SW20 MR2 Rallycross Fun

Like many of us, a long term dream of mine has been to get into stage rally. Also like most of us, stage rally is a bit more than I can chew. So, since I've come to Alabama where rallycross is popular I have had my eye out for the right rallycross car.

My favorite historical rally car has long been the Lancia Stratos because I love the idea of a mid engine supercar overcoming AWD dominance through the power of the MR configuration and sick drifts:

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So, the SW20 is the perfect choice. It's got rad 90s budget-supercar styling, the engine in the back, and a great cockpit. You can even get real stage rally suspension for it if the budget allowed.

Last night I picked up this '93 MR2 Hardtop from a fellow GRM member. It has some light rust, some crash damage hidden under a repair, and minor electrical issues. It's also a rare hardtop model. This makes it the perfect rallyX candidate with the light weight hard top chassis and enough issues for me to not feel bad driving it in the dirt.

For the short term this thread will just be me taking it back to "Stage 0" levels of mods. Fixing rust damage and other things of that nature.

Also on the to-do list is finding a way to solve the dust-intrusion issues that tend to kill MR cars on the dirt, getting the suspension sorted and documenting the cars first steps onto the rallycross field. Hopefully in the long term I'll get a chance to 3s-gte gen 4 swap it.

Yessssss.  I had a V6 swapped one of these as a rallycross car, it was great but ate engines like candy- definitely watch the dust ingestion and the oil control closely.

It handled quite well on stock springs with the swaybars removed and some decent strut inserts.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Do you have any tips on keeping the engine from eating too much dust? I'm thinking I'll start with a Donaldson cyclonic intake which is intended specifically for heavy equipment in heavy dust environments.

In reply to hardtopAeroMiata :

Intake high and to the front- either a roof scoop or a snorkel or something, and on mine I put universal foam filter material in the side scoops too because I couldn't bring myself to fully block them.

Cool that makes sense.