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Hi everyone, I finally made some time to make a start on the kit today. Nothing major to ease me into things, so made a start on the front bumper, drilled out the holes behind the number plate with black mesh panel to fit behind, cut out and fitted the front indicators (I removed the clips from Sierra units and filed back the bottom inside edge of these so they are a snug fit but removable and once painted I will add a bead of silicon to the rear so they can be removed if needed later.
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When it came to fitting the front spot lights I discovered that both the lights and the Hella 3000 covers are about 1/2 inch too wide in diameter so they are not flush to the edge of the bumper (see pics).
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I'm trying to aim for an authentic look as possible - Mick (Retro200) were your lights and covers smaller or did you make the recess in the bumper larger to fit them flush? Any other views on the flush versus proud look here would be appreciated.
They have tab at the bottom as well but I measured last night and it looks like the Hella 3000 are about 3/4 inch bigger in diameter so looks like I need to swap these for the Hella 1000s
hi guys. just a thought on the wheel choice. i found a company that makes wheel adaptors. think there 25mm to 31mm with correct spigots to order converting the toyota 4x100 to ford 4x108 (and loads of other custom stuff) to run cossy ET25 wheels on the mr2. should be about right on the arches. a set of ford oz's or speedlines might be easier to source.
Luke, I've been looking at PCD adapters as well. I thought you had to keep the number of studs/bolts the same but looks like these can also be used to go 5 x which opens up Evo and Subaru wheel options too.
There aren't many wheel choices at ET10 or lower so this is a good route as it gives you a spacer as well as the PCD conversion.
Which company have you been looking at to source the adapters ? I'd been looking at Superforma but then found something on another forum about one of their adapters cracking on a car.
hi swifty ds the correct hella lights for front panal are rallye 1000 lamps as per original rs 200 availiable with either fog or spot or driving lamp lenses dia 190mm outside cover dia 195mm with tabs top and bottom have a look at ebay item number 131565577764 these are the ones you need keep an eye on ebay cos plenty second hand ones seem to come up tends to get a bit expensive when you need 6 of em at 70-80 quid a pop ,mine where all new old stock i they also fit the lamp pod as well they just need some brackets making and a bit trimming off the back of the plastic tab on the cover at the bottom so they sit back flush with the front of the pod cover i think ford must have desighned the front panal around these lamps because when you look at the black areas on the covers they line through with the lines in the front panal if you see what i mean see pic
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also these lights +covers fit inside the hole in the front panal i would get correct lights those 3000s you have shown in your pic look too big they should fit inside the hole with covers flush with the front i made some brackets that run down the back top to bottomspanning the hole bolted thru f/glass with a tab coming forward to pick up on lamp bracket at the bottom you can then adjust them up- down +left to right using the original lamp bracket it needs a slot cutting i f/glass at bottom front edge to let the tab on the lamp at the bottom sit back you can just see this in last pic (above) i made the cut out about 4mm wider than lug on lamp each side hope this helps mick
nick, be carefull with your choice of wheel spacers it all depends on the "et"of your new wheels ,mine are 4x 100 pcd 16x8 et 25 as opposed to the et45 std mr2 ive only got 20 mm spacers in the back none in front any more than this they stick out too far looked a bit "carlos fandango" i understand if your changing the bolt pattern (pcd) then you will need spacers front and rear to alter the pcd, just remember to alter offset on the wheels to suit you may need to go to around 35 to 40 et , try googling "wheel offset calculator" theres some tables you can fill in your wheel tyre size offset dia width etc to see different options it shows you outline images of how the changes look, its very helpfull, mick .
I finally got round to starting to remove the MR2 panels this week. Surprised me how painless it was to remove the front end (bonnet, wings, bumpers and lights). Back wings were a bit more work but all panels are off now so that just leaves the soft top and door mirrors then I will start with the front and rear frames to support the bodywork and start to trial fit the panels.
I ended up swapping the Hella 3000 driving lights for Hella 1000s (thanks Mick).
Need to source a set of wheels before I do final fixing of the panels particularly rear clam. Think I've settled on gloss white Team Dynamics Pro Race 1.2 in 17 inch with a 20mm stagger between rear and front tyre width.
looks like your making progress ,thats the easy bit done, now comes the hard (but rewarding) bit, putting it all together < enjoy > ,joking aside you will find its all a pretty good fit andy/chris/tribute did a proper job with the mouldings i was impressed with thek kit, you cant go far wrong fitting it, have fun, mick
Mick, I've been a lot less impressed with this kit over the evo200 kit. Had moulding, precutting and metal support issues. Great to see us all cracking on. We should do a meet / track day when were all on the road.
yes i have heard some others saying the same but how does it compare price wise against evo200 i bet they are a lot dearer to buy after all as andy says its meant to be a budget build we all cant afford £20kto £30ka for a replica have you seen those banham panals on ebay bonnet / doors he wants a fortune for them and they arnt as acurate as mrs are to a original he also has a original f/fumper wants nearly £4k for it i also had to make some alterations to the supplied brackets the rear one i cut up and re positioned lower down on top of rear bumper bar so clam sits on it under where rear lights reccess are much better and out of the way front wasnt so bad but still needed lowering down to get f/bumper right about 25 to 30 mm from memory i just re drilled holes in new front bar to drop it but you can still end up with a nice rep when the hard works done i think i have around £5.5k in mine inc 49,000 mile facelift 04 doner mr2 that will do me !!!1
Price wise there wasn't much in it, his prices are in the back of his catalogue . The quality in moulding and trimming was superior but bill's moulds are for his frame so they would have needed doctoring to the mr2. I was hoping to seriously reduce build time. Karl is well known in the 200 stuff, always got something going on. I'll look at lowering/remaking a front cross bar that supports the bumper after I've looked at why the backs sitting way left.
I've been impressed so far with the quality of panels, return edges and thickness etc. I've built a couple of kits now of varying styles and there are far worse out there!
Price wise there wasn't much in it, his prices are in the back of his catalogue . The quality in moulding and trimming was superior but bill's moulds are for his frame so they would have needed doctoring to the mr2. I was hoping to seriously reduce build time. Karl is well known in the 200 stuff, always got something going on. I'll look at lowering/remaking a front cross bar that supports the bumper after I've looked at why the backs sitting way left.
My rear frame is a bit off to the left too. I think the clam will still sit square on it so for the moment I'm not too worried. I'll be able to tell for sure once my rear wheels are on. Once it's all built, I may look at replacing it with something like Mick has built as it looks fat nicer than a big industrial looking square frame.
Andy did keep telling me when I was going through the process of buying the kit to think twice about splitting the clam so it lifted, saying that it was easier to line everything up if it was permanently fixed.
This is part of the fun for me to find ways to make this as close as possible to the original, and have started to look at putting a support frame within the clam itself - something like this is going to be needed to allow for gas struts to be used to raise/support the clam on opening. Not sure if this is what you've done Mick as can't quite see close enough from your pics.
Very impressed Mick that you did your build for £5.5k - did that include paint?
swifty i also made a steel frame for the rear clam it comes down from the hinges at the top down each side of rear window and across under bottom edge of window bracketed to inside of clam i also intended to fit gas struts but after buying some (3 sets)strong enough to hold clam up i found that when fitted and clam was closed they had the effect of trying to "stretch" the clam and forced it backwards opening up the gap between the door rear edge where it meets the clam so i ditched this idea and fitted a hinged stay(1" inch box section) centrally using the old rear bonnet catch mounts on the back panal up to the new rear support frame inside the clam so when you lift clam it folds out and locks into position holding it up also it gave me somewhere to route new wiring to rear lights the problem is that the struts have to be so strong to hold the weight of the clam that when closed they exert so much force they try to force the clam apart if you manage to get around this let me know i even considered fitting a electric/hydraulic ram to mine but havnt found anything suitable and yes my build includes paint around £500 quid in 2 pak but i did all prep / paint myself so i probably saved at least £1000 if not more,i was quoted £1200 just to shoot the paint,but i have all the equipment so i didnt make sense another thing i found was a lot of air pockets in the f/glass had to do a lot of grinding out/ filling i went over the whole kit with a heat gun(not too hot) to highlight any defects it has the effect of raising any problem areas that need grinding out/filling and there were quite a few to sort out it took a lot of filler/time to get right from memory i think the roof and "ears"and roof scoop edges were the worst its were there is a very tight radius/corner f/glass dosent want to form into them right check yours i think you will see what i mean
Thanks Mick for the pointers on the paint prep - was going to try to do as much prep myself as possible but have budgeted a decent amount for a paint shop in the build
If you get chance when you're next out in the car would you mind taking a couple of pics of your clam frame for me?
Will let you know if I find a way round the gas struts in terms of enough force to open but not so they force the clam when closed.
I removed the final parts from the MR2 donor yesterday so everything is off now and I've made a start with fitting the front bumper support bar. As expected it needed a bit of fettling to get the height right and to level it up on both sides.
Offering the bumper up it's clear that it will need some additional support in the arch area and, as I think Mick has done, this should also allow for the inner arches to be extended / supported.
Next on the plan is to fit the rear clam support frame and then paint black the two frames and tidy up a couple of areas of the MR2 frame.
I finally bit the bullet on choice of wheels/tyres and ordered a set of Team Dynamics Pro Race 1.2s gloss white in 17" with offset/ET 20 wrapped in Toyo Proxes T1Rs, 205 40s on the front and 215 40s on the rear. With ET20 the plan is to use 20mm spacers on the rear only, but will confirm this once they arrive as unfortunately there is a 6 - 8 week to have them cast.
Man that's a long time to wait for the wheels. Pretty cool that they're being specially made for you though and they'll look awesome on the car too. The 20mm spacer should be perfect. When I talked to Andy, he said the rear needs an offset of 0 to bring the wheel out to the edge of the arch so you also shouldn't need a spacer for the front.
mick 