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| The Weekend Rebuild; and XFi cam swap | |
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| Topic Started: Jan 26 2009, 08:12 PM (4,540 Views) | |
| Johnny Mullet | Jan 26 2009, 08:12 PM Post #1 |
Hi-Tech Redneck
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This turned out to be a wonderful experience for myself, my wife, and Fred (Dimetrodon). Fred contacted me about a complete top and bottom end rebuild and XFi conversion for his 1.0L G10 Metro. He wanted to drive well over 500 miles to my place in his Geo Metro with severely low compression and no power so I can personally rebuild it for him  I discussed it with the wife and we agreed to do this in a weekend time period. This is a complete rebuild including replacing the valves, valve seals, pistons, water pump, etc.  Here is the poor car limping in to my driveway after a 9 hour drive...................  Time of arrival was 4:00 PM Saturday  We had the head off the car in no time and seen the burnt exhaust valves and the huge amounts of carbon on the pistons, combustion chamber, and valves...............   We had all the valves replaced, lapped in and the head all cleaned up but ran into trouble removing the valve stem seals since I forgot my picks, so we called it a night around midnight and got a good nights sleep. CONTINUED |
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| Johnny Mullet | Jan 26 2009, 08:37 PM Post #2 |
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Hi-Tech Redneck
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Saturday, the wife made us a wonderful breakfast and we warmed up my garage with some heaters since it was freezing cold (9 degrees) over the whole weekend. We rounded up the head and took them to my shop where I work and replaced those stubborn valve seals and installed all the valves springs and keepers. We then returned home and completed the head assembly by installing the new XFi camshaft from Delta cams and an 8 degree advanced timing gear from 3Tech and this was done by 10:00 AM............ We dropped the oil pan, removed the connecting rod caps and bearings and then removed the pistons. What? No circlips in the wrist pins? What do you mean the wrist pin is pressed into the pistons with a special tool and a press  Made another trip back to my shop in Christine and we used our ancient (1941) 80 ton press and a socket and successfully replaced all the pistons...............  By this time it was getting later than we expected and both agreed to stay on the job until it was completed. We got the head all cleaned up and had the pistons and water pump installed by dinner time.............  The wife made a hearty dinner of roast, potatoes and carrots  We went back out and completed the job and had the car assembled by 10:00 PM Sunday. The moment of truth was upon us after double checking everything and then I got the honors to start the car. The car cranked about 4 revolutions and immediately started, but was running rough  I turned it off and double checked the firing order. This is when I found #1 spark plug wire was not seated correctly on the cap. Fixed that and restarted the car. It was victory! The car ran smoother than any G10 I have encountered. We did some fine tuning and got this car to run smooth as glass  At 11:00 PM I installed a vacuum gauge in his car and the readings looked great. Fred decided to stay one more night so we could drive it to the parts store and get a new cap, rotor, and wires since the wires were loose fitting. I took it for the initial ride so I could set the timing by ear and was totally blown away with the low end power this car has with the XFi cam and advanced timing gear  Dimetrodon should be home soon since he left around noon for his 500+ mile trip back home. This makes the entire job completed in less than 48 hours  The finishing touch on his Metro before he left................  |
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| r12methane | Jan 26 2009, 08:45 PM Post #3 |
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R12METHANE
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WOW!! Thats dedication...I bet you didnt even have time for any 
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| Will | Jan 26 2009, 08:49 PM Post #4 |
Victory is mine!!!!
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Wow, that is totally awesome. Way to go you guys! I bet that thing will run a very long time.
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| Johnny Mullet | Jan 26 2009, 08:50 PM Post #5 |
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Hi-Tech Redneck
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I had a six pack both nights 
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| dimetrodon | Jan 26 2009, 11:36 PM Post #6 |
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I got home about 2 hours ago and am way too tired to write anything intelligible. Back in touch tomorrow evening after work. |
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| Demon-hemi | Jan 27 2009, 07:00 AM Post #7 |
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wow, good job, now i just need to get someone to build up my lil 4cyl to have some more low end 
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| metromad | Jan 27 2009, 08:42 AM Post #8 |
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Moderator
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JM, great job! By the way, I have never seen circlips on the wrist pins in any of the late model (92-99) G10's I have disassembled. I have heard about them but never seen them. I need to send off a cam timing belt pulley to 3-tech for the 8-deg. modification and get one of those Delta cams myself. I am getting anxious to see if I can get extra mpg out of my daily driver! Excellent write up and kudos to you both! |
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| pacapo | Jan 27 2009, 02:22 PM Post #9 |
Member
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Just imagine how smooth it would have been if you had tried this: http://teamswift.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=40445& But the best part of the story is that you didn't miss a beat with the 'sodas'... Nice job! |
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| jeff | Jan 27 2009, 03:35 PM Post #10 |
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Sounds like a good time. JM i knew you were a wrench. This stuff reminds me of my dad, he was one hell of a Ford Ag mechanic. Lots of all night-ers with friends & coffee. Good for you guys. |
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| bennie442 | Jan 27 2009, 05:13 PM Post #11 |
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 I must have missed something here. Why were the pistons replaced? Genuine xfi pistons used instead?
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| Johnny Mullet | Jan 27 2009, 06:21 PM Post #12 |
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Hi-Tech Redneck
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Regular pistons. We did not want to take a chance since all his compression #'s were 60 PSI or less. The car barely made it here. I was intending to just re-ring it, but if we found a cracked piston and not having parts would have screwed us. Better safe than sorry I guess. |
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| billy508 | Jan 27 2009, 07:14 PM Post #13 |
billy508
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Great job With all the bad news going around its great to see a project like this. Wow The picture of the gray Geo pulling in the drive way is classic. Cold grey day, you can almost hear the snow crunching as the car pulls in the driveway. Good planning=good results.
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| dimetrodon | Jan 27 2009, 11:44 PM Post #14 |
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Just got home from work, and I'm not as tired as I was yesterday.... When I bought this car, it was the only Metro I could find where there was almost no rust where the front control arms connect to the body. I reasoned that if the motor gave out eventually, the body would be worthy of a new motor. So, 11 months and 32K miles after buying it... the car did indeed need a new motor. I considered buying a rebuild, but how do you know what you are going to get? And the motor/car I really wanted was an Xfi and none of the engine re-builders I found offered an Xfi engine. So, one thing led to another, and Google led to Geo Metro Forums, where I found out about Delta Camshaft, Parts Dinosaur, and the fearsome Mullet. Shake and stir... and it seemed possible to get something resembling an Xfi motor (at least the camshaft which is probably the single biggest difference) and to also get to see the insides of the engine and the process of rebuilding it. Sounded like a plan. The drive out was uneventful except for the fact that at the last gasoline stop, the car would not re-start. I cranked and cranked and had to press the gas pedal until the firewall bulged and after about 15 seconds the engine began adding a bit to the revs generated by the starter motor. So with the starter cranking for about 25 seconds, the car rumbled to life and I figured that I better not turn it off until it was in Mullet land. All this to inform just how far gone the engine was. Had I driven it a few more times back home, it may not have been drivable to Ohio. I bought some parts that we ended up not using: a new oil pump and some valve lifters in particular. But in retrospect, I am not wholly sure that we actually needed to replace the pistons. If you look really close you can still see the grooves made by the CNC lathe as it turned the OD of the pistons. Those grooves are faintly visible even in the most worn parts of the piston at the base of the skirt and directly above the skirts at the tops of the pistons. The visibility of these grooves puts an upper limit on the amount of aluminum that has worn away. So, it was possible that valves and rings... might have been minimally sufficient to regain the desired compression. Anyone rebuilding a Metro at a more leisurely pace should examine and measure the diameters of their pistons before installing new ones out of simple reflex. So, the new engine parts we installed were all the intake and exhaust valves, valve seals, pistons, wrist pins, the rings, the camshaft, water pump, timing belt, upper timing sprocket(8 degree advance version from 3tech), belt tensioner, spark plugs, distributor cap (and wires), air filter, oil filter, and all the appropriate gaskets. (Almost forgot the vacuum gauge.) In addition to the motor work, I got to meet some elders of the Lenape Indian tribe*, a variety of cats and dogs, and the patient, charming and hospitable Mrs. Mullet. *(It was very cold and the two heaters we had running were not taking the chill out of the garage. Some friends of John's had a torpedo heater and it turns out that these close friends of Johns are the family of the Lenape Chief.) Here is where I first learned about the Lenape Indians: http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/nice.html http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/lstone_a.html Sorry for the digression but what are the chances that the first time I go to Ohio for an engine rebuild that I run into Lenape Indians... who know all about this artifact and the related controversies? Interesting coincidence. Back to the Geo: The new camshaft and valves give the car pronounced low-end power. You can put it in 5th at about 45 mph and the car is happy. The ride home I was fighting headwinds and so did not worry too much about measuring mileage. Tonight, before leaving the town where I work, I filled it to overflowing, drove 88 miles to the Freeport BP station and re-filled with 1.86 gallons. That computes to about 47.5 mpg. I have burned about 1/2 quart of oil in the 700 miles since the rebuild. Not too bad. I suspect that the rings are not yet seated perfectly, and that things will improve a bit with some additional driving - which is no problem because I do a lot of that. Ashtabula Ohio and the vicinity are beautiful and most be even better in the summer. There seems to be a lot of things to see and do. Ohio seems a bit like Wisconsin, and both Wisconsin and Ohio are different from Illinois in that, in Illinois, if it looks like you are having funs one something motorized, they come and arrest you. Ohio has trails for RV's and snowmobiles so they presumably do not arrest you for having fun. There is more to the story, but my daughter needs the computer for homework. I must conclude with profuse thanks to Dr. and Mrs Mullet for their hospitality, and to John for his wrench skills. My Metro has a second life now and I had the pleasure of witnessing the surgery. This was kind of a risky endeavor in that, had any one of a number of things gone wrong, I could have been stranded in Ohio or, worse... in the middle of I-80/ I-94 south of Chi-town in rush hour on the return trip.(Visualize semi's and cars bumper-to-bumper going 65mph through a 45 mph construction zone with no shoulders.... Fortunately, John knows what he is doing and now have a new Metro. PS There is something special about these cars that makes up for their foibles. I hope that the Japanese engineers who designed them are still around and are aware of these Metro specialty websites. Maybe one day, one of them will post something here. Cheers to all. (Edited all instances of Fxi to Xfi.) Edited by metromad, Jan 28 2009, 09:46 AM.
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| pacapo | Jan 28 2009, 12:02 AM Post #15 |
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Did we put new rod/crank bearings? |
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