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Old 12-30-2009, 02:21 PM   #1 (permalink)
bennelson
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Oconomowoc, WI, USA
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Electric Cycle - '81 Kawasaki KZ440
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Electro-Metro - '96 Ben Nelson's "Electro-Metro"
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Should I fix this XFI?

Hi everyone.

My brother is a college student (= he has no money...) and will be commuting from one University campus to another this coming semester. It's about 32 miles each way.

He currently drives a Chevy AstroVan AWD. It gets around 20 mpg on the freeway. He is in a snowy part of the state, so all-wheel-drive is nice, he needs front-wheel drive as a minimum.

What he really needs is a one-person economy car to get back and forth.
I have been checking online classifieds for 3 cylinder Metros, and stumbled on an XFI for sale. Of course the problem with it is that it has the dreaded control arm mount rust - fairly bad too.

Daox and I fixed that problem on the Electro-Metro while we had the engine out, but it wasn't as bad on my car, and there was plenty of workspace without the engine and transmission in there.

I went and looked at the car in person and took plenty of photos to share with you guys.
See the entire photo album HERE

Overall, there is more rust than I would like on the car. The backside of the passenger fender is bent up. The interior panel of the hatch and the driver door have been removed (although the owner does still have them.)
The rocker panels have a fair amount of rust.

However, the car has been sitting in the guys backyard, parked, for over a year. We moved the battery from the guys daily driver into the XFI and it fired right up! Like instantly! It seemed to sound pretty good to me too. (Although I haven't regularly worked on 3 cylinder cars, and they do sound different than 4 cylinders.)

The car has 134,000 miles on it. The guy is only asking $350 for it, and would prefer to sell it to someone who would fix it, rather than part it out.

So, my question is - Do you think it is worth buying this car, fixing the control arm mount, and using as an eco-beater commuter car?
The main thing that would be a challenge is that there has already been a little deformation of that bit of the frame where the swing arm mounts up. In the one photo of the side view of the front passenger tire, you can see how the wheel is no longer in the middle of the wheel well. I am not sure exactly how I would re-align the wheel back exactly right to do the welding job.

I love the idea of getting an XFI, and the engine sounded really good, but the body leaves much to be desired.....











Maybe Johnny Mullet or one of you other Metro Guru's could weigh in on this one.

Thanks,

-Ben

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