New Engine In...

So I've had the car off the road for a month, why to change the engine.

I've gone for the same basic 2litre turbo engine, but its a later revision of the engine with various sensors changing mainly from a MAF sensor to MAP and some other bits, what this also means is it required a new ECU and a repinning of existing wiring. However the main reason for the engine swap was this was a forged engine, it was built for someone else and had covered a few thousand miles which i preferred as I have the worst luck with newly built engines. The engine should be good for 550bhp with the right turbo, fuelling etc...



First I removed the old engine (quite a few bits off the engine) no engine crane at this point so I jacked the chassis up and slide it under and out.

With the engine out, I used this time to really clean the rear chassis again and touch up the paint work on it as the 3 years / 5500miles of driving had left some grim.

Gave the driveshafts a quick sand and bit of paint as well just to tidy them up as well

So next was to start the work of putting the new engine in, I had already prepped the engine. If anyone else ever build ones of these, bring the engine end into the chassis from underneath if you can as going in from above was much harder, although that may be because I was doing it all by myself so struggled to move the engine about and lower it in.

I filled the engine with oil and gave it that all important first turn over and it came straight to life! Perfect. I'm now in the middle of refitting the driveshafts and tightening all the suspension before the first test drive.

Engine Completed....

So I transferred the engine back to my home garage now that the majority of the work had been done but I still had a couple of jobs left to do.

First I replaced all the vacuum hoses with silicone ones I had bought, some were perishing already so needed replacing. At that point I noticed a lot of blocked off pipes on this engine, some to areas that I wouldn't expect to be blocked off, so ill be posting that on an MR2 forum.

2ndly I blocked off a couple at this moment in time before I decide what to do, the ones I blocked go off to what is known as the charcoal canister and this canisters function is basically to get emissions down, I had a supra before and did away with it on that as well.

Once I replaced the vacuum hoses I wanted to replace / cover the wiring loom's black conduct with red conduct, the only reason was so that when I'm working on it I can easily spot the wiring loom as the engine becomes a bit of a big mess!

After completing that the engine was complete, so i prep'd it for the next few months as it wont get started for least 3 - 6 months. So I took out the current spark plugs and dropped a tea spoon of oil into the cylinder. I then turned it over via the crank a couple of times to line the cylinder walls to stop corrosion.

Once that was done I gave it a quick tidy up and here's the finished product. I feel like the first big milestone has been hit!

Started with;

ended with;

Update on Current Work

Well I decided to go a bit further on the engine cleaning then had planned and the block in the end was basically cleared of brackets etc... and painted.

At least it should be very clean when being put in the car!


** TIP **
On the other side of this block are two hoses that are nicknamed say hello to

The Hose from hell

The Hose from hell On Earth

I strongly suggest whilst the engine is apart you change them so you never have to once everything is back together. These hose's make MR2 owners cry when they leak, I'm sure its not as bad on a kitcar..but why take the risk of having the hassle.

The smaller one comes with clips and is about £15 the other about £30....money well spent!

Few more parts refurbished

Cleaned up and then sprayed more parts below with high temp paint. Still using gunk, a toothbrush and some tooth picks to remove the large parts of dirt and oil.

I'm going to replace all vacuum hoses and water pipe hoses as they are very tough and feel brittle to me, so once I have had the engine put back together ill replace them one by one and the clips as well.

**  The rocket cover has not been wet sanded flat yet (hence the patchy light reflection), I will wait till we have the head on for this as I expect it will get a bit dirty putting the engine back together.

Cleaning & Painting engine parts

Although I'm not cleaning and painting the engine to a perfect level, I do want it nice and clean to work with. So next I've started cleaning and painting brackets and shields.

So first I'm giving them a hot water and abrasive clean. Once dry I've then attacked them with sandpaper to loosen up the surface rush where needed. I then again wash them and let them dry.

I bought some Simoniz high temp Paint. I have a matt Black and Silver as I'm trying to keep the stock look. Its important to do thin coats and more of them, rather than a few thick ones.

Once these were done I placed them in the oven to help them cure a bit, they wont of fully cured, but with the weather like it is currently I wanted to make sure I'd got some of the chemicals at least gone from within the paint as they'll be no heat on it for quite a while and it hardens the paint a bit this way. A picture below of some pieces so far;

Gearbox Cleaning

I'm not going to flood the blog with post after post of the cleaning process but just each big step that I do. So this post is about what I've learnt doing the gearbox.

Remove the solid dirt on the engine / gearbox - I used a product called Gunk and some wire wool and a tooth brush and let it sit for 15 - 20mins. Then wiped off what I could. Dont worry if its not perfect you are just removing the majority of what you need to, the dirt staining gets done later.

Wire Brush - I tried varying wire brush methods so I'm just noting the one that worked for me. I used a wire brush set that goes into a drill. The link below is the one I have actually used.

http://www.screwfix.com/p/drill-carbon-steel-wire-brush-set-3pc/13734

Now it cleans up the metal amazingly and removes the last bits of dirt. Now the down side is if your not careful it can scratch relatively deep and of course it is actually scratching the surfaces to remove the dirt. To get it back smooth and more shiny you could use a mop to polish it.

I wont be doing this I just want it clean and will clear laquer it to protect it for the future.

Tip - By pushing the wire brush over the top of the nuts gets rid of any slight rust on them and they look like new on the gearbox as shown in the pic below. To get like the below I have spent around 6hrs cleaning that bit so far....many more hours to go and still a a little bit in some of the areas ive done.

Engine Work

I'm looking to keep the engine stock (for now) but in good health. There are many revisions of the MR2 engine and depending on the revision will depend on how much power can be had from it due to the sensors / head on the engine. To get to 300BHP on a Rev 1 / Rev 2 is quite hard. rev3+ is a bit easier

Rev1 / Rev 2 are limited. They are firstly limited by the head gasket, which cant take as much PSI. This is easily resolved by using a Rev3 metal headgasket which can take 1.2Bar +, The next limiting factors are the head sensors and ECU... I wont be doing this at this stage.

So by having a metal headgasket I will be able to up the boost in the short term. Also I have had the valves lapped to get a good seal.

Below is a pic of the valves lapped, the head has not been cleaned yet hence is messy, the engine is not in too bad of shape for its age. We also found one of the gaskets by the turbo was blown out but all gaskets are being replaced.

So next was to decide what to do with the block and gearbox and how to tackle it, I really don't want to be taking it fully apart, but will take bits off as I clean those areas so its easy for me to place back. Below is a pic just after I started as I forgot to take a pic before;

After 2.5hrs cleaning the gearbox area it was looking more respectable, although still needs a lot of cleaning! Many hours are going to be spent cleaning this engine I can tell. Ill update with how I get on with it and the best and worse products!