I managed to boil the battery i was using. Not entirely sure how as it seemed to be working fine but i had a current draw on the car so it was draining. Had to keep putting it on charge and it seems to have boiled it and now its dropped a few cells. Ah well better get a new one.
Of course fitted the biggest capacity i can get away with. I dont need the cranking amps but its nice to know the battery has a good capacity for having things on while the car isnt running. You can also see i got the strut brace and spare wheel frame back in. One thing i need to consider though is what to do about the spare wheel. The original one at this point is useless doe to the brakes and tyre sizes so might as well not bother putting it in. Or find an alternative. I had hopes for the spare off an rx7 fd as they are an rather nice alloy wheel space saver but i tried it out and it binds on the rear brakes so the search continues.
Front end bracing is all back on now.
Stuck the last of the side mouldings on
And made a start on the spacers The fronts are currently 15mm but that too much so im knocking them down to 13
Lined up on the lathe and trimmed the back down. Then turned around and took a bit off the front too.
Of course the studs are now a little to proud out the back so i trimmed them down too
Pressed back in and test fitted
The hub studs are also a bit long and run into the back of the alloys so shortened them too.
They still hit the inside of the wheels where these markings are so i had to grind those off.
With everything back in we now have closer to 3mm clearance to the calipers which is probably close enough for now.
I thought about sneaking another mm but i wouldn't get away with bolt on spacers at that point so would have to go for extended studs
I found out that the seat belt clip on the GT86 seats doesnt work with the mr2 seatbelts. Luckily its an easy enough swap to fit the old mr2 buckles, very glad i checked on that one rather than finding out when i went to set off for the MOT.
Steering wheel is now back on
I gave the under trays a good hosing down
There was also much mess as i decided to go round and ensure that everywhere that could take cavity wax got sprayed with it. Then i refitted the grommets and sprayed all the exposed areas with a clear underbody wax
The rear bumper seemed a bit loose and i was concerned it would flap around at speed. So i made up a couple of brackets, used stainless since it gets alot of road grime under there
And bolted them on
Speaking of MOT i have a date booked and i plan on hitting it. This friday
Apologies for being so slow providing an update. The good news is she flew through the MOT with a clean sheet and a good report from the tester.
So what did i still have to do to get it ready for the big day? There was some wiring to tidy up in the boot.
Along with connecting the power for the obd port which i had forgotten. And the boot liner went back in
I wasnt happy with the rear brake lines not having anything on the chassis to fix to. So i made some little brackets
And after some powdercoat and the application of a couple of pclips they were secured
I crawled around underneath and fitted all the undertrays
One of the big issues comes back to the brakes. I had mentioned before that the plates i was using were only temporary and would not be getting used on the road. So i reached out to Mr JohnnyBravo, he gave me a very reasonable quote and they were done very quickly. So before long i had the brackets sat on my bench.
They look much better than my previous attempts. With some blasting and powdercoat i had them ready to fit.
Friday morning dawned and i got her back over the pit to double check all the major bolts and do another quick alignment check.
Followed by a quick wash and then a considerable drive to the MOT station.
The dog even came along for the ride.
We had no issues on the way there or back. And we took the scenic route home. Only minor gripe is the tyres especially the rears are scrubbing on the arches when you hit any uneven road.
Its something i should have thought about back before i painted everything as it would have been much easier to roll the arches. Ah well highsight is a wonderful thing aint’ it.
I have some camber bolts on the way which will hopefully help without needing to go too aggressive with it. Im also going to try and do some remedial work underneath to try and turn the lip of the arch up a bit.
Saturday i got some time to tidy up the workshops. Which was desperately needed. For sunday we went out to castle howard. Being fathers day i went with my dad in his RRC and my grandad in his XK8 It was brilliant having them all lined up together.
Well done on the pass but its not has though you hadn't prepped / worked hard to achieve it - great to see the 3 generation family fleet lined up too
Thanks I had gone through everything but having another critical set of eyes looking it over is always a bit nerve-wracking. Also the 60mile drive to the garage is a good test run for it to throw up any issues.
Been driving her to work all of last week. So how is it? In one word . . Awesome.
I had a small overfuelling issue which is fixed by adjusting the FPR. A slight bigger niggle is i have a gearbox leak. Its just the DS output seal which i must have niked when refitting the driveshafts.
Ah well its not a big leak and a new seal is on the way. One more problem that arose was the pipe i cut down for the cooling system. Its wasnt getting a good seal, it was one of those things i had intended to go back and look at later, i guess that means now.
Seemed to be fine under pressure but then leaked once it cooled down. Its because the pipe didnt have a proper bead on the end, mostly because i dont have a pipe beader. But i realised i do have a factory bead on the end i chopped off. So shortened it and welded onto my cut down pipe so it will be able to seal properly this time.
Could you give me a little more on what you did to modify your speedometer? I see you removed the odometer. What did you have to do to remove it? I see metal tabs that have to be pryed up, but what else? It looks like you don't have to desolder (which I thought you did).
The reason I ask is I have a USDM car (I am in the US) and its speedometer is fully dead. The electrolytic capacitors leaked and corroded the printed circuit board to the point that I can't see what to repair. I am thinking of just getting a JDM or EUDM speedometer and using it. I will have to modify / adjust it so that the odometer reset is on the correct side and put my odometer on. Also concerned with most non US speedometers read km and I need miles (both for speed and distance).
That's where I am at now. You have gone pretty deep into the workings of the speedometer, so, any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Could you give me a little more on what you did to modify your speedometer? I see you removed the odometer. What did you have to do to remove it? I see metal tabs that have to be pryed up, but what else? It looks like you don't have to desolder (which I thought you did).
The reason I ask is I have a USDM car (I am in the US) and its speedometer is fully dead. The electrolytic capacitors leaked and corroded the printed circuit board to the point that I can't see what to repair. I am thinking of just getting a JDM or EUDM speedometer and using it. I will have to modify / adjust it so that the odometer reset is on the correct side and put my odometer on. Also concerned with most non US speedometers read km and I need miles (both for speed and distance).
That's where I am at now. You have gone pretty deep into the workings of the speedometer, so, any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Bob
Hi sorry for the slow reply i havent really been on the forums for a while.
You have to desolder part of it, Its just 6 pins for the motor which turns the odometer. I think the rest just pulled out if i recall. A JDM board will be in KM but i think your best off finding another USDM speedo.
So where have you been? . . Where haven't i been? WOOF!!
Going back a few months I fixed the oil leak. Just a weeping seal, When i refitted the shaft i must have knocked the seal because the garter spring was loose in the back.
Rather than try to get it back in i just pulled the seal and replaced it. No more leak.
The rear tyres were catching on the arches so i bought some crash bolts and fitted them to the rear hubs.
That got most of it but i still had to go back in and trim this little lug off.
And re treated it with some raptor
No more rubbing since then.
I tried to get out as much as possible to get miles on the car.
I sourced some fittings and hose for the aircon pipes.
Had to solder the new fittings to the lexus pipes and then smeared in epoxy as it had a couple of tiny pin holes when i pressure tested it.
The pipes crimped on and i got the system filled. I had to make an adaptor as the mr2 seems to have an odd sized high side port which the standard adaptors dont fit.
It now blows fairly cool air and i can confirm that its still working after the last month so it cant be too bad.
Found a screw in one of my rear tyres which was luckily fixable since i only had 2k miles on them at the time.
I did some research on fabric sealer and this stuff came well recommended.
So i treated the alcantara part of the seats while i was giving everything a good polish.
Then i set off on a big roadtrip. This was day 1 we did 550 miles stopping in germany
Day 2 600 miles getting the midnight ferry from Frederikshaven
Day 3 we landed in Oslo and was mostly a day off
Day 4 200miles
Day 5 100milesaround the LeardalsorenRing
Day 6 200miles
Day 7 200miles
Day 8 200miles
Day 9 Rest day mostly and back to the ferry
Day 10 600 miles Back to germany
Day 11 550miles Back home Back home
It was another truly amazing trip with some brilliant scenery and great people, picture dump to follow in the next post. The only thing in the car that went wrong was a fog light bulb, so i lived without it
Total mileage for the trip was about 3.5k so a really good shakedown for the car, it really is an amazing road trip car. The seats were comfy even for the night we had sleeping in them, the aircon and cruise control worked well and the engine is pretty quiet even when doing a steady 90mph up the autobahn. Considering how unknown a lot of the car was and how many pieces it was in not that long ago i was rather impressed that nothing came up.
After the end of the run i haven't added up how much fuel we went through as that way insanity lays but it was quite a lot.
I did push it a bit and found out the speed is still limited to 112mph so im guessing the restrictor is in the lexus ecu and not something that is easy to remove, its annoying but after considering the amount of times im likely to get up to those speeds and then subtracting the times where its legal to be at those speeds there wasn't much left so i have decided its best to leave it in place for now.
The miles are adding up already and that wont be the last big trip this year, hopefully i will find time to do a Scotland road trip too before the weather gets bad.
Brilliant! and courageous. Any car I put together I wouldn't travel more than 60 feet from the house for about seven years for fear that it would break down. This is genuinely inspirational.
Brilliant! and courageous. Any car I put together I wouldn't travel more than 60 feet from the house for about seven years for fear that it would break down. This is genuinely inspirational.
In terms of the UCU - can't you just rechip it?
I do like to throw myself in at the deep end of things.
Unfortunatly toyota is particularly carefull with the ecu's and as far as i know noone has managed to modify one.
Respect! The best way to know a car is use it. Great story. Which project is next? MK1 MR2 or the horsebox?
Thom
Thanks, it certainly been a journey.
As to whats next im currently trying to get a few workshop organisational jobs done and then i think it will be a bit of work on a few friends cars that i have been putting off.
Of course there will be a sprinkling of other jobs like the horsebox in there too. i am being hounded about getting that finished.
