Track Toyota - 2005 Toyota MR2 Track Project
Discussion
After starting a thread for my newly aquired Volvo V70, I figured it was about time I started a thread for the much more interesting car!
I've had this 2005 MR2 since January 2022, with the intention of taking it on track days on a semi frequent basis. Up to this point my previous fun cars have been a 2006 Mazda MX5, which later got the BBR Stage 1 Turbo treatment, and a 2005 Vauxhall Monaro VXR 6.0L. The Monaro was sold in May 2021 to help fund a house purchase and renovation, leaving me with a Peugeot 107 as my only car. Going from a 400 BHP 6.0L V8 down to a 1.0L 3 Cylinder shoebox was quite the downgrade!
I'd been interested in the MK3 MR2 for a little while, after seeing a nice example in the work car part it got my mind wondering if they could provide a budget Lotus Elise vibe and without the potentially high running or repair costs. I'd also been keen to start going on track days, something the Monaro wasn't particually suited to on account of it likely chewing through £300 of brake pads and £400 of tyres each time it when on track. I had planned to track my BBR Turbo NC MX5, however due to the poor engineering on the BBR kit the turbo grenaded itself simply driving on Cotswolds B roads, so track days were out of the question out of fear of blowing another turbo. The Monaro had also taught me the value of owning a car with plentiful parts supply here in the UK. I didn't want a minor brush with a tyre wall, or mechanical failure to land me with a high 4 figure bill, or leave me waiting months of replacement parts.
So after a good search I settled on this, a late facelift 2005 MR2 with the improved 1ZZ engine without Cat failure, and 6 speed gearbox:

I was over the moon and excited to be back in a propers drivers car, although the mood was soured slightly on the drive back and I realised i'd accidently bought a car without Air Conditioning... I'd mistakenly thought all UK MR2's had A/C as standard, however it was only standard if you optioned the hard top. Oh well, race cars don't need A/C anyway right?
As i'm abit late to the readers cars party, i'll try and condense 2 years of ownership and track days down into a summary. The first stage of the build was to simply upgrade the brakes and take it to track mostly stock. I figured i'd only upgrade parts if they were safety critical, or were actually holding me back on track. The biggest weakness was alwasy going to be the driver, so made no sense to make too many changes until my own ability was good enough to make the most of the upgrades. The discs were changed to MTec J Hook units, with Carbotech AX6 pads. I also removed the old Pirelli fronts and Davanti ditch finder rears with a set of Hankook Ventus 3 K125's.

In 2022 I managed to take the MR2 to Blyton Park, Beford Autodrome and Curborough Sprint Circuit. I was hugely impressed by the car in stock form, yes it wasn't fast in a straight line but it handles brilliantly and was huge fun. The Carbotech pads were especially impressive, huge power on the brakes. There was quite abit of body roll however!


2023 saw more track days to start the year, with Blyton, Angelsey and Snetterton being ticked off in January, Februrary and March respectively. Once again the car performed brilliantly.



In May 2023 I decided it was time to liven up the exhaust on the 1ZZ, and fitted a Malian manifold and Race Backbox. One strange issue I had on track was that the stock exhaust is so quiet when the roof is down I can't hear the engine at all over the wind noise. Since i'd fitted a 320mm OMP steering wheel (a neccessity as I wouldn't comfortably get my knees under the wheel otherwise) I couldn't see past 3000 RPM on the Rev Counter. Quality seemed good at first glance (more on that later) and fitment was relatively easy. Being Mid Engined each exhaust component is fairly small and easy to maneuver, and unlike other MR2 generations the exhaust is on the "back" of the engine so access is a doddle. The car now sounded great, louder than before but not too antisocial (in my opinion anyway).


It was then time to head back to Angelsey and Cadwell Park to enjoy the new noise


Cadwell is where I experienced my first proper track related issue with this car. Towards the end of the day a couple of the exhaust manifold nuts worked it's way loose and one fell off mid session. This reduced the clamping load on the manifold gasket causing a hole to be blown through the top of the gasket in cylinder 2 & 3. I was able to patch the manifold with Holts Exhaust gum, and miraculously found a perfect sized nut on the floor of the paddock to replace the missing manifold nut, and limp the car 3 hours home. I should have known better than to trust the cheap, compressed graphite gasket provided with the manifold. My experience with these has always been poor, usually with the corroding after a year or two on the car. In this case the powdered graphite failed once the clamping load was released, causing a permanent leak. Had this been an OEM steel gasket I could have carried on after tightening the manifold nuts back. This happened only 3 days before I was due to show the car at the Pistonheads 25th Anniversary meet as part of the Sports Cars section, in the end the MR2 was left behind as I didn't trust the gum bodge to hold long enough to make it to Bicester and back. So I apologise to Pistonheads for the missing MR2 on the day!


OEM gasket fitted, and it was good to go again.
I've had this 2005 MR2 since January 2022, with the intention of taking it on track days on a semi frequent basis. Up to this point my previous fun cars have been a 2006 Mazda MX5, which later got the BBR Stage 1 Turbo treatment, and a 2005 Vauxhall Monaro VXR 6.0L. The Monaro was sold in May 2021 to help fund a house purchase and renovation, leaving me with a Peugeot 107 as my only car. Going from a 400 BHP 6.0L V8 down to a 1.0L 3 Cylinder shoebox was quite the downgrade!
I'd been interested in the MK3 MR2 for a little while, after seeing a nice example in the work car part it got my mind wondering if they could provide a budget Lotus Elise vibe and without the potentially high running or repair costs. I'd also been keen to start going on track days, something the Monaro wasn't particually suited to on account of it likely chewing through £300 of brake pads and £400 of tyres each time it when on track. I had planned to track my BBR Turbo NC MX5, however due to the poor engineering on the BBR kit the turbo grenaded itself simply driving on Cotswolds B roads, so track days were out of the question out of fear of blowing another turbo. The Monaro had also taught me the value of owning a car with plentiful parts supply here in the UK. I didn't want a minor brush with a tyre wall, or mechanical failure to land me with a high 4 figure bill, or leave me waiting months of replacement parts.
So after a good search I settled on this, a late facelift 2005 MR2 with the improved 1ZZ engine without Cat failure, and 6 speed gearbox:

I was over the moon and excited to be back in a propers drivers car, although the mood was soured slightly on the drive back and I realised i'd accidently bought a car without Air Conditioning... I'd mistakenly thought all UK MR2's had A/C as standard, however it was only standard if you optioned the hard top. Oh well, race cars don't need A/C anyway right?
As i'm abit late to the readers cars party, i'll try and condense 2 years of ownership and track days down into a summary. The first stage of the build was to simply upgrade the brakes and take it to track mostly stock. I figured i'd only upgrade parts if they were safety critical, or were actually holding me back on track. The biggest weakness was alwasy going to be the driver, so made no sense to make too many changes until my own ability was good enough to make the most of the upgrades. The discs were changed to MTec J Hook units, with Carbotech AX6 pads. I also removed the old Pirelli fronts and Davanti ditch finder rears with a set of Hankook Ventus 3 K125's.

In 2022 I managed to take the MR2 to Blyton Park, Beford Autodrome and Curborough Sprint Circuit. I was hugely impressed by the car in stock form, yes it wasn't fast in a straight line but it handles brilliantly and was huge fun. The Carbotech pads were especially impressive, huge power on the brakes. There was quite abit of body roll however!


2023 saw more track days to start the year, with Blyton, Angelsey and Snetterton being ticked off in January, Februrary and March respectively. Once again the car performed brilliantly.



In May 2023 I decided it was time to liven up the exhaust on the 1ZZ, and fitted a Malian manifold and Race Backbox. One strange issue I had on track was that the stock exhaust is so quiet when the roof is down I can't hear the engine at all over the wind noise. Since i'd fitted a 320mm OMP steering wheel (a neccessity as I wouldn't comfortably get my knees under the wheel otherwise) I couldn't see past 3000 RPM on the Rev Counter. Quality seemed good at first glance (more on that later) and fitment was relatively easy. Being Mid Engined each exhaust component is fairly small and easy to maneuver, and unlike other MR2 generations the exhaust is on the "back" of the engine so access is a doddle. The car now sounded great, louder than before but not too antisocial (in my opinion anyway).


It was then time to head back to Angelsey and Cadwell Park to enjoy the new noise


Cadwell is where I experienced my first proper track related issue with this car. Towards the end of the day a couple of the exhaust manifold nuts worked it's way loose and one fell off mid session. This reduced the clamping load on the manifold gasket causing a hole to be blown through the top of the gasket in cylinder 2 & 3. I was able to patch the manifold with Holts Exhaust gum, and miraculously found a perfect sized nut on the floor of the paddock to replace the missing manifold nut, and limp the car 3 hours home. I should have known better than to trust the cheap, compressed graphite gasket provided with the manifold. My experience with these has always been poor, usually with the corroding after a year or two on the car. In this case the powdered graphite failed once the clamping load was released, causing a permanent leak. Had this been an OEM steel gasket I could have carried on after tightening the manifold nuts back. This happened only 3 days before I was due to show the car at the Pistonheads 25th Anniversary meet as part of the Sports Cars section, in the end the MR2 was left behind as I didn't trust the gum bodge to hold long enough to make it to Bicester and back. So I apologise to Pistonheads for the missing MR2 on the day!


OEM gasket fitted, and it was good to go again.
Now it's impossible to own a MK3 MR2 without the topic of 2ZZ swaps coming up, and yes it's something I would like to do. In fact, it's one of the reasons I bought the car and was an end goal for the project. However a Rogue Motorsport conversion would be around £5000 once I had all the bits fitted I wanted, and a DIY conversion would still be a few thousand to source an engine or donor car plus some of the MR2 specific parts. But then, my colleague told me about his friend who was selling his ropey 2zz swapped MR2 with hardtop for a good price. £2250 for the car plus hard top seemed like a bargain. The hardtops at the time were selling for £1500, so in my mind being able to get all the 2ZZ MR2 parts needed for an extra £750 was a no brainer. So in September I ended up with 2 MR2's on the drive, much to the delight of my fiance 

The 2ZZ car is pretty rough, with every panel having some sort of scratch or scuff, plus plenty of other issues. The heater doesn't work for a start, neither does the Air Con. However the 2ZZ itself was strong, reading good compression levels on each cylinder. So the plan is to strip out the 2zz, and any other conversion parts and swap it into the grey original car. Now you might be thinking, "wouldn't it be easier to fix up the silver car rather than drop 2 engines and swap the 2zz into the grey car?" and you would be right, however I am quite attached to the grey car now and would like to keep it for a good while longer. So the silver car will be cannibalised for good parts, and then either scrapped, broken for parts, or sold on with the Grey cars 1zz bolted in.
The breaking up of the silver car would have to wait until spring however, as I didn't fancy doing all the work in the winter and I had enough space for it to sit around until then. In the meantime the grey car was sent off to Rogue Motorsport for some suspension upgrades, this included:
Meister R Coilovers
Whiteline Antifoll Bars
Refurbished front arms with new polybushes
Refurbished rear arms
Full polybush swap on other bushes
Normally I do all the work on my own cars, however thanks to a combination of poor weather, other house renevation projects and general life busy-ness I couldn't find the time to fit everything before my next track day at Blyton Park. Rogue did an excellent job fitting everything and setting the cars geometry for the track. They did have to perform surgery on the rear subframe due to a siezed bolt, so probably a good thing they completed the work on this occasion! The car did get set abit too low for my liking, and caught on speed bumps quite often, so at MOT time I got rogue to raise the ride height back up 10mm which has helped clear bumps.

It was then onto Blyton Park again for the final track day of 2023. As expected the new suspension made a huge difference, with the car now cornering much flatter. The polybushes also allow me to feel every little detail through the steering wheel, I could feel tiny drainage ridges in the track surface which I had never noticed with the OEM bushes. Came away from the day very pleased with the new set up! The hardtop has also made quite a difference, and also allows me to fit better with a helmet as it gives you another 40mm of headroom


Blyton was a great way to wrap up 2023, with the little MR2 impressing all year. I really have fallen in love with this car, it just puts a smile on your face whenever you take it for a drive!
Now into 2024, so far no track days have been planned as the intention is to finally complete the 2ZZ swap. With the weather warming the plan is to strip the silver car for parts, refresh the engine seals and any other ancillaries which need attention, and finally get it swapped into the grey car. The current shopping list is:
Full Zero Exhaust System
Elise Parts baffled sump
Full engine gasket kit
Timing chain service
Paint valve cover
Potentially a wiring conversion harness as the silver cars wiring is abit "messy"
I'll update this thread with developments as 2024 continues, and hopefully by the summer i'll have an 8500 RPM pocket rocket to throw around
But not before the cheap Malian exhaust decided to throw a spanner in the works...
After 9 or so months on the car, the weld between the hanger and exhaust tube completely failed. Most likely due to poor fitment of parts resulting in a huge welding gap, poor material quality, and potentially dissimilar filler wire material causing corrosion:


So for now the stock backbox will be going back on, until the 2zz swap is complete



The 2ZZ car is pretty rough, with every panel having some sort of scratch or scuff, plus plenty of other issues. The heater doesn't work for a start, neither does the Air Con. However the 2ZZ itself was strong, reading good compression levels on each cylinder. So the plan is to strip out the 2zz, and any other conversion parts and swap it into the grey original car. Now you might be thinking, "wouldn't it be easier to fix up the silver car rather than drop 2 engines and swap the 2zz into the grey car?" and you would be right, however I am quite attached to the grey car now and would like to keep it for a good while longer. So the silver car will be cannibalised for good parts, and then either scrapped, broken for parts, or sold on with the Grey cars 1zz bolted in.
The breaking up of the silver car would have to wait until spring however, as I didn't fancy doing all the work in the winter and I had enough space for it to sit around until then. In the meantime the grey car was sent off to Rogue Motorsport for some suspension upgrades, this included:
Meister R Coilovers
Whiteline Antifoll Bars
Refurbished front arms with new polybushes
Refurbished rear arms
Full polybush swap on other bushes
Normally I do all the work on my own cars, however thanks to a combination of poor weather, other house renevation projects and general life busy-ness I couldn't find the time to fit everything before my next track day at Blyton Park. Rogue did an excellent job fitting everything and setting the cars geometry for the track. They did have to perform surgery on the rear subframe due to a siezed bolt, so probably a good thing they completed the work on this occasion! The car did get set abit too low for my liking, and caught on speed bumps quite often, so at MOT time I got rogue to raise the ride height back up 10mm which has helped clear bumps.

It was then onto Blyton Park again for the final track day of 2023. As expected the new suspension made a huge difference, with the car now cornering much flatter. The polybushes also allow me to feel every little detail through the steering wheel, I could feel tiny drainage ridges in the track surface which I had never noticed with the OEM bushes. Came away from the day very pleased with the new set up! The hardtop has also made quite a difference, and also allows me to fit better with a helmet as it gives you another 40mm of headroom


Blyton was a great way to wrap up 2023, with the little MR2 impressing all year. I really have fallen in love with this car, it just puts a smile on your face whenever you take it for a drive!
Now into 2024, so far no track days have been planned as the intention is to finally complete the 2ZZ swap. With the weather warming the plan is to strip the silver car for parts, refresh the engine seals and any other ancillaries which need attention, and finally get it swapped into the grey car. The current shopping list is:
Full Zero Exhaust System
Elise Parts baffled sump
Full engine gasket kit
Timing chain service
Paint valve cover
Potentially a wiring conversion harness as the silver cars wiring is abit "messy"
I'll update this thread with developments as 2024 continues, and hopefully by the summer i'll have an 8500 RPM pocket rocket to throw around
But not before the cheap Malian exhaust decided to throw a spanner in the works...
After 9 or so months on the car, the weld between the hanger and exhaust tube completely failed. Most likely due to poor fitment of parts resulting in a huge welding gap, poor material quality, and potentially dissimilar filler wire material causing corrosion:


So for now the stock backbox will be going back on, until the 2zz swap is complete

Edited by DD3566 on Friday 8th March 12:42
I like these a lot; on the couple of occasions I've taken one in part exchange it was "mine". Even the 5000 miles one a few years ago on its original ~15 year old rock hard tyres in the middle of winter. Yeeeaaahhhh....
I really like the driving position and relation to other controls. Probably the best "fitting" car I've ever driven, Porsche/Lotus included.
I really like the driving position and relation to other controls. Probably the best "fitting" car I've ever driven, Porsche/Lotus included.
Great to see more of these Mk3s receiving love, always liked the way they drove and preferred them to MX5s/similar offerings. I’ve always badgered a friend of mine with a Corolla T Sport he’s owned since 2004 to sell it to me for the engine/gearbox to transplant in to one of these, just my luck that he called me last week to say the rust is finally beyond economical repair and offered me the car; I feel I’m too old now to complete such a project but still keep half an eye out for a suitable MR2…
Look forward to seeing further progress with your car, OP, so I can hopefully live vicariously through you!
Look forward to seeing further progress with your car, OP, so I can hopefully live vicariously through you!
Great little car the MR2 MK3 and you will have lots of fun with it on track .
I ran one as a track car for a few years ( link below ) and looks much the same as the route your going starting off with the 1ZZ and then upgrading to the 2ZZ .
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
I ran one as a track car for a few years ( link below ) and looks much the same as the route your going starting off with the 1ZZ and then upgrading to the 2ZZ .
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
Not too much to report on the MR2 front, been busy rebuilding the Volvo bit by bit! Some recent highlights include:
The arrival of the engine crane to allow the swap to begin, rather than using the crane to lift the engine from the car, you use it to lift the body off the engine. The engine is then slid out from underneath. The crane also gives me an idea to LS Swap the Zoe...

An annoying front brake pad rattle was also cured courtesy of some new retaining clips

Since the Volvo was in bits the MR2 has been fufilling commuter duties very well, making friends at the office:

Also used for weekend hoons, and parking alongside royalty

While it hasn't seen a track day so far in 2024, it will be going up the the Prescott Hill on Sunday as part of the PH Event. So a quick bath was in order to wash off the Cotswolds bugs and dirt from the weekend


Now that the engine crane has arrived, and the weather somewhat behaving, i'm hoping to start pulling apart the Silver MR2 in order to liberate the 2ZZ. Any other useful bits will be sold on and the shell scrapped. Hopefully the next big update will include some 2ZZ content!
The arrival of the engine crane to allow the swap to begin, rather than using the crane to lift the engine from the car, you use it to lift the body off the engine. The engine is then slid out from underneath. The crane also gives me an idea to LS Swap the Zoe...
An annoying front brake pad rattle was also cured courtesy of some new retaining clips
Since the Volvo was in bits the MR2 has been fufilling commuter duties very well, making friends at the office:
Also used for weekend hoons, and parking alongside royalty
While it hasn't seen a track day so far in 2024, it will be going up the the Prescott Hill on Sunday as part of the PH Event. So a quick bath was in order to wash off the Cotswolds bugs and dirt from the weekend
Now that the engine crane has arrived, and the weather somewhat behaving, i'm hoping to start pulling apart the Silver MR2 in order to liberate the 2ZZ. Any other useful bits will be sold on and the shell scrapped. Hopefully the next big update will include some 2ZZ content!
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