The Night Rider

A small update this time. I am swapping my tail lights for facelift ones. One of the issues associated with this is that the boot release lock is located behind the tail lights. Due to the different design of the lights the original lock is not usable if you install the newer facelift lights. Of course you can simply put in a facelift lock but then your original key won't work obviously. I thought I would try to re-pin the facelift lock using the pins/wafers from my original lock. To do this I went to a junk yard and found a facelift boot lock. Here are two pics showing the lock with facelift and pre-facelift lights. Pre-facelift: Facelift (Note that the lock now needs to protude much further because the light is now over it): Old lock on left, facelight on right (Tail piece actuator has already been removed from old lock in this pic): In order to remove the barrel the front cover must be removed: C clip holding actuator must also be removed: Now the barrel can be removed, to do so insert the key and pull it out (doesn't have to be the exact key for the lock): Original lock has a cover which was too difficult to remove with damaging, perhaps replacement cover can be found but I wont be using this lock anymore: Original on left, facelift on right (Note: facelift lock uses 7 pins while original uses 6 but still have the slot for 7th, at least on mine): Key in original lock, notice that all the pins are pulled down into the core (flush) allowing it to spin in the barrel: Alternatively the same key placed in the facelift lock, see how one pin is not pulled down all the way. This prevents the core form rotating in the barrel: Pic showing how key is inserted in pins/wafers: Pins/wafers and springs removed from both locks, as mentioned before the original lock had 6 pins while facelift has 7: Here are the pins/wafers from my original lock fitted to the facelift lock, make sure to remove the spring from any slot that is not being used or else it could come loose and jam everything. Cleaned everything up too. It works! Oh and why all this effort? Here are the original pre-facelift tail lights (sorry for shitty pics): And now the facelift ones:

Wow, such kind words, thank you! Really appreciate it, especially considering that there are so many insanely talented people on this forum, I'm amazed at the work being done here. To be honest I feel like there is still a lot I could be doing better. This is my second large (large for me) car project and I'm trying to improve from last time. Even a simple manual and re-power swap like mine can get so involved as I'm sure you know; Just trying to catch up on neglected/overdue maintenance is a big enough challenge in most cases. If I was more sensible I should have avoided spending all that money on the ITB adapter. But its all for fun and learning, always can improve. Plus ITB's are too cool to deny. Anyway thanks again.

Thanks for the tip appreciate it. Luckily I got the slave cylinder with the transmission, which was from another AW so all should be good. I also rebuilt the slave cylinder. I just need a clutch master now so I can complete the auto to manual swap.

Thank you, glad you like it.

As you might remember from the pics of the engine when I first got it; it was pretty dirty and oily. Its an old engine and chances are the oil seals have never been replaced, so I thought I better address this. Removing cam timing gears: Notice the oil: With the cover removed its clear to see the camshaft seal was leaking: Removing old seal: Inserting new seal: Both seals in and head cleaned: Front main seal: Repainted the backing/cover plate with high heat paint: Made a nice robo skull image: Fitted: Torquing cam sprocket bolts (47Nm if I recall?): New Toyota waterpump: All my money is disapearing, so I didn't buy the whole pump assembly. Reusing the old pump backing: I noticed that the water pipe which I cleaned up had started to rust slightly already, I must have rubbed off some anti corrosion coating? So cleaned it up again, primer and high heat black paint: Vacuum caps for vacuum nips on ITB's (Going to get vac signal from T3 ITB adapter ports): Okay now for the main update. I managed to install the clutch hardline which runs from the front of the car to the rear. I knew it was going to be a pain and it was. Nothing too complicated but have to remove a number of components (Under body covers, E-brake adjuster/splitter mechanism, front chassis support, front sway bar mounts, fuel tank straps, front heater hoses). Lifted car in preparation: The hydraulic line is split into two sections, one short section from the clutch master to the under body of the car, then a second section which connects to the first and then runs to the engine bay of the car. This is the factory pass through hole for the clutch line: Fitting the line was not really something that could be captured easily with photographs, plus there wasn't a lot of room under the car. For this reason I have only taken pics of mounting the clutch line to the existing brackets (luckily the auto brackets are the same as the manual ones, just with an extra space in the bracket. Here you can see the line came out very close to its proper position, it will be fine to bend it slightly to its final position: Front section of line, blue circle shows where lines connects into the clutch master cylinder (not yet installed): Not the most interesting pictures, but it was literally just me spending 3-4 hours trying to thread the line through various obstacles, finding out it wasn't possible without removing certain parts and repeating. I'm glad its done though, probably the hardest part of a manual swap in an MR-2.

You're right, wish I would have thought about something like those before. Anyway they are not hard to access so I will probably change them over to nicer looking ones at some point.

I've been disassembling the old engine and cleaning up parts which I will be reusing. Coolant hoses removed: Coolant passages full of shit: Bolts on the front water neck mount were pretty rusty and the top one sheared in half: Autobox removed: Sump removed (will be reused as new engine didn't come with one): Some kind of plastic and RTV shit caught on the oil pickup strainer, wonder how much got past (previous owners mechanic didn't do a nice job of re sealing the oil pan, overused RTV): Obviously water in the oil from head gasket failure: Removing cams: Head removed: Block: Hone marks still seem good: Head gasket failed on cyl 4: Alright that's it for the old engine, for now. After this I started cleaning up parts that I will be reusing. Alternator was pretty dirty, no money atm to rebuild it but it was working fine so will just get a clean for now: Starter also, sorry for terrible pic: Re finishing valley cover: Refinishing valve covers: Casting lines don't look so nice, so I sanded them off: High heat primer: My method for curing paint overnight: Spraying red: Okay valve covers done. I broke the engine bay temp sensor removing the engine: So I went to the junkyard to find a replacement: Also my valve cover washers/seals were really worn: Replacements are used and not perfect but a lot better: Also found a facelift strut bar: I felt like test fitting the valve covers and ITB's together, but first I got replacement screws for the ITB's. They originally use a phillips head which easily get ****ed upon removal, so I bought screws with hex heads: Fitted inc. throttle linkage: Anyway that's it for now, progress is a little slow. A lot of weird shit happening to me recently, run of back luck etc..

pics of engine on the ground: Excuse the pics, sometimes phone lens gets dirty. Was surprisingly easy to drag out.

I thought I better check the ITB adapter to make sure it actually fit. It seemed to not fit initially but then I realized it was just the vacuum barb touching the coolant pipe, this can simply be solved by removing the barb, fitting the adapter and then re-fitting the barb through the gap between the coolant pipe and engine block. Anyway back to work, this time I did the clutch salve cylinder bracket. No pictures of the entire disassembly or cleaning etc, getting a little bored of this painting business: The slave cylinder is located in a kind of unpleasant area, so I decided to rebuild it in hopes of not having to do it later on when access is restricted: A little compressed air easily pushes the piston out: Used Vs. new... glad I decided to do this: New piston in: Finished cylinder: Alright so at this point I was tired of seeing the transmission looking so dirty so thought I would deal with it next. This is how it looked when I got it: In the progress of being cleaned up: Again I kind of forgot to take pictures after getting busy with this, however, once it was all clean I used some etch primer on it: Painted black: Ok next it was time to remove the axles which I had been putting off for a long time. I had never removed axles before and thought they would be a nightmare for some reason, they were actually pretty easy. As suspected the auto and manual axles seem to be identical (bottom one is my original one, middle one is the one I got with manual swap): Also time to drain the oil and disconnect all the engine and trans oil coolers: Chocolate milk as a result of the head gasket failing: So as you can probably guess this is all leading towards removing the engine. I went down to the garage today expecting to do one or two small jobs.. ended up dropping the engine, I suppose it was going to happen one day soon. I had gradually been removing all the accessories/wiring etc. so there wasn't one single big load of work. Soon to be out: I know its a shitty situation having the crane up near a wall like this, had I known it could only work in this position I would have tried to move the car earlier. The reason it doesnt work from behind is because the transmission touches the cranes leg. Because of the location of the diff and the engine lift points it kind of went down a bit crooked: And well that is all I have. At the moment the engine is resting on the ground still partially in the engine bay, I'll get better pics tomorrow but chances are I won't be able to actually get the engine out from under the car until sometime later. Oh, I got something nice in the mail: Again it was too hard to wait so I installed the shift cables even though it would have been 10x easier with the engine out of the way: It feels so right having a manual shifter in there rather then the auto:

Okay so although I want to keep the car mostly stock, there are a few modifications I will be making. Other than the manual swap the next biggest mod is going to be ITB's! I picked these up some time ago: Cleaned up: Still a little cleaning to do on the insides: Anyway that was quite a while ago. Although I'm no where near installing the throttles I got something in the mail today which is why I'm posting this ITB related stuff. Hmm.. what could this be: ITB adapter of course: Nice, as it should be; I didn't realize the NZD had dropped to what it is now... Like I said I'm no where near installing the ITB's but I couldn't help it; had to see: I thought the throttles looked pretty clean but now with them next to the adapter they look dirty again. Had to check what it looked like on the engine too: ..Engine is still so dirty too.. Anyway moving on. I also had to order a new distributor rotor, cap and seal because the originals were no good (as you will see below): Original distributor off my car, which I will be using: Doesn't look good: Seems the rotor had somehow rubbed or burnt the plastic cap?? Honestly I'd seemed to run well but couldn't just ignore this, which is why I bought the OEM Toyota replacement parts. New rotor: New cap: New seal: Cleaned up dizzy heat shield: Refurbished unit: Alright onto another completely different area. The transmission and its various brackets/ linkages were looking pretty bad so I decided to clean them up and coat them with the same rust preventative coating as I did the brake/clutch/shifter parts. Here's what it initially looked like: Note the direction of the arrow on rubber seal (not really sure if this was important, but best to reassemble the same way): Rust/protection coating: Feels a lot smoother now. Oh I also picked up a blacktop flywheel since it is about ~1.2Kg lighter than the 16V one, stock feel/driveability should be retained while being slightly quicker revving. Of course it needs resurfacing.

Alright so not much actual progress on the swap but quite an import update. I managed to find a replacement engine. By the way I'm not ignoring you guys regarding the fact that my engine may still be in good enough condition for a simple rebuild, or maybe even just a head resurface and gasket. Like I said, I will be keeping my original engine and look into it later on when I have more time and learn more about 4age rebuilds. I'm a bit uncomfortable doing it feeling so unprepared. This new engine I found was running well according to the seller and was removed for a rebuilt turbo project. To be honest the price was reasonable enough that even if it doesn't run I wouldn't be too annoyed. As can be seen below its a bigport with 7 rib block. Fine with me since I'm not after any significant power gains, more of a simple re-power. Transporting it home: Was quite dirty, so started cleaning it up a little: Dirt: A little cleaner: Other side a little cleaner too I needed a place to store it till I get my engine out (also need to do a bit of maintenance on it (sorry for terrible picture, hard to capture with so much back light): A better view: I didn't want to rest the engine on the crank so I cut two pieces of timber for it to rest on. The 4AG has two little bolts on the bottom of the block (im guessing for aligning the sump. To allow the engine to rest flat I had to drill two holes in the timbers: Maybe this shows what I mean more clearly: Resting nicely: I blocked the spark plug holes to prevent dust/shit getting into the cylinders: As it sits now, waiting for more work to be done: I will be cleaning it up more thoroughly later on, I just wanted to get the majority of the dirt off it so it wouldn't make a mess of the bench and my hands when working on it. Will most likely put on a new water pump and timing belt/tensioner at least.

And I'm impressed by your enthusiasm for the Lada; High five for being weird! Seriously though I just saw your Lada and it looks great, very cool.

Since all the parts are out of the car its the best opportunity to clean them all and protect them from future rust. So I cleaned up all the rust (again using electrolysis) and applied some rust preventative coating on the brake pedal, clutch pedal, the pedal brackets and the shifter mount. But first I disassembled the shifter mechanism and cleaned it up/refreshed it with new grease: Brake and shifter brackets disassembled: After being cleaned with soapy water to remove dust and other such shit: NOTE: At this point I removed the rust from these parts using electrolysis again, however, can't find my pics for this. brake and shifter brackets with the rust coating done: Cleaned up pedal bushings/bolts and re-greased(hands were too greasy to take pics of greased components): Cleaned up pedal hole as well (also re-greased): Did the same for clutch: Shifter assembled: All three (Obviously this pic was taken before brake pedal had been mounted to bracket): Go away! Shifter that should have come with car originally:

I had some free time so decided to adjust the odometer on the replacement manual instrument cluster to the same reading as my original odometer. Here is the replacement manual instrument cluster: And here is the Km's it reads: How many K's my car/cluster have done: Flipped over and starting to open it: This thing is the speed chime which making a sound when you exceed 100Km/h (roughly). Plastic cover removed: Interior cover removed: Some kind of really weird effect I noticed on the inside, like Lichtenberg figures: Speedo/odo removed: Odo separated from speedo: In order to adjust the reading the barrel/stack had to be removed: Cleaning it up: 178812Km: To remove the barrel two small plastic tabs? had to be broken, it fit back without any issues however to make sure it doesn't fall out over hard bumps I applied a little epoxy: Housing cleaned up: At this point I had everything back together except the speed chime. It had quite a bit of surface rust which I wanted to clean up: So I used electrolysis to clean it up a little: Bubbles are hydrogen and oxygen so don't leave this overnight in a confined space: All done: By the way, hes a short video I made of the speed chime in operation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8TZjLPuE-s Finally reassembled and on the bench till testing: Oh and here is a slightly more artistic shot I took with my other camera, just because I thought it would look cool:

Sometime after restoring the suspension is when the engine overheated. So when I decided how to go about fixing it I started collecting parts for the manual swap. One day I was just roaming some car parts yard and literally stumbled across a facelift AW11 by accident. I was pretty surprised because I haven't even seen an SW at car parts yard before (though I don't visit much). I got some parts needed for the manual swap, plus some other random cool stuff: Actually after I got these parts I managed to find someone wreaking a relatively low K AW11 so I got the complete manual swap from it since the parts were in better condition. Now i have two of the manual parts (shifter, brake/clutch etc).

Hey, just saw your build thread. Very nice AW and you even have the ski racks! The blown head gasket isn't bothering me too much as I really wanted to make it a manual anyway; luckily I have another daily driver so can spend time working on it rather than rushing to just throw it all back together. I doubt I'll be selling the storage box just because I also like the original accessories. But for some reason if I do I'll let you know first.

The first thing I noticed after getting the car was that the ride was not as expected, also there was a knocking noise from the front of the car. After inspecting all the main bushings they all seemed quiet tight. However, lifting the wheel up and down with a pry bar created the same knocking noise. This meant it was most likely either worn top hats or shocks, or both. I decided to investigate further: Don't worry, I was just loosening it without the spring compressor since it can be difficult without tension: Rest of loosening down with compressor in place: Horrible: So this is what I found with the shocks, obviously in need of replacement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bSMVl-JUfg Cleaned up the top hats as they seemed fine: Re-greasing: Cleaned up strut housings: New shocks: New dust seals and assembled making sure orientation of top hats was correct (it was not correct previosly): Re-installed with copper antiseize paste on all camber adjustment tabs/bolts: Went for alignment: NOTE: I haven't shown pics, but I also replaced both rear shocks also. They were quite worn too, although no where near as badly. Now as you can see the front and rear toe was hugely off. I'm sure the suspension refresh affected it a bit but to be honest it was completely off even before because it was a death trap to drive in the rain. Also as I mentioned above that the top hats were not oriented correctly (they have an arrow which should point out), I'm sure this also affected the alignment specs, maybe camber as it was noticeably easier to turn the steering after this (no power steering btw). After doing all this work and the alignment it was so nice to drive.

Thanks! Yeah sounds like a good plan. Like I mentioned in build thread, I was keeping the engine anyway because I wanted to rebuild it sometime in the future. I think I'm just a little unsure because I've never rebuilt or had an engine rebuilt before, so don't want to end up spending a lot and then it not working properly. I'm sure it would be a whole lot of fun though. Thanks! The previous owner told me the paint is all original apart from one of the front fenders which was resprayed. Seems like that is correct to me but I'm not an expert.

Sorry I didn't explain it properly. I was driving back home and happened to look down at the temp gauge and it was red hot... I don't really know for how long but by this point I noticed lack of power so definitely head gasket is gone. As for the other components I don't know. I've never overheated an engine before so not sure about bearings, cylinders, warping etc. Probably wont till its disassembled. Also when I was first got it the temp started to climb, luckily I caught it before it got too hot. The previous owners mechanic did not follow the unusual bleeding procedure at all and therefore a lot of air was trapped inside. I thought I fixed it by bleeding the system but I think the head gasket had already been damaged and was probably using some water. It still started the day after but was quite noisy, so I didn't run it long.

Link to build thread: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/52818-the-night-riders-1986-toyota-mr-2-aw11/

Link to discussion thread: //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/52819-the-night-riders-1986-toyota-mr-2-aw11-discussion/ Alright so a bit of background for those who care to read: I bought this car recently from a car collector after seeing an internet advertisement for it. The collector was an older gentleman who had quite a few old American cars and some others such as a Merc, mini, and all three generations of the MR-2; apparently he was wanting to thin the herd down a little. So basically I gave this guy a call asking about the car and its history, He didn't have internet so we ended up having a few back and forth conversations before finally agreeing on a price. He was quite nice and funny to talk to so it wasn't like hard negotiations or anything, more just like talking about the car, which was nice =) To be honest I didn't really think that I'd get the car so I was kind of surprised when we finally agreed. What! I bought a car unseen in person over the phone from some guy 6 hours away! I had never done this before. Anyway the day came to pick it up, I was pretty nervous that it might be really rough in person or weather or not it would even make the trip back home (like I said it was a collectors car so not driven much). Because of this when I finally arrived home with a very clean AW11, I was so glad. I must have spent about an hour or so just walking around it looking at it from different angles while the sun set. ...Skip forward a month or so and the car suffered some pretty bad overheating, lol. Basically the engine is cooked (probably can be rebuilt). Despite this, I love this car way too much to even consider selling (I've been though quite a few cars btw). So there was no doubt in my mind about what needed to be done... it will be reborn. I'm going to be replacing the engine (will keep original engine for a future rebuild) and because everything will be out of the car I will also do a manual swap since there is no better time for it. I want to keep it original for the most part, but will likely have a few light modifications. As I said, I only had it for a month or two before this incident happened so the craving to drive it again is steadily building. Some pics of it before the incident: