The incident at Mallory had left Karen’s car in quite a state. Two crushed front wings, a broken bumper and front valance parts, a crushed radiator, bent front light covers, a heavily creased driver’s door with smashed glass, a mildly dented passenger door, a badly dented driver’s rear quarter panel with a missing side vent and finally an errant driver’s front wheel thanks to a sheared track rod end.


Image copyright Richard Senter, used with kind permission

Our friend David came up from Wiltshire for a weekend of repairs. He and Richard stripped the damaged parts from the front of the car. They then set about removing the worst of the dents in the rear ¼ panel by using David’s slide-hammer to pull the panel back into some sort of shape. Darren also made an appearance and lent his strength to help things along. Where holes had been drilled to allow use of the slide-hammer, they were filled with fibreglass and filler was used to smooth things out.


Image copyright Richard Senter, used with kind permission

Richard and David then removed the steering rack from the donor car and replaced the one on the race car. At least moving the race car about was now a lot easier with the steering returned to a working condition!

The donor car had already had its driver’s door removed for storage as a spare and this was now brought out to replace the badly damaged one on the race car. David made short work of swapping the door lock barrels to enable the use of the original key on the new door and solved a small wiring dilemma presented by the new door thanks to some interesting bodgery by a previous owner. After some messing with the hinges the new (red!) door was fitted to the car. The window winder turned out to be a bit clonkey, but at least it worked.

The next weekend, Tim Cartledge #42 came up from Sussex to help install a new Exedy clutch. Quite a drive to spend your weekend struggling with a clutch change, and that’s just how it turned out! One of the first jobs on Saturday saw Tim spear his finger with a screwdriver, yet despite this nasty wound he soldiered on for the weekend. Many hours were spent trying to get the gearbox back onto the car and it was on what was decided would be the very last effort that everything just fitted into place! Richard finished replacing the ancillaries and exhaust. Just after Tim had left for home, Richard discovered the loss of reverse and a very floppy gearchange. The linkage levers on the gearbox had come apart and were found to be damaged. Replacements were soon robbed from a spares car and everything was returned to a working order. Richard certainly learnt an awful lot that weekend!


Image copyright Richard Senter, used with kind permission


Image copyright Richard Senter, used with kind permission

During the following week, Richard won a pair of front wings in an eBay auction and collected them from close to Oxford. He also managed to bag a spare radiator, and a driver’s door for John Wilson #17 who’s car had received some damage at a recent PowerNights event.

John kindly donated a driver’s side headlight assembly, and with the help of our friend Lance, the bulkhead was re-shaped to allow the correct mounting of the pop-up headlights.

In previous repairs, Richard had taken the time to prepare panels and spray them in an attempt to match the colour of the rest of the car. This was a costly and time consuming process. To simplify things, Richard decided to brush paint the required panels in a blue/black mix of Hammerite that was as close as he could get to the undamaged parts of the car. Lance also helped to paint the headlamp covers, front valance and sideskirt parts. Richard even painted the original bumper which had bounced back into a decent shape. Part of Tim’s fee for helping with the clutch was that Karen’s car should be fitted with a fluorescent pink air-intake which he’d brought along with him. It certainly helped take peoples eyes away from the damaged rear ¼ panel!

A new radiator had been ordered and arrived within a couple of days. The original one had been crushed from beneath and was removed. The radiator support was bent back into shape and the new radiator was fitted and the coolant system was flushed and carefully filled and bled to avoid air-traps. The operation of the electric fan was also checked.


Image copyright Richard Senter, used with kind permission

Finally, Richard re-sprayed the previously black GRP sunroof panel with a colour very close to the original blue of the car. This meant when the MR2 Only graphics were applied the resulting effect was really rather good! MR2 Only decals were also applied to the front and rear bumpers. The race numbers were applied to the new door and the car was complete.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank MR2 Only and its staff for their support and offers of spare parts. Thanks must go to David, Darren and Lance for their help with various repairs to the car and a special thanks go to Tim Cartledge for spending the weekend changing the clutch – We really appreciate it!