Getting Back on the Road

[Portgordon]

My 93 MR2 has been off the road for a few years now while I worked on (or didn’t) a few areas and I am now looking to return it to the road as a daily driver. But with the car being SORN I’m now back in the situation where getting work done on the car is all the more complicated. I’ve reached out to a local autobody shop to see if they think they would be able to assist based on pictures and descriptions initially, even just to give me an idea of what is required to be done, versus nice to have so I can budget, but have yet to hear back.


•Rust (bodywork)
As in the pictures below I have some serious rust in my rear! Behind the rear wheel arches / inside the boot well - I understand that this becomes a lot more accessible when the rear bumper is removed and can be cut out / repaired and welded(?) - is that normally a significant and costly repair? I imagine an MOT would fail for rust of this kind?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2jsmhtdnlj...ion.jpeg?raw=1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1cnw0zpbfp...ust.jpeg?raw=1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dhqzat4mhj...st2.jpeg?raw=1

•Mechanicals
As in the pictures below many of the mechanics around the wheels / suspension / stability are quite rusted and bushes appear visibly worn. Similar to above I would want to have this replaced before getting back on the road and again would imagine it would fail an MOT?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4mm0cbldek...orn.jpeg?raw=1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4z5de0kd4d...rn2.jpeg?raw=1

•Engine
Engine-wise I believe it to be sound, but given the amount of time the car has been off the road I would be looking for a full service to be carried out. I’ve been starting it regularly, bringing it up to temp, maintaining the battery and it’s moved a few times, but nothing more than that.

•MOT
Is my best bet just to arrange an MOT and use that to get the list of work I need doing? On the basis that it is legal to drive the car without Tax and MOT to get it to an arranged test (although I’d still have to sort my insurance out). I am now quite a distance from the MOT tester I previously used (who I managed to get onto my side with following the non cat test correctly). I’m sure I could find another more local, but I’ll have to make sure I discuss the V6 element before hand so I can gauge how they react. Has anything changed in the MOT scene for conversions in the last few years?

•Wheels
The wheels are 3 piece split rims (Work equip 05). They were refurbished in 2009, however they (fronts only) have had issues holding pressure for quite some time (slow release over a couple of days) and one of the wheels in particular has a nasty crack on the outer rim (actually came back from the original refurb with a crack but I gave up trying to argue the case and the crack worsened over time).. Would this fail an MOT also? I am in two minds if I should keep these wheels / pay for another refurb or switch to an easier maintenance set. I feel like my next set of wheels need to be smaller so I can go back to higher profile tyres so this could be an opportunity to do that, again probably depends on the cost to refurb what is a very nice wheel versus replacing.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/t4zcmxaidc...ull.jpeg?raw=1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6clzvvsh2l...ack.jpeg?raw=1

•Paint and bodywork
The car was last sprayed just before I took ownership in 2008 however there are a number of areas which require work (bonnet stone chips, pealing lacquer on the roof, bubbling on the spoiler and better paint required around the sill repairs from a couple of years ago.
I have had a body kit for years that I have been considering fitting (front bumper and side skirts), the kit is second hand so fitting would depend on how much work is required. If I go for getting the kit fitted then I’d be just as well getting a full respray but then the cost starts to spiral. If I was getting a full respray then I would want to consider a colour change as I’ve always fancied a black MR2. Or a return to SMG. I’m in two minds now as to if I even want a body kit any more, I think I might have outgrown the thought.

So with a list of things like that I can’t get my head around what I need to do, versus what I want to do, how long it’s likely to take and how much it’ll cost. It’s difficult for me to get any local places to give me quotes because the cars off the road, and I don’t want to waste money shipping it somewhere that won’t be able to do it all. Obviously paint is the lowest priority and is the main nice to have as long as the rust repair doesn’t require cutting the exterior panels.

I’m based in Aberdeen. The company I’ve contacted after following them on Facebook for ages is Kintore Autobody (like the look of their work and they get good reviews on Pistonheads). I’d ship the car to Paul @ WoodSport in a heart beat, but of course he’s all famous now and chocka block :icon_cry:

The car is a 1993 MK2 (UK spec) with a 3VZ-FE conversation originally carried out by Woodsport in 2007 and then transplanted into the current vehicle in 2008. I should also mention that I started work on replacing the doors (the original reason I took it off the road for a while) which were also rusted. I have replaced the passenger side but still have to do the drivers side. The passenger door is back on, but the front wing / trim and headlight are still off and need to be refitted (I started working on any bit of rust I saw). So I’ll need to rebuild all that before I can do anything and then decide on timing for doing the other side (or…..get someone else with more spare time to do it).

Arch Rust repair:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zpdxpg5i8z...ust.jpeg?raw=1

Door Rust:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8wyf1a84dd...ust.jpeg?raw=1

Door Replacements In Progress:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ia1aulr1ar...ace.jpeg?raw=1


Former Glory:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/x1sdmtl0nl...ory.jpeg?raw=1

Just posting up here as a Brain dump really, looking for any guidance, words of wisdom or help anyone can offer!

Thanks for listening ��

[Eat a bag of...]

I can't see any of your pictures but the rust sounds pretty bad, you could end up blowing your whole budget on getting that done.

You could be better off finding an import shell on rehousing your v6 into that, theres a few of those that pop up now and then. There was a guy up your way trying to get rid of a white hardtop for a while, I can't remember it selling. It was up on imoc, probably still there if you search in the cars for sale section. He wanted £800 or so from memory.

[Portgordon]

Arrrggh, my external image links keep getting replaced a couple of minutes after savingwith invalid twobrutal URLs. I’ll just put them in as clickable links instead then...


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[thomp1983]

That rusts in the usual places really, it depends on how far forward from the rear wheel arch it goes, if it's spread round most of the inside of the top of the wheel arch then repairing it is difficult, if it's just the corners inside and out with the black vents in then it's not too bad to do

[jimi]

Hi Mark, been a while since I've seen you on the forums, how's tricks ?
If you right click on your image in your dropbox (online) and copy the "image location" then use that address post in your post it should display properly (use the url tab and deselect the "retrieve remote file ..." box

[Portgordon]

Hi Mark, been a while since I've seen you on the forums, how's tricks ?
If you right click on your image in your dropbox (online) and copy the "image location" then use that address post in your post it should display properly (use the url tab and deselect the "retrieve remote file ..." box

Cheers Jimi, it was the retrieve image check box I was missing (I wasn’t using the interface to post the pics, so it must default to trying to retrieve the images and fail) .

Things are fine thanks, it’s been a while indeed, but starting to get some focus back on the car now hopefully [emoji3] Hope you’re well.

[Portgordon]

I've gone back to standard clickable links as it doesn't seem to matter what options I choose or how I try to add images to the page, when I come back to the article a couple of hours later it has replaced all of my links with invalid references such as [ I m g ]http://www.twobrutal.co.uk/forum/images/recovered/2018/02/1.jpeg?raw=1[ / I m g ].

I checked in with the garage and they've received my email but need some time to digest it and come back to me with there thoughts. In the meantime I'll look at getting insurance etc.. and if I can put some bits back on.