By: Chris Hope

It’s been a case of mixed fortunes for Chris Hope and his MR2 as a seemingly simple job has caused him no end of trouble…

MY CARS

I’m pleased to report that since my last ‘Our Cars’ update back in October, my MR2 daily driver has managed to pass its MoT and is now back on the road. Well, sort of…

After replacing the car’s rear set of dampers, the next job was to change its brake discs and pads all-round (a job I’ve meaning to do for a while, but made necessary after the MoT highlighted slightly uneven braking). This ran relatively smoothly; the most awkward part was getting the caliper pistons to retract. The fronts were a doddle as I could simply press each piston back with my rubber hammer’s handle. The rears however required a brake piston rewind tool as you need to twist clockwise for them to go back in, and even then they required a fair a bit of encouragement to do so. Once I had worked the pistons back far enough to comfortably slip the caliper back over the new brake pads, it was just a case of screwing everything back together.

With the brakes sorted (or thereabouts; a lack of tools meant that I needed my local garage to secure the brake flexi-hoses to the damper strut and also properly bled the brakes) I put my MR2 in for its test and was handed a new certificate.

The inspection did though throw up a few advisories. First, I had a leaky water pump – I point-blank refused to take on this one myself due to a combination of a lack of tools and a lack of working space in the MR2’s tight engine bay – and second, both the rear hub lower ball joints were on their way out (probably due to the knackered dampers). Having already coated most of the car’s rear suspension components in penetrating spray in order to get the old dampers out, I was fairly confident that replacing them would be a straightforward job. Oh, how wrong I could I be…

The first bit was to remove the split pins; trickier than it sounds given that they were heavily corroded. In the end, after having no success in my attempts to prise or press out the pins, I resorted to brute force and removed the castle nuts with the split pins still in place.

Rather than freeing the ball joint from the lower suspension arm, the ball joint separator broke. I wasn’t impressed…

Next I had to disconnect the ball joint from the lower suspension arm. I attached the ball joint separator to the passenger-side ball joint and after a few tentative turns of the screw it obliged and went ‘ping’. Fantastic. After unscrewing the two bolts that secured ball joint to the rear axle carrier I was able to prise it out and eventually slip its replacement into place. Excellent. Then I moved onto the other side.

Same thing again; I positioned the ball joint separator between the ball joint and the lower arm, began to turn the screw. ‘Ping’. Only this time the noise didn’t come as a result of the two components being freed, but the ball joint separator’s fork breaking in two.

‘Not a problem’ I thought. ‘I’ll just go and get another one’. Which I did, then I tried again, only this time instead of forcing out the ball joint as I’d hoped, the pin that secured the two halves of the separator buckled under the strain.

After now breaking two ball joint separators I had to admit defeat (not quite; I rediscovered a five-foot long metal pole in the back garden and had a go at levering between the lower arm and the tie-rod suspension arm to force the ball joint free, but even that didn’t work). I hate jobs that can’t be solved by an angle grinder…

The MR2 is currently at my local garage where it’s having its water pump replaced and the driver’s side ball joint seen to. Hopefully I’ll get a phone call later this afternoon telling me it’s ready to be picked up.

I’m just going to leave out the bit where I broke a hub bolt after over tightening one of the wheel nuts. It’s really not been my week…

Hopefully, though, with all this behind me I can focus on finding a second-hand pair of white front wings and getting them fitted. After spending a fair bit of my MR2’s MoT advisories I’d really rather not have to pay Toyota £130 each for genuine replacements, before then having them primed, painted and then applying the decal stripes. Wish me luck.