The opportunist

Well for the last half a year I've been working on Black Betty and last week I did what no one thought I would do, I sold her. Not my girlfriend not my best friends Rick or Curtis thought I would do it.

Why would I do such a thing? A one in a lifetime chance, at least for this MR2 lover. What you see before you is a picture of a Supercharged 88 MR2 that has been owned since new by a woman that is 72 years old today. I will post more pictures but the interior is amazing. Cloth seats, all power windows and locks. It even sports the original aluminum alloy wheels. She is everything that I wanted Black Betty to become but was a serious opportunity to really own a piece of motorcar history.

24 years ago less than 2000 of these cars were shipped to the United States. This 5 Speed original is amazing. It doesn't have the suspension under it that Black Betty has (not yet, hehe) but the gearing and power is a much better match to the car. I'll be working on "Decker" from now on, cleaning him up and restoring the few things that he needs to be 'perfect'. We'll replace his front bumper, put in new gears on the window regulators, and replace the 'eyebrows'. Then maybe I'll hunt down some more TRD Japan lowering springs and start that process again.

Staying The Course

I've been working on this MR2 for as long as I can remember now and in this state I made a simple but critical error.

When everything was finished I drove my MR2 to be inspected, they put it on the dyno and started the process. On the second cycle they turned it off and came in and told me the car was running hot. This has never happened before. However the tech explained it was probably due to the fact the car wasn't moving and was under strain. Fair enough, made sense and I told him to cancel the inspection.

Later that evening I decided to drive up to see my girlfriend. About halfway there the water temperature started to spike. Not wanting to blow a head gasket I exited and parked, waited for the MR2 to cool down and then drove home. What was wrong? This was crazy.

At first I thought I had caused an issue while I was troubleshooting the heater on the car. Could I have blown some sludge out of the heater core? Hoping this wasn't the case I started checking the cooling fans. I turned on the ignition and pulled the temperature sensor from the radiator. If all of the systems are working correctly the radiator cooling fans should come on. Mine didn't. What's next? I looked at the radiator cooling fan relay, fortunately my roller (an 89 hardtop I picked up for $100.00, keep your eyes on craigslist MR2 fans) had a spare and I swapped them out. However, when I put the relay back in the roller I noticed that the 30amp radiator cooling fan fuse was in a different location.

While I was in the process of rebuilding the suspension I decided to check all of my fuses in the frunk. Taking out each one by one and verifying that each still had continuity. Evidently I had put mine in the wrong spot when I put it back. After moving it to the right spot the cooling fan started up right away. So once again what is the moral of the story? ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS check the simplest things first.

MR2 TRD Stage 2 Suspension

Here is the results of the TRD lowering springs combined with the 'new to me' KYB struts. Compare this pic to the one when I bought the car, I think you'll see the level of drop I achieved.

After installing all the hardware I took the car to Cobb Tuning (www.cobbtuning.com) of Plano, TX where I asked them to set the suspension to TRD Stage 2 specifications:

Phase Two: AUTO CROSS, STREET PERFORMANCE AND ROAD RACE

RESULTS: Decrease in ride quality (lowers ride height 1.5-2 in.), dramatically improved handling, improved braking.

TRD High pressure gas stuts

TRD Springs

Reset Alignment:

Camber Front: -2 degrees

Camber Rear : -1 1/2 degrees

Caster : +6 degrees

Toe in front: 1/16 in. ( 1/8 in. out for auto cross)

Toe in rear : 1/8 in. ( 1/16 in. out for auto cross)

The racer in me loves the new car setup. I couldn't be happier. The ride is very stiff which is perfect for road racing. For those of you that want to improve your MR2's suspension performance without compromising your ride as much you may want to use the Stage 1 specifications:

Phase One: STREET PERFORMANCE

Results: Slight decrease in ride quality, improved handling, improved braking with a 10-15 hp increase.

TRD Springs

TRD Adjustable Swaybars

TRD Low pressure gas strut inserts

TRD Brake pads

TRD Brake line kit (drain and install ford type fluid)

Reset alignment:

Camber Front: -1 degree

Camber Rear : -1 "

Caster : +6 degrees

Toe in Front: 1/16 in.

Toe in rear : 1/8 in.

You may ask what's next for Black Betty.... well we are returning to 14" alloy rims. The lighter weight rims will reduce the amount of kinetic energy required when the suspension takes bumps in the road. This should improve the 'ride' of the car, additionally returning to 14" rims should (albeit marginally) improve acceleration. I'm looking at some BMW Bottlecaps for it. I think it'll look nice too.

New Legs

Well Black Betty has been up on jack-stands for as long as I can remember. I had quite a fiasco getting new wheel bearings for it. I ordered two rears and one front and needed just the opposite then when I ordered the new front bearing I was missing I was shipped the wrong bearing.

After the third trip to Plano Automotive Machine I finally got the knuckles finished. I've got the front end back on the car with new tie rod ends and ball joints. Also installed TRD Japan lowering springs that should drop the car between 1 1/2" to 2".

I've also sourced some 94 Miata 7 spokes (read 10 lb aluminum) rims. I'll be moving Betty back to 14" rims which are the factory diameter. The 16 inch Black Enkei's are for sale if anyone wants them :). The reason I'm moving it to the factory rims is to reduce un-sprung weight and to aid acceleration. Topping out has never been a problem in Betty and her acceleration is a strong point and I've always said 'Play to your strengths'! I'll post some pics when she gets back on the ground.

Many Pieces

Black Betty is an interesting little lady. She has custom strut tower braces, drilled brake rotors, she's got the 89 LED wing, and also has a rear sway bar and links on the struts. I'm pretty sure that these are off an SC also as the tubes are larger like the 87 - 89's. So I know that this car was LOVED at one time.

The last owner was however ... at the minimum neglectful. Originally, I bought this car for $500.00 with the intention of using it for parts for the Dead Presidents 86 race car. Between needing a car that gets better gas mileage and just really enjoying driving the 86 I decided to fix the car for myself. After a timing belt and a fuel pump I was on the road getting 30 mpg and enjoying driving again. For those of you that are wondering... and have read forum and other posts on both of those repairs on the MK1 MR2.. yes they are both a royal pain and a right of passage. Thank goodness that fuel pumps apparently last for 25 years, and that the timing belt was less painful of the two. I'm sure that I could do it again in about 2 or 3 hours. If the fuel pump ever goes out again... I'll pay to have that done.

That brings us up to date on the car. After a better inspection I determined that I needed a new cv joint, brakes, ball joints, wheel bearings, outer tie rods and struts. I started collecting parts, I can tell you that with a little patience you can save a LOT of money repairing the MK1 MR2. People are constantly buying, selling and wrecking nice MR2's. For instance right now I know of a front end wrecked 85 that could be had for $200.00 and certainly has that much in good parts just in the interior. I bought a set of Intrax Springs for the race car that came with KYB struts. Well the struts were 87-89 and we had nice Tokico Blues already on the race car so I kept the KYB's for me. Now after we raced the 86 the Intrax lowering springs were so awesome I knew I had to get some for Betty. Just Joe from mr2oc.com had just bought some TRD lowering springs from Japan from Lithia Toyota (they are big sponsors of mr2oc.com) they happen to have some old new stock. I called them up and got the LAST SET!

I bought a suspension set including inner and outer tie rod end for the front, ball joints for the front and rear for $74 online. A rear wheel bearing and fronts for about half price of retail all on ebay. The CV joints and brakes I bought on www.rockauto.com at a tremendous discount as well. Currently I'm about 75% of the way through dismantling the suspension and have decided to design some custom rear tie rods. Next time I'll show you them and how the car came together!

The BHG Transplant FAIL!

This is definitely not how you want to be spending your Saturday night at the race track let me tell you. As you've read most likely from the previous post things didn't go well Saturday morning. I drove the car into the pits due to a drop in oil temperature and an increase in oil pressure. I can only imagine that this was caused due to water getting into the oil and it flowing more freely.

When we opened the engine lid we discovered that there was water and oil all over the engine compartment, a missing bolt out of the egr plug in the header had all but burned a hole through one of the shifter cables as well.

What happens now? Well I'll tell you in LeMons wonderful things happen. Mike Mosty provided us a couple weird gaskets and a head gasket, and Paul Bender (on loan from TARP Racing) stayed with us most of the night pulling the old head. He even showed us a trick to get the head off faster. We pulled it off with the intake still attached. Yes it was easier, yes it works well. LeMons are an interesting crowd, everyone wants to win (who doesn't) but they are very helpful and friendly and generally will bend over backwards just for the asking. At the minimum for a beer.

So Saturday night we removed the head, discovered that cylinder 1 has some pretty severe scoring on the piston wall, cylinder 4 actually had some swirling on the top of the piston which we were told by Paul that it is the beginning of a hole being burned into the piston. The missing EGR valve plug sits right above that piston, I wonder if that had anything to do with it.

We decided that the engine was done, and that this was it's last race regardless. What do you do at this point? Go out with LeMons style! Our intent was to put the head back on and race till the little 2 gave up the ghost completely. We stayed up most of the night Saturday night. I think I got to bed at 3 a.m., then got up at 6 a.m. to make the finishing touches putting the engine back together again.

During the test fire we discovered we had a serious air leak on the exhaust side of the head. The head had been warped. The little 2 that could was done for the weekend. So we packed it up and headed back to Dallas.

Next time a little something about the suspension on Black Betty

Always check the simplest things first!

The Dead Presidents MR2 raced at Gator-O-Rama this is the teams second race and the outcome wasn't as we'd hoped.

We arrived at the race track Thursday evening and unloaded got everything situated and started going through the checklist on the car. While doing it we discovered that we had a short and the car wouldn't start. So that evening we spent about 5 or 6 hours trying to run down the cause of our start to no avail. Friday morning came and test-n-tune began promptly at 9a.m. Rich still troubleshooting the issue found the engine fuse popped in the engine bay fuse box. We replaced it and we were running again. At this point Rich needed some driving gear and I had forgotten my racing shoes (now I have 2 pair) so we went into Houston to buy gear from Pro-Am. These guys were awesome and if you get a chance to stop go ahead, you won't regret it. Curtis and Rick stayed behind and took the car out on the track.

When Rich and I returned we were informed that when Rick got on the track the car died and had to be towed back to the paddock. Some quick troubleshooting revealed a discharged battery. We threw the battery charger (my trickle charger) on the battery and started working to determine the cause of the discharged battery. Rich and I pulled the alternator and Rick took off for Autozone. When they returned the bench test was fine on the alternator. We kept looking and discovered that the fuse for the charging circuit was blown. You've gotta be kidding me I thought. So we got it all back together replaced the fuse and went through tech inspection. After strenuously trying to convince Judge Phil that we didn't have a turbo on the car we got through with flying colors.

The next morning the race began, we got out to the grid and started going through the pacing laps. The car sounded and was running very well. But, the water temperature guage never started rising it appeared dead. I did have oil pressure and oil temperature so I kept going. I got black flagged on the last pace lap and pitted in. Seems there was a transponder issue and our laps weren't getting counted. After a couple minutes in the pits we were back on the track and the race was on.

Since the last race we installed new struts and springs. There were no motor changes at all, and the car was moving really well. I was able to dive the car into turns and carry a lot of speed into the turns. For a couple laps I mixed it up with a CRX back and forth it was very fun. Then my oil temperature bottomed out and the pressure went through the roof. We had blown a head gasket 37 laps into day one. My next post will be a recounting of the heroic effort to get back on the track.