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!
