Hi, I'm new to posting on this forum, though I've been reading it extensively for a couple of days now. I find the material fascinating, and I was initially surprised that there were actually other people out there who were really mindful of fuel economy.
So, onto my current situation: I recently bought a 1992 Geo Metro, (4 door manual transmission) which had a recently rebuilt engine. Spent a decent amount of money fixing it up, (bearings, exhaust, brakes) and took it on a road trip through the mountains and back, and it started acting up and died shortly after I got home. Took it to a mechanic and he said that something had not been done properly in the rebuild (something to do with the timing belt) and, for lack of better understanding on my part there was something to do with pulleys, the crankshaft and a big enough mess on the bottom of the engine that it wasn't really even rebuildable.
I've looked into a few options from getting a used engine (seems iffy unless one gets lucky) to getting a remanufactured/rebuilt engine, to even going electric. Due to some of the setbacks of electric (particularly range and winter issues) I've decided against that, and now I'm considering my options and I am looking for a little advice, with a couple of questions in mind:
I'm pretty sure I do not currently have the xfi engine. (I don't think it even comes in the sedan) How much would I need to change if I put one in? According to
Custom 1,621 is the curb weight of an xfi and 1,694 is the weight of my sedan (a regular coupe metro is 1,650). So, if it is relatively simple to plop an xfi engine in, I'm assuming that 73lbs isn't going to be the end of the world. Just seems like it's worth it if I'm looking at picking up the 15% or so increase I've heard one can expect from an xfi. I frequently drive around with between 1 and 4 passengers (I installed an extra seatbelt) but the previous engine seemed to do fine even at full load. (It just drives like the automatic does
without passengers)
Second question - what would be the best option in terms of an engine? Should I hunt around for a used engine, or should I shell out for a rebuilt or remanufactured engine? I've done a little googling and found a few sites offering remanufactured engines ranging from $1200-$1500. Time is also an issue, because I'm not really in a situation where I can wait for a good deal to pop up. (I'm not very mechanical myself, and my father will be visiting me for two weeks coming up pretty soon and has offered to help if I can get something together.) Also, I live in Canada, so it would always be a little bonus to deal with a Canadian company to avoid duty/border stuff, but that's not something that need necessarily be the case.
I definitely want to set this thing up to get good mileage, and obviously getting the right engine is going to be a very important part of that, so I want to get off on the right foot.