It followed me home, so I get to keep it, right?

My kid's been asking after a car of his own for a while.  It seemed a little cart before the horse, given that the older kid still doesn't have his license to begin with (and the notion was that they'd share the 2015 VW GTI), and that we've been working together slowly on a 1969 Datsun roadster.

BUT.

My friend talked to me one day at cars and coffee, and said that he was thinking of getting rid of his '85 MR2 because he had a newfound love of 1st gen RX7s and they "filled the same niche" in his collection.  Now, the MR2 is on the very top of the kid's shortlist of cars to get.

SO.

I went and bought the thing.  I paid a tiny bit above collector market, but in my defense, I still paid $5k less than what my friend has into it, and it came with everything, including the Toyota Big Green Book and wiring supplement, a spare decklid with spoiler, a spare transmission/diff, three gauge clusters, two HVAC heads, an entire spare set of brakes (in addition to the entirely new set on it), an entire spare set of shift cables (again, in addition to the new set on it), an entire spare set of clutch hydraulics (again...).  There are 7 giant bins of spares that I have to make room in the attic for.

I scored bigtime on the delivery though - I managed to time it just right so that I was coming down the street as the two were coming home from school in the GTI.  I dipped the flip-ups at them and Luca had to pull over until he could see through the tears.

Welcome Señor Dos, a very stock example of a 1985 Toyota MR2 non-supercharged, with a 5 speed transmission.

We paid the first of the previous owner taxes on it last Saturday when I pulled the old radio out of it and found that it'd been installed with wire nuts.  Luca wanted a CD player, and the thing in the dash was an Alpine digital receiver (so, bluetooth, USB, and radio).  We subharnessed it with some Deutsch connectors, so at least 43.957% less chance of catching fire.

Score!

Nice! More pics!

Can I be your next kid?

TurnerX19 said:

Can I be your next kid?

Sorry, I've got an heir and a spare and that means my dance card is full.

Rad!

You've done a good thing. Looks like a really clean example, too. Most of them (mine included) are looking pretty weathered by now.

Love it, those have been tempting me lately also.

johndej said:

Love it, those have been tempting me lately also.

How it looked in 2021 after sitting since its last registration in 2012.  It was a yard find at an estate sale flanked by about a dozen Fiat 124s.

Basically all it needed was paint, tires, and a good interior cleaning.  PO hoarded a bunch of stuff though because he's used to that BMW life where E36 M3 breaks all the time.

Did the first bit on Señor Dos last weekend with the kid.

Swapped a gauge cluster with a working fuel gauge into the dash.  I taught the kid how to polish out the lens, because it wasn't in the best condition (though it was salvageable).  We didn't bother trying to swap the lens because they're held in with tabs, and I didn't want to risk breaking them.  The new cluster has much nicer gauge faces, so it was really a win-win.

Also started on the shift quality, by swapping the bushings on the shifter with aluminum ones.  There was also a replacement bush for the ball at the bottom of the shifter itself, so we did a minus-whale swap on that too, since it was in the (frankly huge) pile of spares.

I got a couple of new bins that fit the shelves I keep my parts hoard in the attic on, and started cataloging all the spares, too (I have a small database which adds significant time to buying new things destined for the parts hoard, but means I know exactly what I've got, most of the time).

We're also going to put the rest of the Prime MR2 shift linkage stuff in - the square bush on the shift fork, and the spherical ends for the shift linkages on the bell cranks in the engine bay.  Again, all parts coming out of the spares bin.

Got a new distributor cap (OE), rotor (OE), wires (NGK), and plugs (also NGK), and also oil (Rotella T6) and a filter (OE Toyota) to go in as well.

I highly recommend getting a distributor rebuild kit and rebuilding the distributor. It most likely has all of the original seals still and they are known to leak oil very badly. There is an internal seal on the distributor shaft that requires you to pull the distributor completely apart to replace. It is not too difficult and there are many guides available for it. 

I hope you don't mind some attention stealing, but here are some pictures of my wife's aw11. We love these cars and I enjoy helping people out with their own mr2s

Mrfurzzy1 said:

I highly recommend getting a distributor rebuild kit and rebuilding the distributor. It most likely has all of the original seals still and they are known to leak oil very badly. There is an internal seal on the distributor shaft that requires you to pull the distributor completely apart to replace. It is not too difficult and there are many guides available for it. 

I hope you don't mind some attention stealing, but here are some pictures of my wife's aw11. We love these cars and I enjoy helping people out with their own mr2s

The distributor is actually new.  I have the old one in a box, but I guess I'll try and rebuild it.

I like the body color wing.  I'm thinking Luca's will be SEM Hot Rod Black, to set it off from the silver body.  Still have to go buy some silver for the spare trunk lid though.