Hi, new to the forum from Australia - PIC HEAVY

[bobbymitchell]

Hi, i'm Robert from Australia. I'm new to the forum but not so new to MR2's.

This whole story started about 5 years ago. One of my mates at the time bought an N/A Mk1b. I was envious and when i drove it, i instantly wanted one. A few months later i bought a Mk1b SC hardtop. I know what you're thinking, hardtop, SC, must have been an engine conversion. I'm not so sure.

I could be wrong, but a couple of things struck me as strange. The car was an 88 model which was factory imported to Australia. Toyota never imported SC MR2's to Australia but the car was supercharged with matching engine numbers and factory Toyota compliance plates. Furthermore, the roof had weld lines along both upper C pillars almost as though the roof had been replaced, not sure if this is normal? The guy i bought it off, who seemed to be some kind of an expert? thought maybe the car was like a one off produced by Toyota and brought into the country as maybe a test or demonstrator model. When i approached Toyota about the car, their records showed no sign of the car ever having been brought into the country, even though it clearly has a Toyota Australia compliance plate on it. Can anyone shed any light on this?
http://www.mr2mk1club.com/images/imported/2010/03/CopyofDSC00569-1.jpg
http://www.mr2mk1club.com/images/imported/2010/03/DSC00806-1.jpg

Anyway, so i had the car for about a year. I was using it for hillclimbing and motorkhanas along with general street use. I was mid-way through some rust work on it when i took it out for a drive, and the car met with some unfortunate circumstances.
http://www.mr2mk1club.com/images/imported/2010/03/DSC00912-1.jpg
http://www.mr2mk1club.com/images/imported/2010/03/DSC00911-1.jpg

So, after a long time reminiscing about how good MR2's are. I finally got sick of staring at my boxes of spare parts and decided to buy another one. This time i got a Mk1b SC sunroof, which had an engine conversion done on it. It has a later model 4agze out of an AE93 corolla, along with a liberty RS water to air setup. A few mild mods are already done including braided lines, Koni's, Eibach's, etc. Little things to save me money.
http://www.mr2mk1club.com/images/imported/2010/03/DSC00106-1.jpg

However, the paint is factory faded red and it was covered in hail dents, so after just one day of ownership, it went into the shed for a full respray and hasn't been driven since. That was 9 months ago.
http://www.mr2mk1club.com/images/imported/2010/03/DSC00144-1.jpg

So it is finally sprayed, but i'm still polishing and re-assembling. So it's probably about a month of being ready yet. Here are some progress pics.
http://www.mr2mk1club.com/images/imported/2010/03/DSC00210-1.jpg
http://www.mr2mk1club.com/images/imported/2010/03/DSC00211-1.jpg

So yeah, i'm really desperate to drive the car again. Plans for the future include more engine work, i wanna crack 200hp.

Thanks for reading guys, i tend to dribble on a bit. Hopefully i'll run into all of you on the forum at some stage.

[mr2mk1chick]

Hiya Bobby, and welcome along
G'day etc :wave:

your sc tin-top you had is a rarer model of sc but not unheard of over here. there are a few about. they came out of the factory like this, and were then imported into the uk (sc were never sold here)
SC's came in tin-top, sunroof and tbar models.
ouch! when i saw the pics! you nearly bent it in half! crikey! hope you came out better than the car.

nice project you have on the go now though. get a move on and get it doen so you can enjoy driving it again :+:
there are a few conversions like your here in the uk, but they are not that common.
many engine conversions over here from the normal 4age are the 3sgte conversions.

the sc models 4agze are getting less and less as times go on.

I had an SC and loved it :mrgreen: