MR2 Roadster Championship Build
Discussion
Hi all
I wanted to start a journal for my current build/project which has been going on since November. I've been interested in joining UK club racing for a while but never thought it would be affordable. I was often told to check out the C1 or Ford Ka racing as a budget way in, but then I found out about this MR2 championship. I saw them race last year at Croft, and after speaking to a very helpful Rogue Motorsport, my fate was sealed. I owned a Roadster at the time but this was quite heavily modified and unsuitable for the championship, so that was sold, and the money put aside to fund the entry into racing!
Getting in to racing is quite a hurdle for the first time - lots of stuff to buy and think about. I'm usually terrible at deciding things, especially as big as this, but once I'd chosen my formulae it was time to go balls deep. I am by no way a mechanic, just an enthusiast who *thinks* they can do this, so let's find out.
My old MR2 at the Nurburgring last year:
Let's go back to October 2019 - I've sold my MR2, and started to look out for my donor car for the championship build. Rogue Motorsport (who run the championship with 750mc), say to spend around £2k to get a decent donor car (with a hard top). There's plenty of nice cars out there for this money, but most Roadsters which have not been either dry stored or recently 'enthusiast owned' will all have the same common faults. Mostly corrosion is the enemy, but faults with oil burning engines and tendencies to self destruct are not unheard of. It's recommended to get a MY2002> car at the very least, to try and mitigate these problems.
What I did instead, from which hindsight is a lovely thing, is bought a cheap car from a friend. You know what it's like when you buy a car from a someone you know, you're both kinda doing each other a favour, so it's all good. My friend had built this car from spare bits of MR2s laying around, daily drove it for a while, then it stood for a couple of months before I got it for a measly £600. It came with new front and rear discs, as well as a few extra braces. The hard top unfortunately is just for show, but we'll get into that later.
November 1st, I bought the car and brought it back home. The car had a dead battery on collection and a very poorly clutch so I haven't driven it. I know for something you want to drive hard, you should probably be more concerned about these things, but I still haven't driven it as I type this thread. Anyway...
I know - the wheels are beautiful.
Before we get started doing any jobs on the car, I've got a whack of stuff to buy to get it race ready and legal. Rogue Motorsport, as mentioned earlier, work in conjunction with the 750mc to deliver the MR2 championship. They also sell most if not of the parts you need to convert a car into a race car, so after a few emails and a trip down to Warwickshire I had a boot full of bits to get me started.
Collected items were; roll cage, coilovers, clutch, polybushes, seat rail, hard top brackets, and poly engine mounts.
Now with a few parts to play with and a very sorry looking Roadster, it was time to start the build!
The first job I picked was the clutch change. The clutch that was on the car was very slippy, even so much so that just reversing it on to the ramp was a challenge.
I'm lucky now to share a barn with a few friends and we even have a ramp, which has made a lot of these jobs a lot easier. I changed the gearbox on my first MR2 on the ground and it was a sweary affair with lots of blood. On the ramp it's easier, and having replaced a lot of the suspension on my old car I knew roughly how these went together, albeit with a Toyota engine rather than a fun one.
Car on the ramp:
I had a quick nosey around the car and it's definitely dirty. Both rear arch liners are missing and it's made a mess of the rear of the car.
Gearbox off, wasn't a bad job at all in the end, just fiddly as you'd expect.
Old clutch definitely looking a bit worn
New clutch! This is the fanciest clutch I've ever bought, and it seems a bit overkill. I'm told the original clutches overheat in a race though. Races in this championship are 13 minutes + 1 lap, so perhaps that comment was aimed at endurance racing rather than the series. Anyway, it should last!
I had a minor scare when installing the clutch as it came with a brand new pilot bearing, and stated that if I don't use it, my warranty is void! The only problem was, the supplied bearing was too big for my car.... I had to get an adult round who agreed the 1zz never actually had a pilot bearing, and you can't replace something that doesn't exist. Phew.
Clutch on:
After doing the clutch I got started on the rebush. I knew this would be an awful job, but it wasn't that bad in the end. To remove the old bushes I mostly used a couple of sockets and a M12 threaded steel rod / nuts. On the front of the car you need a hydraulic press to fit rear bush.
The arms do look awful. I was thinking of getting them powdercoated or at least painted, but with time being limited to get this built, and also trying to make sure I don't get 'attached' to this car, or at least stuck with it in many pieces all season, I decided to just fit the bushes and leave them. After being man-handled a bit they did look a bit better, but ultimately quite revolting.
The above is the rear arms from the car. 3 per side.
There is also a bush in the rear hub that needs to be changed. Removing the hub and disc/shield was required. The disc dust cover was mostly rust anyway, so it went in the bin.
Yes - everything is a bit crusty, but it's all good. After working on the car quite a lot of the rust has fallen off the car and into my eyes, so don't worry too much.
Front arms being rebushed
One of the front arms needed a replacement balljoint too. This was supplied from MR2-Ben for under £20.
I also fitted a poly engine mount kit, which replaces the front and rear engine mounts (torque mounts) of the car to poly.
Whilst at the rear engine mount I noted my rear subframe looked disgusting. Whilst it could have been a lot worse, I thought I may as well try to clean it up.
Drowned in rust converter. Unfortunately this stuff doesn't really work when it's just above freezing. I used it on some areas of the chassis that were showing some surface rust too, then went over with some underseal (after warming the tin up!)
Now for some fun jobs. Stripping the interior. Here's how it looked originally:
It was actually quite nice, the interior. Maybe one of the better parts of the car, but that's no good. It all needs to go!
From this, I'll be keeping the dashboard, but that's about it.
I'm replacing all of the original HVAC with a T7Designs heater. Picked up from Autosport for £100, then about another £60 or so on hoses and ducting.
The reason I pulled the interior out was to have a test fit of the roll cage. It arrived in many pieces and I wanted to build it to get an idea of what it would look like.
For a seat I'm hoping to use my old trusty Recaro Pole Position. I've had this in a few cars now, most recently my old MR2. It's hard to get comfortable in one of these cars if you're tall but a wide seat helps.
Everything looked good, if not a little cramped. The cage requires welding in though which is not something I'll be doing, so we'll revisit this later.
I also picked up a eBay special super cheap exhaust manifold. At £80 I'm not expecting much, but it's championship legal and looks better than the original cat-cannons.
It was now time to get the car out of the shed as my friend in Bradford offered to give his Sunday up to get the roll cage mounts welded in. The roll cage is sold as 'bolt in' - but you still need to get the floor plates welded in so that the cage can bolt to them. This was one of the last days of 2019 if I recall it rightly.
Arriving in the morning
There were 6x plates to weld in, the rear 4x being simple jobs, but the front section required slightly more fabrication
The cage was fitted and removed many times, resulting in one or two new cracks in my windscreen. It's very easy to do this, so if you fit one, be careful. Fortunately my screen was cracked when I bought the car, so it wasn't that concerning.
This was hopefully the only time I'll have to get help involved when building the car. Welding is something I'd like to try at some point but for the foreseeable I'll trust the men who have experience.
..and that brings us into 2020!
As January came round, there was one problem with the car that was really starting to bother me. The car didn't have a roof. The rules have changed this year and you can actually run open top (bit like the BRSCC Mazdas), but that is of no interest to me. Hardtops for these cars are rare and expensive, typically £4-600 in the UK, but abroad in Europe and North America they can fetch 3 times that. With that, finding a hard top is hard. Finding another car with a hardtop already fitted? That seemed to be a bit easier, and certainly equated evenly with man-maths. There were a few bits I could do with as well, such as the rear arch liners, so introducing donor car #2:
This car was not only less money than my original, but it's also in much better condition. The initial thoughts of removing all the parts I wanted, and scrapping the shell, soon fell short. This is now a spare car in all meaning of the word. Bonus points were it had an aftermarket steering wheel, so I could rob the boss. I collected the car after Autosport (long day!) and haven't looked at it much since, but it seems like a good purchase. Looking at it one way, I'm around £1k in on two donor cars. 2 engines, 2 sets of panels for when I stack it etc...
Away from the excitement of a new car purchase it was time to start getting the electrics 'plumbed in'. As this is a circuit car I'll need to wire in a safety cut off switch for the battery, as well as adding a few switches; my new heater, for ABS toggle, and for the LED rain light that needs to be fitted.
I haven't fitted any of this stuff before or made a switch panel, but it's one of those things that you either do yourself or feel a bit silly asking for help on. I spent a lot of time deliberating what size battery cable to use, where to mount things. In the end, and like most things, it's quite simple once you get stuck in. I went for 25mm2 cable and mounted a new 12v 22ah ('golf kart!') battery to the passenger footwell. I had to buy a crimping tool for the cable but was happy with the job.
I've made a template out of cardboard for the switches then made the 'real deal' out of 2mm ABS plastic, but I don't think it's quite thick enough, but it will do to get things together again.
We're almost up to date now, this Saturday just gone (25/01) I had enough of the car looking like crap on the wheels it arrived on, so decided to bring forward the coilovers install and put some of my old wheels on it. For the championship I need to run stock wheels with set tyre sizes, but for rolling around the unit and perhaps a first test day, these will do.
The BC coilovers are the only coilover you can use for this championship. My previous car had Meister R with the same spring rate. I doubt there will be a lot between those 2 brands to be honest.
....and that's all for now! I'll keep this thread updated with activities. Ideally I'd like to have the car in a usable state in the next 2 weeks and get a few track days done to test it out. I still haven't driven the car, and there's been many hours spent fiddling for it to turn out to be a lemon. I am concerned about the engine, when I've been testing out my battery it would occasionally start with a nice puff of blue smoke. I also haven't had it revving over about 2k yet, but there are still some things unplugged that could cause it.
Thanks for reading
I wanted to start a journal for my current build/project which has been going on since November. I've been interested in joining UK club racing for a while but never thought it would be affordable. I was often told to check out the C1 or Ford Ka racing as a budget way in, but then I found out about this MR2 championship. I saw them race last year at Croft, and after speaking to a very helpful Rogue Motorsport, my fate was sealed. I owned a Roadster at the time but this was quite heavily modified and unsuitable for the championship, so that was sold, and the money put aside to fund the entry into racing!
Getting in to racing is quite a hurdle for the first time - lots of stuff to buy and think about. I'm usually terrible at deciding things, especially as big as this, but once I'd chosen my formulae it was time to go balls deep. I am by no way a mechanic, just an enthusiast who *thinks* they can do this, so let's find out.
My old MR2 at the Nurburgring last year:
Let's go back to October 2019 - I've sold my MR2, and started to look out for my donor car for the championship build. Rogue Motorsport (who run the championship with 750mc), say to spend around £2k to get a decent donor car (with a hard top). There's plenty of nice cars out there for this money, but most Roadsters which have not been either dry stored or recently 'enthusiast owned' will all have the same common faults. Mostly corrosion is the enemy, but faults with oil burning engines and tendencies to self destruct are not unheard of. It's recommended to get a MY2002> car at the very least, to try and mitigate these problems.
What I did instead, from which hindsight is a lovely thing, is bought a cheap car from a friend. You know what it's like when you buy a car from a someone you know, you're both kinda doing each other a favour, so it's all good. My friend had built this car from spare bits of MR2s laying around, daily drove it for a while, then it stood for a couple of months before I got it for a measly £600. It came with new front and rear discs, as well as a few extra braces. The hard top unfortunately is just for show, but we'll get into that later.
November 1st, I bought the car and brought it back home. The car had a dead battery on collection and a very poorly clutch so I haven't driven it. I know for something you want to drive hard, you should probably be more concerned about these things, but I still haven't driven it as I type this thread. Anyway...
I know - the wheels are beautiful.
Before we get started doing any jobs on the car, I've got a whack of stuff to buy to get it race ready and legal. Rogue Motorsport, as mentioned earlier, work in conjunction with the 750mc to deliver the MR2 championship. They also sell most if not of the parts you need to convert a car into a race car, so after a few emails and a trip down to Warwickshire I had a boot full of bits to get me started.
Collected items were; roll cage, coilovers, clutch, polybushes, seat rail, hard top brackets, and poly engine mounts.
Now with a few parts to play with and a very sorry looking Roadster, it was time to start the build!
The first job I picked was the clutch change. The clutch that was on the car was very slippy, even so much so that just reversing it on to the ramp was a challenge.
I'm lucky now to share a barn with a few friends and we even have a ramp, which has made a lot of these jobs a lot easier. I changed the gearbox on my first MR2 on the ground and it was a sweary affair with lots of blood. On the ramp it's easier, and having replaced a lot of the suspension on my old car I knew roughly how these went together, albeit with a Toyota engine rather than a fun one.
Car on the ramp:
I had a quick nosey around the car and it's definitely dirty. Both rear arch liners are missing and it's made a mess of the rear of the car.
Gearbox off, wasn't a bad job at all in the end, just fiddly as you'd expect.
Old clutch definitely looking a bit worn
New clutch! This is the fanciest clutch I've ever bought, and it seems a bit overkill. I'm told the original clutches overheat in a race though. Races in this championship are 13 minutes + 1 lap, so perhaps that comment was aimed at endurance racing rather than the series. Anyway, it should last!
I had a minor scare when installing the clutch as it came with a brand new pilot bearing, and stated that if I don't use it, my warranty is void! The only problem was, the supplied bearing was too big for my car.... I had to get an adult round who agreed the 1zz never actually had a pilot bearing, and you can't replace something that doesn't exist. Phew.
Clutch on:
After doing the clutch I got started on the rebush. I knew this would be an awful job, but it wasn't that bad in the end. To remove the old bushes I mostly used a couple of sockets and a M12 threaded steel rod / nuts. On the front of the car you need a hydraulic press to fit rear bush.
The arms do look awful. I was thinking of getting them powdercoated or at least painted, but with time being limited to get this built, and also trying to make sure I don't get 'attached' to this car, or at least stuck with it in many pieces all season, I decided to just fit the bushes and leave them. After being man-handled a bit they did look a bit better, but ultimately quite revolting.
The above is the rear arms from the car. 3 per side.
There is also a bush in the rear hub that needs to be changed. Removing the hub and disc/shield was required. The disc dust cover was mostly rust anyway, so it went in the bin.
Yes - everything is a bit crusty, but it's all good. After working on the car quite a lot of the rust has fallen off the car and into my eyes, so don't worry too much.
Front arms being rebushed
One of the front arms needed a replacement balljoint too. This was supplied from MR2-Ben for under £20.
I also fitted a poly engine mount kit, which replaces the front and rear engine mounts (torque mounts) of the car to poly.
Whilst at the rear engine mount I noted my rear subframe looked disgusting. Whilst it could have been a lot worse, I thought I may as well try to clean it up.
Drowned in rust converter. Unfortunately this stuff doesn't really work when it's just above freezing. I used it on some areas of the chassis that were showing some surface rust too, then went over with some underseal (after warming the tin up!)
Now for some fun jobs. Stripping the interior. Here's how it looked originally:
It was actually quite nice, the interior. Maybe one of the better parts of the car, but that's no good. It all needs to go!
From this, I'll be keeping the dashboard, but that's about it.
I'm replacing all of the original HVAC with a T7Designs heater. Picked up from Autosport for £100, then about another £60 or so on hoses and ducting.
The reason I pulled the interior out was to have a test fit of the roll cage. It arrived in many pieces and I wanted to build it to get an idea of what it would look like.
For a seat I'm hoping to use my old trusty Recaro Pole Position. I've had this in a few cars now, most recently my old MR2. It's hard to get comfortable in one of these cars if you're tall but a wide seat helps.
Everything looked good, if not a little cramped. The cage requires welding in though which is not something I'll be doing, so we'll revisit this later.
I also picked up a eBay special super cheap exhaust manifold. At £80 I'm not expecting much, but it's championship legal and looks better than the original cat-cannons.
It was now time to get the car out of the shed as my friend in Bradford offered to give his Sunday up to get the roll cage mounts welded in. The roll cage is sold as 'bolt in' - but you still need to get the floor plates welded in so that the cage can bolt to them. This was one of the last days of 2019 if I recall it rightly.
Arriving in the morning
There were 6x plates to weld in, the rear 4x being simple jobs, but the front section required slightly more fabrication
The cage was fitted and removed many times, resulting in one or two new cracks in my windscreen. It's very easy to do this, so if you fit one, be careful. Fortunately my screen was cracked when I bought the car, so it wasn't that concerning.
This was hopefully the only time I'll have to get help involved when building the car. Welding is something I'd like to try at some point but for the foreseeable I'll trust the men who have experience.
..and that brings us into 2020!
As January came round, there was one problem with the car that was really starting to bother me. The car didn't have a roof. The rules have changed this year and you can actually run open top (bit like the BRSCC Mazdas), but that is of no interest to me. Hardtops for these cars are rare and expensive, typically £4-600 in the UK, but abroad in Europe and North America they can fetch 3 times that. With that, finding a hard top is hard. Finding another car with a hardtop already fitted? That seemed to be a bit easier, and certainly equated evenly with man-maths. There were a few bits I could do with as well, such as the rear arch liners, so introducing donor car #2:
This car was not only less money than my original, but it's also in much better condition. The initial thoughts of removing all the parts I wanted, and scrapping the shell, soon fell short. This is now a spare car in all meaning of the word. Bonus points were it had an aftermarket steering wheel, so I could rob the boss. I collected the car after Autosport (long day!) and haven't looked at it much since, but it seems like a good purchase. Looking at it one way, I'm around £1k in on two donor cars. 2 engines, 2 sets of panels for when I stack it etc...
Away from the excitement of a new car purchase it was time to start getting the electrics 'plumbed in'. As this is a circuit car I'll need to wire in a safety cut off switch for the battery, as well as adding a few switches; my new heater, for ABS toggle, and for the LED rain light that needs to be fitted.
I haven't fitted any of this stuff before or made a switch panel, but it's one of those things that you either do yourself or feel a bit silly asking for help on. I spent a lot of time deliberating what size battery cable to use, where to mount things. In the end, and like most things, it's quite simple once you get stuck in. I went for 25mm2 cable and mounted a new 12v 22ah ('golf kart!') battery to the passenger footwell. I had to buy a crimping tool for the cable but was happy with the job.
I've made a template out of cardboard for the switches then made the 'real deal' out of 2mm ABS plastic, but I don't think it's quite thick enough, but it will do to get things together again.
We're almost up to date now, this Saturday just gone (25/01) I had enough of the car looking like crap on the wheels it arrived on, so decided to bring forward the coilovers install and put some of my old wheels on it. For the championship I need to run stock wheels with set tyre sizes, but for rolling around the unit and perhaps a first test day, these will do.
The BC coilovers are the only coilover you can use for this championship. My previous car had Meister R with the same spring rate. I doubt there will be a lot between those 2 brands to be honest.
....and that's all for now! I'll keep this thread updated with activities. Ideally I'd like to have the car in a usable state in the next 2 weeks and get a few track days done to test it out. I still haven't driven the car, and there's been many hours spent fiddling for it to turn out to be a lemon. I am concerned about the engine, when I've been testing out my battery it would occasionally start with a nice puff of blue smoke. I also haven't had it revving over about 2k yet, but there are still some things unplugged that could cause it.
Thanks for reading
Thanks for the replies all. I will hopefully have some pics of the car outside this weekend whilst giving it its first wash!
I've had a mail from MXT regarding costs - I'll sum that up once the car is together and I've got all my gear, but loosely speaking;
£1500-2000 on safety gear (race suit, helmet, FHR, gloves, boots, underwear, balaclava, extinguishers)
The car will have cost me around £5/6k to build doing most things myself. I've been keeping track of my costs as I've been trying to build it for under £5k. I'm still under budget but have a few things to buy.
Then it's £25 to register with the club, £85 to register your license, £300 or so to do the ARDS (now called NDTC), £135 to register with the Formulae, and the race entries are between £3-450 per round. (Qualifying/practice plus 2x 13 minute races)
What are you racing ?
We'll see how it performs but it could be that the engine gets swapped for a later one, rather than rebuilt.
I've had a mail from MXT regarding costs - I'll sum that up once the car is together and I've got all my gear, but loosely speaking;
£1500-2000 on safety gear (race suit, helmet, FHR, gloves, boots, underwear, balaclava, extinguishers)
The car will have cost me around £5/6k to build doing most things myself. I've been keeping track of my costs as I've been trying to build it for under £5k. I'm still under budget but have a few things to buy.
Then it's £25 to register with the club, £85 to register your license, £300 or so to do the ARDS (now called NDTC), £135 to register with the Formulae, and the race entries are between £3-450 per round. (Qualifying/practice plus 2x 13 minute races)
Otispunkmeyer said:
Liking this
I only found out the other day that MR stands for Midship Runabout!
Yeah, silly Japanese things I only found out the other day that MR stands for Midship Runabout!
ESD1711 said:
Nice write up.
As someone looking to embark on their first seasons racing this year as well i can relate to a lot of this. I keep telling myself not to panic as my cars pretty much 90% there, but i alarmingly keep finding other small jobs to do to add to the list!
Sounds like you're further on that me! As someone looking to embark on their first seasons racing this year as well i can relate to a lot of this. I keep telling myself not to panic as my cars pretty much 90% there, but i alarmingly keep finding other small jobs to do to add to the list!
What are you racing ?Kev_Mk3 said:
Brilliant so far will be following with interest. Once its running and track / race ready do you plan on rebuilding the spare engine just in case anything happens to the one you have in the car currently?
No I don't. Both my engines are within scope for oil burning and blowing up, so I'll just run them until they do that I think. I've been offered a 'good' 1ZZ for £250 but it's not local enough to just pick up for a spare. We'll see how it performs but it could be that the engine gets swapped for a later one, rather than rebuilt.
Ok, time for an update!!
I didn't realise it had been so long before I posted here, what with COVID taking away the first few races of the season, and then some less-than-ideal circumstances which meant I could not be there for the first race last month, I am now doing the final preparations for the first race next weekend at Silverstone.
Since my last post not a great deal has changed, but the car definitely looks a lot different.
I ended up swapping the engine from my donor car. The blue car that cost me £400 with a hardtop ended up being in a lot better shape than the black one, which was more and didn't have the roof. Oh well. I was tempted to swap everything over to the blue, and retain that engine, but it made more sense to continue with the black car.
After swapping everything over, I was most excited about trying out the string kit I got from Tegiwa. I have tried to set my cars up with string/axle stands before, and had okay results, but it was never as good as taking it to a garage/professional. Now that I have my own string kit and camber gauge, I'm able to set the cars up myself. I feel I have learned enough about the theory of geometry over the years, and the practical part of making the changes to the car are all about consistency, perseverance, and patience. It's obvious why specialist garages charge so much for truly custom setups, they take ages!!
Having a flat floor is also really important. I am measuring my changes by the mm, unfortunately my workshop floor is not as accurate. This is something that I'm glad I've got the space to do myself, although I know it won't as perfect as taking to a professional, I am happy that I am self sufficient, if not as accurate as they may be.
After getting the car aligned, I drove it out of the workshop for the first time. The car arrived on a trailer, with a broken clutch, and not much going for it at all. I didn't have a baseline from the car, but I have driven plenty of these before, so now it was time to see how mine drove...
My initial impressions were great, other than the engine. It feels lazy, not without torque, but somewhat asthmatic. It is ~100bhp down on my last MR2, and the 1zz is not known for refinement. It occasionally gets a warning light for an O2 sensor, so this could be hampering my performance. Unfortunately I haven't had a moment where I can pinpoint which one is failing yet. The car has 3x.
The chassis and the brakes were spot on. My ABS switch is working great, although I did note that I need to cycle the ignition to turn it back on, so not quite a toggle on/off. More a toggle off, then a faff to get it back on. I'm happy to have a switch that will disable it though. That was the end goal here.
I did experience quite a bit of being pulled to one side when braking heavy, which was concerning. After much bleeding of the brakes, and making zero progress, I decided it was probably a lot more to do with the -3 degress of camber, and far from flat roads that I was using to test.
Next was to fit the whiteline rollbars, which I had been waiting on for a while. Again, these were chosen simply to meet the regulations of the championship.
I have spent some time making changes on the interior too. One thing I wanted to try with my old MR2 but didn't, was a much smaller wheel. I was able to get this 290mm Momo from my friend and it feels great in the MR2.
Before:
After:
So up to this point I am feeling pretty good about the car. It is still untested on circuit but it is driving well. No lingering issues or immediate concerns meant I had.... finished it? Well I didn't want to get too involved with a car that will likely meet its end in a pit wall/barrier/huge fire, and although it was rough, it was ready.
.... then came the decision to repaint the car, which sort of happened on a whim. My friend Joe had just finished painting his Civic EG Milano Red, and it looked great. Knowing that he was on furlough and soon to be back to work, I booked a couple of days off work and everything pretty much went to plan. This is the first time I've had a car painted, or been involved with the process, and it truly is a ton of work. Endless fags and black coffee are the only way to power through the preparation before paint can come out of the gun.
Overall the job cost around £150 and a few days. It truly transformed the car.
Setting off to Hull.
Arrived at Joe's unit, started pulling panels off and prepping the surfaces
There were a couple of areas that he wanted to make better, out of pride, or something. Nothing hurts more than pride, so they say. The aerial hole was welded up, as well as 2x holes in the bootlid where an aftermarket spoiler was fitted (the ducktail, I threw it away!!)
then, time for paint, are you ready for this?
are you?
okay then!
Needless to say, I was dead chuffed. Having a clean car was of no interest to me, as said earlier I don't intend to hold back when racing. What I do have are plenty of spare panels for the car, which would need painting anyway, so they may as well go cheap-red. Milano Red is cheap from what I understand. The ins and outs I don't follow the specifics, but it's super hard paint that just goes over anything.
So we started prepping the car for paint on Thursday, knowing that I had a trackday on the following Wednesday. I collected the car Tuesday and headed to Cadwell to give it the first test.
It was soaking wet all day, which made for an interesting time getting to know the car. I didn't have any offs, but did feel a bit off-pace all day. I had some times that I wanted to aim for around the circuit, but these were from a dry race. I was well off!
I didn't actually go above 100mph all day around the track. A combination of low power, slippy corners, and long gears... emphasis on that last point, my god the gears are long! That is certainly not something you notice when moving the car around the workshop. I am allowed to use the gear ratios from an MR-S, so perhaps that will be my next purchase to try and find a complete car. I am using a 5spd gearbox, and from what I gather the stock 6spd is not much better. I will see how I get on with the 4 usable gears from the 5 in the first race. Hopefully it will be something that 'goes out of the window' once the pedal is to the metal...
Now that trackday was in June, and I haven't done a lot since then. I did enter the race but was told a week or so before that I wouldn't be able to race and was on the reserve list. My emotions at the time were not very man-like. Think toddler who's just been told the iPad isn't working. I was gutted!
I have had some time to do some more bits on the car since then, such as fitting 6pt HANS specific harness, and some door cards, but not a great deal. I am still very very nervous about the prospect of having this car checked by a marshall. The way it is done now, not all cars are checked, but a select few from each race (due to the covid stuff). So I might end up okay there. Although it would be nice to have a fully legal & legit car, I doubt that's what I have here. Seeing the state of some of the 'race cars' at previous meetings, I think I will be okay, but it sure is nerve racking.
CAD (cardboard aided design) in full swing. I used 3mm foamex board and pop rivets to secure them.
Harness before:
Harness after:
An absolute t
t to fit due to the lack of space for Englishmen. My main concerns with the marshalls will be the seat/harness and the angle of my upper straps to the roll cage. I bought this roll cage from Rogue Motorsports, who run the MR2 champioship, because I didn't want to deal with any of this st. You can just about make out, the harness bar is a bit lower than the holes in the seat. This gets even worse if I fit a SPG, which I looked to switch to at the same time as the harness, but it wasn't viable. The seat is as low as it will go, so this must be par for the course. I'll have to check out some other cars on the grid to see if they struggle in the same areas.
I've also made an intake for the car out of spare joiners and a Hybrid Racing 3.5" velocity stack. I did intend to run this without a filter, but have succumbed to common sense and since fitted one. At the time of making this I cleaned the MAF and the car REALLY liked that. I had some jerky-ness when changing gear hard, the long gears not helping, but it's a lot better now.
The MAF adaptor was kindly 3D printed for me. Unfortunately the 76mm I asked ended up being OD rather than ID, so there is a bit of a venturi effect going on, accidentally, maybe
That just about brings us up to date. I had broken a CV boot at Cadwell, which has now been replaced. I am looking to recreate my switch panel out of 2mm carbon fibre, and I need to add some stickers and reg plates (for more sponsor stickers..) - that actually wound me up a bit, but it's a story for another day. The politics of club motorsport is something I'm trying to shoehorn in to, so accepting all these procedures for now with a hint of hope that i'll be able to race it soon!
Cheers
Dan
I didn't realise it had been so long before I posted here, what with COVID taking away the first few races of the season, and then some less-than-ideal circumstances which meant I could not be there for the first race last month, I am now doing the final preparations for the first race next weekend at Silverstone.
Since my last post not a great deal has changed, but the car definitely looks a lot different.
I ended up swapping the engine from my donor car. The blue car that cost me £400 with a hardtop ended up being in a lot better shape than the black one, which was more and didn't have the roof. Oh well. I was tempted to swap everything over to the blue, and retain that engine, but it made more sense to continue with the black car.
After swapping everything over, I was most excited about trying out the string kit I got from Tegiwa. I have tried to set my cars up with string/axle stands before, and had okay results, but it was never as good as taking it to a garage/professional. Now that I have my own string kit and camber gauge, I'm able to set the cars up myself. I feel I have learned enough about the theory of geometry over the years, and the practical part of making the changes to the car are all about consistency, perseverance, and patience. It's obvious why specialist garages charge so much for truly custom setups, they take ages!!
Having a flat floor is also really important. I am measuring my changes by the mm, unfortunately my workshop floor is not as accurate. This is something that I'm glad I've got the space to do myself, although I know it won't as perfect as taking to a professional, I am happy that I am self sufficient, if not as accurate as they may be.
After getting the car aligned, I drove it out of the workshop for the first time. The car arrived on a trailer, with a broken clutch, and not much going for it at all. I didn't have a baseline from the car, but I have driven plenty of these before, so now it was time to see how mine drove...
My initial impressions were great, other than the engine. It feels lazy, not without torque, but somewhat asthmatic. It is ~100bhp down on my last MR2, and the 1zz is not known for refinement. It occasionally gets a warning light for an O2 sensor, so this could be hampering my performance. Unfortunately I haven't had a moment where I can pinpoint which one is failing yet. The car has 3x.
The chassis and the brakes were spot on. My ABS switch is working great, although I did note that I need to cycle the ignition to turn it back on, so not quite a toggle on/off. More a toggle off, then a faff to get it back on. I'm happy to have a switch that will disable it though. That was the end goal here.
I did experience quite a bit of being pulled to one side when braking heavy, which was concerning. After much bleeding of the brakes, and making zero progress, I decided it was probably a lot more to do with the -3 degress of camber, and far from flat roads that I was using to test.
Next was to fit the whiteline rollbars, which I had been waiting on for a while. Again, these were chosen simply to meet the regulations of the championship.
I have spent some time making changes on the interior too. One thing I wanted to try with my old MR2 but didn't, was a much smaller wheel. I was able to get this 290mm Momo from my friend and it feels great in the MR2.
Before:
After:
So up to this point I am feeling pretty good about the car. It is still untested on circuit but it is driving well. No lingering issues or immediate concerns meant I had.... finished it? Well I didn't want to get too involved with a car that will likely meet its end in a pit wall/barrier/huge fire, and although it was rough, it was ready.
.... then came the decision to repaint the car, which sort of happened on a whim. My friend Joe had just finished painting his Civic EG Milano Red, and it looked great. Knowing that he was on furlough and soon to be back to work, I booked a couple of days off work and everything pretty much went to plan. This is the first time I've had a car painted, or been involved with the process, and it truly is a ton of work. Endless fags and black coffee are the only way to power through the preparation before paint can come out of the gun.
Overall the job cost around £150 and a few days. It truly transformed the car.
Setting off to Hull.
Arrived at Joe's unit, started pulling panels off and prepping the surfaces
There were a couple of areas that he wanted to make better, out of pride, or something. Nothing hurts more than pride, so they say. The aerial hole was welded up, as well as 2x holes in the bootlid where an aftermarket spoiler was fitted (the ducktail, I threw it away!!)
then, time for paint, are you ready for this?
are you?
okay then!
Needless to say, I was dead chuffed. Having a clean car was of no interest to me, as said earlier I don't intend to hold back when racing. What I do have are plenty of spare panels for the car, which would need painting anyway, so they may as well go cheap-red. Milano Red is cheap from what I understand. The ins and outs I don't follow the specifics, but it's super hard paint that just goes over anything.
So we started prepping the car for paint on Thursday, knowing that I had a trackday on the following Wednesday. I collected the car Tuesday and headed to Cadwell to give it the first test.
It was soaking wet all day, which made for an interesting time getting to know the car. I didn't have any offs, but did feel a bit off-pace all day. I had some times that I wanted to aim for around the circuit, but these were from a dry race. I was well off!
I didn't actually go above 100mph all day around the track. A combination of low power, slippy corners, and long gears... emphasis on that last point, my god the gears are long! That is certainly not something you notice when moving the car around the workshop. I am allowed to use the gear ratios from an MR-S, so perhaps that will be my next purchase to try and find a complete car. I am using a 5spd gearbox, and from what I gather the stock 6spd is not much better. I will see how I get on with the 4 usable gears from the 5 in the first race. Hopefully it will be something that 'goes out of the window' once the pedal is to the metal...
Now that trackday was in June, and I haven't done a lot since then. I did enter the race but was told a week or so before that I wouldn't be able to race and was on the reserve list. My emotions at the time were not very man-like. Think toddler who's just been told the iPad isn't working. I was gutted!
I have had some time to do some more bits on the car since then, such as fitting 6pt HANS specific harness, and some door cards, but not a great deal. I am still very very nervous about the prospect of having this car checked by a marshall. The way it is done now, not all cars are checked, but a select few from each race (due to the covid stuff). So I might end up okay there. Although it would be nice to have a fully legal & legit car, I doubt that's what I have here. Seeing the state of some of the 'race cars' at previous meetings, I think I will be okay, but it sure is nerve racking.
CAD (cardboard aided design) in full swing. I used 3mm foamex board and pop rivets to secure them.
Harness before:
Harness after:
An absolute t
t to fit due to the lack of space for Englishmen. My main concerns with the marshalls will be the seat/harness and the angle of my upper straps to the roll cage. I bought this roll cage from Rogue Motorsports, who run the MR2 champioship, because I didn't want to deal with any of this st. You can just about make out, the harness bar is a bit lower than the holes in the seat. This gets even worse if I fit a SPG, which I looked to switch to at the same time as the harness, but it wasn't viable. The seat is as low as it will go, so this must be par for the course. I'll have to check out some other cars on the grid to see if they struggle in the same areas. I've also made an intake for the car out of spare joiners and a Hybrid Racing 3.5" velocity stack. I did intend to run this without a filter, but have succumbed to common sense and since fitted one. At the time of making this I cleaned the MAF and the car REALLY liked that. I had some jerky-ness when changing gear hard, the long gears not helping, but it's a lot better now.
The MAF adaptor was kindly 3D printed for me. Unfortunately the 76mm I asked ended up being OD rather than ID, so there is a bit of a venturi effect going on, accidentally, maybe
That just about brings us up to date. I had broken a CV boot at Cadwell, which has now been replaced. I am looking to recreate my switch panel out of 2mm carbon fibre, and I need to add some stickers and reg plates (for more sponsor stickers..) - that actually wound me up a bit, but it's a story for another day. The politics of club motorsport is something I'm trying to shoehorn in to, so accepting all these procedures for now with a hint of hope that i'll be able to race it soon!
Cheers
Dan
S54B32 said:
Oh yeah, no idea who that E36Dan bloke is, but I'm taking the thread over now
aka dannyvts, danieljames, dannydc2, e36dan,
think they're all the same bloke
Just flicking through this thread thinking, I recognize this car, oh and the workshop, oh and the Audi and the...... bloody hell it's the late great Dannydc2.aka dannyvts, danieljames, dannydc2, e36dan,
think they're all the same bloke
Good to see you still around. I've been following you on YouTube.
Have you given up on the You Tube channel??
I did enjoy your Yorkshire straight talking, anti -bulls
t views. M4CK 1 said:
Just flicking through this thread thinking, I recognize this car, oh and the workshop, oh and the Audi and the...... bloody hell it's the late great Dannydc2.
Good to see you still around. I've been following you on YouTube.
Have you given up on the You Tube channel??
I did enjoy your Yorkshire straight talking, anti -bullst views.
I still have the YouTube, just not that arsed Good to see you still around. I've been following you on YouTube.
Have you given up on the You Tube channel??
I did enjoy your Yorkshire straight talking, anti -bulls
t views. Martin350 said:
Great thread, great update, great car!
I have a pre-facelift Roadster as my most used daily driver so following this thread with interest!
Good work and good luck!
Cheers!I have a pre-facelift Roadster as my most used daily driver so following this thread with interest!
Good work and good luck!
S54B32 said:
Oh yeah, no idea who that E36Dan bloke is, but I'm taking the thread over now
aka dannyvts, danieljames, dannydc2, e36dan,
think they're all the same bloke
Knew I recognized the surroundings!aka dannyvts, danieljames, dannydc2, e36dan,
think they're all the same bloke
Love the car, just in the process of painting my own race car, saving lots but god it does take a long time to prep everything!
Nice car above! I do fancy a 2zz one, but at the same time I'm having fun with the 1zz.
I figured I best update this now that I've competed in a couple of races! My first was a bit of a let down to be honest.
I'll be posting quite a few YouTube videos on this post as I tend to post on there more often these days.
Silverstone International Circuit.
After all the work, all the safety gear, the license, the fees... I was ready to race!
To say this day was a disappointment would be an understatement. As much fun as it was to be out there on the grid, the straight line performance of my car was dismal. Brakes and suspension were good, if not a slight alignment goof, but the power just wasn't there at all.
I couldn't quite hold in my emotions on the track. With the MR2 championship being well moderated, restricted heavily on modifications, I thought building a competitive car would be the easy part. Oh how wrong I was.
Upon returning from Silverstone, I went full steam ahead with improving the car. In my mind there were 3 key areas to focus on.
I decided to skip the next event that was at Snetterton just a few weeks later to find out why the car was so slow. It took me a while to find the smoking gun, but once I found it, boy did the car drive better. It was like having the car remapped! The only clues I had was woeful performance, and occasional EML for lamba senors....
First up, compression test. Not quite even stevens, but nothing to be too concerned about:
I changed the fuel filter, and pump. Checked the condition of the plugs, tried different air filters. No dice.
On a whim I decided to check the cam timing...
Bingo! Not something I've played with before but I was happy to get stuck in and have a go at resetting the timing. I removed the engine for this, as there isn't a lot of access to learn how it goes together whilst in the car. After putting the chain back on in the correct position, the little 1ZZ really came alive.
Remember I did a trackday on this engine in June, and although the car felt slow, I just thought it was how they were. It wasn't until the race that I learned just how slow it was.
I don't seem to have any pictures, but at similar time I lost 4kg from the car by removing the bonnet/boot skins. The car now weighs ~930kg without me.
So all that was left to address was the gearbox. I simply couldn't source a JDM MR2 gearbox for love nor money. I did hear a rumour about one from a breaker, but the initial rumours of £500 asking price led to a quick dismissal.
What I found instead, with the help of some Wikipedia knowledge, was that the Toyota Corolla Verso 1.8 Petrol shared the exact gear ratios as the JDM MR2, only with a slightly shorter first gear.
By an even greater chance, the local (slightly dodgy) scrapyard down the road had one on the shelf! From Wikipedia to workbench in less than a few hours, the Verso gearbox was mine
Now I have 3 gearboxes for the car, 2x UK MR2 boxes and this Verso gearbox. All 5 speed. (I doubt any racers have the 6spds). With having one in the car and 2 on the bench, it was time to get physical! My plan was to fully strip the gearbox and attempt to put it back together properly. Unfortunately I failed at the first hurdle (removing 5th gear) and decided to just simply swap the gears instead.
It was a massive bodge, and I had little faith that it would work. Obviously I wanted to keep the LSD from the UK spec car, which sits in the outer casing. So after a lot of fiddling, bodging, and loctite grey (I had to assemble the gearbox about 5 times after missing things) the gearbox was back together.
Another first for me, haven't played with gearboxes before, but it worked!
I will finish up the updates later on today, but lets just say the car was in a lot better health by this point. The next race was Oulton Park, so I decided to get a trackday in there to learn the track and test out the changes. It was entirely a different beast. I want to get it on a dyno to confirm, but I'm sure it's making all that 140 horsepower now!
There's still Outlon race, Donington trackday (finally breaking the car), and Donington race to do. As well as some updates in the garage to help me set the car up.
Until then...
I figured I best update this now that I've competed in a couple of races! My first was a bit of a let down to be honest.
I'll be posting quite a few YouTube videos on this post as I tend to post on there more often these days.
Silverstone International Circuit.
After all the work, all the safety gear, the license, the fees... I was ready to race!
To say this day was a disappointment would be an understatement. As much fun as it was to be out there on the grid, the straight line performance of my car was dismal. Brakes and suspension were good, if not a slight alignment goof, but the power just wasn't there at all.
I couldn't quite hold in my emotions on the track. With the MR2 championship being well moderated, restricted heavily on modifications, I thought building a competitive car would be the easy part. Oh how wrong I was.
Upon returning from Silverstone, I went full steam ahead with improving the car. In my mind there were 3 key areas to focus on.
- The weight of the car - of which I had no idea. The limits are 1000kg including driver for my class.
- The power - something was up. I had a hacked together exhaust, and a hobbled together intake, which I thought would be surely losing me power
- The transmission - I had a stock UK 5 spd gearbox, which is notoriously long geared. The JDM varient has a higher final drive and shorter gears, and is within regulation, so that's what I need...
I decided to skip the next event that was at Snetterton just a few weeks later to find out why the car was so slow. It took me a while to find the smoking gun, but once I found it, boy did the car drive better. It was like having the car remapped! The only clues I had was woeful performance, and occasional EML for lamba senors....
First up, compression test. Not quite even stevens, but nothing to be too concerned about:
I changed the fuel filter, and pump. Checked the condition of the plugs, tried different air filters. No dice.
On a whim I decided to check the cam timing...
Bingo! Not something I've played with before but I was happy to get stuck in and have a go at resetting the timing. I removed the engine for this, as there isn't a lot of access to learn how it goes together whilst in the car. After putting the chain back on in the correct position, the little 1ZZ really came alive.
Remember I did a trackday on this engine in June, and although the car felt slow, I just thought it was how they were. It wasn't until the race that I learned just how slow it was.
I don't seem to have any pictures, but at similar time I lost 4kg from the car by removing the bonnet/boot skins. The car now weighs ~930kg without me.
So all that was left to address was the gearbox. I simply couldn't source a JDM MR2 gearbox for love nor money. I did hear a rumour about one from a breaker, but the initial rumours of £500 asking price led to a quick dismissal.
What I found instead, with the help of some Wikipedia knowledge, was that the Toyota Corolla Verso 1.8 Petrol shared the exact gear ratios as the JDM MR2, only with a slightly shorter first gear.
By an even greater chance, the local (slightly dodgy) scrapyard down the road had one on the shelf! From Wikipedia to workbench in less than a few hours, the Verso gearbox was mine
Now I have 3 gearboxes for the car, 2x UK MR2 boxes and this Verso gearbox. All 5 speed. (I doubt any racers have the 6spds). With having one in the car and 2 on the bench, it was time to get physical! My plan was to fully strip the gearbox and attempt to put it back together properly. Unfortunately I failed at the first hurdle (removing 5th gear) and decided to just simply swap the gears instead.
It was a massive bodge, and I had little faith that it would work. Obviously I wanted to keep the LSD from the UK spec car, which sits in the outer casing. So after a lot of fiddling, bodging, and loctite grey (I had to assemble the gearbox about 5 times after missing things) the gearbox was back together.
Another first for me, haven't played with gearboxes before, but it worked!
I will finish up the updates later on today, but lets just say the car was in a lot better health by this point. The next race was Oulton Park, so I decided to get a trackday in there to learn the track and test out the changes. It was entirely a different beast. I want to get it on a dyno to confirm, but I'm sure it's making all that 140 horsepower now!
There's still Outlon race, Donington trackday (finally breaking the car), and Donington race to do. As well as some updates in the garage to help me set the car up.
Until then...
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