4A-GE Toyota-powered Midget

Here's Mike French's Toyota/MG, which he calls "The Toylet".

I saw it at the NASA race day that I attended (at Pocono) last weekend. I've known Mike for years (and ChrisS knows him too). Mike used to race another (1275) Midget against me.
These days as he has gotten older (he's at least 10 years older than me), he's taken it down a notch and only runs Time Trials....no more wheel-to-wheel. But he was doing like 115 out there in this Midget, so he's not exactly "slow" these days.

Anyway, the car uses an early 4A-GE mototr with smaller crank bearings and a rwd Corrolla 5 speed. The trans tunnel in the car had to be compleltly cut out and a new tube frame (made from 3/4" steel tube) replaced it. Then a cover went over that. The Spridget rear uses normal double-bearing race hubs with large studs and Vega Cosworth wheels. And a custom driveshaft. The front end uses MGB calipers and Spitfire rotors (he bought the kit from Winner's Circle).
He ditched the fuel injection and is running Weber 45s (a bit too big, he thinks). The distributor is an old-school Starlet unit. He particulaly liked the fact that this engine has it's distributor coming off the side of the engine. Most of these Japanese twin cams have the distributor coming out of the front of the cam box or they are crank-fire (no distributor). He hand-built the headers. The engine is basically stock inside and has recorded 107 HP to the rear wheels. Compared to a normal Midget, this thing goes like stink. By the way, it is road-legal (in New Hampshire) and he street drives it all the time (but he towed it the 6+ hours to Pocono with his Toyota Matrix).











For more Pocono photos from last weekend with NASA, ~Go Here~.

Nice conversion, Nial.

From the title, I thought you were talking about the Chevy Nova of a few years back that was a redo of a Toyota Corolla!

Mickey

that engine really fits well.

Looks like big fun.

I helped Mike with a couple things on that. Since the engine was out of an MR2 the upper radiator hose fitting pointed straight up. We cut the adapter at a 45, rotated the cut piece 180 and welded it back together. Now the hose is horizontal just below the intake. Also, the Starlet distributor needed an adapter sleeve and a new drive gear. That is a odd distributor because it has both separate vacuum advance and retard diaphragms.