I have more or less settled on using the convertible body as the base of my Metro XFI buildup.
I have stripped it down so far to almost the bare shell and will be finishing that up tomorrow if I don't get side tracked.
As of now my plans are to totally strip it to a rolling shell. I will remove everything that is bolted on the car except the suspension and maybe steering. From there Build a tube chassis to replace the unibody and add a roll cage of some sort. After that strip out the remaining unibody structure and leave just the sheet metal body. Inner fenders and other random covers I will probably replace with a plastic of some sort, it will be easier to install and lighter than metal. I will make a custom wiring harness similar to the one on my kit car that uses mosfets to control all the loads so the dash just has some 22ga wiring and is otherwise empty. This also keeps the amount of heavy wiring to a minimum but gives me the annoying part of having multiple fuse blocks.
I will probably lower the car by swapping the springs I have in my car right now into it. I am thinking right now of using
these 175/70-14 tires on a set of 14 inch steel rims. I will probably flatten out the floor since it won't be a unibody so just welding in a flat sheet would be easy. I am still thinking that I could seal the underside of the engine bay making a smooth belly pan. If I raise the passenger floor 4 inches higher I could use that extra space as a duct for the engine compartment air and direct it out the back center. Managing the airflow for the required parts of the car seems like it should help me out some. I plan on closing the gap on the front wheels and adding deflectors on the front end to keep air off them.
So far this is about all I have planned. I will probably change my mind on stuff constantly up until the time I actually build that part. Anyone else got any ideas of suggestions on stuff I can do? I am thinking that since this is going to be probably 6 months or so to build that I have time to do some pretty complicated stuff. I am open to anything really, even putting the engine in the trunk and making a can am style nose is a possibility.
I will probably strip the car down the last bit this week and then not touch it other than spraying degreaser on it for a week or so. Rushing into doing work like this usually means you end up doing it twice
