This one's a grab bag of things I did before firing up the MR2.
Transmission Fluid
The fill hole on this transmission is hard to get to, so I made a really long funnel. You can stretch plastic hose pretty well if you heat it with a hot air gun.
If you set your gear oil in a pot of boiling water for about 10 or 15 minutes (about as long as it takes to make a long funnel), it'll pour more like regular engine oil and less like molasses. Make sure to open the jug since it does expand some.
Oil Cooler Hoses
These are notorious for leaking and mine are definitely guilty. Three of the four ends are easy enough to get to, but the fourth is in a spot you can't actually see. This is one of those things that happens when engineers take a drivetrain meant to be mounted in a front-engine front-wheel drive car and stick it in the back of a sports car.
Drain to the oil pan:
The oil cooler itself, which exchanges heat with the engine coolant:
These flex drivers were really useful for getting to the clamp I couldn't see.
Out with the old, in with the new (wrapped in the old heat shields):
I also replaced the old T-style hose clamps with modern band clamps.
Oiling The Engine
Being that the engine had sat for a while, I figured I wouldn't gamble on it starting and building oil pressure right off the bat, so I decided to oil the top end myself.
All the tools needed to pull the valve covers:
The nice thing about having the engine back here is the trunk lid makes a nice workbench.
I took each valve cover off and poured about 2 pints of oil all over the camshafts.
A while back I had poured a few tablespoons of 30 weight oil into the cylinders to keep the rings from freezing to the cylinder walls. To get this stuff out of there and to give the engine a bit of time to splash some oil around before starting, I pulled the EFI computer fuse and the spark plugs, then ran the starter a few times.
This didn't fling out as much oil as I expected. Put it all back together, and it started on the 3rd or 4th try! Unfortunately, it's got some weird rattles to debug:
There is also still an oil leak from the back of the engine that is hopefully the distributor. I've got a rebuild kit for that, so I'll redo that and see if that fixes it. Time to start on a list of things I need to do before she's roadworthy.