Mark's MR2

Jan'09, as bought	the day it arrived in my garage

Before he sent the car over to me, Mark had a fair idea of the extent of the rot, the usual suspects for rust in MR2s are the rear wheel arches and this car was no different. The left rear arch was definitely the worst and there was evidence of previous layers of MOT patches on both rear arches. It had obviously been get alive through a few MOTs. He sourced a full, genuine Toyota rear left quarterpanel to make the left side good and some aftermarket repair panels for the right side, it wasn't quite as bad as the left. A good right front wing accompanied the car too since the original item wasn't in great shape either. Aside from those parts, the front apron had serious issues on both outer corners, there was a hole in the sill under the RHS A-pillar and later on I discovered rot in the rear boot lip and the rear window frame. Other than that (!), it was a nice solid car. Mark had already replaced the front bumper bar as it was completely rotten by the time the car got to me.

rear left corner	front right corner	sill under the A-pillar	rotten front bumper-bar

right side sill-MOT patches	rear right corner

The first thing to do was to jack the car up onto the axle stands and strip the left hand side to tackle the left rear arch. The rear bumper, tail lamp, boot lid, engine lid, side skirts and window trims were all removed to allow the panel to be cut out in preparation for the new one. I decided it would be best to just use the portion of the panel from the window frame down as if I was to use the entire quarter panel I would be cutting into the roof and C pillar to get the old one out and there was justno need to go that far. I made the incisions so that even though they would be well finished, any welded seam I created would be hidden under a trim or inside a door/lid shut area.
With the quarterpanel removed, I could see that the inner arch was rotten too, unsurprisingly. I was able to make up repair patches to make the inner arch good again and with that sorted I fitted up and welded in place the new rear quartepanel. The quality and fit of the genuine panel was great.

all the filler knocked out the corner, ready to get cutting	rear left quarter removed	inner arch repaired	new rear quarter fitted up

Once the left rear was done, I set to repairing the right rear. The rot wasn't as extensive so there was less metal to cut out and replace but the quality of the aftermarket panels in terms of shape wasn't great so they took a bit of fettling to get them looking nice.
The front wing was a straight bolt-on, it wasn't worth trying to repair the old one, it had been bodged in the past and the newer one was perfect. Once off, it revealed a small bit of rot in the bottom of the A-pillar which needed a small patch. Directly below the A-pillar, in the sill, the underside needed an area of rot cut out and replaced. This is a heavier gauge steel so I welded up a two-piece repair section in heavier gauge steel and welded it in.

rot in sill below RHS A-pillar	cleaned up to assess the extent	sill repaired

After two small repairs to the rear boot lip and the rear window frame, the main shell was sorted. The only thing left to repair was the front apron, both outer corners were rotten and a couple of small spots in the centre area weren't great so with a few patches folded up to suit, they were welded in place of the rot.

rotten front apron corner, other side was the same	and repaired

With all the welding done, a bit of grinding and a skim of filler over the welds was required to smooth out the repairs. Once that was sorted I set to repainting the car in its original two-tone. Mark got the paint and sent it over and I coated the original paint in "bar-coat" to start with, to prevent any reactions between the old paint and new. I did the whole top section in white and allowed the colour to bleed down past the joint line where the silver/grey would come up to. I left the white paint for a week due to other non-car stuff needing to be done. When I went back at the car and painted on the silver/grey, the white paint that had bled over and was now covered in grey paint suffered a horrible reaction where the two met. I was gutted. After doing a bit of research, it turned out that the white paint had been allowed to cure for too long, chemicals had settled to the surface and had caused the reaction with the new wet paint. All I could do was to sand back the reacted area and bar-coat and prime the lower portion again. Then lay on the grey again. Thankfully it went on well the second time.Since the silver/grey paint is metallic, it had to be laquered too.

whole car bar-coated	white painted on	reaction in paint	paint finished

With the car now painted, colour sanded and polished, the reassembly went together pretty quickly. There were a lot of small parts that needed paint too, like the spoiler, skirt sections, bumpers, front apron and lip, headlamp covers etc. When everything was back together, I was able to apply the new replica decals to finish off the car. These were commissioned in the original colours of black and red, specially for the car.

part-way through reassembly	new decal set made up specially

new rear disks, rebuilt rear calipers	freshened up struts to satisfy the MOT

15" Lenso BSX wheels	third brake light	stainless Magnex exhaust system

The resto was finished with about a wek to spare before Mark's wedding in June 2009, here in Ireland. He picked up the car with just days to go and drove his new wife Caroline away from the church in it and off into the sunset!!