Geo Metro XFI Convertible Project Finished

[MetroMPG]

Well, stating the obvious, but it's amazing how much rust you can uncover once you start poking. And pressure washing. I was convinced the blue ForkenSwift Metro was a solid host car with "one or two" tiny holes in the floor. No way. I opened up some pretty big holes. It wasn't as swiss cheesy as this vert, but still a bit of a shocker.

Next topic: I'm assuming you're either friendly with your local garage, or you don't have to do state inspections to get your plates? (Wondering if they'd give you trouble for a massively modified unibody/frame.

[Coyote X]

There is a state inspection to make sure the car is road worthy. Mainly checking the lights and junk like that. They don't check the car for much of anything really. Pretty much if the car is within the uniform vehicle code specs they can't fail it. The car doesn't have to be anything resembling stock though

There are no emissions tests or any actual tests for a car unless you are trying to license a salvage title. Those have to be inspected a bit more carefully. If you have a picture of the damaged area they usually just look at it to make sure it was actually fixed then give you a clear title for it.

Really the car isn't as rusted out as my xfi. I have more or less found every bit of rust on this thing and it is in the pictures. I bet when the xfi shell is down to the bare metal it looks way worse. I think they made these cars with super cheap metal. I have cars that have been sitting outside unprotected for 20 years that have less rust on them than these cars all seem to get.

The good thing about the vert is the frame is still square and the suspension points are all in the right place so I don't have to try and re square the car. I should be able to have it sitting on it's new chassis in a few weeks if I can get the tubing in quickly and school stays easy.

[Coyote X]

Went to the steel shop today and ordered the stuff I needed. I ended up with 1.9" .130 tube for the main frame rails, 1.5 for the roll bar and some 1" for random suspension mounts and brackets. I also got about 40ft of 3/4" square to use for the body mounts and other random junk. Metal is getting expensive, it was $380 for everything. More than double what it cost for the kit car's frame.

I guess even if you add up all the costs of everything it is still cheaper to build your own chassis than have one built. $750 for a plasma cutter, $200 for a tubing bender, $600 for a mig welder, and the 380 for the metal still works out cheaper than ~$2100 the shop told me it would cost for them to build me a chassis. I had all of the tools already so it wasn't that expensive for me to just do it all myself.

Now I just need to find a few sheets of abs plastic so I can make plastic inner fenders and a few other things to keep the weight down.

[Coyote X]

I cut away all the extra metal on the passenger side inner suspension mounts. I have it pretty well figured out now. I got some of the metal for it today, they dropped off what they had in stock but the rest will be in either tomorrow or next friday.

After I cut away some of the unibody I was kind of surprised how they made these cars. There are so many layers that are 1/4 inch apart with no way for water or dirt to run out of it there is no wonder that these cars rust out as fast as they do. I see some things that would probably help keep the cars from rusting out as bad but really I would say anyone who owns one of these cars should put about a gallon of oil into the front and rear suspension mounts every year to help control rust.

[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by Coyote X

I would say anyone who owns one of these cars should put about a gallon of oil into the front and rear suspension mounts every year to help control rust.

I noticed exactly the same thing when working on the blue ForkenSwift car. There's a drain hole in the unibody "floor" directly behind the front tire that receives spray into one of those bizarre voids between layers. If I wanted my car to rust out catastrophically, it's pretty much exactly how I would have designed it!

[Coyote X]

I was sitting here thinking of how I can repair the curve on the rocker panels when I thought about it and having the rocker not curve seems like it would be better.

So how about instead of the curved rockers like the car has stock I run it straight down and have a 90 degree angle and the floor sits flush with the bottom of it? I could extend the rocker down below the floor easily that way. Kind of like having a built in side skirt. It would make the rear wheel covers much easier to install and keep a bit more air off the front of the back tire.

[Coyote X]

moving right along, passenger side frame is almost done. It is spot welded in place for now. I will weld it right tomorrow and cut away the last of the unibody holding it in place. I will also add a few more temporary braces to attach the new tube to the old unibody panels for now.


There are a few more images plus the larger versions on my site like always. I think we need an html mode here so I can just copy and paste my entire post from my site without having to do it in bb code.

[SVOboy]

Another sweet update!

[AndrewJ]

You're really making some good progress!

Also, between your pics and the metro test-crash videos, I think there's pretty good progress being made in the Andrew-never-buying-a-Metro area too.

[Coyote X]

Welded up the last of the passenger side inner mounts and turned the car around and started cutting away the drivers side rocker panel. It isn't as rusted as the passenger side but there is no point in trying to save anything so I cut it all away anyway