Off with the wheels. The lug wrench that came with the Spyder will do, but the impact made it nicer. 21mm socket, if anyone is curious.
Both rear wheels need to be removed.
As you can see the two 10mm bolts holding the license plate have been removed along with the plate. Do not forget about these small electrical clips. Leaving them on when you pull the bumper skin off will embarass you in front of your friends.
Hit all three 10mm screws that are on each side of the bumper skin. Two are where I have my ratchet placed, one is hiding up in the wheel well but is easy enough to spot.
This needs to be done on both sides.
Pop the hood
While hard to see, Iām removing one of the two 10mm bolts that secure the tail light in place.
This needs to be done for both lights.
Removing the electrical clip that is attached to the tail light housing.
This needs to be done for both lights.
Removing the two 10mm bolts that secure the bumper skin to some actual metal under the tail lights.
This needs to be done for both sides.
This documentation in no way replaces the Toyota MR2 Repair Manuals. The purpose of this content is only to provide supplementary information to fellow MR2 enthusiasts. Midship Runabout and its contributing authors will not be held responsible for any injury or damages that may occur as the result of practicing any of the methods or procedures described within this website. Article and photo submissions are property of the contributing author.
You sir are a star! i have to do this job in a week or so and this write up will help no ends. your right about the best tool being common sense, i didn’t use mine once to do a small job on a fiesta, you know how it is” i’ll just nip under this car without axle stamnds as its only a quick one” then the car falls off said jack. A night in hosptal and resulting brain damage tends to make you think twice about stuff lol lesson learned me thinks.
Thanks again for the write up. wish there were more people who took the time to do great work like you with the photos and so on.
Tony
I cannot believe I go online to find a tutorial to re-install a motor in a spyder and I find my car used in a step by step picture guide! I recognize it by the tape pulled off mark behind the license plate, the stick welds on the modified header, and the way the wire was poked through the firewall grommet next to the main harness wires! Out of curiousity, why was the motor dropped for this tutorial? Was that when it was opened up and some of the rod caps not installed back onto the correct rods? I would love to know some more history for this car from before Brad owned it!
-Jared
Thank you. I’m glad the write up has proven to be handy. I had originally hosted this document on my own personal web site and was not aware of this site until I was looking for other 2zz related details and stumbled across it. Just as a reference for anyone who finds this document instead of the other; I totally glossed over the disconnection of the coolant lines. I imagine it would be fairly obvious to someone performing the work, but just in case, they get disconnected after the coolant has been drained from the car.
Hi Jared, I apologize for missing your post. I don’t recall it being there when I posted my response to Tony several months back.
I dropped the motor for this tutorial because I needed to weld some coolant ports for the 2zz swap. Truth be told, this engine may as well been installed with a zipper because I removed it so often for various repairs/modifications after the swap. I had rolled the car during a Fall Dragon Run and the 1zz started using oil afterwards so on a whim, we decided to swap the drivetrain while I was visiting Little Rocket. This was David’s first 2zz swap and we didn’t know to weld the ports at the time. We used rubber coolant caps as I recall and they failed which was allowing coolant leak hassles. Sadly, those aren’t stick welds on that header. I just had no idea what I was doing back then.
If you’re curious about finding more of the car’s history, my username on SpyderChat.com is dmc-4359. I owned it from 2001 until I sold it to Brad in 2005. If you still have the car, and are ever interested in selling it, please hit me up on SpyderWeb or on SpyderChat.