(Please welcome our newest COAL series author, James Pastor) A couple of years ago, when my son was about 13, I noticed his addiction to video games was getting intense. He enjoyed a variety of video games, but especially a racing one where the gamer selected the car and its modifications prior to each race. Apparently automatic transmissions are popular.
As a little boy, I built model cars, hundreds and hundreds of them. When I was a teenager, about my son’s age, Pac Man and Asteroids intrigued some of my peers, but you needed a stack of quarters and a ride to the arcade. A lot of us worked on real cars in High School auto shop class, and our modifications were not always well-thought out, nor helpful – but at least they were not virtual!
I decided that a father/son project could get him out into the garage and we could spend more time together.
I scanned the Craigslist ‘autos for sale’ section, knowing I didn’t have much of a budget. I came across a rather ambiguous ad, with no photo, it read: “93 MR2 bad engine, no key, $1500.” That one would be sitting a while, I thought. In our visual society today, pictures are crucial, so this car would probably be sitting for even longer. Sitting for a while translates into the price going down, maybe even down into triple digits, which would be in our price range!
The second generation MR2 was slightly larger than the first gen (1984-1989 car), but was a similar car yet more rounded and less angular. It’s exterior dimensions were virtually identical to the Ferrari 308. Toyota offered Ferrari-like handling and sportiness mixed with Toyota reliability and price. It was a fairly popular car, but this version was only on sale in the US from 1991-1995. I was not a huge seller, and Toyota probably lost some sales to Pontiac’s Fiero.
When we arrived, the white car looked gray, and sat with a couple flat tires and piles of leaves all over it. The seller grunted and motioned more than verbalized, so I could get no further information about the “bad engine” mentioned in his terse ad. A quick glance through the filthy window (and purple window-tint) revealed an interior full of empty fast-food containers, but a stick, a five speed manual transmission!
$800 plus a tow later and the little Japanese import was in my garage. A quick trip to the Toyota Dealer and $12 and we had a key! My son liked “exploring” this car. It held many firsts for him: He had never been in anything but a front-engined car, he had never been in a car equipped with T tops, and he loved turning lights on and off, because he had never been in a car with pop-up headlights. We did a lot of vacuuming and washing, but when we tried to start it, we had no crank, nor start.
These cars are also very low. It is impossible to get underneath them without jacking them up. We found a spot on the rear crossmember and barely slid the floor jack under and raised it. After we shoved ramps under the tires I slid under to discover a hole in engine block.
So the engine was bad, really bad. A quick Google search revealed that a quarter million or so Toyota Celicas used the exact same engine, so one was located in a salvage yard a few towns over. Over the course of a couple weeks, we removed the drivetrain. Like an old-school Beetle, it is easiest to raise the body and leave the heavy parts where they are. We swapped in a mystery Celica Engine of unknown provenance, and it fired right up!
We learned that the temperature gauge on the dash was kaput, and speculated that the engine might have survived if the driver had known how hot it was, or could see steam ahead or could have even whiffed burnt engine, again, ahead of him or her.
We buffed it out and waxed it and threw on some cheap tires. We splurged and added an aftermarket temperature gauge too. It was such a fun little car to drive. After some practice, my son learned to “drive a stick”. It was the first manual-transmission car he ever drove.
After we were done fixing it up, a local kid three or four years ahead of my son saw it at the end of our driveway with a FOR SALE sign on it. $1800 later, he was driving away with a smile on his face and the sound of grinding gears in his ears.
What a great father son story. Why didn’t your son keep the car? What does he drive now? Does he still drive a manual transmission?
Wow, this was the kind of thing I had always wished my Dad would have done when I was your son’s age. What a great project!
Thanks for an excellent story, and it’s nice to hear you and your son had such a great time with this project. Sounds like a wonderful experience all around. It’s a shame these cars didn’t sell better at the time, but they seemed to get caught in the same rising insurance rate/price increase trap that nailed a lot of Japanese performance cars in the 90s. They are a blast to drive, though.
I was on a forum a couple of years a go when a guy asked the question about which sports car should he get for an extended stay in Italy. He said he had some money to spend but no a whole lot. He said no to the Miata right away, I suggested this basic 2nd gen MR2 as it would be very reliable. He laughed that off saying it was too ugly. I guess he was figuring on getting a European car like an Aston Martin or Ferrari cheap. I wonder how that worked out for him.
Great story btw!
Sounds like a wonderful experience for a father and a son. Too bad you didn’t keep it.
Wow, cool story. You should have taken an epic road trip together before selling it.
Nice that your son got interested in it. I’ve had no luck getting my son interested in what we call “the physical world”, I’ve had much better luck with my daughter, who helps me out with the VW Beetle occasionally.
As the father of two young sons, the way you phrased the comment about your son struck fear into my heart.
Our 3 yr old loves nature, the beach, trains, ferries – but stick an ipad in front of him and he’s mesmerised and doesn’t want to give it up for anything – even if he’s watching toy infomercials on youtube.
Yup, you can talk to any boy’s father and get the same answer. They’re almost all like that.
For us camping is a good solution. A few days in the wilderness with no devices of any kind is a great break for everyone. Photo below in Algonquin park when he was 11. And our son (who is 16 now) is spending all of July and August as a camp counselor, he turns in his devices when he arrives and gets them back for his day off.
He enjoys these activities just fine, and when they’re over we have a chat about noticing how his interaction with other people and his environment change when he’s not constantly on a device. It hasn’t stuck yet, but there’s time.
That being said my boy is a great kid, God knows things could be worse.
Just expose your son to as much “real” stuff as you can, and support any interest he shows.
So true — we go camping several times a year with our kids as well, for the same reasons. It’s wonderful to escape from devices — for us and the kids.
And looking back on my own childhood, my fondest memories involve alone-time with my dad — and the best experiences involved a car story or road trip of some sort.
What an awesome story James. Changing the MR2 engine is no small feat, especially if you did it in a home garage. Certainly more involved than a beatle.
In the second pic I see what appears to be a wreck you’re repairing in front of the Toyota so you’re certainly a hands on, can do guy/dad, no stranger to the tool chest .
This story has inspired me to to make the time to help my grandson with his recently acquired prodject. We celebrated his 14th birthday last weekend. 2 days later he called me excitedly discribing some off brand beater motor scooter that he bought off some kid down the block. It’s hard to start, won’t idle,rear brake inop,muffler fell off,ect.
While this thing might be a piece of junk in my mind ,it’s importantant to remember how I would feel at his age. In my mind then,as his,it’s a diamond in the rough. He too needs some heathy interest besides video games. His dad did not inherit my mechanical genes. So yeah,l’ll make the time to help him.
When it comes to our youngsters, the days seem long, but the years are short.
Good story. Good Dad.?
A very sweet story. Elbow grease, mechanical knowledge, plentiful cheap used motor andasmall investment for the win. I would’ve kept the car, though.
Great story, and welcome aboard! Sadly, my father, in addition to being a professional meat cutter, was also a professional drunk; we never had times like this. I escaped to the garage to work on lawn mowers to avoid his wrath. Turned out OK, I became a professional mechanic because of it. If my dad had been “normal”, hell, I might have been another damn lawyer instead. Fun times indeed!
How great to hear of a father-son project like this with a productive outcome! When I was 14, I undertook a similar mission with my dad, and bought a 20-year-old MGB for $250. My initial enthusiasm, though, waned when I realized that restoring a car cost money and skill that I couldn’t possibly dream of acquiring.
Dad was EXTREMELY patient with me, and kept the MG in pieces in the garage for 10 years. We both laugh about the experience now, but I remember the youthful exuberance of dreaming about driving my MG to high school. Well, that’s how life’s lessons are learned.
Thanks for sharing this story!
These father-son times are precious. One of the reasons I own an old car is to drag my kids off of their Xbox and out to car shows.
These are cool little cars that handle well and with the Corona/Caldina powertrain are almost bulletproof and easy to source parts for, great project but you shoulda kept it.
My Dad was a good guy ,nice guy but not a bit of mechanical ability
and I am pretty much the same Do you turn the bolt right or left?
I assume that adding the aftermarket temp gauge was simpler than getting the factory one working?
A great story about father-son bonding and doing things together. Your son is blessed to have a father like you.
I started early helping my dad change the oil and grease our ’50 Ford & Studebaker starting around ’57-’58. I couldn’t do much but hand him tools but we were doing something together. My father and I did a lot together while I was growing up. Fishing, camping, boating, shooting and home, auto and boat maintenance & repairs. The one adventure we never got to do but often talked about was a camping trip by boat on the Willamette River from Portland to Eugene. Oh well there are enough other memories of things done together.
Built hundreds and hundreds of model cars? Check. Nowadays I don’t tell people how many I’ve built. Nobody believes me, except my long-suffering wife!
I introduced my son to mechanics by stripping down an old mower engine. He helped his uncle out on the farm during holidays, and picked up a fair bit there. Now he strips down and rebuilds locomotive engines for a living, and doubles as his uncle’s on-call fitter during the harvest.
Sounds like a fantastic project! Not much investment required except time, and excellent results. As many others have said, this was the sort of project I dreamed of doing with my Dad–except for the small fact that he has zero mechanical ability. I didn’t even learn how to change my own oil until I went away to college. He made up for it in other ways, but shared wrenching was not in the playbook.
Hopefully your son values the shared experience, as well as the skills acquired! I’m also curious–what does he drive now? Or is he still too young for a full license?
Got a ’62 Beetle with a broken crankshaft at age 13, took the body off the pan to replace the gasket and put a junkyard crank in it by myself. Also installed a cool headliner using shag carpet squares, and installed a AM-FM Cassette deck along with speakers and a 12 volt converter. Dad had little ability or interest in working on cars. I learned a lot about fixing VW’s from my older brother previously, but he had moved out by the time I got the Beetle.
Sold it to someone my Dad worked with, (who sold his ’63 Corvair 2 door Powerglide to buy the VW) about 3 months later the junkyard crankshaft also broke, I guess that’s what happens when you install it but don’t check any clearances!
What a great story! I’d love to do something similar with one (or both) of my kids. Girls need to get some grease underneath their fingernails too! Your car looks like it had a hard life, but you managed to get it scrubbed up well. I can’t understand why they put blue interiors into the SW20 over there – I thought they disappeared with the 80’s!
Given the lacklustre nature of the 5SFE in the US-spec MR2, I would be tempted to replace it with a modern Camry 3.5 L V6, which fits like a glove into the SW20 chassis by all accounts. I don’t know how long the factory C-series transmission would survive though.