Nik_Lee
Wow, you have had a bit going on haven't you, its nice to see that those wheels ended coming up so nicely in the end though, oh and how did the bolts come up what did you do with them in the end?
Have you thought about a slightly lower ride height for your car? if you went the coilover route and went with KW coilovers you could also fit their HLS which gives you up to 45mm of lift to negotiate steep access areas.

 
Been very busy since my last update and the car is never done :p I cleaned the bolts with vinegar and polish, I was going to replace some but couldn't source anything other than genuine RAYS at $4 a bolt or crappy colored eBay ones. I thought it best to use the current ones as they weren't too bad but one day they'll need replacing as you suggested
Looking to get Eibach Pro springs at some point with Koni's but money is depleting haha I've tried coil overs before and been burnt so I'm not too inclined to go back down that route sadly. 
 

Falcon
You have been busy. And congratulations !!
Some sod has pinched all your photos ?  Nice looking car till that happened. Thanks for the story.
Nik Lee. What is this New Toy you speak about ?? Do tell. Photos.

Thank you. The photos seem to remain for me although when I use tapatalk they sometimes bug out. Welcome for the story everyone loves a good one :p 

Right so those of you who've ventured to the cooling systems thread will have worked out the rather hilarious yet sad situation I found myself in over the past 2 weeks. 
 
I bought a $20 temp sensor off eBay to replace the stock one. Bled the car like 7 or 8 times all resulting in overheat on the guage. Turns out sensor was ****ed as the second I put the stock one back in we were smooth sailing again. It did cause mass frustration and I did purchase a neat bleeding set up for my aftermarket radiator:




 
Got the idea off Robk and now its spill free. Before I had to unscrew plug then screw it back in with coolant going everywhere. Now I have a 70cm coolant hose thats permanently attached to radiator and hides under garnish. When bleeding I take hose, take cap off, attach inspection hose and when coolant is at the right level I bring hose down to that level take inspection hose off and cap it off. It's a brilliant system. 
 
While I was waiting for coolant to settle I put some stickers on:

 
Got all my coolant together for a laugh:

 
And found some toblerones:

 

It's great if you have an upgraded radiator that only use plugs. The stock cooling system uses a tap similar to the one at the heater bleed point. I'd reccomend this as a cheapish solution only costing about $60 worth of parts and means you don't really have to get coolant all over your hands. 

Moved into a new place over the past few weeks and am back in Newcastle now. I have a double lock up garage which means I've got much more space to store my spares:


 
So naturally I'm now more inclined to fix things seeing as I don't have to take my tools up and down stairs into a public garage. I am fixing the revering lights as they've been on the blink for a year. I took the plug off the reverse switch, bridged it and lights were fine so it's the switch. A new one is on the way from Amayama. 
 
In going through some of my spares I found many things I didn't know I had such as a Traction Control Throttle Body but also a Rev3+ Gear shifter (Something I've been trying to buy for a while without knowing I had one). When I found it, it was a little worse for ware:

 
So I dissembled it, cleaned the grease and human slime out of it, wire wheeled the rust away and re-painted it with some black rust converter paint I had lieing around and it came up awesome:




 
 

Bit the bullet today and installed the CT20b that I've had lieing around in what feels like forever. I had 5 mates come around to help out for what was a long and painful day. The casualties were the rubber oil outlet pipe to the sump that was vulcanised and just fell to pieces, my BOV which has been wobbling around and we found out that the installer stripped the threads on the flange (welded to pipe) that it screws to and the turbo stay which no longer bolts to the turbo. 

As you can see and know this was a pain to get at and the bolts to the manifold were a pain. Uni-joints saved the day and the hardest bolt was the damn oil supply banjo which took the power of zeus to move and was bending my 300mm snap on breaker bar doing it. The dump pipe bolts were aweful as they needed a chopped 14mm open ender to get on but happily I can say its bolted on.

CT20b Turbo Stay on a Gen2 engine just doesn't line up. I also discovered that the CT26 never had the M12 bolt in there anyway so like its predecessor the CT20b will have to rest on the stay. The exhaust has support and advisors on the internet have said that its fine to have it like this. As Toyota no longer sell the part if I can't find some from wreckers I'll just leave it as it is. 

And the old CT26 finally removed:

After that day, this is sorely needed:

sr2223
Where did you get the fittings for your aftermarket radiator, would you happen to have a link to which fittings you bought I would love to run a similar set up.

I got all my fittings from RaceWorks at AutoOne in Castle Hill NSW. Any auto store that stocks AN fittings should be able to sort you out. 
The adapter from the Fenix Radiator to AN was a male 1/4" NPT to male -6 AN fitting (https://www.raceworks.com.au/fittings/adapters/bsp-tapered-an-to-bspt-adaptors/) and then from there it's:
- 90 degree female -6 to 5/16" barb (https://www.raceworks.com.au/fittings/barb/female-an-to-barb/)
- 70cm of -6 hose (https://www.raceworks.com.au/fuel/e85-hose/push-lok-hose/)
- 5/16" barb to -6 male (https://www.raceworks.com.au/fittings/barb/an-flare-to-barb/)
- -6 female cap (https://www.raceworks.com.au/fittings/flare-cap/)
Thats it for the permanent set up. I also have another female -6 to 5/16" barb that I replace the cap with when bleeding and attach clear tubing to it to bleed easily. You'll also need thread tape for the NPT fitting because it's an NPT fitting. 

Another larger update with some emotional ups and downs. I guess we don't expect anything less with these cars. So after the turbo upgrade I needed a new head unit as the old one was dieing and couldn't get FM radio anymore. I gave it away but later found out it was just dodgey solder behind it. Nevertheless I upgraded to a Sony AX-100 unit with Android Auto, the unit is compact and intuitive to use and the android auto makes driving so much easier with the google assistant. Whilst I was doing the swap I couldn't help but noticing a lot of mystery wire so what was a simple radio install turned into a full cabin strip to get rid of the excess wiring. I also discovered that my rear speakers were never hooked up so I was able to fix that too. I think at some stage the car has had serious sound gear in it and just been ripped out without care or skill. 



But in the end it all worked out

 
I took the car to the Newcastle All Japan day as organised by the same people who do Toyota Nationals. Despite not great organising we managed to park some MR2's together and the all looked great!



 
The car was running great UNTILL! MR2 Nationals. Sadly despite a great event full of epic cars, great people and amazing cars my car was overheating on the way down. The car would raise temperature momentarily then reduce back down to normal for the 3 hour drive to Canberra. I had no idea what could possibly be going on and thought I must have had a coolant leak from the thermostat housing as thats the only place I could see water droplets. It did kind of put a downer on the weekend as we left early during the last night so the car could have a cool run home. Fortunately there were no issues on the way home but further testing was needed. 
 














 
After the event I ran compression testing and cyl 1 was 180 psi and cyl 2 was 120 psi but when I cranked the engine for cyl 2, water vapor shot out of cyl 1. I presurised the cooling system to 0.9 bar and stuck my endoscope into the bore and sure enough coolant was leaking into the bore. Insert many sad emotions here. I thus relegated the car to the shed for 4 months while I waited for my mechanic to arrange some time to fix the car, I began to order some parts as we agreed that we would take the engine out for the next head gasket job. Initially I was going to put an MLS gasket on

But later decided against it because I wasn't machining the head or the block and only hand skimming. I had also heard horror stories of people who didn't properly skim for MLS and had it leak again so I ordered a stock gasket. I've heard the stock gasket can take well to extra boost (16psi) so I wasn't stressed about using an inferior gasket. I also heard from Advanced Motor Mechanics (people who builts Robk's car) that Cometic probably shouldn't be used and use HKS if anything. With HKS not being available and me not machining block or head I decided to go stock. 

While parts were still coming I took Jess's AW11 to MCM Nationals for her and was a pretty cool car to drive. Having the supercharger is a weird concept but works well when you need it

 
While the car was off the road I attempted to fix the sunroof on the car as it's never worked. I found out that the sunroof is a cheap POS that should never have been put on the car. A cast aluminium bracket snapped on both sides and couldn't be welded as the heat would crack the glass and without a very expensive TIG you risk melting the thing and not being able to put it back on ever again or not aligned. I used JB weld and stainless steel wire but the brackets still snapped so I forced it into place, cut the wires to the motor and will sikaflex it in later so its a permanent glass roof. 

 
Engine out time and new head gasket time. I took the opportunity to replace the HFHOE (HFH done 10,000k's ago) and some clamps and o'rings on the water pipes. I also was able to see where the old head gasket had failed 
 





 
Finally got her all back together. The engine out took 6 hours, the engine assembly took 4 and back in took 5 hours so it wasn't too bad. The engine now has ARP studs to hold that stock gasket right down to the block. There was no damage to the bore and was a relatively easy experience with the assistance of my mechanic mate who had all the right tools and the hoist was so unbelievably amazing to have. 
 
Glad to say I'm back on the road now

Yep AX100 is discontinued but I really wanted the knob, it's impossible to find an android auto unit with a knob on the current market so I picked mine up off gumtree for $300. Microphone I mounted under the top right windscreen trim piece. 

It comes with a clip so you can put it on a sunvisor but if you take it apart the ball end of the mic fits neatly under the trim. Sadly the car is often too loud with engine or wind noise for the google assistant to work 100% but it's not too bad.