In the past few days we have had quite a bit of snow and ice accumulate on the roads. Everyone's getting stuck. I on the other hand sail through the snow like a hot knife through butter. I have been lucky to not have any problems, but man do I love my car even more now. The new tires I got are phenomenal. I was skeptical about buying General Tire Altamaxx because I did not know much about them, but I regret nothing. They chew up the snow and push it aside with ease. Not quite snow tires but pretty damn close if you ask me. I've climbed over snow banks as high as my bumper and never thought twice about it. Last night I pulled my friends Blazer out of a snow bank he got stuck in. Appropriate **** talk was administered.

Anyway, I'm still having problems with the underside. Still have the exhaust rattle but have another problem. Sometimes when its wet or if I take a sharp left turn I hear a sound that seems like something is touching the drive shaft. It only happens while its spinning. Whether its in gear or not. It's really driving me crazy. On top of that I think my ABS module is bad AND my brakes in general are shot to hell. Damn you Audi for having high prices on parts! Even the after market stuff is expensive. Oh well, one thing at a time. I still love my car.

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Okay so a lot has happened. My basic plans for the car are still the same. It's just going to take a little longer to achieve them now. I just had to get new rims because I bent three of my stock ones. The roads around here are atrocious. I replaced them with 17" RS4 wheels, don't look to bad. I've gotten a lot of compliments so far. I think it cut some of my wheel gap down just a little bit. On top of that happening, I am currently unemployed. DAMN SALLIE MAE. So I'm looking for another job while living off of what I had saved up. So that means mods are being put off for a while. YAY for me! I really need to get back in school.


:(

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I've only driven through one winter up here so I'm not to experienced on the white stuff. Thats why I bought AWD. That and my love for rally anyway. But this should be fun :) My only experience was in a mid-engine RWD car last winter.

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Well there are three changes coming to my car early next year. In January I plan on getting a "chipped ECU" by APR. This will increase my horsepower from 150 to around 200 and my torque from 155 to around 243 ft lbs. Next I will be saving to get my timing belt changed before it goes out and costs me about five grand to fix everything it breaks. After that I'll finally get my tint. I'm probably going to get 32% since the place I'm going to only offers 17 and 32 percent (in the range I want anyway). I'm going to this place because all their tint is machine cut and I've heard many good things about their shop. They do industrial applications also. So I'll update again once I get my ECU chipped. Cant wait :)

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Well for a few weeks my car was really sluggish. I knew I had a boost leak somewhere but didnt have time to find it. Finally, I got fed up and decided to put other things on hold. Turns out it was right on top of the engine so it was easy to fix. The guy at Autozone even gave me a piece of hose and two clamps free. Wooo boost again! Wait, it blew again. WTF?! Now I have to fix it again. At least its not in a hard spot.

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Yup, its finally over. No more going out to start it and it dieing. Some words of advice, never take your car to CarX. They SUCK. I spent hundreds of dollars there trying to get my car fixed, and they didn't fix it. But it's to late for me to get a refund. I took the car to a guy my uncle knows and he fixed it for less than $200 and there is nothing wrong with it now. Just needs new tires. I'm still trying to sell it, I just was not proactive about it until I got it fixed. I am going to lower the price to get it sold. I'm trying to get a new car (05-07) soon so I will probably sell my MR2 also. I need a good reliable car for college.

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For a long time now I have been very interested in cars, but I've been very limited to the amount of hands on experience that I would like to have at this point. The only cars I have really worked on were MR2's, a first gen and my second gen. Oh and my friends Impreza. Everything I know is pretty much self taught. I've done a lot of reading on everything I can find but that can only do so much. But I think I've found a way to achieve my goal of one day opening my own shop with a friend of mine who is a mechanical engineering major. I have a meeting this Thursday with a guy named Troy from the Ohio Technical College in Cleveland. I've heard good things and I had a detailed discussion with him over the phone today about the school, the program I'm interested in, living arangements, expenses and everything else. I feel comfortable that this will be the right choice for me. It's going to be a huge step for me to take but I think I can handle it. I have to schedule an orientation day to check the school out and make a final final decision, but I think I've already made my mind up. The school seems great, small class sizes, experienced instructors, lots of equipment to work with and lots of space. The program I will be entering will encompass your regular automotive training, plus high performance/racing and alternative fuel technologies. I'm both excited and apprehensive at the same time, as to be expected. But once I finish I will be ready to start learning in the real world and make it on my own.

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...except this constant noise! It sounds sort of like a power steering pump when you are turning around with the wheel turned as far as it will go. But the thing is, I dont have power steering in the 2. Yesterday it made a really horrid smell fill the cabin and I had to get home quick because it wouldnt go away, even if I rolled the windows down. According to the BGB's (Toyota service manuals) the smell could be all sorts of things I have to check. Some of which I've ruled out because if it was incorrect timing or something like that then the odor would smell like the engine is running rich or lean, and it definetly doesnt smell anything like that. Reminds me of a papermill in a way. So right now I'm trying to figure out what is causing the sound and the smell. The sound only starts up if I have driven over I think about 10 minutes, and the smell takes longer to develope. The sound itself is coming from behind the firewall in the front trunk. I made a short video of it that I will post in my video section after I post this. Check it out and see what you think.

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Last night I finally brought the MR2 home. I'm extremely happy now, even though I have to drive to work today with no windshield wipers haha. A few weeks ago I was bringing it home and it died on me after about 30 minutes and stranded me. Worst day I've had in years. But we found the problem. The alternator went out. So I bought a new one two days ago and picked the car up last night. So my baby is home safe and sound!

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Well I don't know if I posted about this but I found out what was causing my strange idle problem. It was a combination of the ISC valve not functioning properly and a vacuum leak. So that is fixed! I was finally driving the MR2 home when my tachometer began to surge up and down quickly. I knew something was up with the wiring. It died after about 1/4th of the long drive back home. Long story short, jumped the car many times, got stuck in a driveway hindering traffic on a very busy road, tore up someones yard, parked in their neighbors drive way, left the car overnight in the parking lot of a Kohl's after finding out the hard way my car is to low (stock suspension) to go on my uncles dolly, finaly tow it back to my uncles house. I'm trying to get an alternator from a guy I work with so hopefully I can somehow get that tomorrow. Going to be tough though, seeing as how my other car just blew a hose today and started smoking and leaking coolant and water all over the groun. I have the best luck! Now I have no car to get to work.

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Ever sine I got my Monte Carlo back from the shop she has been giving me problems. Instead of fixing whats wrong I'm going to say screw it and try to trade it in on another car. I don't feel like dealing with it. I'd rather make payments on a used car that is in better shape than put more money into this car. So I've been looking at a BMW 318is for a few days now. It's black which suits me well, and its a 5 speed. So that racks up some more points in its favor. Besides the default points it gets for being a BMW. So, I'm going to call the insurance company for a quote and discuss trading the Monte in on it. I'll post updates as to how this is progressing.

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I graduated in the class of 06 with no ambitions for college. Now that I've realized how much life sucks and grown up a lot, I've decided I'm going to go back to school. But, alas, I cannot afford it right now. So, my plan is to take a year off of school to get my priorties in order and figure out what I'm going to do. So far I've come up with work as much as I can and save as much as I can (well thought out huh?). After this winter I'm probably going to move out of Ohio to Indiania to hopefully work for Toyota for a while so I can save up money quick. I want to get in school as soon as I can. I really want to become a mechanic, but not just an everday mechanic you see at your local AAMCO. I want to go through the BMW programs at OhioTech when I can afford it. I love BMW's and it would be awesome to work for BMW one day. Then maybe work my way up to more exotic cars. One day I'd like to own my own tuneing shop for imports and domestics since I'm not one whos biast aganist where a car comes from (yeah, thats right mullet man). Wish me luck, I'm going to need it.

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My new leather shift boot with red stitching came in the mail today. I got it from www.redlinegoods.com It arrived on time and I'm very pleased with the overall product. Cost me $45 shipped from Poland. Hand made to. I'll get some more pictures once I get it installed in a few days.

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The MR2 hit the road today for the first time in two years, and it was a great experience for me. I've waited a long time to get this thing out on the road. It still has the idle problem, but it drives great. I'm close to getting it 100% road worthy.

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Well, a little over two weeks ago my transmission took a dump on me. Lost one or two gears. So, I replaced the entire thing for $1,238. I got it back last Friday and have been taking it easy on it until I hit 500 miles to make sure everythings broken in properly. But today I got on it more because I finally got around to replacing the air filter with a FRAM filter. Just under normal acceleration on residential streets there was a noticeable difference. The old filter must have been worse than I thought. But the car pulls much harder now. I probably regained a few horsepower that was lost due to the previous owner. Next I'm going to replace the distributer cap, plug wires and spark plugs.

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It took 3 days to drop the gas tank. We had to remove all of the dust guard panels under the car, then disconnect the e-brake cables that need to be replaced. After that we disconnected the radiator lines and some fuel lines. Not to sure if they were evaporator lines or not. After moving those out of the way we removed the brackets holding the tank in place. I had to remove the center console that covers the transmission tunnel (gas tank is under it) and the console covering the ac/radio/ect controls so I could disconnect the sending unit from the wiring harness. I went and bought an aftermarket fuel pump to replace the old one with because it needed it....bad. It needed it worse than Carrot Top needs to die. So we got that replaced and then put everything back together. I got in and after such a long time of only hearing the engine run while running off of brake cleaner sprayed into the intake, I got to hear my baby running on its own power! But in my fit of excitement I noticed that it was idleing at 2k RPM's and pouring white smoke. But it eventually stopped smoking and the RPM's dropped. But then the tach started bouncing back and forth between 1-2k RPM's and we are trying to resolve that problem now. Look for more updates in the future.

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I'm thinking about getting rid of my stock dual exhaust and going with either Magnaflow or Flowmaster mufflers. I'm not sure if I'm going to go catless or not. I'm still looking around and trying to see what other people have done and what they have to say. I'll look at a new header to help to produce a better sound also.

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