What to strip from rusty metro
 

Hey all, my old metro (1997) was rusted out and uneconomical to get reinspected, and I picked up a shiny new 1999 one. It has very little rust, excellent here in Nova Scotia, and only 125000km but it does have a 4cyl engine. My old metro has a 180k 3cyl that runs fine, I'm looking to pull it, do a little preventative maintenance, drop it in the new one, and keep/sell the 4cyl.

Never swapped an engine before, looking for general advice, things I need from the old metro I might not think of, ( I understand the two engines are mounted a few inches apart laterally?) and emergency aid when I run into trouble.

Also, anyone need parts from this car? When I'm done with it I plan to have it scraped.

Current questions; new metro has no tachometer, old car has one. Is the dash display a drop in swap?

I'm assuming the easiest path to a 3cyl engine with 4cyl trans ratios will be to just swap my final gear ratios, any reason to swap the entire transmissions between engines?

Thanks all

Its easier to swap whole and one may be in better mechanical shape than the other.

Keep everything. You never know what you'll need. Can you store the whole car somewhere?

You'll need the 3-cyl axles to swap in the 3-cyl engine. Use the whole 4-cyl transmission.

The 3-cyl tachometer won't work on the 4-cyl engine without modifying it. Wait until you swap the engine.

There is a lot of good technical info over at geometroforum.com. Some of it is step by step with pictures. They can help you with the process. Take pictures when you do your swap and share them. It always helps.

The lads at MetroManiacs send these 3 replies:

He's gunna have to pull the whole intake tree and ECU with it, prolly most everything under the hood. I also remember a possible really bad problem with engine mounts not being at all in the same spot, but that may have been an auto trans to a 5 speed trans mod that Charlo Barnes was doing. I would certainly NOT want to attempt this mod. I think the car should be kept 4 cyl and if he wants a 3 cyl he should buy one that way, but I may be wrong. If the engine mounts fit the 3 cyl out of the old car and he's willing to deal with any wire harness mods to the 4 cyl ECU, it may be OK. Changing a cluster is simple, but a whole dashboard I would not do. I could not even get one out of a car I was junking and did not care about!

-Carl

He will need to swap out the CV shafts as well, as the 4 cylinder to 3 cylinder ones are different. The tranny mount as well as the shifting rods should be way different too. The 4 cylinder engine moves the trans toward the drivers side, with the 3 cyl things move to the passenger side more. He should certainly find it to be a learning experience. :)

DJ


There are two separate factors at play here that lead me to suggest he
should leave it hell alone.

First, the newer cars are physically larger and 250 pounds heavier
than the older generation, the three cylinder is overstressed and
doesn't really deliver as it did in the 89-94. I owned two 3/5's and
two 4/5's in the newer body style, the three cylinders got 43mpg, and
the four cylinders got 40mpg. Both four cylinders had A/C too, so
they were carrying around an extra 45 lbs. That's not enough mileage
difference to make all that work worthwhile.

Secondly, the 98-01 four cylinder is the only truly modern engine
there ever was in a Metro, it's quite a gem. With 78K miles on it,
it's just getting broken in. I'd change the timing belt and water
pump, adjust the valves, and expect another 100K out of it before it
really needs any work.

Instrument panel will swap right in, but the tachometer will not work
without modification. The four cylinder has a direct ignition with
coil on plug and no distributor. There's a thread over at TeamSwift
about modifying the tach to work with the newer four.

Transmissions will swap easily, final drive gears are buried inside,
the last part that comes out of the case. If both trannies work, swap
the whole thing.

Don McC

Thanks for the posts all,

I was expecting my biggest concern to be the different motor mounts, and a limited amount of wiring. Looks like I may leave this one alone. I'll still be parting out the old metro locally, and I'll throw an ad on here, I can't really store it. I'll attempt removing the whole dash and engine for education, and if it doesn't take too much effort, may go ahead with the swap, I use the metro for winter driving.

Thanks for the posts all,

I was expecting my biggest concern to be the different motor mounts, and a limited amount of wiring. Looks like I may leave this one alone. I'll still be parting out the old metro locally, and I'll throw an ad on here, I can't really store it. I'll attempt removing the whole dash and engine for education, and if it doesn't take too much effort, may attempt the swap, I use the metro for winter driving.