My 2nd Mr2

[blown]

So last year i ended up selling my Aw11 as things just got way to out of hand with trying to build a blacktop 4age with a big turbo the car still had the 4agze in it at the time and went to a very good home, an older chap that doesn't actually live to far from my parents he was looking for one for ages and liked mine alot and hunted me down and made me an offer i couldn't refuse so while i was still at EIT studying automotive i thought i needed something a tad more user friendly so i bought an Altezza and i hated it from the moment i bought it so that didn't last long.. 3 months later i bought a 1995 WRX that was so frankensteined together it just hasn't been a good car.. and now i've landed a job where i am really enjoying i decided to buy a more modern car but that didn't happen as i saw this mr2 on trademe... it had been up for one day and had almost 1000 views i emailed the seller right away then about an hour later i saw there was a contact number so i just thought what have i got to lose if i ring? ended up talking to the seller for about a half hour and decided then i wanted the car lol. so 3 days later i booked a flight to take me to auckland as he agreed to pick me up from the airport.. really nice guy i must say

so here it is a 1990 MR2 with a 3VZ-FE 5 Speed

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Car is in pretty good condition overall, 1 or 2 very minor insignificant dents, interior is pretty good everything works

mechanically speaking as the chassis is a 1990 N/A the V6 has literally just been slapped in there with the 3sge removed with nothing been changed to the drive train itself.. the gearbox is pretty shoddy feeling the clutch is ridiculously heavy, 2nd gear synchro is shot, wont go down into 2nd above 30 km/h. well it does go in but crunches real bad still has the factory N/A exhaust so its pretty quite.. has that sleeper feel. the engine itself feels healthy but has leaky cam covers so ill be remedying that not sure if its just my foot or because its a 3ltr V6 but its only getting about 250km per 3/4 tank so i want to look into that

car is also not certified for the V6 so that is the number one priority at this stage need to find out whats needed for that.

so pretty much going to be pretty busy for awhile as this is going to be my "fun car/Weekend weapon" going to sell the subaru and get a 4x4 diesel or something

[TNR]

Congrats on the new 2!

Its funny.. I also bought an Altezza a while ago to be more practical and sensible. Although I did think it was a very nice car initially, I quickly realized there was no way I could keep it and ended up selling it like literally 3 weeks later or something ridiculous like that. It was just some strange handling at high speed corners and although the engine did have power the characteristics of it were just..weird. There's another person I know who also found something off about the Altezzas and sold his.

Anyway good luck with that list of jobs.

[blown]

hmm i cracked into the car last weekend to replace the rocker cover gaskets and check the knock sensors as i was constantly getting code 55 found out after pulling everything off the knock sensors have been replaced, the wiring looked pretty dodgy but availability of the KS wiring harness led me to just patch fix to get the car up and running again... i really should have checked the timing first

got it all back together then found all the injector o-rings were perished so went to Toyota and they're $10 + gst per o ring so i went to saeco wilson and scored some for a fraction of the price which fixed that problem.

Now the cars all back together however i think I've lost ECU power as i have no Engine light when ignition is ON/cranking.. I've checked spark and fuel and they're both good

i'm completely stumped as wiring is just not my thing and as i didn't put the motor in in the first place i have no idea where to start. hoping it could be something simple like a fuse or a bad earth

[mickeyduck]

The problem with a car that's no longer standard is Toyota's BGB is no longer entirely relevant, and the guy that built the thing may be the only guy that really knows what's what... until you figure it out.

I do hope someone can help you out with some ideas at least. But at the end of the day if you buy a modified car these kind of riddles do go with the territory.

Trust me I know.

You're doing the right thing though. Ask for advice, pick people's brains, sift through the suggestions you might receive and carefully suss things out while trying not to get frustrated or discouraged.

You bought the car imagining what it might be like, so stick with it and suss it out if you can, and sooner or later you might just find yourself driving the car you envisaged.

On the plus side you probably need the SW BGB, another manual covering your V6 (what vehicles did they come in?) and to fill in the blanks a bit regards wiring. I suggest you start by looking at who here has had the same engine in their SW (search the forum for the engine type) and try to contact them via a PM and ask for ideas.

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My little red beast is a lot more of a custom thing so I have a lot more dots to join up but I'm getting there too. In between working on the house...

Good luck...!

[blown]

Yep literally saw this car bought it without even really looking at the price (not that it didn't affect final choice it was a mean deal) I wanted a proper project of a car.. something I could mess around with and this already having the hard part of the V6 transplanted was a big plus.

Dad's offered to go over the car with me this weekend with a multimeter, I really struggled to find a 3vz-fe ecu pinout for some reason but have printed out the "V6 swap wiring guide" has lots of pictures explaining which wires do what. So provided the original owner used something similar when transplanting the engine. Atlest that's a starting point.

if worst comes to worse and the problem can't be found I can just put certifying the car back on the list and get a mega squirt a bit sooner then planned

I've learned everything's not such a huge drama when you've got another car

I have also bought another engine from good ol trademe which has been fully rebuilt and had all the work done to it. It's just in pieces. Block pistons rods been acid dipped. Crank polished. Heads skimmed ready to go. So pretty much just needs assembling.. playing with the thought of possibly hunting down some forged pistons for when I decide I want boost because I know I will want more power later on down the line

Just before buying this engine i talked to the seller for about half and hour and it turns out his mate did the v6 swap on my car... small world.. it's a shame he's in Auckland..however from what he could tell me was very interesting.

planning to pick the engine up in the next few weeks as seller was happy to hold for me.. of which I am very grateful

So the to do list probably be as follows:
Sort out wiring fault
Install coilovers (2nd hand cucsos I got locally)
Certify the thing so I can insure it
Assemble new engine
Drop engine/gearbox to rebuild the S54 and chuck in rebuilt motor
Mega squirt. Reloom car etc

Oh and redo the exhaust one weekend as its got the N/A Muffler on it

Pretty long list but will be an awesome little car once it's done. I wanted more of a project and I sure got one

[Benckj]

You certainly have some work cut out for you but that's how projects can go. Anyone can eat an elephant just focus on one bite at a time.

Turbo V6, how will you find the room? Any space to plant a SC? Can get a SC14 for around $300 and don't have to mess with exhaust which can be very tricky having 2 banks to deal with.

[Zimmo]

I was chatting to my fabrication guy and turbo over the gearbox on the v6 would fit just fine just need to protect the starter.

Twin turbo would be an issue I would assume.

Sounds like you have a bit of work to get through, good luck!

[blown]

Yep turbo would sit just above starter motor. Other problem would be all the fuel lines aswell as the filler neck. Problem for down the road if I decide to go down that road. If I were to supercharge it a commodore sc might be better as they're slightly easier to come by and I don't think a sc14 would have enough puff

[blown]

So today me and my dad have stripped the loom back tested everything apart from spark as we had spark on Wednesday night

Fuelpump works we had fuel out the return line. Can hear the pump

We removed half the plugs that are not used
.. double checked first of course

We checked power to the ecu and it has 12 volts. Still no CEL with KOEO

Have removed dizzy cap to check if the timing belt could have snapped It spins..

Obviously we checked all the fuses. Circuit fuse able links etc they're all good

The car will only turn over..

AM I right in asumming no CEL means no go? I have 2 ecus and 2 afm no combination brings the cel on. Have checked the bulb and it's good

We have cross referenced everything with a v6 mr2 wiring guide..

Literally at wits end as I'm so confused as to how last week in the shed everything worked AFTER putting everything back together after doing the rocker cover gaskets (had fuel injectors leak everywhere maybe they shorted something?) seem to have lost CEL ecu etc etc from literally moving the car out of the shed and putting outside

Getting the mega squirt is starting to look favorable

[blown]

Okay..pretty sure the problem lay with having 2 ecus and 2 afm. 1 afm works which has been opened. Which is the one that was in the car when I drove back from auckland. The afm we used for testing seems to not allow power from the ecu... however I have opened this afm and it doesn't show any sign of looking shorted confused to say the lest..

With the ecu and 'orange (because of the orange silicone)'afm all wired up we have CEL back.

Haven't tried starting the car as of yet as we've decided to deloom all the unused wires which in case the problem isn't solved having all the clutter of wires removed easier for problem solving down the track and if worst comes to worst and need to get a auto sparky to have a look they're not gona waste time checking all the useless plugs that go no where costing me a small fortune

Having the loom with only the bare necessities will also make wiring in a mega squirt easier

[blown]

Wiring is almost finished all the plugs not used have been removed and with that hopefully the risk of a fire

The main circuit fuse able link circuit breaker has been added into the factory sw20 fuse box. Had to remove the vent relay which wasn't being used anyway small belt sander to grind away the 4 points for the vent relay

This should make it alot safer due to having the main link somewhere safe as a posed to before when it just had some black tape stopping it from shorting out anywhere (it was very long) and was just floating around near the starter motor

Should be able to have it running shortly.. provided ecu still has power

[blown]

Okay so we ended up getting g the car fired up fine but as soon as the revs hit 1600 ish it went into limp mode every time. Was not impressed

After checking codes again it was still code 55 which is right hand bank no signal from knock sensor detected blah blah I decided to try to bypass the right hand bank and splice it into the left bank wiring as It would throw code 55 not 52

After another quick check online I found a test you can do on the knock sensor wiring which surprise surprise a big fail. Wouldn't even read anything which was confusing as I check continuity on the wiring before putting the inlet manifold back on the car and as the whole loom had been just checked over I was getting pretty annoyed

So traced the wiring for the shielding wires on the knock sensors which are just earth's. Found then literally next to the ecu plugs where they merged into a ground wire.. so I cut the shield wires where they merged. Fired car up revved it up abit and no CEL

So after 2 weeks of confusion and frustration I solved the whole problem by cutting 2 simple wires

Can't say it wasn't worth the wait as I sure learned alot of wiring and general car electrics in the process so all well and ends well

Let the mods begin

[blown]

Goal for the weekend as I have saturday off is to install these adjustable coilovers I bought 2nd hand a few weeks ago

Sw20 cusco zero street I believe

I'm abut unsure though as when I pulled them out of the boot it looked like all 4 had seeped a small amount of oil. Pretty sure this is not normal anyone know otherwise? These are my first ever adjustable shocks so I'm clueless. I've tried searching and only get no results I'm after

[blown]

For what ever reason the clutch in the mr2 has failed. it went from mint to slipping badly in less then a week. i changed the engine oil and noticed after changing the cam cover gaskets it is still leaking oil from somewhere. i suspect rear main as there is engine oil on the gearbox as well. this may well have contributed to the clutch failing, i'm sure its been leaking for awhile as the bottom half of the motor is a mess

honestly couldn't have come at a worse time as i had my subaru pulled apart trying to fix the million vaccum leaks so i had little choice other drive the mr2 which only made it even worse

now my subaru is sorted i started looking at options for the mr2 i was thinking should i just be cheap and get a trademe standard NA friction disk with a oem turbo P/p or go for a custom 3sgte clutch disk with NA splines to fit the S54 trans. After a few weeks of trying to decide what i wanted to do i kept coming back to the fact that yes i have a rebuilt motor waiting to be put together (lol) yes i still want to slap a turbo on the V6 eventually

as the N/A box isnt worth rebuilding for what i want to do in the future and needing a new clutch i have bought a turbo gearbox including everything to convert my mr2 to turbo drivetrain to support future awesomeness.. i believe the only thing i have to do to get the gearbox to work is make a bracket to connect to the axle carrier bearing to the V6. shouldn't be to hard.

Also will be getting a HD exedy clutch kit after i find out if the clutch fork is pressed steel or cast iron.

should hopefully be able to pull the motor and box next weekend if everything goes to plan. may try make a custom Y-pipe while the motor is out as i'll need to remove the entire exhaust system anyway as its been welded together

[JasonFriday13]

Also will be getting a HD exedy clutch kit after i find out if the clutch fork is pressed steel or cast iron.

N/A gearboxes have pressed steel forks, and turbo gearboxes have cast iron forks. Also, you used a N/A clutch on a 2GR-FE? I'm not surprised it's already slipping, although engine oil on it is also bad for the plate.