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Yep I am putting the Metro in the Manta body. I thought about it for a while and the Manta was probably the most dangerous car on the road the way it was built. 1300hp in a 1600lb car was fun in a terrifying about to die at any second kind of way. But it was not really usable on the street. The metro was about the same way. It was incredibly rough riding and with the drivers front suspension much stiffer and limited compared to the rest of the car it drove terrible also. So with 2 cars that were not really fun to drive I figured I could build one really good car out of the two.
The Manta is a rear wheel drive mid engine car so I am keeping it that way and putting the front end of the Metro in the back. The only change I made to the front end was to swap the control arms from side to side and angle them forward about 40 degrees. I am building this one from scratch instead of like I did with the convertible and building it inside an existing body. So it is much slower to build but the end results should be a much lighter and cleaner build.
I am really considering tearing down one of my extra transmissions and seeing how much work it would be to have a longer shaft machined for it to stick out of the 5th gear cover. I would probably use the driven shaft. I am thinking with it on that shaft what ever gear I put the car in won't matter to the electric drive. It would always be connected. If I put it on the main shaft I would get a lot of gears to use but then I would have the problem of having to always hold the clutch in when not using the gas engine and I don't really want to have to keep my foot on the clutch constantly. I am not settled on hooking it up this way but it is just another option I have.
With the tire size I am using and the gearing I have I would need a 4000rpm range on the electric motor. If I find a motor that can spin faster I can gear it down with the drive sprockets. I would like to use an AC motor so I don't have to worry about brushes wearing out but if the brushes could last 50k miles before needing changed I could live with that.
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