The Spyder has been a bit neglected lately, so after I finished up with the M Coupe, in came the MR2. I can really only deal with one car in my two car garage at a time, just so I have enough space to work on removed parts, plus I still have a BMW S50US on a stand.
I haven’t been driving the Spyder since it developed a coolant leak during the drive back from South Carolina. I’m pretty sure I’ve narrowed it down to the rubber plugs on the left side of the head. There is one large one and two smaller ones that used to run to the throttle body. It also has a leaky brake booster, probably from a combination of age and it seeing boost from the supercharger. I’ve had a new booster sitting in the box for a while, just waiting to go in.
Another issue is the battery. I’m running a very small Deka battery, too small to reliably turn over a high compression and supercharged engine. I also think it was getting way too much heat in its current location on the rear cross-member. So, I plan to relocate a larger battery to the cubby area behind the passenger seat.
And finally I’ve removed the soft-top in anticipation for a roll-bar install. The top came out relatively easy, the sound deadening, not so much. I first tried a heat gun, but that just resulted in liquid tar goo going everywhere. I then got a bunch of “canned air” dusters from Wal-Mart, turning them upside down to freeze off the mat.
While removing items from the back of the car, I noticed a rattling coming from the resonator. This is the tell tale sign of overheated fiberglass filling, so I cut open the resonator to confirm my suspicions. Sure enough, there were a lot of chunks of solid melted glass. This exhaust gets hot… hot enough to melt fiberglass. So now I need to get either some ceramic filling or stainless steel shavings to repack the resonator and weld it shut.
EDIT: See this post for the update on the exhaust.
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