Broken speedometer

Now, if your speedo stopped working it is most likely the rear cable. Here is how to check whether is is the front speedo cable or the rear one.

Step 1.) Take off the rear most underbody panel and you can pry out the speedo cable:

Step 2.) Remove the rubber boot covering the two speedo cables joining and seperate them by holding the rear cable with a 12mm wrench and pull the front off.
Step 3.) Attach a drill to the front cable and spin it counter clockwise and see if the speedo needle jumps or not. If the speedo needle jumps then the problem is with the rear cable, if the speedo cable doesn’t jump then the problem is with the front cable. I had a problem with my rear speedo cable.

Note: The car doesn’t have to be on to spin the cable.

Step 4.) Remove rear speedo cable (if that is the problem), I found laying under the exhaust with my head towards the passengers side gave me the best access to the tranny connector. There is a 10mm bolt holding it down, it is located to the right (pass. side) of the actual speedo cable.

Step 5.) After removing the 10mm with just a normal socket+ratchet you can twist out the speedo assembly, after its loose you can pull it out, which shouldn’t require very much force.

Step 6.) Inspect the rear assembly and see what the problem, in my instance the inner speedo cable had snapped. The cable is also being held on by 2 white brackets located by the drivers side motor mount and underneath behind the rear underbody panel.

Step 7.) Buy a new speedo cable and re-install, I’d start with putting the speedo assembly in the tranny first and then pull the cable up from the top of the engine bay

Here is the routing the speedo cable:

Speedo gear -> Cruise control speed sensor -> Speedo cable, rear -> Speedo cable, front -> Speedometer, instrument cluster

 

http://www.Rockauto.com

Y882 part number for the front cable.
Y849 part number for the rear cable.

MR2 turbo boost

The MR2 turbo stock has a fairly conservative setting for enabling some spirited driving with its turbo.  There is a work around that allows you to get some fairly decent horsepower gains by playing around with the turbo boost.  I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on how to adjust the boost, and there are a couple of options being either a manual or electronic boost control.

I wanted just a simple and cheap way to play around with the boost.  In doing so, what I needed was a way to see how much psi boost the car was running.  Thus picked up a mechanical boost gauge.  It was pretty easy to install.  I put the boost gauge on the pillar mount.  I pulled the vacuum hose from the pillar and under the carpet, then into the engine bay.  I also had to route the MBC from the compressor to the wastegate.  Plain stock, the boost is at 7 psi.  I played around with the boost, and had to make minor increments where turning the MBC clockwise will increase the turbo.

It’s been quite a joy ride feeling how much quicker the car is when you increase the boost.  From what some of the other MR2 experts say, 15psi is probably the max to safely run on a stock car, so that’s what my car’s at now.

MR2 Berk Exhaust

Berk has this 3″ diameter cat back dual exhaust system that I picked up to get a few more horses out of the MR2.  The exhaust looks really nicely packaged.

I was looking to get the exhaust put in by a shop instead of having to do it myself.  The message boards, and the MR2 BGB has some general guidelines that when I read it thought it would be fairly easy

First impressions of the exhaust:

Noise:  It’s definately louder than the stock exhaust system.  At idle it has a nice low humm.  At half throttle when cruising it’s noticeably louder, but not to the point where you can’t have a normal conversation with the passenger.  Gets pretty loud when you stomp on at wide open throttle.

Performance:  I can feel it’s more responsive and feel it pull much quicker.  Haven’t had much time to really put the exhaust through its paces.  But from the manufacturer’s website, it says HP power gains from 20-50WHP vs stock.

Appearance:  Very nice fit and appearance.  Tucks in nicely and the exhaust tips are polished.