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Hello!
My name is Mike and I just joined this site a few days ago, and this is my first post!!!
I have been following this website for several months now just waiting for a good deal on a GEO. Anyway I bought a 1994 Metro 5 speed with 134K miles awhile back for $200, and I have been working to get it on the road. This car appears to have led a hard life and was in need of a lot of work to bring it back from the dead. The previous owner had driven the car approximately 20K miles in the state that I bought it in. So it was drivable, but not necessarily economical as I soon found out.
First a little background information is necessary. My commute is almost 100%stop and go traffic 30 miles per day round trip. I bought this car with the intention of bettering the 35MPG city that my other car is getting. Initially my goal for the Metro was 45MPG city but given the sad state that the car was in there was no way this was going to happen.
As you can imagine there were a lot of issues that needed to be fixed to get the full potential out of the car. With that in mind before I did any work I drove the car for ~ 300 miles to establish a baseline. The results were less than expected to say the least. First I drove 150 miles on the highway @ 65MPH and got 38MPG. Then I drove an additional 150 city miles at speeds below 45MPH and got 40MPG. Ok so I wasn’t happy but hey what can you expect for $200 right? Well at this point I knew I had a long road ahead of me but no worries. Below is a list of the work that I have completed so far…
First off I took the car down to the local car wash and power washed the engine compartment twice to remove all of the grime!!! Then I changed the Trans. fluid, changed the engine oil & filter. Next I replaced the Air filter, fuel filter, new cap, rotor, spark plugs and wires, flushed the radiator, new Fan Temp switch which was hard wired to the windshield wiper motor and ran all the time. I also ran a couple of cans of SeaFoam in the gas and oil, and in the TBI. Next I cleaned the EGR valve and ports with three cans of carb cleaner. And finally I cleaned all under hood electrical connections with Electronic cleaner.
Ok so after completing all of that work, I added up my receipts for the parts listed above. Plus a few other odds and ends that I needed and I have $450 in the car including the cost of the car. It was now time to see if all of my $$$ and hard work were going to pay off. Time for another road test, just like before, 150 hwy miles @ 65MPH, and 150 city miles at speeds less then 45MPH. This time around the results were much better. How about 56MPG HWY and 51MPG City!!!
Since completing this work I started researching cheap mods that would increase the MPG even more. So off to Home Depot for some goodies!!! I used a round piece of pipe insulating foam to block off the opening in the hood; next up I sealed the gaps between the hood and the fenders from the front of the hood to the back. Finally I made headlight covers out of Lexan. Total spent this time…$33.
Since completing these mods I have driven the car to and from work for ~ 500 miles. Remember my commute to work is all stop and go traffic. Anyway this time around my city MPG has increased to 56.23MPG. I did not test the mods individually so I do not know specifically what each is worth. Although collectively these mods accounted for an increase of 5+ MPG. Not bad for a $33 investment! Also I have not driven the car on the Highway with these mods so I do not have any HYW MPG numbers yet.
Ok that’s all for now I am tired of typing!!!
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