The Missus has fallen ill with a nasty cold, so nasty that she’s actually staying home from work today to sleep/recover. This meant that she was in bed around 8:00 or so last night, allowing me to work on New Blue (we need a better name for this car — Blue 2? It does have Electric Boogaloo as the paint job) without pangs of guilt. I also finished the last half of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on DVD whle working on the car. Alec Guiness is masterful as George Smiley. More car details after the jump:
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MR2, Tear Down
Author: Pat
In racing, “adding lightness” is a time-honored tradition. Here at TARP Racing, we’re nothing if not traditionalists. And so it was that we gave our most recently acquired MR2 a reverse makeover. As chronicled briefly the other day, Dave and I worked the car over on Sunday. I worked it a little more last night, finishing the heater removal and removing most of the front firewall padding/insulation from the area where the heater used to reside. And although I haven’t weighed them up yet, I would bet that we have taken at least 7 pounds of screws, nuts, and bolts out of the car, all of which were holding in pieces that do not contribute to speed or safety. In other words, 7 pounds of fluff. Photos after the jump:
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MR2, Tear Down
Author: Pat
I’m going to keep this short tonight because I’m whipped right now. I started dismantling the MR2 on Saturday night to drop unnecessary weight. My basic rule is that if it does not make the car either go fast or be safe, then it’s unnecessary. Between what I pulled off the car last night and what Dave and I junked today, we easily took more than 100 pounds off the car. The seats are 60+ pounds together and I’d bet that the 5 pieces of glass (both side windows, both quarter windows, and the rear window) probably weigh another 30 or forty. We also stripped out the carpet, the firewall carpet/insulation, the center console, the door panels, window regulators, a ton of interior trim pieces, and a bunch of rubber seals. I’d bet that the door seals alone were 5-6 pounds of unnecessary rubber.
Dave did yoeman’s duty in fighting the heater core today. He broke out the sawzall to cut the dashboard in half, then he took on some vicious white plastic. There were a lot of hidden screws and bolts, but Dave was their master. He got most of the core pulled out. I haven’t weighed it up but it the heater core section is probably 7-8 pounds alone.
The end result is that the car is much closer to race condition than it was just yesterday afternoon. And it really, really looks like crap.
In other words, perfect.
MR2, Tear Down
Author: Pat
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