Radiator

[nathanMR2]

Thinking about replacing my rad at some point.

Is the radiator the same for air con and none air con models?

[Anonymous]

Twin fans on the aircon, but I believe the rad is the same.

[loadswine]

I'd agree with that.  s:) s:)

[Anonymous]

If you dont have the twin fans, might be worth considering popping a pair on.

[Capvermell]

If you dont have the twin fans, might be worth considering popping a pair on.

I think it would be more useful to check that your radiator isn't about to turn in to metal papier machee and spring leaks in numerous directions caused by stem to stern corrosion if it is more than five years old as that is what happened to mine after only 7 years and 50,000 miles of use.

My personal recommendation would be to replace it with one of the aluminium radiators intended for racing that don't rust and also provide much superior cooling.  Whoever is the supplier of the stock MR2 Roadster radiator provided Toyota with a particularly substandard component.  Much can the same can be said of the supplier of the car's clutch components along with the quite chronically underspecced battery capacity in relation to the high level of power drain by the alarm system when the car is not in use.

[iPap]

I paid £50 ish on eBay, brilliant quality and quick delivery!

[Capvermell]

I paid £50 ish on eBay, brilliant quality and quick delivery!

For what kind of radiator?  OEM spec or an upgraded sports type affair?

I paid about £60 for mine from an Ebay supplier with 100% feedback and when it turned up it was exactly the same item as the original Toyota fitted unit.  I would have gone for the upgraded racing one at about £130 had the supplier not temporarily shut up shop for a few days and so not responded to their emails and unfortunately I needed to get the rad in a hurry as the other one was shot so and the car already in the garage.  Also the sports model supplier had slighly crappy Ebay Feedback which put me off.

As it happens I then pranged the front of the car only a few months later in the Shetland Islands on a hidden curb when pulling up to park and although the bumper/spoiler broke in the thin part in the middle at the bottom and the radiator was partly bent it didn't break as it was new.  If it had been the five year old one in the same accident I am sure it would have been a different story and my trip to the Northern Isles would have ended there and then.

[spit]

My personal recommendation would be to replace it with one of the aluminium radiators intended for racing that don't rust and also provide much superior cooling.  Whoever is the supplier of the stock MR2 Roadster radiator provided Toyota with a particularly substandard component.

The stock item is aluminium and has all of the heat transfer characteristrics of an ....erm.... aluminium radiator. Therefore it doesn't rust. I certainly wouldn't regard it as substandard for cooling, but the trade-off is that aluminium at the front of a car receives a shed-load of abuse over the years. That holds true irrespective of the price of the aluminium replacement. Arguably a lighter and thinner-walled unit would be more efficient - surface area to volume ratio and flow rate and all that.

Nate, I believe the carcass of the fan housing is equipped with the mount points to take a second fan, and the additional fan that you see on airconned '2s is identical to the main unit.

[iPap]

I paid £50 ish on eBay, brilliant quality and quick delivery!

For what kind of radiator?  OEM spec or an upgraded sports type affair?

I paid about £60 for mine from an Ebay supplier with 100% feedback and when it turned up it was exactly the same item as the original Toyota fitted unit.  I would have gone for the upgraded racing one at about £130 had the supplier not temporarily shut up shop for a few days and so not responded to their emails and unfortunately I needed to get the rad in a hurry as the other one was shot so and the car already in the garage.  Also the sports model supplier had slighly crappy Ebay Feedback which put me off.

As it happens I then pranged the front of the car only a few months later in the Shetland Islands on a hidden curb when pulling up to park and although the bumper/spoiler broke in the thin part in the middle at the bottom and the radiator was partly bent it didn't break as it was new.  If it had been the five year old one in the same accident I am sure it would have been a different story and my trip to the Northern Isles would have ended there and then.

Standard replacement.

I would have spent £350 on a new one had I not have lost my job at NoTW last August! I spent ££££££ on the car in the first half of the year but having been unemployed six months and not earned a bean in that time, I thought it was more important just to get a replacement. (ps, I have not claimed unemployment either)

[nathanMR2]

Capvermell,

I get the impression you've had a bit of a bad time with your motor and you don't like it much from your posts

Don't get me wrong my rad has seen better days but its been on the car for the life of the car ungaraged and open to the elements. For a 11 year old car I would consider that its done alright.

Maybe I've been relatively lucky but in over 4 years of ownership I've had to replace 2 O2 sensors and a seized nearside calliper. Oh and sort a few rattly heatshields.

Its just flown through another MOT today with never an issuse... Yet  s;) s;)

I noticed uve previously compared the 2 to and MGF but from knowing people that have owned them they are wriddled with issues and are commonly known to have major issues with the head gasket.

Thanks for the advise. Ill bear it in mind.

[Capvermell]

Don't get me wrong my rad has seen better days but its been on the car for the life of the car ungaraged and open to the elements. For a 11 year old car I would consider that its done alright.

The radiator cracked when I was driving on an unsurfaced road but I didn't hit anything.  It was just such a rough surface that then heavily jarred the suspension that it was the straw that broke the camel's back.  But when I was shown the radiator's condition in the garage after they had taken the bumper off you just seemed to be able to push your finger in to it anywhere.  I have never had a radiator fail on any other car even though I ran some to quite elderly ages.

Maybe I've been relatively lucky but in over 4 years of ownership I've had to replace 2 O2 sensors and a seized nearside calliper. Oh and sort a few rattly heatshields.

Well I object  to the oxygen sensors failing at all in a car with the supposed reliability repuration of a Toyota (no oxygen sensor has failed yet in 100,000 miles and 12 years on my mother's V70 Volvo estate and nor has any other part apart from expected consumables like oil, brake pads and tyres needed replacing) and I certainly object to the top two on the MR2 effectively only lasting as long as a pair of front tyres on the car. But worse than them failing is the absolute price gouging by Toyota to fix their own substandard part and/or overheating sensor location design.  £150 for the sensor and then £100 on top for labour (they lie to justify this by claiming that the sensors easily cross thread when removed and so on when actually removing them and replacing them is a breeze as long as you have the right socket for the job) is quite excessive for what is little more than a variation on a spark plug. You will note that other parts that used to fail after only three years on cars long ago like the exhaust system actually seem to be good for the life of the car.  So why should a poxy oxygen sensor with no moving parts that merely gets a little hot need replacing as though it is a consumable due to poor design (I understand the same problem also exists on the RAV4)

Its just flown through another MOT today with never an issuse... Yet  s;) s;)

I take it that you don't have it MOT'ed at a Mr T emporium then as they failed me three years in a row on the most dubious of bases. Since I stopped using them and starting using the Sussex based Just MOTs chain (who do not do repair work on cars but only MOT them) it has flown through the last three (or at least only had a number of advisories rather than advisories bogusly turned in to fails as Mr T favours doing) even though it is now getting quite long in the tooth.

I noticed uve previously compared the 2 to and MGF but from knowing people that have owned them they are wriddled with issues and are commonly known to have major issues with the head gasket.

Yes I had a failed head gasket at only five years old and a broken gear linkage and the whole suspension system was seemingly completely finished at only 60,000 miles (although the car had been driven daily down 12 miles of particularly tortous southern Surrey country lane in each direction for the previous four years which may not have helped with the crappy hydrogas suspension system that permanently chewed up the inside edges of the front tyres no matter how much the car was computer tracked). But it was far more sensibly designed for carrying luggage (the MR2 just wastes space at the back of the car for no good reason other than probably crash resistance or some such) and it had a much better quality soft top leaving aside not having a glass heated window.  So that moves me to my last MR2 Roadster complaint where it has become a leaky sieve since it was six years old and even though the scuttles have been cleared and the rear luggage lockers stay water free I keep getting water in the driver and passenger footwalls.  There seems to be a load of flanges and seals in the roof that just perish in the first five years so that your formerly nice quite soft top now has the wind whistling through it and the rain running through it once the car is half way through its expected life.

The MR2 Roadster does drive quite well and is fairly cheap to insure but I'm really at an age where if I'm going to go on driving soft tops I would like to be driving a Boxster or even an S2000 that have some slightly more serious performance oomph than the MR2. I am probably a little bored of it after nine years but can't really justify a Boxster in my current situation where running costs (including insurtance that would immediately double) would be a lot higher.

I expect you are only in your late 20s or early 30s whereas I expect I in my late 40s am beginning to turn in to something of a grumpy old man!

[VVT-i]

.......... But it was far more sensibly designed for carrying luggage (the MR2 just wastes space at the back of the car for no good reason other than probably crash resistance or some such)

There is a very good reason for the lack of luggage space in the MR2... it was called weight distribution, Toyota felt that putting in a boot, as in the MK2 MR2 would unblance the car and hinder the handling, so much so that they deliberatley put luggage space behind the seats, this was to keep it small to prevent us from putting too much weight in and ruining the driving experience.

The MGF may well have been better designed to carry luggage, but why have a two seater sports car to carry luggage, the '2 was designed for handling and.... errr... handling.

As for the roof.... I'll disagree, I've had personal experience of a good few MGF's over the years that have leaked from the day they left the factory... it was even documented by good old JC on Top Gear.

[JiMR2]

As my beast is coming up to 9 years old now and due a service, is this something I should be overly worried about?

Will they look at it during its service or is it something I'd have to request them to look at???

Or am I being a spanner and its bleedin obvious if its knackered or not? We all have our special skillsets... mechanics, cars, engineering, cars, driving, and cars are not mine...

Heya Caper - I must say mate you made me chuckle re: your comment on luggage/storage space  s:) s:)  Theres tons of it in the MR2!!! Seriously, never had an issue, never been gone more than a week mind but am so confident in the space I've even thrown these beauts in;



The frunk is like mary poppins handbag if you bag all ya crap up nice n tightly in a million and one different bags!!!! No dramas as the FOSTERS boys say!!!

[JiMR2]

There is a very good reason for the lack of luggage space in the MR2... it was called weight distribution, Toyota felt that putting in a boot, as in the MK2 MR2 would unblance the car and hinder the handling, so much so that they deliberatley put luggage space behind the seats, this was to keep it small to prevent us from putting too much weight in and ruining the driving experience.

Well bugger me. No wonder the car keeps spinning out on me!

[VVT-i]

That will more than likely to be your lead boots Jim.... after all listening to loud music makes the loud pedal go down further lol.

But yes.. seriously, the MR2 Roadster was designed to be as damn close to a 50/50 weight distribution as possible, I maybe getting the wrong car with this advert, but didn't toyota feature two 2's with one balanced on the others windscreen surround?.. or was that Porche or Audi or some other cheapo imitation?

[mrzwei]

The MGF may well have been better designed to carry luggage, but why have a two seater sports car to carry luggage, the '2 was designed for handling and.... errr... handling.

As for the roof.... I'll disagree, I've had personal experience of a good few MGF's over the years that have leaked from the day they left the factory... it was even documented by good old JC on Top Gear.

I really liked the MGF until I wrapped it around a tree. But, in terms of handling, no comparison to the roadster. You did get more boot space but at the expense of a really heavy looking rear end. The old-fashioned pram type hood was really difficult, even on late models, to put down; you had to put your hand underneath and fiddle with one of the supports to do it. The hood on the roadster was a very big plus point. I'm back in the pram on the Z3.

[Wabbitkilla]

9 year old car, 97000miles and no leaks ... softop design is A-Ok imho.
Radiator is extremely exposed and I agree the finning does deteriorate, but again mine reached 90000miles before showing any signs of leakage, and the car gets abuse from me and North Yorkshire's crappy roads.

O2 sensors now reputedly have a 60-70K mile lifespan, some go sooner, some go later ... they're consumables really.
The MGF has a different arrangement for luggage, but it handles like sh-t ... I'd rather have the handling thanks!

Can we stick to the topic of the thread please, or is there a troll abroad?

[Capvermell]

but again mine reached 90000miles before showing any signs of leakage, and the car gets abuse from me and North Yorkshire's crappy roads.

Is the weather so cold in Yorkshire that you may be only take the top down on 2 days a year  s:lol: :lol: s:lol:  

But seriously the life of the soft top will clearly depend on how often it is used as a hood opened and closed 100 times a year is clearly going to start experiencing leaks and other issues a lot sooner than a soft only opened say 10 times a year.

I also seem to have issues with various straps and poppers that have come off since the hood started jamming and sticking when trying to raise it and I don't seem to very good in the art of plastic and metal origami that the hood seems to be based on in terms of how it is put together.

I must try the place in Chessington to see what deal I could get out of them for a new one at the moment as they must surely be desperate for business at this time of the year.  Even so I'm not entirely convince that would fix all my issues as I think various rubber seals that the hood sits against have also perished and may need replacing.

[onion86]

Don't get me wrong my rad has seen better days but its been on the car for the life of the car ungaraged and open to the elements. For a 11 year old car I would consider that its done alright.

Maybe I've been relatively lucky but in over 4 years of ownership I've had to replace 2 O2 sensors and a seized nearside calliper. Oh and sort a few rattly heatshields.

My stock rad lasted 11 years too, 4 years of those was with me, ungaraged, I only replaced it last year because it was leaking ~0.5 litres of coolant (so not a massive leak) out every couple of weeks and I got a rad from a fellow member for £20. If I'm honest the rad itself looked in the same condition as the new one I was using (a few small dents here and there). I know people have had issues with other rads so the stock one is good enough for me, even with the turbo I don't notice it being in any way 'substandard'.

[nathanMR2]

Has anyone tried one of those supposed high flow ones from ebay?

[Capvermell]

Has anyone tried one of those supposed high flow ones from ebay?

I was going to get one of them when mine broke three years ago but the seller didn't reply to my questions for three days and didn't have a phone number whereas the seller of the cheaper OEM spec replacement was able to be telephoned and was very helpful.  Unfortunately as my car was already mobilised by the radiator failure I needed to get a new rad in a hurry.

To be fair the stock radiator seems to do an adequate job of cooling the car.  I had far more issues on two Fiat X1/9s with the fan running almost permanently and the temperature rising above normal if the car was stuck in traffic for any length of time.  That doesn't really happen on the MR2 Roadster.

Don't forget my car has the harder shorter TT or whatever they are springs and that combined with a lot of driving in London streets with humps some of which turn out to need to be tackled much more slowly than others probably shortened my radiator's life below the average.

[Wabbitkilla]

I'm pretty sure UKtotty got one of those high flow Aluminium Rads and had load of trouble just filling it.

The OEM types on ebay seem to be good quality and they certainly seem to keep the car cool properly.

[onion86]

I'm pretty sure UKtotty got one of those high flow Aluminium Rads and had load of trouble just filling it.

Yeah just avoid this one:  l viewtopic.php?f=11&t=22656 l

Can't see a reason not to get an OEM type really, keeps the woes to a minimum; the one Russ got in the end was VALEO and £117 from reading his other rad thread  l viewtopic.php?f=9&t=24469 l .

[Lippy]

My rad is missing all of the bottom third of the W shaped fins and it looks pretty hanging, the cars only done 44k and used to be garaged during winter  s:( s:(

Has anyone got any experience on the japspeed radiators? Ive never heard of japspeed but never owned a jap car until now...
Are Japspeed a brand name or some cheepo Ebay tosh that should be avoided?

I generally never buy OEM parts and thought this would be a nice upgrade, although even boosted my car doesnt go above the half way mark on the temp (if thats normal)...

Here is the link, any help/suggestions would be much appreciated

Cheers
Lippy

[kentsmudger]

... I maybe getting the wrong car with this advert, but didn't toyota feature two 2's with one balanced on the others windscreen surround?.. or was that Porche or Audi or some other cheapo imitation?

BMW 3 series