10 Years of Dreaming.... 4 Years of Searching....

My name is Jason and I've finally purchased my dream car. I thought I better start this thread before I regret it so this is my very own 1990 Toyota SW20 MR2 GT. After what felt like eternity of wanting one of these cars from it being a complete unobtainable dream in my mind it has finally become reality...

My criteria for my MR2 was something I thought I would never find. It had to fit the following:

1. Factory Red - Crimson/Super Red didn't bother me.
2. Complete, clean and well looked after interior.
3. Exterior panels and body straight/untouched.
4. Close to standard/Lightly modified.

After looking at several cars over the years and talking to many potential sellers which never went through I was finally contacted by a man named Sean who replied to my Wanted ad on gumtree. Pretty much the rundown is, Original Owner in Japan did all the current modifications which include the usual, Gearknob, Steering wheel, Volk Racing Wheels, Exhaust and a Budget intake. Sean purchased the car off the original owner back in 1997 and had it personally imported late '99. Complied and Registered in early 2000 Sean used the car as a weekend driver over the last 20 years of ownership and only wound up a whopping 30,000kms on the car. The car's odometer was at 71,300kms when he sent over the photos and the story checked out. A couple of weeks later I flew down to Melbourne and drove it all the way back to Sydney without a single hiccup!
 

It looks great! Congrats. 👏👍👊

Really nice car with low kms. Keeping it stock as possible or do you have other plans?

Keen to see more pics too. can you do engine bay,boot and frunk pics, keen to see what a really clean car looks like.

Good job on your purchase, holding off for the right one is not a skill i posses. :D
 

Whore of Babylon
Really nice car with low kms. Keeping it stock as possible or do you have other plans?

Keen to see more pics too. can you do engine bay,boot and frunk pics, keen to see what a really clean car looks like.

Good job on your purchase, holding off for the right one is not a skill i posses. :D
 

 
Thank you! I definitely plan on modifying it but not much further than it currently already is. I tossed up the idea of keeping it as stock as possible but the fact that its already been modified kind of ruins that for me. My plan is to clean it up and tastefully modify it keeping it looking OEM+.

As for those photos if you keep your eye on this thread they will appear as I update it :)

Here we are 2 months into my ownership, in that time I've managed to finally get it registered in NSW and start to wrap my head around the car. One of the issues this car had was discoloured/rusty coolant which I was upset about when I saw the car in Melbourne as was told the coolant condition was fine before I flew down. However before I managed to set aside the time to flush the coolant myself the car decided to spring a water leak on me whilst I was on a day out with my girlfriend...

       
I managed to limp the car 60kms to a service station south of Sydney filling up water every 10 or so minutes. I hired a trailer after calling out in my car club for a tow and got the car home safely. The very next day I diagnosed the leak to be a failed 90 degree bend coming out of the water outlet. I took it to a local shop to get a new 90 degree elbow welded on instead of the original press fit silver soldered elbow and managed to snag the last water outlet O-Ring in Australia from my local Toyota dealer. I ended up snapping a bolt but with the help of a friend got it out and replaced them with some nice shiny allen key bolts finishing up the cooling system and fixing the leak. The next job was to flush the cooling system and get the coolant back up to spec but that was for another day....

The one job everyone told me was going to be absolute hell.... I finally got around to attempting to flush and bleed the coolant now that I fixed the water outlet. Now to make this long and frustrating story short it actually wasn't too difficult to bleed the system but I was having major issue's trying to drain all the coolant out of the car. Although I followed the repair manual I was only able to drain out on avg about 4.5L of the rusty coolant. I tried flushing the system 6 times in total before I just completely became unmotivated and gave up. First photo is the very first drain and the 2nd is the last time before I gave up.
 
 
So after only getting it slightly clearer and less gunky I eventually ended up sending the car over to Paden at Unique Automotive. He carried out not only the Coolant flush but did a normal service as well as replacing the fuel filter, gearbox oil and drive belts(I decided to get him to do everything I was going to because I was so over this car making no progress with cooling system). Paden ended up finding a partial blockage in the passenger side coolant pipe which runs under the car and managed to clear it after having the same issue as me only being able to drain about 4L of coolant. I was super impressed with his work and everything was done properly to my inspection and taken care of as if it was his own car. I highly recommend Paden for any jobs you need done on your MR2's if you decide not to take them on yourself. As you can see the Coolant is super green as it should be and a shiny new fuel filter in view as well.
 
I was given an Original "TEQ" Oil cap by my girlfriend which she found cleaning up her dads spares from his old Cressida and said I would put it on once the cooling system was sorted. It will match perfectly with my vision of this car with some other "TEQ" bits currently on their way in the mail!

Hi Jason,
Just a point about the coolant. Genuine Toyota Coolant is red.
Have seen Forum posts which indicate that green is not preferred of our engines.
Maybe an urban myth ?
Others may have first hand experience or verifiable reasons why green isn't good.
Nice car, but.

Peter
Hi Jason,
Just a point about the coolant. Genuine Toyota Coolant is red.
Have seen Forum posts which indicate that green is not preferred of our engines.
Maybe an urban myth ?
Others may have first hand experience or verifiable reasons why green isn't good.
Nice car, but.

You raise a very good point! I spent hours researching about what coolant to put in the car as I was originally going to put Genuine Toyota Red coolant in it as that's what I heard was to be used. After speaking to a radiator repair shop locally he actually told me that todays formula of green coolant(specifically mentioned penrite) it actually contains all the suitable additives for my car and he recommended I used it at a 38% mix because my cooling system is older and Toyota red tends to leak out of older coolant connections as opposed to the green.

I also found out in my research that Penrite/Nulon red coolant definitely won't work in my case as my 1990 model has the original copper core Toyota radiator in it still and those two brand Red coolants are not compatible with copper core radiators. Paden from unique said I could use either green or specifically the Toyota Red but again recommended green as it's an older car. That being said I'm more than comfortable and confident running the green in my car especially because I've matched the additives required to whats on the bottle.

Have a 1990 SW20 owned since 1994. Always used Red with no coolant/cooling issues at all. (touches wood)

Its gotta be OAT red coolant. 
 
I really don't think that a colour is going to make a difference between it leaking or not, but from all I read about our engines using OAT coolant is a must, the additives in the green corrode the internals otherwise. 
 
But a great find and a nice looking car.