starlet or mr2 turbo

[Texx]

Recently swapped my MR2 Turbo for an EP82, both great fun cars.

MR2 Turbos are very nice to drive but expensive to run. When problems arise their either harder to fix than your average car due to their design, or more expensive to get parts.

My turbo was a REV1 - dangerous is the only word to describe it in standard form. REV3+ are far better (1993+)

Insurance was exactly the same for both the mr2 and the EP82 with my insurers.

The MR2 Turbo's have become very common of late so you can get a lot of car for your money these days. I only swapped cars out of boredom/Fancied something different.

Much better MPG from Starlet though, and parts are more expensive on the mr2.

Shop around and you could find a minter for very little money.

Great advice there. The Rev1 is where the MR2 Turbo got its reputation for unpredictable handling and to be fair the Rev2 wasn't a great deal better, but a significant improvement was seen with the Rev3 onwards (this is all in stock form btw). A lot of the scary back end moments was usually experienced with cars fitted with a LSD. A LSD is all well and good until you break traction and effectively lose the majority of road grip to both the rear tyres, this couple with the weight of the engine and box sat directly above, the car mid corner and the driver lifting off the throttle, will cause the car to spin as the rear tyres completely let go. When breaking traction with a normal open diff, it results in road grip being lost to only one of the rear tyres and so the car remains a little more controllable, however its a lot easier to break traction with an open diff than it is with a LSD.

So in summary, a Rev1 Turbo with a LSD will be a handful compared to a Rev3 Turbo with an open diff. As long as you go for a well maintained Rev3 onwards and respect the fact it has a mid engine, rear wheel drive setup, you can't fall off.

Running costs aren't the cheapest. I had a Rev2 GT-S for a fair while, slightly modified with a HKS TD05-16G @ 1.2bar, HKS 264 cams, Mines VX ROM ECU and an ST205 chargecooler @ 294HP 287lb/ft . Would return me about 26-27mpg general driving and 12-13mpg when doing what it was built to do.

 

[nicholai]

thank you very much that is a lot of help thank you