I've crossposted from Pistonheads so you'll have to excuse any references that don't quite make sense.I have previously had a thread for this car, but a long time has passed and much has happened, so time for a reboot I think.
This'll be a long one, settle down with a cuppa.Here's the old thread for anybody interested in reading:
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=991070
In summary:
MR2 with custom-fabricated buttresses
(among other bits) to exaggerate the MR2's original styling traits, alter the profile and bring in some not unwelcome echoes of classic Italian sports car design.Here's how we left her at the end of the last thread
- August 2011:
I merrily drove the car for about a year, commuting every day to work
(12 miles of deserted country B-roads, every single day...!), did some minor tweaks and maintenance here and there but mostly just drove. It didn't let me down and put up with a lot of abuse, including one incident with a badger's corpse (the downside of deserted B-roads! Car was lower than I thought).Until one fateful day in about September 2012.
The occasional overheat problem finally caught up with me, and rolling into work one day I noticed the temp gauge rocketing upward and steam come billowing out. I limped the car to Rogue Motorsport, an MR2 specialist not far away, who condemned the engine with massive head gasket failure and likely some form of internal damage besides. Not even worth taking it all apart and trying to repair, the problems could be so widespread. It was all over 
I explored engine swap options with Matt at Rogue who walked me through what we could do.
Swap in a new 3SGE, go for more power and swap in a 3SGTE (standard turbocharged MR2 engine) or go big and fit a V6, something I've wanted to do since I first heard about that swap several years ago. Unfortunately they were all way out of budget and I just couldn't do anything for the time being. The car came home and took up residence on the driveway - where until very recently my wife's dead MR2 had resided. Just traded one dead MR2 for another - oh dear...I needed a runabout to get to work, so did a quick Autotrader search for sub-£500 cars within 20 miles.
Ratty Clios, knackered rusty Peugeots, maybe a tired Honda or two, oh and what's this? A tatty MR2? Well, it would be rude not to! Even the worst MR2 would be better than a FWD hatchback. The deal was struck and my runabout while my MR2 was off the road was to be... another MR2. Glutton for punishment.In the meantime I started doing every available hour of overtime at work to save up to get the red car fixed.
12 hour shift every day, for six months so far.I had some discussions with the Mrs and outlined how dearly I wanted to get the MR2 back on the road, preferably with V6 power.
The car needed a new engine either way, and it seemed to me absurd to spend a significant chunk of a V6 swap cost on swapping in just another standard engine.Being the champion wife she is, she offered to part finance the V6 swap to the value of what a new standard engine would have cost me.
I was to pay the difference between the two, on the caveat that I wait until our house purchase had completed. Deal!Finally after years of dreaming, six cylinders were inbound to Mister Two.
..!For those who don't know of the V6 swap, which is not uncommon in this day and age, the idea is to swap in a 3.0 V6 from a Toyota Camry
- Toyota's equivalent of the Vectra, I suppose. In the standard car it's attached to an auto box and is dreary and uninspiring. Swapped into the back of a lightweight manual RWD sportscar, with a freer exhaust system, it comes into its own and provides paper performance in line with a standard MR2 Turbo, but with more torque lower down (100% of torque available at 2000rpm) and - most importantly - the most divine noise. Here's a sample - and my car will be having the same exhaust as in this clip, so should sound identical. This is what sold me on the whole conversion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_PkswoXMx0Now the turbo conversion could offer the same, and wih tunability for future, but I love the unusual and more
"exotic" nature of the V6, and you just can't compete with the noise. So now it was just a matter of time...Onto bodywork.
While waiting for the house transaction to go through, and saving up money for the V6, I wanted to send the car back to Xquisite (who originally built the custom elements of the bodywork) for a revision and a refresh. I loved the buttresses, but from some angles I wasn't quite happy with how it looked. Due to the geometry of the thing, it looked a little humped from a front 3/4 angle, and I really wanted to get rid of this look. Here's what I'm talking about:
This is one of my favourite pictures of the car, but I also dislike it because of that hump look.
It was time for a change. I had some thoughts about really adventurous mods and custom work but ultimately decided I didn't want to meddle too much and didn't really have the coin for true madness at the bodyshop.Off she goes:
In it rolled to Xquisite near Guildford in Jan 2013 with orders to revise the buttresses to remove the hump
(without compromising the side profile), fit and paint a new rear bumper and repair the Badger Damage on the front splitter. I wanted to build something a bit sleekerand more exotic looking, less tuner-ish. Here's how they got on:
You can see what they did here.
Sliced the top off to flatten it in the side profile, and moved the rearmost tip outboard, by only a few cm. A tiny change, but it made all the difference.
No more hump!
They did a really nice job on the finishing of it.
The corner radii are really tight and the whole thing generally looks lovely.
Homeward bound.
While it was out there I started another tweak, some custom dial faces.
I'd read a guide for MX5s and it didn't sound that hard as I am fairly handy with Photoshop. I wanted to make something that had a little bit of a retro sports vibe to it as that was the feel the whole car was taking on. Took a fair few nights but I got there:
The rest of the dials are along the same lines, I haven't taken a picture yet with the finished set installed.
The little icon at the bottom are a Pegasus symbol I designed
(actually as a present for my mum :hehe: ) that I've adopted as the kind of symbol of the car. I think a modified horse is a good analogy for a modified car!I also had a hankering for some new wheels.
Although I loved my OZs, I wanted something a bit more retro looking. I wanted wide, I wanted a shiny dish, and I wanted fitment closer to the arches. It was time to go 3-piece. I was originally hunting some Autostrada Modenas - a replica of F40 type wheels - but couldn't find any and instead settled for some Volk CV Pros in 9in and 10in widths. They were stupidly cheap and I had to go for it - now I love them and I'm glad I didn't go for the derivative Ferrari style wheels, I think would have looked a little try-hard. Trial fit
- phwoar:
Rested in front as soon as I had some tyres on them:
And then mounted on the car properly:
Soon, destiny was within my reach
- the money was in place and the car booked in to meet its destiny at Rogue - a donor car was sourced and off we go on the trailer one last time:
Clearly in the right place
(check the background):
Goodbye, knackered 3SGE, you did well:
The new mill awaiting rebuild:
One day, all of this will be yours:
The Rogue conversion package is great and includes basically a full strip and rebuild including replacing things like big end bearings.
The engine is basically brand spanking new now.And now comes my final customised contribution to the build.
The standard V6 intake manifold is a bit pants looking, at best most people seem to sand them down and spray them a ghastly blue all over or something. I wanted, once again, to make something more special feeling. How it would look in an MR2 completely standard:
I wanted to highlight those sexy looking interflowing pipes, and seperate them from the big canister bit which makes it look like one big solid lump.
I went at it with some sandpaper
(and hours, and hours and hours of sanding) and the rest is history.
Some wrinkle black paint:
And then unmasked and with a spot of polish reveals the true loveliness of the finish that I presumably paid for by bringing forward the onset of arthritis:
Then the final update: as of last Friday the engine is hung in the bay waiting to be plumbed in.
What's that in there then?
Phwoooarrr.
And that's how we left it up to date, looking gorgeous under the strip lights.
.. the car should be on the road by early week after next, and after that, as is tradition: break the new motor in with a weekend thrashing it around Wales 
[footnote]Edited by OwenK on Sunday 17th March 13:10[/footnote][footnote]Edited by OwenK on Sunday 17th March 13:14[/footnote]
I want your rear buttress please.
Works well with the whole package though 
