Hi everyone,
My name is Matt and I just bought a manual 96 3cyl Metro on Craiglist with 99k mi for $1100
. Even though I'm 30 years old I had never had the opportunity to learn how to drive a MT. Thankfully like many in my generation and no doubt nearly everyone on this site, I have found that one can learn anything on the internet
. I literally youtubed how to drive a stick shift - watched a video then went out and played for a couple hours. Now I know what all the fuss is about.
I had heard about metros winning mpg contests by altering their driving (something I now know as hipermiling) and googled this shortly after buying the car. This quickly led me to metroMPG where my entire world changed. I spent two days locked up on the boat (I live on a boat in San Diego) during a crazy winter rainstorm and was completely fascinated as I read about hipermiling, mechanical mods, and what I found most fascinating: aeromods. As soon as the rain quit I began my aero mods
.
went to San Diego Plastics where I bought a sheet of 1/8in ABS (in green to match the paint) and the scrap metal place where I picked up an old aluminum roadsign that I cut into long aluminum strips and tabs that I bent into small brackets. My first mod was rear skirts almost exactly like the blackfly only I went ahead and drilled self tapping screws rather than make copper clips. Then I made a complete lower grill block, leaving the upper hood gap as my functioning grill. My latest creation was completely smooth hubcaps (I simply cut 14" discs out of the plastic and ziptied them to the rim spokes).
You can see my tank to tank progress in the fuel log which represents every tank since I got the car. My best so far is 44mpg but I hope to significantly improve this. A buddy is going to help me put in an ignition kill switch and I just ordered a scanguage II. For my first equipment mods. My next aero mods will be: some sort of miror(s) deletion and I really really want to do a full bellypan. I'm also dreaming of a cambak extention.
Sorry I don't have good pics of the mods up. I took pics but then deleted them off my phone not realizing they were still being sent via email at the time. The result was emails void of attachments. I'll try to take some pics asap.
edit: I just realized I don't have the ability to post pics until I participate in forums more. Alright, good thing my lurking days are over. Pics to come soon