Rev3 Turbo - Unknown Blue Colour *for how long?*

[marshiboi]

Hi everyone,

Been inspired to create a thread after reading so many of yours so far.

Unfortunately, since I've owned the car since early 2010, I've suffered many trials and tribulations during ownership of my 2 and will take some time to put them all here.

Done many things and taken many pics along the way, the next thing to do is find them, put them in order and relate my story...easier said than done, so bear with me

Here are a few Pics as she was advertised.









Note: Buyer beware, I thought it looked pretty sweet from the Pics. What I didn't know is how long it had been since they'd taken those pictures and me coming to see it

I’ll update the story shortly...

[toxo]

Your unknown blue colour appears to be caribbean blue (colour code 8B6).

[marshiboi]

lol, trust me it's not, those pics are in the sun and distort what the colour actually looks like.

It's not a standard Toyota colour, I took it to a few places and they couldn't match it easily.

Was resprayed in Japan, car was originally white!

[toxo]

lol, I see! I await the rest of the story with baited breath in that case...

I bought a set of doors once thinking they were carri blue, turned out to be rev2 blue with a SERIOUS flash on the camera.

[marshiboi]

Hehe just getting onto that, trust me the colour and paint on this car has been a PITA since the start lol

[marshiboi]

Here are a couple of pics of her polished up at work back in 2010, she doesn’t look bad, but nothing like those first pics, she’s much darker....





But going back a bit, here’s the beginning of my MR2 story.

After a year of driving a 1.3 escort and then a year of a BMW 523i, I’d decided I wanted to get something sporty and fun since I was paying so much in insurance and petrol. I didn’t originally look to buying a turbo MR2 as I figured I’d never afford the insurance for one in a million years. However I was massively surprised when I got quotes and found the prices for N/A and turbo to be similar.

I went to a garage recommended to me, which will remain nameless, to check out an imported G Limited they had in white. I got there and to say it was a little scruffy was an understatement. It was no longer white but moss green and didn’t sound great while running. However, the blue MR2 caught my eye and on discussion, found out it was a turbo. The seller offered to take me for a quick spin in it, I was hooked immediately, was like a rocket and sounded fantastic.

After a few e-mails and a bit of bartering I decided to purchase the car even though the thought of driving a manual turbo MR2 thrilled me and scared me at the same time. There were a few cosmetic issues with the car but mechanically it all seemed peachy, the paint let it down somewhat but figured it could be polished and buffed up.

I picked up the car and gingerly drove it the 5 miles home to my house as careful as I could, what a culture shock after a 2 ton automatic armchair, it was after a couple of days driving that I realised something was wrong and that I’d probably been a bit naive.
Basically when accelerating and trying to get into 3rd it would crunch, miss or pop out entirely. Unfortunately I’d listened to the seller who said it was running brilliantly and he’d had several MR2s before, I took him at his word and didn’t check.

I tried to get them to sort it and they basically said they didn’t have to do anything, the car was in perfect working order and was fit for use.

I managed to get hold of a MR2 specialist who’s worked on them for years, he told me anyone who knows MR2s would know the clutch was f****ed and that the synchros were knackered on 3rd. so not a happy bunny, again massive mistake on my part not test driving it, but as their garage was based at a farm just off a motorway, a test drive wasn’t done, but also trusting someone with a supposedly good reputation did go some way towards my decision to buy.......

Next part of story coming shortly

[marshiboi]

Finally managed to arrange my specialist to find time to get my 2 on his ramps to replace the gearbox from another rev3 he had lying around.

Here are a few pics of the work going on.













Below, one of the good things that came out of doing this was the discovery of Ohlins suspension which must have cost a pretty penny



Discovered something else knackered, the induction kit intake pipe was knackered and needed replacing, to my shame I've still not done this



The nightmare nearly continued when once we'd bolted on the gearbox we tested it to see if we had all gears and found out that we didn't have reverse or 5th, we then had to rig up a puller to get the the working gear from my old box which luckily wasn't knackered.

I'm a bit hazy on the details as it was nearly 3 years ago now but after all that got a new clutch barely used, gear box which hadn't much use and got to check out other bits and pieces while I was there.

At this point I was also living away from home, so money was massively tight which is why this was a fairly important job to sort and why I wasn't great at keeping up maintenance on her

[marshiboi]

Replacing the gearbox was obviously a huge and unexpected job but in a way was a blessing because now I know most jobs won't probably ever involve that much ball ache lol.

After getting her home treated her to a clean and polish, then when car whoring with my mate jon in his Supra.












Just as I was starting to enjoy her again, this happened.....





Was doing 60 down a back road and a hare ran smack bang into the front corner and basically snapped the corner of my splitter clean off, I managed to get the piece back and set about rebuilding it, however this is where my problem of paint codes came in.

We tried our best to match it but it came out nowhere near, this was my first experience of using fibreglass and filler







You can just about see the complete colour difference in this Pic

[marshiboi]

After a few months of trouble free driving, the drivers side window motor literally sheered off its mountings meaning the window nearly fell inside the door, next thing I learnt was how the door cards come out another lesson learnt, managed to get the window up and wedge it with a block of wood until I could get a new motor.

After getting sick of looking at the horrible japanese double Din mini disc that was in when I got it, got a nice Kenwood double din head unit, only then did I discover that the front speakers were knackered
another future fix.


After fixing the window motor she was again relatively trouble free until I ended up crashing her thanks to some old fart who decided to stop in the middle of the main road and then set off again, giving me hardly any time to react and unfortunately it was a xxxx road and it was wet so managed to stop it spinning and instead slid across the road up the kerb and got wedged on a grass verge.

Luckily it took a couple of chunks out of my alloys and that seemed to be the only damage, however after a few days realised my exhaust was pretty much knackered, the impact must have broken something inside it which was gutting as it was a decentish Fujitsubo exhaust.

Ended up having to get a cheap one from ebay as money was, again, tight.









Decatted her at the same time





What a huge piece of metal!

[marshiboi]

One thing that had bugged me for ages was this really annoying, high pitch vibrating noise when the car was above 3k RPM, it was right behind my head but almost impossible to find when driving.

Eventually after some digging around I checked the roof mounted brake light, it turned out that one of the plastic clips had snapped off and was loosely attached to the wire and was vibrating like crazy at high revs

[marshiboi]

Think my next mod was to get a Border replica front bumper and yet again the curse of the paint codes came to bite me on my ar$e again... here's a few photos of her stripped down and the bumper taking shape.
















Here it is after it's been fitted a few days, sometimes it looks a close match, others it doesn't

[toxo]

That paint literally looks a different colour in every photo

[marshiboi]

At somepoint 2011 I ended up trying to sort the paintwork on the bonnet and failed miserably, as I was due to go to a car show with my (then) club, I got it carbon wrapped to tidy it up a bit.

[ashley]

Good read so far....more please!

[craig]

Good read so far....more please!

yup, good thread

[marshiboi]

Thanks for the comments guys, more to come as I remember it and as I come across photos lol.

Here's a few more pics with my graphics on that I thought were a good idea at the time, put them on at Rising Sun Car show 2011.









Unfortunately the brightnesses are all slightly different as I think I was playing with camera settings at the time

[marshiboi]

Unfortunately due to several low speedbumps and my gf parking it too close to the kerb the front bumper has a few battle scars.

Here's a few more pics of her from photoshoot in sept 2011

























She isn't to everyones tastes, but she's by no means finished and I've modded her for my enjoyment, no-one elses

[Magic Beans]

It's great to see another Caribbean Blue (looking ) tubby being cared for

Good work

Did that front license plate location pass MOT?

[toxo]

It's great to see another Caribbean Blue tubby being cared for

Good work

lol

[Magic Beans]

It's great to see another Caribbean Blue tubby being cared for

Good work

lol

See now, this always happens when I have a big day on the tools and try and read. Better to just sit on my hands and stare, mouth hanging open