Soon after that my personal situation changed and I had other things to take care of and the MR2 sat undriven for most of the time. Getting a motorcycle licence and moving to 1km from my work only made matters worse. I changed the oil every year and took it on one or two short drives every month.
I now have the time to drive it properly again but it developped a lot of problems and I don't know where to start to fix them all. I have fixed many issues before but never this many at once so it's hard to find the root cause of the problem. The car has:
- Lots of smoke on startup if it has been sitting for a day or two
Smoke while warming up
Black spark plugs full of sooth
A blowing exhaust
Stalls when the engine is warm
Hard to start (5+ tries) when it rains
I thought it would be the headgasket but the oil and coolant seem to be fine. I had to add a little bit of both every now and then but nothing excessive. I orderd a cheap cylinder leakdown test but that seemed to be defective so I have to return that.
Do you guys have any advice on where to start?