it actually fit. It seemed to not fit initially but then I realized it was just the vacuum barb touching the coolant pipe, this can simply be solved by removing the barb, fitting the adapter and then re-fitting the barb through the gap between the coolant pipe and engine block.


Anyway back to work, this time I did the clutch salve cylinder bracket. No pictures of the entire disassembly or cleaning etc, getting a little bored of this painting business:





The slave cylinder is located in a kind of unpleasant area, so I decided to rebuild it in hopes of not having to do it later on when access is restricted:


A little compressed air easily pushes the piston out:


Used Vs. new... glad I decided to do this:


New piston in:


Finished cylinder:



Alright so at this point I was tired of seeing the transmission looking so dirty so thought I would deal with it next. This is how it looked when I got it:


In the progress of being cleaned up:


That's not water by the way, its a bit of trans fluid which came out while tilting the box.


This part really was no fun:


Looking a little cleaner:


Again I kind of forgot to take pictures after getting busy with this, however, once it was all clean I used some etch primer on it:


Painted black:





Ok next it was time to remove the axles which I had been putting off for a long time. I had never removed axles before and thought they would be a nightmare for some reason, they were actually pretty easy.






As suspected the auto and manual axles seem to be identical (bottom one is my original one, middle one is the one I got with manual swap):



Also time to drain the oil and disconnect all the engine and trans oil coolers:


Head gasket for sure:





So as you can probably guess this is all leading towards removing the engine. I went down to the garage today expecting to do one or two small jobs.. ended up dropping the engine, I suppose it was going to happen one day soon. I had gradually been removing all the accessories/wiring etc. so there wasn't one single big load of work.

Soon to be out:





I know its a shitty situation having the crane up near a wall like this, had I known it could only work in this position I would have tried to move the car earlier. The reason it doesnt work from behind is because the transmission touches the cranes leg.






Because of the location of the diff and the engine lift points it kind of went down a bit crooked:



And well that is all I have. At the moment the engine is resting on the ground still partially in the engine bay, I'll get better pics tomorrow but chances are I won't be able to actually get the engine out from under the car until sometime later.


Oh, I got something nice in the mail:







Again it was too hard to wait so I installed the shift cables even though it would have been 10x easier with the engine out of the way:


It feels so right having a manual shifter in there rather then the auto:

BLAAAAACK!!

Looking good. The paint should protect everything from oxidation.

Love the shift knob. Very clean. Glad you think manual is the way to go. I couldn't stand driving an auto in a car like this, I need the control and direct feel. I hope you get some enjoyment out of the car once you get the new engine in and finish up the manual swap. I would hate to see all this hard work done and no fun at the end if you can't drive it. Although I do like working on cars just as much as I do driving them.

Awesome! Did you get the old engine out and new one in just by yourself?

And you have a good looking knob!!

GDII wrote:BLAAAAACK!!

Looking good. The paint should protect everything from oxidation.

Love the shift knob. Very clean. Glad you think manual is the way to go. I couldn't stand driving an auto in a car like this, I need the control and direct feel. I hope you get some enjoyment out of the car once you get the new engine in and finish up the manual swap. I would hate to see all this hard work done and no fun at the end if you can't drive it. Although I do like working on cars just as much as I do driving them.

Ha the black was just an idea from some other builds I had seen recently. Hopefully it gives the look of a tidier engine bay since it should blend in with all the other black pipes and hoses, but we will see.
I definitely want to get a lot of use out of it. I know what you mean though, a lot of projects don't get used after completion. This is kind of the reason why I wanted to keep it mostly stock without anything too crazy, I think drive-ability makes a big difference for a road car.

Swampy wrote:Awesome! Did you get the old engine out and new one in just by yourself?

And you have a good looking knob!!

Thanks for the compliment :s, lol.

Actually I haven't gotten the new engine in yet so a lot of work to be done. At the moment the old one is still sitting on the ground waiting to be pulled out from under the car. I did it all my self apart from a little help from my dad. He came down to the garage to see what I was doing and ended up helping me guide the engine down since it was kind of snagging on a mount a little.

Here is how it sits at the moment:

Okay found some more time today to work on removing the engine.

Excuse the pics, sometimes phone lens gets dirty.















Was surprisingly easy to drag out.

I've been disassembling the old engine and cleaning up parts which I will be reusing.



Coolant hoses removed:


Coolant passages full of shit:


Bolts on the front water neck mount were pretty rusty and the top one sheared in half:


Autobox removed:




Sump removed (will be reused as new engine didn't come with one):


Some kind of plastic and RTV shit caught on the oil pickup strainer, wonder how much got past (previous owners mechanic didn't do a nice job of re sealing the oil pan, overused RTV):


Obviously water in the oil from head gasket failure:


Removing cams:




Head removed:


Block:


Hone marks still seem good:


Head gasket failed on cyl 4:





Alright that's it for the old engine, for now. After this I started cleaning up parts that I will be reusing.










Alternator was pretty dirty, no money atm to rebuild it but it was working fine so will just get a clean for now:






Starter also, sorry for terrible pic:


Re finishing spark cover:




Refinishing valve covers:


Casting lines don't look so nice, so I sanded them off:






High heat primer:




My method for curing paint overnight:


Spraying red:






Okay valve covers done.
I broke the engine bay temp sensor removing the engine:


So I went to the junkyard to find a replacement:


Also my valve cover washers/seals were really worn:


Replacements are used and not perfect but a lot better:


Also found a facelift strut bar:



I felt like test fitting the valve covers and ITB's together, but first I got replacement screws for the ITB's. They originally use a phillips head which easily get ****ed upon removal, so I bought screws with hex heads:






Fitted inc. throttle linkage:





Anyway that's it for now, progress is a little slow. A lot of weird shit happening to me recently, run of back luck etc..

Good work getting all the bits cleaned up. Love the last picture. The valve covers look great in red.

Yeah that's coming along real nice alright. Can't wait to see it on a run.

Nice work mate, 50 points for dedication
That is looking really, really tidy!

Thanks guys, appreciate it. It'll be nice to go on a run with it, I was planning to.. and then it overheated.

I have two more pics I took last night which I'll share, since everyone loves ITB's:





At the moment I'm trying to get all the various O-rings and gaskets for all the coolant fittings.

Looks really nice