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I have been wanting a quicker trackday car for a while and looking at getting something lightweight and fast, rear wheel drive, but it has to be a comfortable daily drive.
Lotus Elise ruled out as this has to be a daily drive. Honda s2000 is a contender.
But now I am thinking it would be great to get the new shape MR2 and put a better engine into it. I know some people have fitted the 190HP engine from the elise. And I have heard of one that has been supercharged. I think a good honda vtec engine like the B18C would be pretty good in one of these too.
I've never been a fan of the new MR2 (I have owned a couple of SW20s), but they can be made to look a bit meaner and more Hetro, and they are well balanced and light weight, so I thought, add an extra 60-100HP and you have a decent car.
Anyone know of any MR2s converted like this for sale anywhere?
i've had a mr2 roadster, didn't much of it until i actually had a test drive. They really handle well in corners, straight line speed not too bad considering they only have 138bhp.
Added bonus is the soft top for the summer. A big negative is the lack of space, not a problem for me, because it was a 2nd car.
As for honda VTEC engine conversion, i've only known of one mr2 doing this and it cost £10K+.
Cheaper to get a bolt on turbo kit 2nd had saw one, HASS kit going for as cheap as £1600, then ecu, etc.
Main issue with a B18C conversion is the engine/gearbox is fitted backwards to pretty much every other car out there (except the old mini ) which means more fabrication is require to get it to bolt in
(why Honda have their engine backwards to everyone else still confuses the hell out of me)
The engine out of a Corolla T-sport or Celica VVTLi 190/T-sport is naturally a good candidate, as bothe cars also had fittings for the 140 engine forund in the MR2, the 190bhp engine interchanges quite well as both engines use the same fittings, reducing any required fabrication work:
The other engine conversion you could look into which has been done by a few tuners in Japan, the USA and the UK is the Honda K series engine (from the Civic Type-R, etc). Rogue motorsport also had a couple floating round with Toyota (or Lexus??) V6 engines in which go quite well.
Both of these would enable you to keep the N/A feel to the car.
I used to love my MR2 but as a daily driver the lack of practicality did become a bit of a PITA.
Location: Markyate.owned:-wrx-sti5typeR-p1-uk22b-modded my00-now a classic wagon!
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I've had an Elise s1 as a daily drive, aside from the getting in and out issue and the roof taking a bit longer to put up and down the Elise is quite a good everyday car.
I've actually got an mr2 mk3 right now, and as an everyday car it's quite good. Obviously very limited space for bags etc, but it has aircon, and it's fairly easy to get in and out of, and the roof takes seconds instead of minutes. If you're after a track car then I'd probably plump for the Elise, and get a Honda conversion if you want serious track presence. I can't think of what mods you could do to an mr2 to make it 'look more hetro' whatever that's supposed to mean, as it looks good in stock. Any cosmetic mods would look pretty awful I'd say, and judging by the pic above I'm not wrong
i knew of a guy who got his unichippedf up here in Scotland at dastek headquartes up near Fife it was the celica 190 and it made something lame like 7 bhp extra for like 700 quid he eventually put nitrous on it.
he had the rolling road graph in his office up on the wall for all to see.so makes me think the 140 would be roughly the same.
my pal has the 140 celica and according to him makes the same power up until 6k rpm as the 190 and is the stronger engine as the 190 has alot of engine failures!!!!
he has nitrous too hes running a 40 bhp shot it feels like vtec on steroids lol.
Nah, in stock form the only main thing that goes wrong is the lift bolts that engage the high speed cam lobes. Simple fix, if somewhat labour intensive. Also banging into the wrong gear doesn't help matters, and is a costly mistake; easy to do thanks to the sometimes un-coperative gearbox. Although I have "heard" from Lotus fanatics that 2zz-GE equipped Elises can suffer oil surge when driven round race tracks. So maybe a baffed sump would be required on a trackday car.
Have however had a couple of standard 140s in with knocking bottoms ends. Actually one of them is still running like that, as the guy can't afford to rebuild it (it'll cost him even more when the rod flies out the block )
140s and 190s do use oil (especially the early 140s) ; and probably the main reason why I've seen the ones that are shagged; as the oil level at some point has been neglected in-between services (like alot of cars on the road tbh).
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Some people get by with a little understanding, some people get by with a whole lot more.
From my SW20 days (still have a soft spot for those cars) this guy has a very good rep and the workmanship is supposed to be of a super high standard: Paul Woods http://www.woodsport.org/
I've seen a camry V6 mk3 conversion - plus you can turbo/supercharge them if they dont deliver enough power - suggest you ask Paul about your options.
MR2 with honda engine/toyota engine+supercharger
) which means more fabrication is require to get it to bolt in
(it'll cost him even more when the rod flies out the block 
)
