A bit of history (part 1) - An auspicious beginning...
- ainsworthashley
- Jul 6, 2017
- 5 min read
Early 2008 and I was, for one of the first times in my life, in a reasonably stable position…I even found myself with a decent wodge of cash in the bank! Time to buy a decent car, something a bit special to make a change from the cheap projects I had made do with in the past.
I had always fancied a Toyota Supra, and spent many hours on the mk IV forum reading people’s build threads, and looking through the classifieds, but I just never seemed to find anything that spoke to me. It was on this forum that I came across an advert from Jurgen for a Toyota MR2 that caught my attention:
I can’t say exactly why it grabbed me, but the more I looked at the pictures, the more convinced I was that it was the one…I’d never driven an MR2 before, and knew precious little about them, although I had admired one that used to park outside our place in Reading for a few years. I remember being drawn to the fact that the engine bay had taken over the boot as well for an intercooler, and thinking “yes…no limits…love it.”
A couple days later and I was on the phone to Jurgen, and the next thing I knew I had put down a deposit and the car was to be mine…albeit in three months’ time once it had made its way to the UK across the oceans. That was a very long three months, and I lost track of the number of times I poured over the youtube video I had of the car:
I also spent the time researching as much as I could about MR2s as possible, and ended up scaring myself silly about snap over-steer, and death-wish handling…especially when considered in the context of an MR2 newbie and the potential of 350hp straight off the boat…
Needless to say, the day of collection arrived and it was duly raining, talk about bricking myself!
My brother, Mike, kindly drove me the five hours up to Newcastle to collect my new project, and to meet Jurgen- someone I’ve got a lot of respect for, having built himself a solid business out of not much, and who shares his customers’ passion for performance vehicles. Jurgen happily confirmed the car felt like it was indeed running “about 350hp”, and his team had done a lovely job of detailing her…needless to say I was more than happy.
The drive home was nowhere near to rollercoaster of crazy handling I had feared, in fact the car felt great- really solid, and wow did she put down some grunt when you used your right foot: easily (and by a large margin) the fastest car I had ever driven, and I loved it!! It’s hard to describe those first experiences of forced induction, and the addictive surge of torque as the motor comes on boost…it just leaves you wanting more more more…
It was at this stage I started to spend more time on the owners clubs, and it started to dawn on me just how nice the car was I’d gotten my hands on…zero, and I mean ZERO, rust, immaculate body work and some really nice performance parts on her including an HKS top mount turbo kit, an external fuel swirl pot and pump with hardlines, Rays Te37 alloys, a line lock system, Apexi ECU, 1000cc injectors, etc etc etc…
In hindsight (it’s a great thing) I really should have left well enough alone and enjoyed the car as was…but, I had a large wodge of cash left in my pocket from my ‘special car’ fund, the MR2 being significantly cheaper than I had budgeted for a Supra…and I wanted the car to be something very special indeed.
I was nervous of boosting the engine without knowing the state of the internals, and I didn’t trust my own mechanical abilities at this stage (the car was high up on a pedestal for me), so I made decision to engage with an MR2 specialist…but who to trust? Welcome to the vagaries of the UK tuning scene, where everyone is both the best specialist that “I would never trust my car with anyone else”, and at the same time “the bastards that destroyed my pride and joy, and ripped me off”.
Oh joy.
Anyhow, I made enquiries and ended up going to Matt Wishart at Rogue, who is a top bloke and someone I have a lot of time for…if we lived closer I’m sure we’d have become very good friends. I explained about how I wanted this to be a very special car, and the state of play and he agreed to take it in and have a look.
So…without going into too much detail, it turned out my engine was indeed still on stock rods and pistons, but otherwise seemed healthy. Rogue proposed a big engine build to try and give me my special car, and off they set to work in July 2008.
The proposed work:
Full forged bottom end (Eagle rods, Wiseco 9:1 pistons)
Sleeved block
ARP bolts/ studs throughout
Lightened/ knife edged crank
Port and polished head
Oversize inlet and exhaust valves
Catcam high lift camshafts, with springs, retainers and pulleys
1ZZ shimless bucket conversion
I finally got the car back mid October 2008, and proceeded with the detailed engine running in procedure Rogue had stipulated…so 500 miles below 4k rpm, oil/ filter change, then 500 miles below 5k rpm, then final oil change to fully synthetic and 200 miles at stock loads before a mapping session.
The engine felt lovely- the lightweight crank made for a very rev happy experience, and considering the camshafts in there, she was still easy to drive at lower rpms.
By the time I had run the engine in it was late November, and the fateful day arrived…the 21st of November 2008…
Lyndon (Nod) agreed to map my car on Rogue’s behalf, and he drove it down to the Race Shack in Tewkesbury to do this…I met him there. The mapping seemed to go really well, once we worked out that the dizzy needed to be timed in still! She sounded amzing on the dyno, especially once the waste gate opened up and the screamer came on full tune.
She made good numbers, being 350hp at the wheels…we tend to assume ~15% transmission losses for these cars, giving ~410bhp at the flywheel at 1.5bar of boost. Impressive stuff (albeit a bit laggy)!
Rogue wanted the car back after the mapping session to leak and spanner check, so Nod agreed to drive it back up the motorway and I toddled off home. Later on that evening I received the phone call…Nod had had a smash on the motorway and totalled the car, he was ok (which was my main concern!) but the car was far from it. It had spun out on the greasy motorway and gone backwards into the barriers, wrecking one side of the car and bending the chassis leg on that side.
Funnily enough I now count Nod as a friend (albeit not a close one), and I never really blamed him for this crash, in fact he's helped me road map the car a few times since then...another top person to have met.
Not good…not good at all…
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