MadaboutKitcars

Thanks Wozzy

Been a bit of a bitsa day today tidying up little areas like the petrol release flap not always ‘flipping’ open when pressing the release switch inside (fixed by using a small foam strip on the inner edge where the flap closes against to provide a small amount of tension), adjusting the front mud flaps to reduce the width so they don’t catch the tyres of full lock, and a bit more adjustment of the rear screen fixings to tighten up the edges.

Interior cleaned up as well as door cards - both of which were covered in dust!

Will take some pics and post them once the door cards are back in.

My garage seems to be constantly full of dust and even after I've hoovered it and then hoovered the car then covered it over, I'll get in the car a few days later and be greeted with a fine layer of dust. It's really odd...

Well.....funny you should say that Nick. I’m also finding that just after I have also hoovered and wiped the rear screen, of both the MRS200 and the MR2 hardtop rear screen, about 2-3 hours later there’s also a thin covering of dust.

I’ve come to accept that the dust particles from sanding the car down are in the air in and around the garage and I’m just moving them from one surface to another.

I’ve tried to leave the garage doors open to create a draft to get stuff out in the open and also left the car outside for a while but to no avail!

On a side note, we had some work done on the house this week and the folks doing the work had to go through the garage. I was most heartened when they spotted the RS200 and first thought it was an original but on hearing it was a replica said ‘I’d never have guessed there was an MR2 roadster under there’!

Bit of a nightmare day on the car yesterday. I should have just put the door cards back in and I would be ready for the MOT.....instead I took another look at the door rod/handle set up on the drivers door.

Big mistake. I still wasn’t 100% happy with the action and could see a bit of play in the rod I’d used to piggyback from the Sierra handle to the MR2 latch rod. First mistake was to try to reshape this which just resulted in the 4mm rod snapping!

So I had already ordered some new 4mm stainless rod which arrived mid afternoon and I managed to bend this and get a better radius in the area I was trying to sort.

So back onto the car and I’m tightening up the connector block (a repurposed central locking rod clamp) when the thread in the aluminium block strips. They’ve been on and off the rods as I shaped the bar originally and then when the door skins were bonded on so no real surprise. Nightmare indeed and no spares.

It was time to call it a day and I’ve ordered 4 new connectors/rod clamps but they won’t arrive until later in the week. I might try and see if a new grub screw in the connector works today but I will need to wait for the new blocks now before the door cards can go back - i had also planned on doing the same on the passenger door as well as there is also play in the rod on that side.

Whilst waiting for the new rod clamps to arrive I remembered I had bought a solenoid when originally fitting the door skins as I wasn’t sure piggybacking onto the MR2 rod was going to be reliable enough in operation.

I’d never even taken it out of the box so found it in the garage and took a look at whether it would fit. Well it’s small enough to clear the glass when it’s dropped and it looks like there’s a suitable mounting point just below the MR2 release rod.



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It pulls up to 5kg in force and there seems to be enough movement on the solenoid to adjust the cable such that it will move the bar enough. I need to sort a mounting plate out as the one supplied isn’t wide enough to pick up the mounting point. I will sort some plate out and have it as a back up - my idea was to mount a microswitch behind the Sierra handle which is operated when the handle is pulled. There looks to be a 12v feed already in the door for central locking so shouldn’t be too hard to wire it up

Any views from folks reading this as to the engineering / feasibility of this longer term?

Forgot to say I would use a rod clamp on the MR2 rod and hook the wire from the solenoid through that otherwise it will just slip on the MR2 rod

Could you use some electrical 'choc block' connectors? I've used these to successfully connect door lock rods.

Thanks for the response - I’d thought of that but the block I’ve got has quite a bit of movement between the connector pairs - will hunt out another block and give it a try

I also got another suggestion from Nostromo on using wire rope grips to join the two rods so I’ve ordered a bag of 4mm sized grips/clamps as they look like they will be a bit sturdier than the connecting blocks.

So until they arrive there wasn’t much to do on the car. I decided to have another go at bending the handle connecting rod to improve the radius of the bends and make them tighter, this time applying heat to the area to be bent on the rod which made a huge difference and it looks a lot better now.

Will probably be Friday now when I can next spend time on the door handle rods, but there was a nice surprise when my wife presented me with the following she’d had produced ....





Now I have chance to admire my handy work every time I have a cuppa :-)

And that also spurred me on to dig out a print I bought at the Castle Coombe Rally Day, now suitably personalised ....

Hey - like the mug especially!

Cheers - FunkyPigeon!

Love the cup Dave! Reckon I should drop a hint or two to the wife.

Definitely Nick .... especially if you get a nice pic with that new sunstrip on yours :-)

Success at last with the door handle rod! Persevered with the rods as opposed to using the solenoid as I know the method works on other kits.

Rebent a new rod using a bit more heat on the bends to get them tighter and took Nostromo’s advice to use wire rope grips. I also repositioned the Sierra rod to attach underneath the MR2 rod so it was pulling rather than pushing from above.



Cable tie around where the rod slots into the door handle and feels a lot better in terms of the action. Door opens without needing to pull the door handle fully.

Need to repeat this now on the passenger side, door cards back in and a bit more black painting around the inner edge of the door then it’s ready for the MOT.

Redid the passenger door handle rod yesterday and have to say it was much simpler and quicker now I had it sussed from the drivers side. Also the wire rope grips make it much easier to fit.

Door card back on the passenger side.



Bit more tidying up of the inner door area with some matt black paint then I just need to get the drivers door card on. Aiming to get it MOT’d next week - hopefully should be ok. Main areas of concern are the headlight alignment due to how I’ve mounted the Golf MK2 lights and bonded then into the headlamp cowls in the bonnet (I have aligned then as much as I can at home) and the handbrake efficiency which seems to be problem with rear callipers on all MR2 Roadsters from what I can see.

Will post an update on progress once it’s booked in.

I didn’t manage to spend as much time on the remaining jobs on the car this week, so I’m not quite there yet with booking it in for the MOT.

I noticed that the thin black vinyl coach stripe that I’d used down the indent on each side of the car was peeling off at the edges and I just couldn’t get it to stick. Also the gloss finish of this wasn’t contrasting well with the matte white. So I decided I would paint the stripes on. Wasn’t too difficult with a small square brush and masking and like the rest of the finish will do for now.



Not many opportunities to get the car out of the garage with the weather being awful, but I did need to turn it round to put the door cards in and finish off the black paint on the inner door edge on the drivers side. What I have noticed is that the front mudflaps are still catching on the tyres on full lock - you can’t really see in this picture but I will have a go at trimming back the inner edge otherwise I’ll remove the front ones for the MOT.



Drivers door card back in and the inner door edge tidied up with matt black paint.




Just needs a good clean now inside and out, front mud flaps looking at and another pre-MOT check. Aiming to book it in for the end of this coming week.

Looks great!

Thanks Jack. All cleaned up now inside and out and all the little jobs completed ahead of the MOT.







I just want to have another go at the headlamp alignment given this was tightened up back in 2016 for the U.K. MOT regs. Aiming to have this done tomorrow/Tuesday and will book it in for the back end of the week.

MOT passed !

After nearly 3 years building, my MRS200 replica passed its MOT this morning at the first attempt.

Knowing how much the MOT changed last year I have to say I wasn’t that confident it would pass first time despite all the checks I’d done. In the end the only issue was with the headlamp alignment which I had been expecting. I went armed with a toolkit and it’s an MOT centre I’ve been to before with kit cars. The tester was great and showed interest in the car from the outset. He was quite happy for me to make adjustments to the headlamps - i had set these up at home so they were aligned both sides but I couldn’t really get the height of the beam accurate which is where it needed adjustment. Luckily I’d built some adjustment into the brackets holding the MK2 Golf units to the back of the cowls which was enough.



Very happy bunny and the car ran great there and back which was a good 10 mile first run. Taxed it online as soon as the tester updated the pass status and all set to go.

He did record an advisory as to the car being ‘heavily modified’ which I can live with.



As you can imagine I still have a long list of ‘improvement’ jobs to keep me busy but at least now I can enjoy it on the road. I also do still plan to get a professional paint job but the stickers and vinyls are holding up just fine so far so no rush for that.

I will keep updates coming for those who are interested but shift this now to an on the road thread.

A big thank you to everyone who has shown an interest in my thread over the past 3 years and especially to those who’ve provided help, inspiration, feedback and ideas along the way.

Congratulations! Please do keep us updated.

Well done on the pass.

Love that advisory

Absolutely brilliant news Dave! Is it an advisory for you? Pretty sure you already knew. Now to arrange a meet up!

Thanks guys for the positive comments.

Yep the guy felt he had to include an advisory on the grounds it was ‘heavily modified’. No issues just felt he was sort of covering his own back. Unfortunately the spelling of this came out as “ this vehicle is Hefley modified“ !!

Now if only it was a Hefly MRS200 kit :-)

Having loads of fun with the car now I can finally drive it on the road. Weather hasn’t been great so it’s pretty grubby - I gave it a good coat of resin wax/polish to protect the stickers as best I could given these are just applied to the polished up gel coat for now.

Anyone who has any recommendations on good protectors for this set up with gel coat etc until I get it painted just let me know on the thread here.

Went to fill up with petrol over the weekend as I’d been topping up the tank during the build with fresh fluid from a jerry can but worked out probably half of the half full tank (1/4 of the tank) was probably still the fuel I had in it when it was last on the road before I started the build back at the end of 2016. Loads of folks came over as I was filling up and paying ... one guy was on his way the NEC Classic Car show and thought it was a real one .. even when he was close up :-)

Decided I couldn’t live with the Nav Pod I’d built a small 7” tablet into for sat nav/OBDII gauges and had sat in the cubby hole space in the MR2 dash. I found a folding smartphone holder on Amazon which looked just the job for a spare Android phone I had lying around. Means I can put the lid back on the cubby hole in the dash, and when the phone isn’t in the holder, everything folds down and the cubby holder lid closes.



There’s quite a bit of lag with the ODBII Bluetooth dongle I’m using and the app (Torque Pro). Will have a play with the set up and also try another spare Bluetooth dongle I’ve got.

Again, if anyone has experience of Torque Pro on Android and can comment if this lag is normal I’d appreciate it.

Congratulations on a first class build!

Regards, Mick