Practically Classics Forum

right time for a proper look and assessment of the bodywork obviously I couldnt remove the sill covers ,mud guards and wheelarch liners ,and to be honest Ive been putting it off ,because the last 2 mr2's Ive owned I found freshair where there should have been metal lol well yesterday I did this and here some pics with explinations of what youre looking at and what I'm gonna do

first passenger side ,the bottom of the wing had a small crusty bt where the sill cover body kit had rotted through ,but it is quite minor ,the sill its self looks great I tapped it all the way along and couldnt here rust delaminating from the inner surface ,but the sill ,wheel arch point is a real rot spot on these and true to form there was some rust but none that had gone through ,the wheel arch its self had been repainted but I couldnt detect any filler anywhere







the back of the rear wheel arch there were mud flaps and it took me ages to get these off because they were bolted in and stuck with some sort of non-setting guey black mastic but under that there was rust but none had gone through ,the rear lower quater panel after the wheel is a bad rot spot on these cars but here it was all fine




the drivers side : at the front the sill and lower part of the wing where perfect ,



but the meeting point between the rear sill and start of the rear wheel arch had a huge patch 'stuck' on with more black mastic ,and looking,tapping etc I think the rust underneath didnt goto the extremities of the patch thats been glued over ,and i think theres probably a small rust hole underneath it





the drivers side rear wheel arch look fine and looks like its in its original paint ,the rear part of the wheel arch looks abit crusty but again nothing had gone through and also the mudflaps had been bolted and stuck with this black mastic thats non-setting ,it was a bugger to get off and i'm gonna have to grind the mounting bolts of carefully as the nut behind is seized and just turning ,the rear lower quarter panel is perfect and this is a real rot spot on these cars

I'm not gonna do the body work myself as I dont have the time or space to do it ,my garage has only just enough space for the car and I want a proper finish ,
and I'm currently looking for repair panels ,I found these at 89quid a side (not bad)

waiting for repair panels and got myself a bodywork man to repair the rust

but one thing thats been bugging me though was I got the engine running great ,but when warm/hot the engine smelt like it was running very rich

there could of been a few reasons for this but I thought I'd change the water temp sensor for the ecu ,as if this is reading wrong then the ecu
will think its cold and have the cold start injector running all the time ,but its in an awkward place being right next to the cyclinder head and
being turned,screwed in ,in such a way that the plug which is like a injector connector has a wire that you push in ,but because that side is so close to the cyclinder head lol you cant push it in ,it took 3 hrs to get off lol



then I struggled to get a socket to get over the electrical plug and ended up having to buy a 19mm spanner (which i got from ebay and quite a bargin)
but once off and changed ,I took the car out for a run and no rich running smell

result !!!

Nice bit of detective work mate well done.

last saturday a smell returned whilst stood in traffic ,its was the smell of a leaking distributor though,if your not familiar with these cars
then one problem with the 4age engine is that the distributor seals and bearings go very hard/wear because theyre so close to the
exhaust manifold in a fairly compact engine bay,they leak oil straight onto the exhaust manifold and spurt out crankcase gasses
I'd had my original dizzy rebuilt and the one on the car leaking was an ebay item so I today Ive fitted the rebuilt dizzy ,timed it all up
and apart from taking it for a run out its all done and running




the 4age engines dizzys leak oil through the shaft seal burried deep in the dizzy housing and cause quite a smell as crankcase gasses also escape you
can buy a rebuild kit from canada at 18quid ,and take it apart ,I entrusted this job to my engineer brother rather than try myself

There's a buyers guide in Classic Car weekly using MLZ 8451,don't know if you are acquainted with the MR2,looks like concours one

I think I missed it ! dam