Building a TRACK MR2: MR2 Build Ep. 1

Oh, hey there. I'm currently removing the pre-cat on my 2001 Toyota MR2. If you're wondering how we got here, let me catch you up to speed. So I recently bought another car, the cheapest MR2 I could find on autotempest.com. I'm not going to be able to match the vision that this man had for this car, so I think I'm gonna have to start from scratch. This is all the stuff that we have taken off of the car. Tons and tons of, I'm gonna say, garbage. We have some modifications of our own to do. I bought this car because I wanted to have a light, fun, reliable car to turn lots and lots of laps in at the racetrack, because my Evo is a little bit too high strung and my RX-7 would probably burn down. So with that in mind, everything I do to this car will be with the aim of making it a fun lapping car. But before we can really start doing modifications, we need to do some preventative maintenance, which in the case of the MR2 Spyder, the number one thing you need to be aware of is that on these early models, the pre-cats, sure to say the cats that come before the main catalytic converter, are prone to breaking up and then getting sucked back into the engine, scoring cylinder walls, causing oil consumption, and eventually ruining your engine. So we're gonna pop out the header and get to work gouging out those pre-cats and just removing them from the car. All right, we got the header out. That only took a day. It definitely was not seized in there on a stuck stud. It was, but we've got it out now. And the good news is these pre-cats look to be pretty intact. For a car with 150,000 miles, not too bad. We are still going to gut them because even if this was a zero mile car, you wouldn't want them in there just for the safety of the motor. All right, so this is all part of our effort to avoid getting little pieces of platinum stuck in our lungs. Luke, you want some? I'll save it. All right, we're doing it outside so we don't get platinum dust all over the garage. The only real downside is that today it's 95 degrees. So let's get started. One, two, three, four. Now that we've gutted the cat, I need to take it home and power wash it. Get all that residual gunk out of there. In the meantime, we are going to do an oil pan on the MR2 because MR2s are prone to oil starve. As soon as you put any kind of g-load on them in right-hand turns, huh, seems very familiar to a 4G63. I guess the big fix that people do is a nice Morosa oil pan, which kind of has little trap doors just like the oil pan on my Evo and prevents oil from sloshing away from the sump with these trap doors. And it's got a bunch of extra bungs for catch can system or oil temp sensors, stuff like that. It's really nice. This is a nice unit. All right, so obviously if we're going to change the oil pan, first we have to drain out the engine oil. And I did just check and there's actually oil in the engine, which is a huge win, way more than I expected for the previous owner. So that's good. There was some kind of lubrication in the engine. And now we get to remove this extremely black oil and subsequently the pan. All right, so the oil pan is off. And honestly, I'm a little perturbed by some of what I feel like are wear marks that I'm seeing. Here's the situation, okay? This is a 1ZZ OEM engine that came in this car. This is a 1.8 liter that makes 130, 140 horsepower at the crank. Okay, so by the time we're at the wheels, we're making like 110 wheel horsepower, 100 wheel horsepower. This is not a particularly incredible motor. You don't really do anything to 1ZZs to make them faster, right? The go-to mod is usually a 2ZZ swap, which is a 190 crank horsepower engine or like a K series or something like that. I haven't decided yet which one of those swaps I'm going to do, but I do know this 1ZZ is not long for this world. All right, we're going to change the brake pads and rotors on the MR2 because obviously things are in bad shape rotor-wise. And then these brake pads are not going to work on the racetrack. Got these Carbotech XP10s. It's from my buddy Kobe at K&S Brakes. He sent these over. Nice track-oriented brake pad, good stopping power. These are obviously going to work way better in stopping the car than these stock crab pads. And then I've also got a brake rotor or two actually from Advance Auto. These are just nice blanks that are obviously probably not warped like the rotors that are on here and they're not grooved as much. So don't need anything fancy as far as rotors go. The pads and the fluid will do most of the work. Now, if you've watched much Gears Gasoline at all, then you know the things I'm most passionate about are unreliable cars. Things are going great. Impressing women. Yeah, I'll give you a call. And Advan wheels. Now, I've bought a Toyota that looks like a frog. So those first two are kind of out. But they make Advans for just about anything. This is an Advan TC4. And the delightfully small 15 by 8 size plus 35. It's very reminiscent of the Advan GT. One of my favorite wheels ever. Same thing I run on the Evo. One of two wheels I run on the Evo, I should say. Same thing I split in half at the racetrack. But these are cast instead of forged like the GT. So they're a little bit more affordable. And then on the tire front, I've got the new Nankang CR1. This is Nankang's new 200 treadwear hotness. The design is interesting. A little derivative, I think. Looks on one side kind of like Yokohama AO52. And then on the other side, I feel like it looks like a Michelin Supersport. But I hear they're really fast. Jackie Ding sold these to me. And he only deals in things that are fast. So really excited to see what they can do with a 2100 pound car. So that's the ride height. That is five inches of gap. Most of the things that the previous owner did to this car are pretty easily reversible with the exception of a couple holes in body panels. But a hole this big in a body panel, there's not really any coming back from that. There's not too much you can do to salvage that. So I think the solution that we're going to go with is a little additional surgery. So we have done the little bumper cut. And now we are going to put back in the OEM exhaust. The previous owner actually held on to the OEM exhaust. So that's kind of convenient. Obviously, I wish he'd never taken it out in the first place. I looked at some aftermarket muffler options for this car. Really, honestly, no point in doing it. Not like it's going to drop a ton of weight. Obviously, no horsepower gain on a 1ZZ. And then I don't really want to spend a bunch of money if the motor is going to get changed sooner rather than later at some point. You know, stock muffler should be just fine for now. We get into the pre-cats. We cut the bumper. We put the OEM exhaust back on. We upgraded the oil pan. We did wheels, tires, brake pads, rotors. We've done a lot in this episode. We're so far from where we've come. But we've got a ways further to go. In the next episode with the MR2, we're going to baseline all the fluids. We're going to do a roll bar. We're going to do suspension. We're going to do a wrap. And then we're going to take the car to the racetrack. So I'm pretty excited for all that stuff to happen. And I'm excited for you guys to watch. So see you next time with the MR2. Whenever that next episode happens. Probably in a couple weeks. We're still waiting on parts. But yeah, we'll see you then. Thanks for watching. So what I'm actually drinking is Calypso Paradise Punch Lemonade. Taste of the islands. That is five inches of gap from the tire to the fender. Does it pass the shoe test? I think it passes the thigh test. I think I can fit my whole body in here. Is your head in it? I think my head is a little wider than five inches. That's wild.