Face lift Spyders use inferior steel.

They totally missed the significance related to the near noticable tweak to the paint formula for 040 Super White in the face lift years that increased BHP by 3 at the wheels, reinforcing the Super White MR2 Spyder's place in history as the fastest color in Toyota's arsenal of fast paint colors.

@uncle-mush

And yet, oddly enough, Electric Mica Green is still the best color, even though it is a known fact that white is faster. Weird, huh?

(Your car is beautiful, UM)

@uncle-mush

And yet, oddly enough, Electric Mica Green is still the best color, even though it is a known fact that white is faster. Weird, huh?

(Your car is beautiful, UM)

As to the inferior steel, well, duh! That's why they had to add all that bracing: the door panels were just too bendy to support the weight of the whole car. Stupid California, with all their rules...

Posted by: @dev

Looks like your 2003+ is less of a car according to one person.  Check out post number 5.

https://www.mr2roc.org/forum/index.php?topic=68544.0

Just too funny.  

 

 

 

The person metioned has disassembled and recycled a few hundred retired MR2s. 

While not scientific fact, his opinion is a bit too well founded for a laugh. 

And since we are about founded fact; seems the everywhere copied ´fact´ that the FL has the improved pistons is less well founded than the steel opinion. Rather a weird turn of info. Curious to see how the latter pans out.

Not sure about the quality of the steel in the 03+ models but I do know that the steel in the front firewall of a 2000 model will not hold up to being shot as my current Spyder can attest.

I can say that said bullet is no match for the firewall and a lower control arm however.

Posted by: @petrus

Posted by: @dev

Looks like your 2003+ is less of a car according to one person.  Check out post number 5.

https://www.mr2roc.org/forum/index.php?topic=68544.0

Just too funny.  

 

 

 

The person metioned has disassembled and recycled a few hundred retired MR2s. 

While not scientific fact, his opinion is a bit too well founded for a laugh. 

And since we are about founded fact; seems the everywhere copied ´fact´ that the FL has the improved pistons is less well founded than the steel opinion. Rather a weird turn of info. Curious to see how the latter pans out.

 

 If its the same guy that claimed that there is a special JDM transmission that stands upto abuse I call BS. 

  Everything else including the leather claim is also BS. 

 I will give him the benefit of possibly seeing some difference only because of wear, tear and age has on the condition of the materials.  After the car is born it becomes a snow flake and many things can change it depending on its location, storage and abuse.  There is no doubt there can be manufacturing variations and in some cases cars can get better with subsequent years but going for the jugular on the metal being inferior to pre facelift  is pure poppycock.     

 Please don't think this is in anyway aimed at you as we have been though this before by so called "experts" of this platform that some people followed blindly only to unravel because they made some outlandish claims that would be next to impossible to prove without actual testing and documentation.  

Posted by: @wilcomr-s

Not sure about the quality of the steel in the 03+ models but I do know that the steel in the front firewall of a 2000 model will not hold up to being shot as my current Spyder can attest.

I can say that said bullet is no match for the firewall and a lower control arm however.

 

 

Thank you for sharing.  That was just the "shot" that this thread needed.  <grin>

Posted by: @uncle-mush

Posted by: @wilcomr-s

Not sure about the quality of the steel in the 03+ models but I do know that the steel in the front firewall of a 2000 model will not hold up to being shot as my current Spyder can attest.

I can say that said bullet is no match for the firewall and a lower control arm however.

 

 

Thank you for sharing.  That was just the "shot" that this thread needed.  <grin>

Agreed and far more scientrific.  

Posted by: @dev

 

 I will give him the benefit of possibly seeing some difference only because of wear, tear and age has on the condition of the materials.  After the car is born it becomes a snow flake and many things can change it depending on its location, storage and abuse.  There is no doubt there can be manufacturing variations and in some cases cars can get better with subsequent years but going for the jugular on the metal being inferior to pre facelift  is pure poppycock.     

 

 

 

 

 

Hmmm. Is that not more a case of semantics rather than anything else?

After scraping hundreds of Spyders, Dean observes that the PFL´s steel ages better.

Ok, that is but óne property of steel and whether that warrant the stamp of ´better steel´ ... well, depends.  It is like stiff, hard, resilliant, compliant; what is better?  Being a scrapper, hé interpretes aging better as better period. 

Dick Sloan has scrapped hundreds also, yet I have never seen him comment on a difference between PFL and FL steel. Were it noticeable I'm sure he would have commented on it.

Posted by: @petrus

Posted by: @dev

 

 I will give him the benefit of possibly seeing some difference only because of wear, tear and age has on the condition of the materials.  After the car is born it becomes a snow flake and many things can change it depending on its location, storage and abuse.  There is no doubt there can be manufacturing variations and in some cases cars can get better with subsequent years but going for the jugular on the metal being inferior to pre facelift  is pure poppycock.     

 

 

 

 

 

Hmmm. Is that not more a case of semantics rather than anything else?

After scraping hundreds of Spyders, Dean observes that the PFL´s steel ages better.

Ok, that is but óne property of steel and whether that warrant the stamp of ´better steel´ ... well, depends.  It is like stiff, hard, resilliant, compliant; what is better?  Being a scrapper, hé interpretes aging better as better period. 

Dean also observed that there is a special JDM transmission only available in Japan  that handles more abuse. That claim is false. Many here have that magical transmission with and without LSD as an option and it is the most common transmission for the Spyder as well as other cars that share the same engine world wide.  It's actually the Euro transmission that is the odd ball transmission  however there is nothing wrong with that transmission either as it has been adopted on many stateside Spyders without any issues.  I can tell you that the C56 transmission has its share of failures. 

This is what reinforces the claim about the steel differences being suspect because it follows a pattern of grandiose claims.  Same with the leather as I have seen both with and without tears and they seem to be of the same quality if not exactly the same material but I have to make a much closer comparison to rule it out.  

As far as the metal not holding up to corrosion there can be a case to be made when the cars environment is taken to the limits as it has been observed in the UK possibly because of the highly corrosive salts they use, however on the whole US Spyders  even in the rust belts tend to only have spotty surface corrosion and im sure there is a case out there but on the whole it is usually arrested.  If Toyota switched to a different rust proofing around that time frame it might point to a difference in other markets but on the whole I doubt they told the foundry they are going to cheapen the steel that is already in its production run as they usually don't do something this extreme because  it can be catastrophic.   

This is not the first time I have heard people on hobby boards point to steel being better in older items. I have an older Czechoslovakian  handgun that is reported to have magical steel that the communists used. It is believed the rumor was perpetuated by some well known gun smith. The rumor was so bad that  it ended up into some Japanese anime comic book where the hero would go into great detail of the magic powers of the steel.   

 This lead to a heated debate and all kinds of anecdotal reports of how the metal was special and held up to abuse compared to the current Czech versions of the gun. There were people that would say you can tell because the steel resonated like glass when you tapped it with another metal object.  Finally someone sent samples to a lab and the results showed that  although they were different possibly due to formulations that change over time there is nothing special about the steel used.  

Posted by: @nelix

Dick Sloan has scrapped hundreds also, yet I have never seen him comment on a difference between PFL and FL steel. Were it noticeable I'm sure he would have commented on it.

I actually had to do a search to see if it was a real person. I thought it was someones porn name.   

@dev

Nope, you are thinking of the nearly famous Pacer racer and sometime Fiero scrapper Hans Veelofer. He got into porn later (for the money, of course) after the last of the easy Fieros got scrapped. Nice thing was that he didn't need to come up with a porn name.

I can see how you got confused, though. It's actually a pretty common mistake, but very few people know that.

Posted by: @nottamiata

@dev

Nope, you are thinking of the nearly famous Pacer racer and sometime Fiero scrapper Hans Veelofer. He got into porn later (for the money, of course) after the last of the easy Fieros got scrapped. Nice thing was that he didn't need to come up with a porn name.

I can see how you got confused, though. It's actually a pretty common mistake, but very few people know that.

Not many would get his name either.

Meanwhile I am pleased with my superior steel one dipped in ´liquid metal´ paint 🙂

Had a metalic grey base Fiero 2.5 btw. Never understood why they got the flack they did. It was a pleasant enough midship runabout at a great price. Lóved the car. It just was not a sports car.  It is still going strong btw. The bloke I sold it to 25 tears ago stíll uses it for daily transport.

My gf at the time drove a white Karmann Type 34. Same thing. Véry nice car; practical, good looking, reliable, easy maintenance yet flogged for not being sporty. 

The husband of another gf had a lime green X1/9. Same thing again. Much maligned for being too slow but is was a véry nice car. Well built, STRONG, uttahly reliable engine.  A very  pleasant  and cheap to maintain runabout.

Before the Fiero I had a reed Thriumph Spitfire 1500. That was oddly enough the reverse.  A simply  bad, basically pre-war car with at best suspect handling yet thát was and still is hallowed.

Back to the steel. In the anglo-saxon language area French and Italian cars have a proverbially bad rust image. Brit cars do not. In the real world they were on average all just as bad with better/worse examples than average on either side. 

Ahhhhh, cars x motoring journalists and the resulting self sustained image/delusion amongst the masses. Owned Alfas too. Raced one even; two actually;  a 1300 GTJ and a 75. Despite the almost revered sporty image of the italian stallion, the Volvo 343 with 2.0 red block was quicker; drove circles around the contempory 75 on the track yet the 343 was given a granddad image.