new guy- intorduction

[silentmobious]

Hello I'm new to the fourm here and hopefully here to stay I've been looking around for a bit and am pretty impressed with your love for MR2'(s)? as whell as the amount of general knowladge. I'll start off with a little about myself I guss a good petegree is a list of car ownership. For a first car I had a Toyota of sorts a 1991 Lexus es-250 this was back in the days of bliss when I knew next to nothing about cars and my maintiance consisted of washing, waxing, adding petrol, and changing my oil. The car was a automatic fail bucket with many problems and expensive fixes (thanks alot for being a camey with electric windows) but it got me around quite well and was a perfect fit for a time when I didnt know a ball joint form a ballpien. After two years of heavy abuse that thing finaly gave up and (what I know now to be the torque converter) the transmission went out I took it to a tranmission shop and they said it would be like 1500$ to fix and I knew the car wasnt worth that at all so i ended up selling it for 500 to someone who im sure sorced a 50$ torque converter out of a camery and had the car on the road in a week. Lesson learnd. I decided after that to go off the other extreme and learn how to do my own maintance and decided the best way to learn was to do so I bought a 1977 datsun 280z with the thought of restoring it lol. I will say this it tought me alot about how cars work and the fundmentals of tool use, body work, and painting. I work on it for a year and a half and didnt get much done to be honost. I had discoverd to my horror that the thing was a total rust bucket and realisticley not even worth restoring. It sat for 1 year. Now I was I a real bind out of highschool with a stety job and no operating wheels. riding the bus was a option and I used it for quite a while but I needed wheels and having to barrow my moms car for dates was getting embarsing. So I saved up for a bit ( or at least what I though at the time was saving) and bought a 1981 honda accord. Now I should have noticed that the steam coming out of the carberator was a very bad sign but I figured that It just neede a tune up I took it out and drove it around and It got up to 70mph stoped felt good and didnt leek too much oil so I bought it. On the way home on the freeway it started billowing thick white smoke that my mom driving tae trail car didnt find importatnt to tell me about untell i noticed it comming from under the hood. pulled over had it towed home. Got the haynes manual and started eleminating things. did everything that I could think of when It got down to flushing the radiator oil came out with the muixture blown headgasket I knew that much by then. So I thought I would pull the engine out replace the head gasket and that would be that (lol). After posting on the fourms with small projects that I had learned how to do I stumpled upon the guru of 1st and 2nd gen accords who happend to live quite close to me, in fact we had mutual friends through autocross( my rx-7 buddies took me to help with corse work) we hit it off and he helped me soo much. I pulled the engine with the help of my friends and started talking it apart only to discover that the car did not have a blown headgasket it infact had no headgasket(thats right it ran and drove without a head gasket)god belss honda reliability. long story short my friend sorced me a can sepec head lol at handa parts and i rebuilt the engine from scratch. I had a machine shop the a t bore and hone but other then that I did the dirty work even after market weber carb and made my own adaptor plate. got the car running did a manual trany swap and tidyed it up a bit. Enjoyed the sense of pride and accolmpishment in my own work for about 3 months then joined the air force. In the time while i repairing this My friend lent me a 91 kia sophia that I drove for like 3 months. This was my first manual car and I abused the **** out of it lol it later became a rally car and the beacmew a jy car for someone else to steal parts from. ive been i for almost a year now and when i finaly got home on leve and had to driv e mt stuff cross countery to my first base i bought a 97 honda accord with emmaculent service reccords that Is now my daily I sold the other accord for what I bought it for to someone whom relly neaded a car and I know the accord guru still watches over that car and maby someone elase can learn as far as i herd the engine hasent exploded so my plasti gague skills prety much pown. and Ive be saving ever since for a just for ****s and giggles car to have my own autoX fun with and have learned my lesson about having a proiect car as a daily driver. I had been thinking a miata bueacse I had driven a few and relly liked the feel but after a month or so of serching I couldnt come up with anything that struck my fancy (at least not for the price) I finaly stumbled acrost a 87 mr2 with 306,XXX miles for 500$ the car isnt perfect but the bodys in fair condition theres a major oil leak (pour) and some funky headlight electrical issues ( they go up but not on). since I had a car to drive I was sorta planning on a rebuild for the engine any how and thought Im not the best with wiering i can make sense of a wireing chart and can sort out those bits eventually I figured ide buy it. the owner claims the laek is comming from a diaprham on the oil sending unit and has a new one hes including with the car if someone could varify/ refrute this? the car drove whell for its age the struts where shot not that suprising. the trany seamed strong and the clutch was fair. the exhaust is shot and the head gasket need done but that would sorta be included in inital maintence anyways. I plan on having the car by this weekend here on base then I can get some pictures up and get the beast on a lift and do a good assessment. Sory this was quite long winded and my spelling and punctuation are poor at best. But just trying to say hello and nice to meet ya. Im in the VA hampton roads area so if your around here hit me up. Anything major I need to check up on befor purchse ? questions, comments, naysayers allways welcome.


-silentmobious

p.s picture of my work

[MR2 Drifter]

Wow thats a long read, it seems to me that you keep buying cars in bad condition

if you have a good daily driver then its ok to buy a project car but with over 300k miles on it there's going to be ALOT of replacing parts

if you have money and can do it then go for it, otherwise it's going to be sitting in the garage for a while

[mr29180]

^^ true!!!
But anywayz welcome!!

[silentmobious]

lol i know but its deffentaly my my thing to buy and older car and fix it up i think its more fun that way