Something a bit scary happened recently.
For the last 10 months my MR2 was kept in a rented lock-up garage, underneath an apartment block. Last week when I went back to the garage for the first time in about 5 days, I was shocked to discover that someone had successfully disengaged the lock on the garage door by destroying the key hole...fortunately the story doesn't get any worse than that...nothing was stolen or damaged in my garage, thank god!! My only explanation is that someone else from the apartment complex must have entered the garage area and (unknowingly) interrupted the thieves-to-be, at exactly the right moment before they had a chance to steal or damage anything! There is no CCTV in the complex, so I'll never know what really happened, and I guess it doesn't matter anymore. Needless to say I've moved my car and tools out of that garage immediately, in case the thieves intend to try again.
Now for a change of subject.
As I was discussing in this thread last year, I am going to be re-doing my A2W intercooler setup, and replacing my intake manifold/plenum with a larger aftermarket item at the same time. I've committed to this idea, I just have to decide how soon to do it. I may do some of the work myself, but MRC will certainly be involved.
In the recent summer heat, my boot-mounted A2W barrel (and everything else in the boot) has been getting excessively hot, and wreaking havoc with my ECU which is less than a foot away from the hot side of the barrel. To make things worse, the boot is black, and so is the ECU. My A2W system also heat-soaks badly when the car is idling, because the two small heat exchangers are located in the hot engine bay.
So, the heat exchangers will be removed from the engine bay and replaced with a single front-mount heat exchanger, as I should have done the first time. I'll also remove the PWR intercooler barrel from the boot and patch up the holes in the boot/firewall. I've already obtained a replacement boot carpet lining. I'll buy a different A2W intercooler core for the engine bay, probably FrozenBoost like stuka's or dasic1's, and I'll replace the weak Bosch water pump with a Johnson pump.
For the intake plenum, I'll be using one of the RacerX items from the US. It will be a full replacement intake manifold (not a re-plenum), with a phenolic spacer to replace the TVIS. I'll probably get a side-feed plenum because that works best with a A2W intercooler core on the left of the engine bay. The RacerX centre-feed plenums look amazing though, and I wouldn't have to modify the throttle cable if I went centre-feed. I haven't decided which throttle body I'll use, if I change it at all (currently stock gen 2 TB).
When my car was tuned for 267rwkw, the intake temperatures placed a limit on the safe combination of ignition advance and boost, and therefore limited the power. Also, in hindsight the stock intake plenum would have been a bottle-neck at the top end, and my engine deserves an aftermarket plenum when everything else in the engine bay has already been modified. I anticipate a power gain of at least 20kw (maybe less, probably more) with the improved A2W intercooler setup and bigger plenum.