Pics.

And no sign of that rusty manifold!

Oil leak or coolant leak? Either one sucks.

Oil leak. We’re currently digging into it now. So far it doesn’t appear to be cam seals. We’re removing the crank pulley now.

The oil pump perimeter seal and the oil pump shaft seal are prime leakers, that perimeter seal can be tricky to lay flat in the groove all the way around. The shaft seal usually only leaks when the shaft is deeply scored, doubt thats your issue.

Found it. It was a dumb bolt that goes into the oil pump that was missing. We grabbed the old pump and removed the bolt. Cleaned it up, and no more leaks.

We’ll put it back together tomorrow.

It’s off to the tuner tomorrow AM.

Loaded on a flatbed and brought it to my tuner this afternoon.

>

my heart knows its still there.....

The Rusty Manifold, good name for a gay bar.

lol

I asked my tuner to start with a preliminary base tune that I can break the engine in with, and then I’ll schedule it back in for max power after.

Well I popped in today to check in, and they had it up on the dyno doing some partial throttle fuel changes. Turns out the coil wire is arcing to the catch can, causing a miss. New wires will be here tomorrow to replace the cheap ones I got from PrimeDriven.

I’m hoping it’s ready to go tomorrow. I have an alignment appointment on Saturday, and then a car show on Sunday.

Bites nails

So much progress, and it's almost all over.

Well getting it ready for a car show this last weekend I found that the coolant overflow port on the coolant neck broke off and leaked a little bit of coolant. Looks like it wasn’t even welded in, but rather just epoxied.

So a mild bummer, but thankfully Racer X sells their own version, so I got that on order. I also pulled the trigger on a Racer X center feed intake manifold and 75mm Mustang TB. With any luck the coolant neck will be here this weekend, and the intake manifold in a few weeks. We’ll install it when it’s time to go back to the tuner to dial in the power post-break in.

At the same time we will convert to Coil on plug. I have the hall sensors and cam and crank trigger wheels to get that done, as well as a set of 1ZZ coils, although from an aesthetic perspective they don’t please me. I also have a set of 1NZ coils, which I understand are just as strong as 1ZZ, but cheaper, and the connector is flat, rather than at an upward angle.

My Innovate LC2 arrived today, so that’ll get wired into the ECU.

Can you get something to cover the coils? I have a nice semi matte black steel plate that bolts down to my valve cover on the Celica and covers the coils, looks real good.

>

The valve cover doesn’t have any provisions for something to bolt on top to cover them. There is someone who makes a cover for the Gen4 3S, but the valve covers are way too different. I couldn’t use it if I wanted to. It is just that the plate to bolt the coils down to has them all at different angles, which is fine from a functional perspective, but I can’t imagine it being too difficult to just get them all lined up the same way. I have some buddies that may be able to 3D print something else. We’ll see.

Not many updates for now. Racer X sent the coolant neck and I installed it, and cleaned the dried Toyota Red from the top of the transmission. I drove the car once, and then the alternator started to undercharge the battery. I didn’t have time to look into it until yesterday, where I found the nut had completely backed off the power wire, so I got that tightened back up and went for a drive.



Filled the tank and calculated initial fuel economy. 224.6 miles and 9.456 gallons to fill up = 23.75mpg, or 10.09 km/l.

Still waiting on my intake manifold to ship. Hopefully this next week.

>

I was looking at those, too, for my 2nd gen and upon laying my eyes on the photos, I said to myself, "Them hoes look uggo...."

The intake mani has shipped! I should hopefully have it by Saturday.

Well I haven’t updated this in a hot minute. Intake manifold is here. We’re just waiting to put it on. We slapped a manual boost controller on in the meantime and set it to 11psi. I’ve been getting about 24 - 26 MPG with it, and I’ve been beating it like it owes me money.

The TCS coolant neck broke on like the 4th or 5th day. The overflow port broke off, which is when I learned that TCS just epoxied it in place. I replaced it with a RacerX unit.

We should be ready to slap the intake manifold on in a few weeks, and then it’s back to the tuner for the final tuning and max power pulls.

Long time ago I was a vendor for MR2OC making carbon fiber part's for the masses. But I got like half of them saying that part's should be carbon fiber from the inside too. So I decided not to make any aftermarket part for MR2. Okay now on for the story on here. I thought those 1MZ engine would mate up to a 3S-GE manual transmission with no problem. People say that the 1MZ can't mate with a 3S-GE automatic transmission. The entire thing is suppose to keep cost down and not let people on a wild goose chase finding a transmission.

I had to run to get some SD cards for work yesterday, and on my way back to the office I noticed the temp gauge rapidly climbing. I quickly pulled into the next parking lot and shut the car off. I could hear hissing from the engine bay.



It looked like the lower coolant hose had ruptured, so I had to call AAA to come get me and take me home. Once I got the car in my garage I got to work. This is what I found:



I must’ve knicked the hose when I put the heat shield back in, and it finally popped. New hose will be here today, and I have to go drop a small fortune on coolant at the dealership.

On the positive side you caught it before it caused any serious damage.

Yikes, the way it's cut across the webbing almost looks intentional!

Well I've been away for a minute...

MR2 is still a work in progress. A victim of the oft-moved goalposts, I've kept tinkering with different aspects, but never coming back to the engine work to complete it.

So, engine bay update:


I pulled out the TCS coolant overflow tank in favor of a matching Racer X piece. I also finally got my hands on some M10 stainless hardware so I was able to replace the bolts that connect the X brace to the firewall with something that doesn't rust.



I had been looking at the brakes, which got my OCD going. The rears were upgraded to the 93+ Turbo rear brakes, and are larger than the front non-turbo brakes. The car looked goofy. I had to fix it, so I upgraded the fronts to Wilwood 4 pot superlites with MKIV Supra Turbo rotors. Just barely cleared the back of the valve stems.







Recently I got to thinking that pretty much the only things that are still stock on the 3S was the valvetrain. I knew I wanted to upgrade the cams eventually, so I bit the bullet and ordered a set of GSC S1 cams (268 degree), GSC valve springs and retainers, and a pair of ATS cam gears. These are going to be going in along with the intake manifold hopefully in the coming weeks so that I can get the car back to my tuner for a final tune.




In a less "big" change, a couple weeks ago I swapped the rear tires for 255/35-R18's and got rid of the 245's. Looks much better now, but I don't have a picture of this.

I did that exact same valve train set-up in mine except I added shimless buckets with'em. I can't wait to hear how it sounds! I'm jealous of those carbon intercooler pipes though. I'm thinking about doing a titanium piece for mine later on down the road. I dunno what you're running for fuel, but I'll have my MK4 550cc injectors up for grabs soon if you're interested. They were cleaned and flow tested before I put them in, but decided to go bigger with 1000cc injectors and E85.

>

ID1050X's in a Racer X rail, full -6 lines to the pump.

E85 in the Seattle area is pretty much impossible to find. There are 7 stations in the state that sell it. It isn't like the corn belt states over here, HOWEVER my tuner wants to slap a flex fuel sensor on it just so we can see what it'll do with E85, but meh.

oh nice! Went similar with FID1000s. Walbro 450 with -6AN lines up to the rail using an in-line Radium Engineering filter.

Doesn't hurt to see what you'll make on corn juice. I'm hoping to hit a solid 350hp or at least to see whatever the limit is on the S54 transmission as far as torque is concerned. lol

What are you planning to tune with? I'm hoping to pick up a Link G4 PnP ECU this weekend.

That is what I have. MR2Link v3.