Hi Joe.
Ive not done this power steer to manual conversion.  I do grease my manual box from time to time and it only requires a mere smear of a quite light grease.   Each time I open it again it is still perfectly moist.
I would NOT go putting too much grease in there in case it causes a hydraulic lock as it migrates and accumulates one place or another.
I believe the difference in lock to lock of the manual at 3.7 turns to the power at 3.1 is quite noticeable.
Rebuilding your power box and deleting all the power stuff sounds a good idea.
I would be very wary of any quick ratio pinions !!  I can NOT see how they can possibly work .
All the best with it and keep us posted.
Sorry you wont be at MTC.

I gave up on the idea of doing the conversion a while ago. It's too much work, and it's been far too long since I've driven anything other than the Corolla, and I miss the noise dearly.
The mods list I previously listed will still happen eventually, but most likely to a devoted track car rather than this one, which is too clean to ruin for track use.
 
Cheers for the heads up!

More news on the ongoing "daily driver" project.
I've had the car for nearly a year now, and have spent more time with it off the road than on it, which is far from ideal.
That said, I did have some progressions!
The new turbo arrived just before Christmas, as did a set of Kinugawa braided oil lines for the turbo.
Upon arrival, I learned that I had, in fact, ordered a set suited for the Gen 3 3S-GTE, rather than the Gen 2. The line sets are almost identical, except for the banjo bolt for the oil feed, which is an M18 on the Gen 2, and an M12 on the Gen 3.
  
a couple of AN fittings later and I have a nice 90 degree bend set up for the oil feed... only cost me another $25 or so...
So then I attached the lines, manifold and dump to the turbo, tensioned it all up and lobbed it back into the car.
 
It's back in now, but with one stud not in properly, since the thread in the head is stripped (will helicoil it at some point.
When I connected all the lines back up, I found ANOTHER problem with the braided lines.
The oil return is more than long enough to make it down to the sump, but it's designed to connect to a rubber hose that then connects to the stock drain bung in the sump itself. Unfortunately, using what was sent makes the oil drain either hit the dump pipe, or, if I made a bracket to make the line go around the dump, the line would dip below the level of the drain bung into the sump. Neither of these is ideal, so to fix this issue, I'm going to need to find a way of connecting the thread for the sump bung to the aluminium thread on the braided line fitting.
 
I've been told braising it could work, but I'm not willing to test myself on my ONLY fitting, so I'll be getting that done professionally at some point in the near future.
I also swapped my XSPower intercooler and piping for ZMIT's stock cooler and piping, since he was after an upgrade and I'll be getting a W2A setup sometime in the next few months.
That said, that oil drain and some fresh engine oil are the only things stopping the car from starting now!
Unfortunately, starting is all it'll do til there's a steering rack in the car.
I took my busted rack out and sent it off to a mate of mine to rebuild, only for him to tell me it'd be cheaper to get another rack and rebuild that than use the one I have. There's an ad in WTB for one, please help, it's the only part I need to get the front end done now </3
I will be following Stuka's (and others) advice and de-powering a P/S rack and removing the pump, reservior and ECU, etc to save some weight, and keep the feel I'm after.
In the spare time, I also fitted some new rotors and pads to the front, and wwhen I get around to it, i'll do the same on the rear.
Dimpled/slotted front rotors, stock rears with QFM A1RM pads all round! I'm looking forward to being able to stop!


And finally, I pulled the front bar off to get a closer look at a few things. I need to fix a foglight mounting point (on the foglight itself. The plastic screwhole is broken), I removed the air condenser, and found that my side indicators are a bit broken. The drivers side is sikaflexxed in there, and won't come out at all...
 
Also found that the front end has had a small bingle and the paint around the end of the chassis rails has flaked and aa bit of surface rust has appeared, so I linished that up, primed and painted it black.
 
And then I went hunting for a heat exchanger for the soon-to-be charge cooler!
With the air condenser removed, there's HEAPS of space for one now, and I found that a stock radiator from a Civic actually fits nicely. and it cost next to nothing because i bought it from a wrecker!
 
fun fact: you can buy a 1MZ from wreckers for ~$300. Maybe I'll do a Knightrous and V6 an AW as a project once this is a little more reliable...
There will be air con in the car eventually, but it can wait for now. Getting it running is more important.

Aside from the oil return fitting issue and waiting on a steering rack and rebuild following, the car is nearly ready to move again! Maybe only another month or so til it starts!
 
As always, please excuse the photo quality. I am no photographer, and never check to make sure they're even in focus. That's the missus job :P

FINALLY an update that isn't just more of the same!
 
Since my last post, I've had that fitting sorted, and the turbo oil drain is done, all coolant lines and oil lines are connected and the engine starts and runs!
The car is STILL leaking oil out of somewhere, but I have a sneaking suspicion it's coming from the intake plenum, where there could be a large amount of oil from when the turbo oil seals blew, and sent it all through the intake.
If I had a leak where the intake manifold joined with the head, and there was a pool of oil in there, would that leak out? It's the only reasonable explanation I can think of as to why oil would leak from an engine that has had all the oil drained out of it... The leak is definitely coming from above the head on the intake side, so I'm stumped if it isn't that.
If it is, the intake plenum will be coming off soon enough when I replace it with the Celica one anyway, so no big loss there.
 
Chuck us your ideas guys, I'm not too sure what to think of that.
 
 
Anyway, new turbo is in, engine is running and the bay is now properly together and ready to drive.

 
Almost looks stock, huh?
 
So the back end of the car is on the ground now, and we're just waiting on a steering rack rebuild (which should be done this coming week) to get the whole car back on the ground and driving again!
 

 
 
I also made up some brackets out of 2mm sheet steel to mount my Civic radiator heat exchanger for the charge cooler, since I had nothing better to do this week. I had to flip the core 180 degrees since the outlets fould on the front bar and I couldn't mount it, but one of the outlets will now stick out of the mount of the bar a little for that full-on street cred

 
 
But the front bar is on again, and the only thing left to fix is the passenger side foglight, whose plastic mounting tabs are broken. I'd assume it's a fairly common issue, anyone else got ideas on a fix that won't cost the earth?
 
 
 
 
So the car is less than a week from driving again! I have to say it's been a VERY long time since I've been able to drive my own car and I'm looking forward to it quite a bit.
 
As long as nothing else breaks, I'll be making it to Mallala on the 9th of April for a track day to see exactly how bad the stock intercooler is before I start serious work on Charge-cooling this.
 
Hope the next update is a positive one!
 
 
 

Yet ANOTHER update!
 
Car is on the ground and registered!
I've driven it around and it's holding boost nicely and not leaking anything.
I have my car back!
 
An interesting thing I noticed about the steering rack was that it was rebuilt normally, rather than having the internal seals removed, and it was suggested that I leave my P/S reservoir in and make a closed loop between the rack and the reservoir. I poured what fluid I had left in and purged the system and took it for a spin
I've done this and the feel is pretty good! The added bonus being that I could add the power steering pump back in and reconnect the lines and it'd have power steering again (if the mood strikes me...)
 
Looking forward to making it to Mallala next month for a practice day!

Good progress Joe!

Took the MR2 to the track on the weekend!
 
It was a mildly successful day overall.
I learned a bit about how the car handles high stress and now know what needs to be done before the 30th of April (the next track day).
In the second lap of my first sessions I split an intercooler hose, taking me off the track immediately.
Borrowed a friends car to get a replacement (thanks Mike!) and get back to the track.
Missed 2 more sessions, but managed to get the car back out there.
It proceeded to overboost, overfuel and heat became an issue. The wheels I'm using for the track have very little airflow, so the brakes cooked pretty quickly, and the stock intercooler works better as an interwarmer after about 4 laps, so charge cooling has to be done fairly soon.
Managed ~1:30 around the track, so there's HEAPS of room for improvement, but it's a start.
 
The next day, I started the car, and the turbo manifold gasket was leaking, so I pulled the piping off and retorqued everything once again, and hit the brake pads with a belt sander to remove some of the glazing. The pedal feel is still really wooden, so it looks like I'll have to check the rotors for glazing too.
 
Overall, the car still runs, and managed to survive the day, so I'm happy.
 
The only things I need to do to it now are to add a bleed valve and fuel pressure reg and it should be ready for track day #2!

Here's my last session out, until the GoPro ran out of space to record:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhY3jNnsKDc

Beautiful shot with the flames out the back joe. Good times to mate, good to see ur cars running finally ☺

Sent from my SM-G800Y using Tapatalk

Knock knock.
Whose there?
Rod Bearings!

 
Turns out I had not a spun bearing, but a broken one, and all of them were worn out.
The knock was not a nice noise to hear...
 
I went over the paperwork for the rebuild back in '06 and found that while forged rods and pistons had been used, and the crank had been ground 0.25, they used regular old oversized bearings...


Fortunately, ZMIT happened to have a spare set of ACL Race bearings that he didn't need, so I swapped my blown CT20B for them so he can fix his laggy turbo with an appropriate rear housing.
 
Bearings took a couple of hours to replace with the engine in the car, since I had no interest in removing it.
The crank was completely undamaged! Which saved me both a lot of time and money.
 
While the car was in the air, I finally decided to get a legal exhaust for the car, since it was still catless, and I don't fancy those fines much...
So I bought a couple of meters of stainless pipe, a 3" cat high flow cat, a 3" flex joint, and a couple of v-bands.
Because why be conservative and only chuck a cat in there when you can replace the WHOLE exhaust?
Full stainless is cool and the 3 bolts on the bottom of the dump were my least favourite part of removing the turbo and manifold, so v-band will make it MUCH easier...
So I chopped the flange off of my Berk dump and welded a v-band onto there, and started on the b-pipe.

 
I got this far before I ran out of shielding gas...
I'm out of work right now, so I can't go buy more until I find a job :(


I also replace the cam cover gasket, fixing the last oil leak I'm aware of in this engine, and cleaned the cam cover at the same time

Fancy
 
I also got my wheels back from the powder coaters aaaaages ago, so I put them back together and test fitted them on the car
 
The centers

 
Got offset? Always wanted to put the barrels on backwards, so I finally got the opportunity while they were in pieces

 
and fitted to the car...

 
Turns out the spokes hit the brake calipers....
I bought these off of the forum, and the sample photo was of them on an SW20 and they don't fit >.>
 
Only options were to grind the calipers back a little (and remove my yellow paint), or spacers...
 
So a full set of slip-on spacers it is!
They're waiting to go on now, but the wheels still leak air with tyres fitted through the 30 bolts holding them together...
Anyone got any hints on sealing 3-piece wheels? It's one of the 3 things holding the car off the road (work notwithstanding)
 
Hoping to get something soon so I can finish the car and get it prepped for MTC17 guys!
 

Go buy a tube of sikaflex to seal the wheels. We used the grey stuff last night. you must always seal 3 piece rims. Run a bead in the seam then run your finger along to smooth it out. You dont need to take the bolts out.