This weekend it's time to get back to work on the MR2. Actually, I'm starting to run out of parts, so soon there won't be much left for me to do on the car other than wait for extremely delayed shipments, and wish I could take it out to get it dirty. The game plan for the weekend is to replace the shift lever in the car, and to tackle the brake proportioning valve. Should be easy, but being me I figured out a way to mess things up.
The AW11 came with a shift lever meant to be held like a pistol grip, and the PO then installed a janky short shifter, and a ball knob on top. The result used to be that the knob was a little too high, but now with the 6 speed in there I'm also having trouble getting into reverse because the short shifter is interfering with one of the shift cables. Here's the shift lever today:
The car came without a shift boot, so I make the one on the car long ago out of some flannel. The sewing job on it leaves a lot to be desired, but it's mostly holding together. That said, the janky short shifter also causes the fabric to be caught between the shift cable and the center consol, and ripped my artful sewing.
The new shift lever comes out of a later model 93+ MR2, which apparently fits right in but is shorter, which means reverse shouldn't (hopefully) interfere anymore. So, I pulled apart the center console and disassembled the shift lever only to look at it and realize I really needed to grease the ball joints, and of course I don't have any grease in the garage. I'm not sure how that happened, but apparently I haven't done any work requiring any grease up to this point. I considered greasing them up with vasoline (it'd probably work), but finally gave in and ventured out into the plague infested countryside to get some grease. Here's the end result
The shift lever is much more comfortable now, it doesn't interfere of the shift cable when shifting into reverse, and as an unexpected bonus there's a ring/ledge thing around the top of the lever which holds the shift boot up. While I had the center console out, I also re-installed the fake-leather armrest thing, you need to bend the tabs in from under the center console to get than damn thing to stay in place and I've been too lazy to bother since it came off on me while someone else was codriving the car at a rallycross.
With that, I took the car out for a quick spin just to make sure everything was working right, only to find I couldn't get into reverse! I suspect that the bracket at the back of the car, which now has a little bit of wiggle room when the bolts are loose, shifted a bit on me. So, I took the air filter off, loosened the bracket up, conned my wife to test shift for me, then tightened it all up again. Reverse works fine now, great, but I discovered during the test drive that you can't get into 5th any more. Well, sometimes you can, but usually you can't. Oddly enough, 6th works just great.
After filing the hole in the mounting plate a bit wider so that the lever didn't interfere on the mounting plate when pushed right, and loosing and tightening the bracket in the rear 5 or 6 times, and driving around the block after each change only to find the problem still there, I finally found a solution:
In the photo above, you can see the shift lever without the center console in the way. What was happening when you went for 5th is that you'd move over to the right just fine, and then as you pushed up the lever would sorta slide to the left on you. It wasn't fouling on the (square) hole in the metal mounting plate, it was hitting the end of travel on the (circular) ball joint bushing. What I needed to do was pull the gear lever back just a hair, so that I could get it into that 5th position, actually if you squint just right at the photo above, you can see that it's sitting slightly forward (it's in the neutral position).
I was about to go fiddle with the bracket in the back of the car, even though previous attempts had only moved the lever left and right (not back and forth), when I noticed that there is some adjustment on the back-forth shifter cable! So, yeah, I screwed that guy in, and everything was fixed. For such a simple project, it sure did take a long time.
On to the proportioning valve, that'll be easy right? I got a new Wilwood proportioning valve as a kit for a Miata since they share the same 10 mm brake line fittings, it came in a kit with everything I would need. Except of course it didn't. Here's the proportioning valve for the MR2:
2 ins, and 3 outs. 2 of the outs go to the front wheels, and the 3rd is routed back to the rears. Apparently Miata's are weird and have a proportioning value with 2 ins and 2 outs. So, the kit came with a simple straight barrel union, and in the MR2 I needed a Tee. I actually figured this out weeks ago, and already had the Tees I would need in the house. So, no problem, right. Well...
Here's those 10 mm brake line fittings attempting to be fit into the new proportioning valve. Both of those fittings are screwed in about as far as I can get them, and have a whopping 1 or 2 threads of engagement. I had the same basic problem with the Tee fitting as well. Call me cautious, but I don't think that's enough. The problem is being caused by the rather long unthreaded section on the MR2 fittings. They were designed to go into the cavernous depths of the Aisin proportioning valve, and all my adapters are just too shallow.
To add just a bit more aggravation to all of this, when I went to remove those brass adapters on the proportioning value to confirm that they really are too shallow, I discovered I screwed them in way too tight into the valve. The valve body is just aluminum after all. I got one out, but it mangled the threads. The other shattered on me, apparently you can shatter brass. I thought about repairing the valve, but at $40 (this time with 10 mm inlets from Wilwood instead of brass adapters), I don't think its worth my time. I also ordered a new Tee, hopefully the new bits are deep enough, if not I guess I'm going to learn how to flare brake lines.