... Sometime Later... — Apex Attack

Holy crap. Has it really been a month... and more? What happened? It's been a busy summer, but the car is coming along.

Where we last left off, I had JUST gotten the car running. The first test drive left a lot to be desired, like getting into 2nd gear. I had a big list to get the car road worthy.

First, we need to get that missing exhaust mount in. My exhaust was flexing all sorts of ways without it. I finally found mine, still on the old car which has been put out to pasture at a buddies shop.

Quick 5 minute install and my exhaust was now supported correctly.

Next, I needed a speedometer. 91-92 MR2s relied on a mechanical speedo cable running from the transmission to the gauge cluster. They often broke, gave inaccurate readings, and like to wobble above 30 mph. In 1993 Toyota decided we were in the electronic age, and fitted the cars with an electronic sender, through the body harness to the gauge cluster. Much more accurate, more reliable, and less moving parts. My old car ran a crappy ol' mechanical speedo, but this new fangled 93 chassis is all setup for electronic. All I have to do is pull the sender from the old tranny and put in the newly installed tranny and plug it in.

Predator blood cleaned off after the pic.

Looking down at the transmission towards the rear firewall, installed! That was easy. Literally a 10 minute job. Now we have a speedometer, and can monitor just how much we're breaking the law. (jk I always speed on closed courses)

Next up, Was to get that damn clutch bled. After spending a solid 2 hours under the car bleeding, and bleeding, and bleeding again, the pedal felt the same and worked about the same. Still couldn't get out first. Then a lightning bolt of realization hit me, Turbo chassis had clutch pedal adjustment! A quick google led to me under the pedal box, pulling all sorts of contortionists dream moves. 20 minutes later I had all sorts of gears, 5 and a reverse!

After a fun little test drive (with boost, boo yah) I came home to find a decent coolant leak from the turbo side of the motor. I quickly found the source, the turbo coolant inlet.

Ugh. Why would that fail? I pull the gasket and find it was torched.

Luckily I had another crappy eBay-style replacement on hand. Paper gaskets for the... win? Put it all back together (that bottom nut... the worst) and filled with coolant, we were back in boost business. I enjoyed the car for about a week, back and forth to work a few times... but something didn't sound right. It was getting worse as I drove it more too. I had a dreaded exhaust leak. When I finally had some time after work I discovered it was my B-pipe flex section. I knew it was on it's last legs of life, but the few runs without the mount must have laid the final blow.

I ordered a replacement flex. And pulled the B-pipe when the replacement came in.

Since I cannot weld... yet, a buddy at work offered to help me out. A couple days later.

We're back in business!

It fit just as well as before. This repair gives me a lot of hope for replacing the muffler in the future. I wish titanium would weld to stainless... if only.

In the middle of all these improvements, one big one sat on my list. Get the power steering working again. After a bit of research, the internet led me here. I swapped a few wires on my body harness plug, and boom, power steering came alive! I will get you all an updated wiring guide for the USDM 93+ turbo to gen 3 swap, if anyone does these swaps any more. The new rage is the gen 4 3sgte swap in our cars. The motors are closely related, but the gen 4 just a bit more modern.

The brakes were also on my list. The 93 turbo models also came with the best brake package available in our cars. I ran the same setup in my old chassis, but with Porterfield R4S pads. Known as some of the best street/track pads in the MR2 world, I grabbed the pads off my old brake setup to swap in.

Kudos to Toyota, they designed a brake system truly fit for the average shadetree mechanic to work on. You just pull the bottom bolt on the caliper-to-bracket.

Pull it back, and replace the pads. This is legit As Seen On Tv easy.

After swapping all the pads, I replaced the fluid with some fresh ATE Typ 200 fluid. The preferred MR2 fluid for track star wanna-bees.

The car is really coming a long. Let's modify some easy stuff, eh? The interior isn't that bad, but it's far from perfect. One of the easiest things to upgrade on our cars interior is LED bulbs in the gauge cluster.

Where we start. The dingy yellows bulbs out out uneven light. Ew.

Remove the gauge cluster, takes about 15 minutes for the first timer, 3 if you're experienced.

Pop these guys in... bought off eBay for about $8.

BAM!, we're not in 1993 anymore. It feels so much more modern, easily the best $8 you can spend on your MR2.

I've mentioned it before, but my intercooler pipes are GHETTO. They were bought from a guy who built them himself. He did an ok job with fitment, but the welds are what we call "hammered dogshit". I've been working closely with a local shop here in the PNW and they've helped me out with numerous parts and advice on this build, Rat 2 Motorsports. Although not official, I'd like to think of them as one of my "sponsors" for this new car. Ian and Shawn have been great help, providing me with awesome pricing and quick turnaround on OEM and aftermarket parts. They recently helped me source some nice replacement intercooler piping from TCS motorsports.

Yeah, the pipes stick out badly. The crappy BOV block off isn't too appealing for airflow either.

Coupler welds... ugly, but they've held 18 pounds of boost.

A while ago I noticed this pipe had been hitting my engine hook. Can't believe it didn't punch through. Another reason to replace these. They were on their last breath of boosted air. More ugly welds!

Ahhhh that new pipe smell, and a few new t-clamps!

These look better!

Those coupler grooves will hold much better all around the pipe. I dig.

The welds are cleaner as well.

Fitment isn't 100% perfect, but it is a HUGE improvement over my old pipes. I barely had to wrestle these into place. The only thing I would change is to make the hot and cold angled pipe sections parallel with each other for the aesthetic pleasure. I've adjusted them since to match better and trimmed the cold-pipe-to-throttle-body coupler, overall a nice improvement in the bay.

Some more engine bay shots. I'm finally happy with it. You really can't get a gen 3 bay much cleaner than this without going way over the top with modifying heater core lines, welding holes, AN lines.

I've been wrestling with a hot topic in the MR2 world lately as it pertains to my build. Real vs replica parts. Our cars are old, and the aftermarket support is fading away from the big Japanese tuning companies like Apexi, Greddy, and Mines. Almost any authentic part from Japanese shop has to be bought second hand, and usually not in great condition. On a good note, there's some great US shops building parts for our cars like TCS, Prime MR2, ATS Racing, KO Racing, and of course Rat 2 Motorsports. These companies have helped greatly on the mechanical sides of our cars, developing turbo kits, exhausts, intercooler kits, and even taking on 500hp+ builds. But no one is producing aero and body parts for our cars anymore. Greddy still makes their kits I'm told, but that's about it for finding new authentic body and areo parts. You can scour the internet until you eyes bleed and find some authentic stuff, but it'll be used, poorly painted, cracked, and ziptied together. When it comes to parts that matter in the function of your car, I am all for authenticity, strength, and good design. I'm talking suspension, brakes, drivetrain, and wheels.

But with aero, a guy like Campos comes in. If you're in the MR2 world, you've likely heard of him. He started replicating hard to find authentic parts for the community. With some parts he will even modify the original to fit better. He has resurrected great looking body parts like the Aeroware front lip (I've never even seen an authentic one), ASK Sport body parts, Pheonix Power rear add ons, and much more. In my honest opinion, if a body part fits well, is painted or made from quality carbon fiber, who really cares? Campos also offers his stuff with pretty great pricing, often you can get a new part from him for cheaper than buying a used ratty version from someone on the forums. I liked what he was doing, and we've been in touch a few years now (my original Aeroware rep lip was purchased from his first group buy). When I started this new project he jumped on board as another "sponsor" to help me get this rolling in the new direction I wanted to take it. His first package arrived a few weeks ago.

You got it, another Aeroware rep lip (still my favorite style), and a spoiler yet to be revealed. You'll see it, eventually, I promise!

I got excited when his first package arrived and decided my 93 lip needed to be tossed immediately. It was cracked in many spots, and even chunks missing out of it. First remove the old lip, jack the front end up and take off about 15 10mm nuts and bolts. Basically I would rather be that guy rocking a primered lip over OEM poly one (they weren't painted either).

You can and should re-use the metal strips to help mount to the polyurethane bumper. I got Campos' fiberglass version of the Aeroware lip (he also makes a poly version). While the poly version will take a lot more curb and scraping abuse, the fiberglass version stands up to high speeds (100 mph+) without deforming. Since this car will see track time, it was an easy choice. I also beat the hell out of my old fiberglass lip on all sorts of curbs and speedbumps and it held up pretty well.

Just showing the OEM mounting tabs replicated. Overall fitment is pretty solid. Since it's fiberglass, it takes a little force to get it fitting perfectly, but once you get it fit right, it stays where it should. When I get more of Campos products, I will give you all honest reviews. I've been a happy customer with his front lips. Campos is reachable via email (camposvazquez@gmail.com ), or his facebook posts (MR2 Parts for Sale), or on either MR2 forum (screen name: campos).

The car is really starting to feel complete. Motor seems to be running nicely, and pulling hard, interior freshened up a bit, brakes felt good, and I even had power steering. Now with the front lip on, it was time to turn my attention to the paint. 23 years and 160k miles of abuse were showing. The front paint is pretty bad and really needs a respray, the rear and roof show a lot of sun damage and are faded pretty badly too. Let's see what some elbow grease and TLC will do. First, the before pics.

Stone chip city... sounds like an ice cream flavor.

Lots of swirl marks, faded clear coat, and overall just dingy. I figured my first step would be to remove all sorts of nasty contaminants in the paint with a clay bar kit. I had never done it before, so why not experiment?

Mothers kit, can be had on amazon for $18. Two clay bars, rag, and instant detailer. Basically just knead up the clay, spray the detailer as a lubricant, rub the clay bar on the paint picking up dirt, tar, oils, etc, and then finish off with the rag. Pretty simple process.

I thought the car was pretty clean when I started, but this was a common sight. The paint felt much smoother after this process, and shed water much better. You could really feel a difference, but it didn't look that much better. So time to bring out the big guns, let's polish this turd.

I used 3m 3 stage polish and although it takes a lot of time and elbow grease, the results are worth it. I know the old OEM lip is on in this pic (you caught that, didn't you?), I actually installed it the day after polishing, sorry to mislead you guys, I hope you can trust me in the future.

Before the big reveal, I also got one more easy mod in the mail. New front markers! The OEM orange ones... are just plain ugly.

So new! I went with clears over the smoked version this time. With a black car, they just look clean. Install is pretty easy, but does require nimble fingers to install the side bumper markers. The corner lights literally pop out with your fingers if you know where to pull.

Old lights out. I know, I already told you guys the front bumper is toast. Lots of 5mph and less bumps have cracked the paint badly.

New lights in, OEM fitment, I can't complain.

Now that I have the car nicely put together, the weather finally started to cooperate and act like it was summer here in the PNW. It was a good time to go check out my little local mountain run. I frequent the road quite a bit most summers, but this was my first time up there this year. I snapped a bunch of pics for ya'll.

Washington is the prettiest state I've lived in. The light always plays with the cascades in such dramatic fashion.

First I had to stop on the old railroad tie bridge for a couple of snaps.

All the vistas! For real, this stretch of road is pretty unreal. It's a 2 mile climb starting in dark dense woods and rising up through the trees to these amazing views. During those 2 glorious miles are dozens of turns (the road is never straight), 4 hairpins, and almost never any other traffic on weeknights. You guys will get a video some time.

Let's check out those paint restoration results a little closer.

Pretty big improvement, eh? I haven't waxed it yet. I'm happy with it for a 23 year old chassis. The front end will need a repaint eventually, but I can handle that.

We've come across a bit of a milestone for the car. For most MR2 enthusiasts, this car is pretty much "done." 300 whp, subtle exterior mods, koni/trd suspension, upgraded brakes, and a chassis loaded with features. So, with that, this build is pretty much complete. Thanks for following along!

...jk lol. I'm gonna ruin it. I have a vision for this car, and have acquired almost all the parts needed to pull it off. I'm excited to see how it all turns out. I've also just signed up for a track day in September, and have quite a bit to get ready for that, stay tuned!

Also, before I left my mountain run, I had to make sure the LSD was working properly... 235s are fun.