Seeing as there's a general interest in old cars it seems, here's my MR2! This is all copied over from the MR2 forums so please excuse any formatting oddities. I'll include some dates so it makes sense.
After someone rear ended my Rev4 in September (2015), I was in the market for another MR2. As I had owned my Rev4 for nearly 4 years, I knew my way around it pretty well and it had served me very well too, so it made sense to get another one. The fact that they are decent cars helps too :laughing . Or perhaps it's Stockholm Syndrome...
October 2014
Anyway, lets start with a few pictures of the Rev4:
As it was when I got it back from the breakers yard:
And off it went for it's good mechanical bits to find homes in MR2 Championship cars:
The damage looks light on the face of it, but the chassis is slightly twisted as one of the T Bar's doesn't fit very well anymore, and the rear suspension is badly out of alignment which suggests that theres a fair amount of damage underneath.
Once the insurer had paid out, I could only keep the hire car (Skoda Octavia diesel barge… horrible thing) for up to 7 days. This was a bit of an issue as I had a one week buying window - in the ~8 weeks between the incident and getting paid I had seen several potential candidates come and go, as well as a few very dry weeks. In the end it came down to 4 cars, one of which was sold by time I could go and see it, one I could put my hand through the hole in the rear arch, another that was grossly overpriced and the seller would not budge, and the car I ended up buying.
So, here it is. 90 something thousand miles on the clock, pretty well looked after but with a couple of cosmetic things that need sorting. In hindsight I would have been nice to have been able to wait another week to see if anything else came up just for comparison sakes, but I'm happy with it.
The day I got it home (image quality will improve!)
It's always the long drive home where you start to uncover more things that are not quite right, or completely broken - this was no exception. The central locking didn't work (passenger side does not lock or unlock unless you lock it manually at the passenger door). There was a slight knock from the rear of the car which I put down to droplinks - easy to replace, so I wasn't too worried. The car otherwise drove fine so it couldn't have been anything catastrophic. Digging a little deeper once I got it home, the exhaust mount on the rear sub frame was broken, and it only had one bolt holding the downpipe to the manifold - that could also be a cause of the noise. Other than that, it all seemed OK.
So, with the fix-it list growing, I did the sensible thing of cleaning it and taking it out on wet, muddy back roads to get some better photos:
Love the Rev5 side profile.
After someone rear ended my Rev4 in September (2015), I was in the market for another MR2. As I had owned my Rev4 for nearly 4 years, I knew my way around it pretty well and it had served me very well too, so it made sense to get another one. The fact that they are decent cars helps too :laughing . Or perhaps it's Stockholm Syndrome...
October 2014
Anyway, lets start with a few pictures of the Rev4:
As it was when I got it back from the breakers yard:
And off it went for it's good mechanical bits to find homes in MR2 Championship cars:
The damage looks light on the face of it, but the chassis is slightly twisted as one of the T Bar's doesn't fit very well anymore, and the rear suspension is badly out of alignment which suggests that theres a fair amount of damage underneath.
Once the insurer had paid out, I could only keep the hire car (Skoda Octavia diesel barge… horrible thing) for up to 7 days. This was a bit of an issue as I had a one week buying window - in the ~8 weeks between the incident and getting paid I had seen several potential candidates come and go, as well as a few very dry weeks. In the end it came down to 4 cars, one of which was sold by time I could go and see it, one I could put my hand through the hole in the rear arch, another that was grossly overpriced and the seller would not budge, and the car I ended up buying.
So, here it is. 90 something thousand miles on the clock, pretty well looked after but with a couple of cosmetic things that need sorting. In hindsight I would have been nice to have been able to wait another week to see if anything else came up just for comparison sakes, but I'm happy with it.
The day I got it home (image quality will improve!)
It's always the long drive home where you start to uncover more things that are not quite right, or completely broken - this was no exception. The central locking didn't work (passenger side does not lock or unlock unless you lock it manually at the passenger door). There was a slight knock from the rear of the car which I put down to droplinks - easy to replace, so I wasn't too worried. The car otherwise drove fine so it couldn't have been anything catastrophic. Digging a little deeper once I got it home, the exhaust mount on the rear sub frame was broken, and it only had one bolt holding the downpipe to the manifold - that could also be a cause of the noise. Other than that, it all seemed OK.
So, with the fix-it list growing, I did the sensible thing of cleaning it and taking it out on wet, muddy back roads to get some better photos:
Love the Rev5 side profile.