To understand how Red came to live here, we have to go back a bit. I have had several (6) AW11 MR2’s in the past, and when I bought Whitey (the 88 MR2 yes we are up to 7) I swore it was my last one. Well I also had a Spyder for a while.
When I sold the Spyder I decided to use some of the money to pick up an engine for the Supra. If you already have a truck and a trailer at a Japanese Engine supplier, then you might as well make use of it right? In addition to the 2JZ for the Supra, I drug back a 3SGTE for Whitey. What does this have to do with Red? Well Whitey already had a small port swap, but had been running off of a Honda ECU and I wasn’t happy with the distributor mount. The idea was to pick up an MR2 that had a dead engine and make a few bucks reselling it after it was back among the living.
I found Red while browsing Craigslist, and while it wasn’t a pristine body the price was decent, and it was local-ish. We drove the 4Runner up to Paradise, CA and grabbed a U haul trailer at the local hardware store and went over to pick up the car.
I’ll be honest it was a bit rougher than I originally thought, but having owned so many of these cars before it’s easy to remember the “good ol days” when parts were readily available and easy to come by.
Getting it home was a drama free affair, and then we got into the car.
