my MR2 Spyder!
 

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Gonna have to figure out what to do with that front plate, the owner said he's been driving for 32 years without a front plate and has never been pulled over, but...yea better not risk it IMO.

Drive home was via highway 17, and it was funny because I'd go slower than most people on the straights (that engine is noisy as f*** and the cable? throttle requires you to really step on it to go faster, compared to what I'm used to) but then when the turns came I felt like they were all going too slow!

Yea pretty excited about my first car haha. Not used to the clutch yet, need to spend a little time with it. Thankfully it's a very forgiving clutch.

Throw a 2zz in it!

Hello fellow MK3 owner. :thumbsup:

Congrats on owning your first car! I currently own an MR-S as well. Just a tip; Make sure those pre-cats are gutted as I can see this is an early 2000-2002 model. :)

Hardtop. ASAP.


Awesome.

^:word: It's exactly what I got right off the bat! (Warning...quite expensive though; either shipped from UK or Japan)

[insert asian voice]
tooo mah-che mang-nee

No worries, I'm going to someday make an aero cap over the back. The ragtop is actually not bad at all in terms of noise, but there's this loud whistling sound from the s*** aerodynamics when you get above 50mph. Engine is still louder at any rate. The 5th gear is not a cruising gear at all...there's quite a bit of power available in 5th.

Speaking of which, has anyone bought one of those 12 dollar OBDII scanners off Ebay before? Any good? I want to use it with Torque on my phone.

How much? (...shudders at the thought...)

In other words, be like Davis!

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8164/7...7674ea77_c.jpg

Anywhere from $2400 to $3000 depending on color, condition, etc

Would rather save that for building the next engine.

Or when someone tears your soft top. :thumbdown:

$3k for the roof! Over half what you got the car for? Ouch...

Well Serial, time to learn yerself some composite skills. Fiberglass and Lexan. That 'flying buttress' aero idea from the 599?

Got mine for almost $3500 after tax, BS-brokerage-fee (they're called brokerage for a reason!), and shipping&handling. :mad0259:

It was all worth it though; gives the car a much meaner/sleeker look, less chassis flexing, better areodynamics, no worries about leaking, no worries about people stabbing/slashing your canvas top, and of course less road noise!

P.S. It also turns heads! People think it's some sort of Lotus. XD

It's made by Beatrush back when the car came out, so if anything the 599 got it from us. :p

Worth it for sure. I do miss going top down. Kinda can't nowadays since I gutted my soft top. I have no place to store it most of the time. But when I do, oh man do I love the open world. :happyanim:

Damn that's not cheap. Was it at least new and factory paint?

This thing should've been a coupe with the 2zz from the beginning. And a more Celica-y front end. Le sigh...

I mean they gave the 2zz to the Corolla and Matrix ffs...

Let's make it more expensive with a convertible and optional fancy SMT gearbox, then save money by not giving it a 2zz/6m. WTF, Toyota???

Heh, I love the hardtop so much, I never take it off...not even during summer. I would probably end up getting sun-burns...

I think I've seen you on Spyderchat if I'm not mistaken. (I recognize that MR-S and plate...)

It's factory paint, but not brand new. Used, with a few nicks here and there, but nothing too horrific. A mint condition one would of been a little more expensive...

100+mph down a track with wind in your face is refreshing! Okay okay, maybe 95ish if it was a nice cool day, darn 1zz. Yep, I'm on Spyderchat, sadly. :lol:

If that happens, I'll keep the frame and figure out how to redo the roof in fiberglass. Hopefully won't have to deal with that of course.

Just fiberglass, gonna keep the softtop window. Yea I want to do flying buttresses, as it allows you to slope the "C pillar" without creating strong trailing vortices. Otherwise you end up with an old Lotus Europa's look, and that would be tragic from an aesthetics point of view. Done right, it should also have lower drag too. Done wrong, well, it looks cool :P
However I have a feeling that I'm just going to get too lazy, and just use a foam block and not bother reinforcing it.

If you study the hardtop the shape is almost exactly the same as the softtop, so aero benefits are going to be minimal. You do get better visibility, but I just have my mirrors set so the blind spots are nearly nonexistent. Backing up is no trouble as the rear end is so short.

Ah my bad, for some reason I was thinking of my bottom rear diffuser. :confused0068: :lol:

Man do I love the smilies on this forum.

Okay yay after quite a bit of stop and go driving today, I am finally starting to "understand" the clutch and get an idea for the speed at which I can let it out completely.

I went to get the car smogged, and holy fucking shit:
Max allowable HC emissions: 66ppm
Measured HC emissions: 66ppm

My nose and headache can confirm the HC emissions. Car sorta stinks :/

Had them take the O2 sensor out for me, precats look fine, but the mechanic said O2 sensors look really old...yea I think I may need some new ones sometime.

They look fine as in the honeycomb-like matrix is still intact, or as in they're completely gutted?...

Precats intact, no issues.
HOWEVER, I feel really stupid for not noticing earlier but...finally checked the oil level, and it was at the "L" mark on the dipstick! :eyebulge::confused0068::scared0012:

They added 4! quarts of oil for me...got cheap dino oil as I intend to monitor oil consumption closely, and I don't drive much.

I'd personally gut them or swap it with a straight header, even though they are still intact. Some will stay intact longer than others but eventually they may slowly deteriorate and get sucked into your engine during valve overlap phases since the precats are one-piece with the header. These little matrix bits will scrape and cut up your cylinder walls...causing it to consume engine oil through the piston rings/cylinder. ALWAYS check your engine level frequently as this could potentially be an indication of this common problem for the 2000-2002 model of the MR-S.

Remember though, the cause of the breakdown of these 1ZZs is not the precats themselves, but the consumption of the engine oil from the precats cause...

Good luck.

Yea, I can't believe I didn't check it earlier because I read that older 1ZZs had oil burning problems (even with no precat issues). Will monitor oil levels closely from here on out.

Thankfully fuel consumption looks to be mostly in line, I don't know the gauge's idiosyncracies but I've driven about 100 miles on an indicated (slightly under) 1/3 tank of gas, probably somewhere around 30mpg. Because of my shit manual transmission driving, I burned a lot more gas than I should've too.

Yup...unfortunately, that's another problem in itself with these 1ZZs... Bad/weak piston rings... Engine SWAP time!... :happyanim:

PS: Yeah, fuel economy in these little buggers are GREAT!

Engine swap...yea, I wish :P

Well okay, the oil level is wayyyyy above full. S***, I paid money for that.

How bad is it to be driving with an extra quart or two in there? Is the crankshaft drowning yet?

Firstly, congratulation on your very first car. It must be very exciting for you. I remember my very first car was also a red one, and I had it for over 11 years....

The OBDII adapter does its wonder and hook up with Torque on Android fine. As long as your Android device support Blue Tooth 3.0 (I think?) it is ok.

One thing for sure, before you buy the adapter check where your OBDII port is and see how the trapezoid is oriented. Some adapter can have it either way so you want the lights facing you.

When you check the oil level did you let the engine stops for a while and wipe the dip stick clean first before measurement? I seem to remember that it is recommended to take the measurement after the engine cool down a bit since just shut down there could be oil in the engine that is not yet in the reservoir. Maybe that explains why you had the false sense of oil consumption and put too much oil into it.

Is it bad to run too much engine oil? :iono:

EDIT: w.r.t. the front plate, check this post and its thread:

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...9&postcount=53

Either Kinzo or that Hidetheplate thing would work for you.

Love this car!

seriously considered getting one but the lack of space is a no no for me

congrats cereal!

Thanks.
So the 12 dollar one actually works? lmao that's good, I'm cheap and refuse to shell out the 30 bucks that the widely retailed ones ask for.

I just had the oil changed, since it's been almost 4k miles anyways, and they were like "pretty dirty eh?"... (yea I took it to a shop, 26 bucks for filter, oil, change, whatever.)

Gonna have to watch the oil consumption pretty closely, I think the engine is burning 1/2 to 1 quart per 1000 miles, depending on driving conditions.

Dude, there's plenty of space what are you talking about? :bellyroll:
If you remove the spare, there's enough space for a carryon suitcase, possibly a medium sized suitcase that needs to be checked if you're going on a plane.

The cubbies behind the seats are good for 2 duffel bags, as long as the contents are soft and there's no problem with shoving them in really hard.

And then of course, the passenger can certainly carry a suitcase or something in their lap or between their knees :P

Don't forget the toothbrush space in the dash lol! Also when the top is up, you can stuff a backpack or 2 under the rear window. No different from loading an SUV up anyways right?

Tehehe!...he said soft and shoving them in really hard... :bellyroll: Usually that doesn't work out...if you know what I mean... ;)

On a more serious note... I could barely do grocery runs in this car when I had my ex in the passenger seat... I refuse to make her carry stuff on her lap.

May need to gut that spare tire...the frunk is cavernous without it. I've used the tire goop successfully on bicycle tires before, but not too sure I should be trusting it for car tires...good thing is, goop doesn't require jacking the car up though you need to rotate the tires a little.

http://www.ippnet.com/fibreglass/mul...ural-foam.html

Just found out a distributor for this stuff is just down the road from my work ( was looking for Plastidip). I may pop in this weekend for some cans of the Dip and will inquire about what you can do with this formable foam sheet and price.

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Congrats on the purchase fellow Spyder owner. Mod the Spyder? Save for FR-S? Hm.

Just quoting this. DO NOT let this go unattended. The same exact thing happened to my roommates Accord V6-6MT. His precats took a shit, the motor inhaled some of the catalytic convertor material which fried the rings and required him swapping in a new motor.

Are there recommendations for which headers to purchase?

I worked at a Toyota Dealer when these came out... was kinda disappointed to find a Corolla engine in it.