Rob's Aw11 Project

Out comes the engine

2008-07-21T22:11:00.006+12:00

I managed to get a whole lot done this weekend. My friend Chalkie came over and gave me a huge hand getting the engine out to make way for the nice new(ish) blacktop.

The use of his experience with pulling engines out, an extra set of tools and spare pair of hands made the job a lot easier than doing it myself.

The first order of business was removing the drive shafts. To get them out, the hubs had to be loosened, and the shocks were removed. The drive shafts were a lot less difficult to remove than I have been told. A bit of *gentle* persuasion with a few carefully placed tools and they were both out.

The plan was to (1) lower the engine out the bottom of the car onto a tarpauline, (2) lift the car clear of the engine, (3) drag the engine clear.
The next step was to disconnect everything that was keeping the engine from dropping out the bottom, except for engine mounts. Wiring was reasonably simple to unplug, and the coolant was mostly drained already.

The engine is a tight squeeze to lower down, but since the engine bay is smaller at the top than the bottom, lowering it is the sensible option.

The engine crane was moved into place, and connected to the engine. We then went ahead and removed the front and back engine mount bolts, then the gearbox mount. The cam cover mount was the only one that remained, and gave a bit of trouble. After a lot of mucking about with jacks under the engine, trying to alter its weight distribution, we decided to just unbolt the mount from the engine, rather than from the car (The mount on the camcover side is a two piece mount).

Almost there...

....Hooray!

Lifting the car up was a lot easier than trying to lower the engine. The chain was attached to the engine mounts on the left and right of the car, and carefully lifted. The photo doesn't really do the angle of the car justice. Standing next to the car, it actually looked like it was on much more of an angle - reasonably impressive :)

After a bit of heaving, out came the engine....

...and back down the car went.

Bluetop for sale:

Next, I'll be cleaning up the engine bay and getting the rest of the rust work done so I can start reassembling the car!

I know - it's been a while...

2008-07-16T21:37:00.005+12:00

It's been a little while since my last post - I've been having my car port turned into a garage, so that's disrupted progress somewhat. We also got a puppy, so it's not surprising I haven't had time to work on the car or post...

Over the past 3 weeks, I've managed to remove all of the brake master cylinder, pedal box, dash, and speedo from the car. The brake master cylinder had to be removed since there was lots of break fluid leakage underneath it. I left the lines in, but strung them up to hold them out of the way while I prepared the surface for painting.

I also did the side "rails", and the front bit too. The weather sheild sits over thease, and there was the odd spot of surface rust starting...

(Sorry for the blurry image - too late now - it's all covered in black paint :D)

After painting shots:

...and with the brakes replaced:

I thought I'd include a couple of garage shots - it's much better working on a car when you don't have the wind/rain coming in. Plus now I have my arcade cabinet downstairs so people who come over can play arcade games while I muck about with the car. The cabinet is also on my wireless network, and so is my source of music for my workshop. You can't work on a car without music!

Hopefully my car doesn't end up as unfinished as my mame cabinet...

Stripped out the front

2008-05-26T20:10:00.000+12:00

This weekend I spent pulling the front of the mr2 apart. I already knew that the front had the most rust, so it's something I've been not looking forward to.

I pulled back all of the trunk lining, and saw that there was the beginnings of rust underneath the brake master cylinder - someone must have spilt brake fluid there, and not known that brake fluid strips paint...

Where the right hand headlight mounts, there is a reasonable amount of rust. So the light fitting had to come out.

Looking at the otherside of the panel where the light mounts, you can see how bad the rust is:

Removing the light was a long process. After removing the four bolts holding the light shroud on, I had to remove the cowling underneath the car to find another bolt. Once this was removed, the light still wasn't coming out - the light adustment control which is mounted to the light shroud was still protruding through into the trunk, and had to be unbolted from the shroud. Once this was unbolted, everything was free to be removed, except for the wiring. So whilst balancing the heavy light with one hand, I attempted to remove the plugs.... Not the easiest way to do things... (The other light came off much easier, having already figured out how they are bolted in)

Once the light was removed, the full extent of the rust was clear:

I'll need a new light shroud, and have to cut the rust out and weld a plate in.

The left hand side light mount was spotless - so at least I'll have something to model my replacement plates from:

I also removed the front bumper - I'll need a replacement bumper because this one is long gone:

Once the front bumper was off, I removed the air conditioning radiator. Before I started removing pipes, I had a look in the BGB (big green book) about the Air-Con system, to see if there was anything I should look out for. Essentially, the book just said not to spill coolant on yourself, so I decided to release all the pressure in the system first.
I used a screw held in a pair of pliers to carefully press the valve release pin and allow the pressure to be released. As a precaution, I used the "turn your head and hold your breath" safety method.

I then unscrewed all of the mounts for the air con radiator, and unscrewed the pipes going into it. The whole air con system is quite elaborate, so I'm looking forward to the weight loss that the car will get from removing it all.

The car looks a bit sad now, but it all needs to be done to make sure it's as good as I can get it:

Removal of seats and carpet

2008-05-07T19:38:00.000+12:00

Last weekend I spent half a day removing all of the interior of the car. My last mr2 had a similar damp smell as this one, and I'm going to try to get rid of it.

I removed both seats, then pulled out the carpet, and firewall padding. There was a small amount of dirt underneath the passenger carpet, and quite a lot underneath the drivers side. The drivers side also had a hole in the carpet, which probably contributed to the dirt under the carpet, and the small patch of surface rust.

Passenger side:

Drivers side:

There is a small amount of surface rust on right of the footwell - that other browish stuff is fishoil...

One of the previous owners must have spent a long time removing panels and fish-oiling everything in site. The more I remove stuff, the more I see fish oil....
Even the roof underneath the roof material was fish oiled...

The rear firewall is pretty clean:

Next I'll spend some time cleaning out the floor panel and checking more closely for signs of rust.

More pictures of the boot repairs

2008-04-29T19:33:00.000+12:00

Here are some more shots of the rust repairs -

After cleaning the boot with the sponge, I managed to clean off all of the rust using a wire brush on the end of a power drill:

I removed the two bungs from the boot and had a look underneath them. From the top of the boot, there was a little bit of rust around the edges, so I knew there would probably be some underneath the boot as well. So I had to drop the exhaust and wire brush the holes from underneath:

After preparing all of the surfaces, I sprayed degreaser over all of the bare surfaces, and allowed it to dry. Next I applied the POR15 metal preparation goop and let that sit for 15 minutes. The instructions said to hose it off, but instead I just used a wet cloth and mopped it off. I didn't want to fill the sides up again with water...

After the water, I towelled off the excess water then uesd a heat gun to dry the excess water. Once it was all dry, I painted the brushed areas and the bottoms of the bits behind the wheels.

Once I've done this to all the rust on the car, I'll get some white paint and cover the black bits. Don't want the car looking like a cow....

Boot clean and rust repairs

2008-04-28T21:09:00.000+12:00

The last two weekends have been spent cleaning the boot out and doing rust repairs.

Heres a photo walkthrough:

The boot has a lot of smallish spots of surface rust. Unchecked, they would probably end up rusting right the way through.

This little delight is one of the places where aw11 Mr2s are renound for rust. It's the space behind the rear wheels inside the guard. It's like a little bucket for rust :) There is a factory hole presumably designed to release water, but the hole is about 20 mm from the bottom... Those are parking tickets that have washed down in there... The yellow stuff is actually fish oil - one of the owners must have been concerned with rust and taken steps to reduce it.

The hardest rust to remove is stuff like this where it is rusting between the joins of metal:

Here is a picture of the right side of the boot lining...

Here is the left hand side of the boot after I scrubbed it with a kitchen sponge. A lot of the surface rust came off, but this will all be wire brushed and repainted to prevent any further rusting

I will add some more pictures of the wire brushed boot and final painted area soon.

Which engine is the right one for the job?

2008-04-23T14:11:00.001+12:00

Deciding on the right engine is not something that can happen overnight.

The criteria for the right engine are numerous making the right choice difficult. Here are some thoughts:

1) The engine would be a 4a series. That way I don't have to mess about with custom engine mounts. Call me lazy, but I'm no engineer, and I'd rather not make things too hard for myself :)
2) Ultimately, I really want forced induction. Whether it be supercharged or turbocharged, I'm as yet unsure.
3) The engine needs to have reasonably low kms on it. I don't really want to get something that has done 250,000 kms and have to rebuild it from the get go (unless it's really cheap :D).
4) The gearbox, like the engine must be a c52 or c56 so as to easily bolt up to the engine. I have come to terms with having to switch the selectors to the other side (http://www.padandwheels.com/mr2/blacktopproject/day13/c56.html).
5) In terms of power production, I'm happy with around the 200hp range or less. I'm not insane...
6) I'm happy to force induction a 20 valve by lowering the compression and maybe giving it stronger rods. Although at this stage, I'm unsure about the price/complexity of the ecu required to do this.

Essentially that boils my options down to a few:

A 2nd or 3rd generation 4agze. Stock standard they produce a little over 120kw and a bit over 200 nm of torque. With an sc14 super charger, and/or a larger pulley kit, they would do the job nicely. The downside is trying to source one that hasn't got very high kms and isn't too expensive.

A 20 valve silver top or black top, modified with a super charger hanging off the side. The upside here is that sourcing an engine, gearbox and loom would be relatively easy, plus it could have lowish kms. The downside is that I'm unsure as to how would the gearbox and engine handle the forced induction? Also, how much is the ecu modification to handle the super charger going to cost?

Theres still plenty of time, and I suppose it's good to thresh this out now, rather than getting something that I won't be happy with :)

Beginnings of Project aw11

2008-04-21T22:09:00.000+12:00

I've always loved the old mr2.
I remember driving one for the first time - it was a really old, rough, naturally aspirated one. It was a manual, with the first generation blue top 4age engine.

The one thing I remember most about it was the feeling of the car. Mid engine, rear wheel drive - it just felt so much different than a standard front wheel drive front engine car. Accelerating out of corners; you feel like you are being pushed rather than pulled, and the car just felt so responsive - like it was on rails.

Of course it was probably not quite as I remember it. Probably much rougher, and not quite as quick...

After driving it, I went to work trying to find one I could call my own. I decided to get a supercharged one, and managed to find one eventually. It had 170k on the clock, but drove beautifully.

After owning it for about year or two, the rust situation became a bit difficult to manage, and since it was being stored outside, I decided to sell it an get a newer sw20.

That was all about 5 years ago....

I've driven the turbo and non-turbo sw20s, and they are both very nice. But I still love the old aw11. So I decided that an aw11 project car is just the thing to cure those boring weekends :)

The candidate car was preferably supercharged, manual, and in good condition. It was hard enough finding one that fits that description 5 years ago, nevermind now.

However, I finally found a car. It isn't manual, it isn't supercharged. But it is in remarkably good condition. Ask anyone selling an aw11 and they will tell you that "it has hardly any rust". Sure...
But this one is a bit different. It just doesn't seem to have rust where it should... The engine is tired, the gearbox is shot (plus it's a slushbox), but the body is near perfect. Must have been kept in a garage, one lady owner, e.t.c :)

My plans for project aw11 are quite simple:
1) Restore the car interior and exterior back to its former state as closely as possible, using original parts. This means removing all rust in site, and taking precautions to prevent future appearances.
2) Exchange the engine for another 4a version (still to be decided), and switch the gearbox to manual
3) Do a few minor engine modifications to make it a bit quicker than usual.
4) Upgrade the suspension and brakes to make the car more nimble than ever.

Here are a few pictures of the car after I'd picked it up:

Note the white painted console - who does this sort of thing?!!