Yes, I've done it more than once.  You need a short 19mm socket to get the pulley bolt off.

Good progress today. Old engine has been removed and engine bay fully degreased and cleaned up. Removing the old engine was pretty straight forward but had fun cutting the drive shafts with my grinder. When I cut them, as they were nearly all the way through, they grabbed the grinding disc due to there still being forces transmitted through the drive shaft from the suspension components. 
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I removed the crank, oil pressure and temp sensor from the 1zz as these will be required for the Audi engine. The crank sensor to read the toothed aux pulley to provide a signal for the rev counter, the oil pressure sensor for the oil light on the instrument cluster and the coolant sensor to send a signal for the temperature gauge. The conversion runs two coolant temperature sensors, the 1zz one for the temp gauge and the Audi one for the engine ecu.
Now the engine bay is clear the next step will be to modify the fuel system to provide a return fuel line to the petrol tank. With the engine out of the way it provides much better access to install this extra fuel line. Been a long day so that's a job for tomorrow.
 

Only a few days to go until the weekend's activities, so a little more prep...

First up, Subaru needed an MOT, so off I trotted to the test centre. All good bar a couple of bushes and ball joints that need replacing at some point... but now I can transport the wheels to the tyre shop on Friday and get the tyres swapped over!

Second up, I needed to decide what rubber to take and which wheels to put them on. I have unfortunately amassed quite a lot of options, which means I now have too much choice:

R888R
AR1
GD351
Phi-R
ZE310

In an ideal world where I can transport multiple sets of wheels, this wouldn't be an issue. But I only have a passenger seat so can only take two myself. Fortunately, my friend bought another MR2 and has a luggage rack, so he's going to be helping me transport some wheels in return for using a couple himself. So now I just need to decide what to use...

I have a little oil leak entirely caused by my own incompetence, which requires taking the timing chain cover off to fix. Now before I get balls deep into this, does anyone know if its physically possible to remove the bottom pulley and timing chain cover etc with the engine in situe? Its going to be tight I realise, but have any of you guys tried and succeeded, or tried and failed ?

Thanks 

Thank you all for your positive input.
All the hard work has been done by Zurawski Motorsport. The parts are all available in separate chunks so you can either buy the parts for a particular part of the project or if you're resourceful you can come up with your own solutions. The costs of all parts are listed on their website. https://www.zurawskimotorsport.com  I've personally opted to buy all the parts of the conversion. Engine mounts, driveshafts, exhaust, charge cooler, deimmobilized Audi ecu (with cheeky little stage 1 tune), crank trigger wheel, fuel line conversion, coolant system conversion and conversion wiring loom.
They have also produced a series of 7 videos on youtube with step by step instructions on how to carry out each step.
The toothed wheel is to run the original rev counter in the MR2 instrument cluster. The crank sensor from the 1zz engine is used with a bracket that is part of the conversion kit for this purpose.
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Didn't get much done on the actual car today. I had to move everything to a friends garage so a lot of the day was spent loading and unloading all the parts and engine into the van and then into the new garage.
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I did manage to remove the rear lights and bumper before it got dark. The rear bumper bar is the one that came with the Malain exhaust. Due to the exhaust suffering from the 2 outlets not being level when fitted to the car I blanked one of the outlets off with a blanking plug fitted to the V band joint so it is totally reversible and can have the other tail pipe refitted. I went for having the outlet on the nearside because the exhaust requires the bumper trim cutting and the only available replacement on ebay at the time was the nearside one. Going to one outlet also quietened down the exhaust a little bit.
 I'm hoping to get the old engine out tomorrow.
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Well two days in a row!!

Started 1st on the button with a fully charged battery.

IACV needs some slight adjustment, but will look at that tomorrow.

Pulled it out and gave it a much needed bath.








House renovation materials are in the way of getting it fully out,  but its a start!

Take the vent off & you'll probably be able to glue it back.

Mine had emission issues a year or 2 ago. Most here suggested the cat or maybe a leak somewhere. Despite no error codes, I replaced the 2 manifold O2 sensors and that sorted it.

Sadly I missed out on the baffled sump but it is something that I want to get at some stage, I am pleased to have got the forged rods but it has got me thinking!

As an engine will need to be opened up it might as well have a refresh as it would be having a timing chain kit I might as well do both pumps but is it worth changing the pistons and rings to a more suitable 8.8:1 compression for my forced induction setup or is that just overkill?

What would cause this?




It's like all the clips on the inner vent trim has failed and the black part is now totally detached.

I guess I'll get a used one from J Spec but just wondering if anyone had seen it happen before