Mystery Car... ("58 - 166 MPG" streamlined Geo Metro)

[freebeard]

Congratulations! ....and welcome.

Zombie threads are Okay, perusing page 1 I see the VW rat rod I'd asked about. I'm making payments on an 1990 XFi so this is relevant to my current interest.

Do you have plans for it? How does it drive? Noise, harshness, vibration?

[Trekintosh]

Originally Posted by California98Civic

Exceptional! It has changed quite a bit since 2014. Hey, tell us what you mean about it being a mechanically very good car. It drives well? It is a reliable runner. Thanks for bringing us your story. This is legend stuff.

Well it’s just a Geo Metro. It’s a 900cc in-line 3 with a 5-speed manual transmission from a 4-cylinder metro for taller gears. The engine is almost completely in modified, save for an XFI cam. That cam makes it a little grumpy at idle but other than that I could drive this car every single day if I didn’t have my Crown Victoria. In fact, I’ve driven this car almost every day that I’ve owned it so far. The transmission shifts perfectly smoothly.

The only unreliable part is my fault. I installed a dash cam+rear view camera+mirror combo and connected it to a handy 12v line that was in the cabin that wasn’t switched by ignition, so now I’ve injured the battery. I’ve since put the camera on a switch though so once I get a new battery it’ll be perfectly fine. For now I just use a kill switch to disconnect it when I’m done driving.

I’m planning on doing a 400 mile round trip in this car next weekend, so that should give you an idea of my confidence in it.

And you’re quite welcome. I’m a big attention... lover so it just tickles me pink to spread this story around, and I also love answering unsolved mysteries.

[Trekintosh]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Congratulations! ....and welcome.

Zombie threads are Okay, perusing page 1 I see the VW rat rod I'd asked about. I'm making payments on an 1990 XFi so this is relevant to my current interest.

Do you have plans for it? How does it drive? Noise, harshness, vibration?

I have plans ranging from reasonable to ambitious to silly.

Reasonable

I’ve already put a rear view camera and replaced the metro mirrors with different ones. I’m going to remove those once I get side view cameras together, and use those instead.

I need to make a real interior. I love the mad max meets doc brown aesthetic it has right now, but I want to make this thing look like a spaceship on the inside as well as outside. Thin aluminum dashboard, brushed and anodized, full width of the car, using bent and alumawelded aluminum tube space frame. Whole thing should weigh less than 20lbs. I’m going to use the metro gauges but remounted in my own cluster, which I’ll be styling after 80s and 90s digital dashboards. Think a 1970s hifi stereo system mixed with Knight Rider.

Also on this dash I will have full instrumentation. You might see the various thermometers and voltmeters in the interior now. The voltmeters are directly connected to the fuel injectors and o2 sensor. This is awesome but also silly. I will take all this information, read by multiple microcontrollers, and feed it to an Atomic Pi (a raspberry pi on steroids basically) for datalogging and instrumentation. I’ll also use the atomic pi to run a Carplay server for my phone.

New paint: I had Gene sign the car. It will be clearcoated where he signed it ASAP, and that spot will always be costed aluminum. I don’t want to take credit for this whole car, just my upgrades. Anyways, I’m not settled on a paint scheme yet. I was thinking burgundy where it’s blue now with cream pinstripes perhaps. Something a bit 40s. Yeah I’m mixing eras but so what it’s my car.

Aero: this car has very good aerodynamics, but they could be even better. The mirrors are gonna be gone, replaced by barely there cameras. The rain gutters riveted on above the doors were a useful in the moment fix, but they’re Atrocious aero. I’ll need to do something else for rain, maybe a dimple gutter instead. Full front wheel skirts that open when steering are on the ambitious side but I’d like to do it. The whole front end of the car isn’t actually that aerodynamically clean. I’m going to reshape the whole front to be more blunt, and while I’m at it I’m blocking off the grill. I’ll be relocating the radiator and AC condenser to the belly of the car, where they will both create less drag and get more airflow. Also vortex generators at the very back of the car to help clean up the sharp edge.

Ambitious
To be continued , I just typed all this on my PHONE.

[Trekintosh]

Ambitious

Sequential port fuel injection: This car gets amazing fuel economy, but while the XFI cam does help, it’s still just throttle body fuel injection doing its best single barrel carburetor impression. No wideband AFR, no O2 sensor, we can do better with some modern technology. There’s plenty of room on the intake runners to put a fuel rail, and have complete control over this puppy. I’m talking aftermarket ECU (megasquirt, minisquirt, Speeduino all in the running), more sensors, lean the thing right to the edge of pinging, only give it gas when it needs it, maybe even cylinder deactivation?? Not to mention increased performance when required. This thing is scary slow. This is going to be a large project but it is all entirely doable and not even particularly expensive. I imagine we can get huge gains in economy while under load (hilly regions, and especially stop and go traffic).

Engine (+trans) swap: 1L Ecoboost 3-cylinder. Even smaller package than the metro engine. Again, aftermarket ECU, as I want to be able to completely bypass the turbo until needed, and I want control over the valve timing. Plus six speeds is better than 5. Id probably have to machine new 6th gears at great expense but we gotta do what we gotta do. Plus, if the metro engine is scary slow, this will be scary fast. Depending on tune these ecotoots can easily put out over 140 horsepower stock. I could flip a switch and go from George Jetson to Buck Rogers.

Silly:

Rear engine rear wheel drive why oh god why: move engine to the rear. Before I bought this car I had convinced myself I would never own a fwd car and I would very likely never own a car with less than 8 cylinders. We can rectify one of them. We have the technology. There is enough room. This would not be for economy. This would be if for some reason I grow entirely tired of EcoModding. I would be going for power and this would be a phenomenal track day car due to lightness. Yes, I am a hot rodder who also is gonna try for 150 mpg on the flat in this car. What can I say, the duality of this man.




I think I’ve covered all my plans. There’s all sorts of minutia I need to tend to but that’s way too fiddly to cover here. Please don’t worry too much about the rwd swap. That’s just fantasy theorycrafting that will never happen for the foreseeable future. The EFI and Ecoboost are very real plans however.

[redneck]

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Thanks for sharing with us. 😎

When you get a chance some more photos or a video would be nice.
Particularly the underside, along with more inside pics, the engine compartment and a proper side shot of the car to compare it against the template.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/tool-aero-template.php

https://ecomodder.com/forum/showthre...ion-21952.html

>

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[Trekintosh]

Originally Posted by redneck

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Thanks for sharing with us. 😎

When you get a chance some more photos or a video would be nice.
Particularly the underside, along with more inside pics, the engine compartment and a proper side shot of the car to compare it against the template.

>

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I have this side shot handy. I’ve been meaning to take more pictures. The engine compartment is just a Geo metro engine bay with some things relocated slightly because of the new body. I’ll try to make an introductory video today.



Obviously not ideal in the front. As I said I’ll be reshaping from the top of the grille forwards to be much more blunt and rounded.

[Xist]

Thanks for the updates and introduction! Do you mind telling us how tall you are?

There have been many cylinder-deactivation discussions here. I do not know if anyone has successfully modified an engine like that. I am sure that people just deactivate the deactivation, because who needs fuel economy?

Basjoos has front skirts. I do not know if you can make a more efficient version, but it sure could be prettier! Aerocivic - how to drop your Cd from 0.31 to 0.17 He made a huge number of other modifications, but it does not seem like any were with sheet metal.

[freebeard]

Full front wheel skirts that open when steering are on the ambitious side but I’d like to do it.

Here's an idea hat no-one has stolen from me yet, prolly because it's so poorly represented:

The cylinders represent four-bars linkages. The top two are connected to prevent racking or binding as it moves. Instead of hinging at the top the whole skirt lifts against gravity.

[Xist]

I made this!

[freebeard]

Provide proof and I'll strikethrough the assertion in #68.