Malcolm's 3SGTE AW11

[Malcolm]

Yeah its not structural in any way, and the cut I had already made would've taken any strength out of it anyway. I think most WOF guys won't even know it's been cut.

I made good progress today and got the priming all done. It looked like it shouldn't need much sanding before I'm ready to top coat!








Might get some colour down tomorrow if I get time to go in and work on it

[Malcolm]

Sadly not a lot of progress lately We've had some contractors in doing work on a couple of vehicles in our spray booth which has meant I haven't had the MR2 in there for a couple of weeks. I was planning to take today off work to try and get the sanding finished and the bulk of the top coating done, but the booth still isn't free so it'll have to be next week (at best). Fingers crossed I might have it painted by Xmas

[Malcolm]

BTW, I don't suppose anyone would want this? It's of no use to me anymore and someone could use it as a basis for their own single piece engine/boot lid if they wanted. It'll just go in the bin otherwise, so free to a good home

[KWAFA]

Hopefully it's done before 4's and Rota's next year Malcolm. Looking forward to seeing this when it's done!

[mickeyduck]

+1

[Malcolm]

Car is now all but fully painted - I just have the bumpers left to do (need to get some flex additive for my paint without spending $100 on buying a whole 1L when I only need 20ml!). I also have put the bonnet aside and will probably just use my old one initially, after laying many coats of clear down to try and build up some imperfections in the carbon, I've given up on the idea of leaving the carbon exposed.

I started reassembling it today and I'm really stoked with how it looks! Paint finish hasn't come out great though, so it will need a good wet sand and polish sometime in the future. I think my main problem was using the wrong thinners for the (hot!) painting conditions, and probably just being way too out of practice at painting!

Anyway I'm dying to post some pictures to show how it's coming along, but I want it to be a bit of a surprise at the 4 and rotary show... it is pretty much unrecognisable now! The next few days I'll be reassembling it (and painting bumpers I hope), which is a fairly big job. I also need to get a WoF as the last one expired last month, and probably a new battery since I accidentally left the key on for the last few months...

[Ash Kelly Barr]

I've got whole thing of 2K fix I'm not using, your more then welcome to grab some out of it if that's what ya after?
I'll send some picks of what exactly it is if you need

Can't wait too see this thing! Will be coming 4nRotors to see it in the flesh

[Malcolm]

that is exactly what I need - could you send through some pics/specs on it?

[Ash Kelly Barr]

Cool ill stop by my olds and grab it. I havent really had a good look at it just came with a car I had so its been sitting for a couple years
Was told its mint 2k with everything to paint a whole car.
Ill PM you the fix labels

[GDII]

Loving the new paint scheme. Big change from before but it looks great. Looking forward to some detailed photos. Nice work.

[Malcolm]

Here's a few quick pics of the new look for my car! Still a few pieces left to paint, but it's mostly there now. It'll be nice to get the last bits done and not have to think about doing and bodywork for a while and getting back to more interesting stuff

[Statek]

Awesome panda look, good choice!

[Malcolm]

Thought I'd post up some pictures of the painting process from after the last update.

I had a fairly long gap between when I laid down the primer and when I got onto sanding it back, partly due to being busy with other stuff and partly because the spraybooth at work was too full of actual work stuff! But when I finally did I managed to get through it pretty quickly, then it was time to make the final call on how to split the colours and start laying it all down!

Guide coating before sanding:


All masked up and ready to spray the red:



I struggled to decide what colour I should be painting stuff that wasn't the actual outside faces of the car - e.g. door jambs, behind the tail lights, inside edges of the doors etc. In the end I decided the philosophy would be "black car with red panels", so everything that didn't unbolt would be black, and everything that came off would be red. It's a minor detail but I did spend a long time considering it.

Red stuff:



Masked up for spraying the black:



Blacked!


I also painted all the wheels with Plastidip. I'm not sure whether I'll keep these wheels in the long term - would much rather have some lighter, wider 15" rims but not sure if I want to spend the money



I think I sprayed the black the weekend before the four and rotary show, which gave me the rest of the week to assemble it. Here it is the afternoon before I had to take it in to the show - just had to throw the bumpers and old bonnet on.


The morning of the show I took it in for a WoF and passed no problems, which was a big relief! I also temporarily installed a super lightweight Shorai lithium battery (about 1.5kg I think) - quite a small one that I was surprised could quite happily start the car. Unfortunately it won't be staying in there, I've had a lot of experience with this brand in vehicles at work and they just aren't durable enough to leave in there long term, plus it's not mine!

So the next things on the list to get done are:
- finish painting new bonnet
- paint bumpers properly
- replace radiator

Once that stuff is sorted I might actually start making it to a few more runs! (so long as running, house buying, house selling and wedding planning don't get in the way!)

[Malcolm]

Well I saw Charlie on the weekend and prodded me to update this thread...

To say life has changed since I last posted would be an understatement! To my list of prized possessions I have added: a wife, a house and a small child. Unfortunately all of these things demand a lot of time, and being "new toys" they've kinda sat higher on the list of priorities than the MR2.

But I have been tinkering away. For me this car has always really just been an outlet for me to try things, learn things, and make stuff I think is cool. My focus at work has been increasingly shifting toward electrical/electronic design so I've been using the MR2 as a place to use and build on what I've been learning in those areas.

The main thing that's really piqued my interest is developing some data logging and display units - at work I'm spoiled and get to work with really high quality Motec hardware for these purposes, but because of the acquisitions mentioned earlier, my "spare" money is extremely limited these days, and am doing everything as cheap as I can. So what I've been working on is a "brains" unit, which is able to read a few sensors (2x temps, manifold pressure, oil pressure, wheel speed, GPS speed, exhaust lambda, etc), and send them to a display unit. This records to a microSD card, although I haven't connected that up yet. It also sends a speed signal to the instrument cluster as required by my electronic speedo. Oh and it controls the factory oil pressure gauge to make it work with the Honeywell oil pressure sensor I've installed.

This is the Brains at the moment:

It's just an Arduino Uno with a prototyping shield I had made to allow connection via a 26 pin AMP Superseal connector. (incidentally I have more of these boards if anyone wants one). The couple of chips on there are a CAN controller and a CAN transceiver - I intend to run a CAN bus through the system for interfacing with the lambda sensor controller, the display unit and possibly some other devices. Eventually I'll probably replace this with an Arduino Mega 2560 and make a new PCB that makes most of the connections without requiring all the jumper wires. At that point I'll also have a housing 3D printed for it to make everything a bit more pretty

And the other bit is the display - this is very basic and is just a Freetronics 16x2 LCD with an Arduino Nano on the back to control it. I had the bezel 3D printed a while ago and it has some flexible parts that allow tactile buttons below the screen to be used, but it was a first attempt at using flexing plastic for buttons and is a bit crappy. Eventually I think I will replace it with a 20x4 display and get a nicer bezel made.

Communication between them is current via i2c (as it doesn't require extra hardware), but at some point I'll add the CAN hardware to the display and use that instead.

I've also been playing around with the instrument cluster a bit. I wanted to integrate the boost gauge more nicely than what I had previously done. What I've made is another temporary job, but I won't make this post any longer by going into details of what I'm planning to do just yet. It'll look similar to this, but more symmetrical and informative

[mickeyduck]

Well it's all a bit voodoo to me but damn it's clever stuff what you're doing.

I very much like the looks of that instrument cluster and the data logging to the centre console is a very cool idea too.

Can't wait to see your wee beast out on a run again eh. There's some cool new modified cars in the mix so you might find yourself with some new mates...