Ghost XI

My distant cousin has a engraving company. Recently, I did a small vector drawing for his company and for return, he made me a MR2 bird engraving. 🙂

Here is a short video of me testing the Chowini’s tacho. Reasons unknown, the gauge doesn’t rise above 6500 rpms, though the rev limiter is at 7500. There is a adjustment screw behind the gauge, but I’m not sure if I want to tinker with it.

I bought some white and yellow T10 leds some time ago, for the side turn signals and park lights.

They didn’t quite work, too narrow pattern and way too blueish. I have a random T10 led on the left and a Osram Blue Cool (gotta check the name) normal filament bulb on the right. Too blue lights can get me a ticket here, so I’m not taking any risks. 🙂

After this I wasn’t that interested about using leds, because most of them are cheaply made in china or something, and they’re not white. I’d love to get some decent LEDs if they really were white, but everyone seems to sell the cheap ones.

I was taking the gauge cluster apart for no reason and noticed that the bulbs for the gauge cluster were also T10. Just for fun I tried my extensive collection of leds, and couple of wide angle T10 leds did the trick.

For some reason, the blueish leds I had, looked quite nice

Then I though “why not to change the Chowini’s tacho also”

Well, it didn’t fit like the original one. It seems to be for the earlier AW11 and not for the facelift model.

Quite Ok with lights on

Here is the diff.

Giving some blue love

Still trying to resist

Here is the ATS LSD. We had to stop here, because both of us missed the small text at the ATS homepage, which said that you need a speedo gear and some parts from SW20 LSD and new bolts for the diff gear.

Bearings and model numbers

Took some pictures while we opened the gearbox and struggled with the fifth gear

E50? What the fuck?

Fifth gear wont come off

Finally, the original open diff

My gearbox serial. I found some info about toyota gearboxes, specially decoding the serial. The first number says the year the gearbox was made, which on my box is 8, so => 198(8). The second and the third number should be the month, so again 02 => February. Rest of the serial is just a running number.

Maladar did some new graphics for my car, I absolutely love (loathe :crazy:) these ideas 😀 Whilst drinkin my gin and beer bought with my money, here is the new look for my AW11:

Swapping the automatic gearbox to manual gearbox is pretty big thing to do. We started with LSD installation and checking the synchros and stuff. More to come.

I did some research when I noticed I have this kind of markings on my muffler:

And found out that the first part “051” is the manufacturer code, which points to HKS. Second part “90000003” is the JASMA approval for this muffler.

And finally, I found out the HKS page for the muffler 🙂

MR2 MR2( E-AW11) LEGAL Code No. 3302-ST005

Now I have two of these, the one in good condition is in the car, the beaten one is just standing in the corner…

It does look kinda cool without the rear wing…

But the holes on the trunk lid! Argh! My sad little camera phone doesn’t have enough something (resolution?) to show the holes, so this is kind of retouched picture 🙂