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Building my Metro Supercar
Topic Started: Jul 31 2011, 11:28 PM (19,358 Views)
Coyote X


I think the block is from metroschultz's car and the intake is from a 91. The trans I have no idea what car it came from. But it is all just random parts I have piled up in the garage. I didn't see much point in taking my good XFi motor out and dragging it around the concrete a bunch of times.

Does anyone know if the 4 cyl cars had a shorter transmission mount? If it is can someone send me one :)
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Coyote X


Engine mounts built

I ended up digging up a bunch of parts to try and come up with something for the transmission mount that would still be strong. I ended up cutting the stock mount in half and bolting a rear transmission mount to the bracket. Then I could use an engine mount bushing that was bolted to the frame to get it solidly attached. It might not be great looking right now but after I clean it up it should look better. The main thing is it will work and be strong. The pictures show the engine mounted to the frame and fully supported by the mounts.

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Next up is to built strut tower mounts and clean up the last of the old frame. Then I just need to make new trunk hinges and it is all built and ready to be stripped down to finish welding and paint it.
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Coyote X


Strut towers built

Today I built the strut towers. I tried to come up with a way to do it without using a brace across the top but it would be much heavier than just a bolt on brace. So I will make a bolt on brace to run across the top of the strut mounting plates after the frame is fully built. I didn't want to use a bolt on brace since it would have to be unbolted every time the engine needed some in depth work most likely. The best thing about a brace is I can bolt it on using weld nuts so it would be pretty easy to get on and off. Overall it will not be that big of a deal since the Suzuki engines are pretty reliable.

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The strut towers are just spot welded in place like everything else but they seem pretty strong the way they are now. Next up is to take the steering rack and build a steering lockout setup of some sort.
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Coyote X


Rear toe bars and removing the test motor

The rear toe bars were fairly easy to build. I took the tie rods off the front end and used a bolt to mount the inner rod solidly. I tried to keep the same geometry as the stock front end but since it is mostly mounted backwards it makes it a bit harder to line up. But after getting it lined up I spot welded it in place. I will have a lot of bracing to build once I get to that point but for now they are in place and make the rear suspension work like I want it.

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With those in place I no longer needed the motor and stuff in the back. So I took everything off the frame. Tomorrow I will build the trunk hinges and get it all square and try and fix the problems with how the trunk opens and closes. I also need to build a safety catch so it won't accidentally fly open while driving. All the motor and suspension parts are located properly now and it looks pretty good. The only strange thing is the brace going from the control arm mount to the main frame. I had to make the passenger side closer to the middle to clear the belts on the motor. It will work fine and I can add a smaller brace in there to make sure it stays strong.

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Coyote X


I have had a few people ask he how I keep my build logs of my cars as consistent as I do. So here is what I do.

I take pictures with my phone that syncs them to dropbox and onto my computer.

On my computer I use Windows Live Writer to create the post and it uploads it to my website that runs Wordpress.

After It is uploaded I go to the post in Firefox and highlight the text and pictures and right click and view source. It will already be highlighted so I just click copy.

I paste it into an html to bbcode converter located here: http://www.seabreezecomputers.com/html2bbcode/ Then I just copy/paste it into the post message box here.

Doing it this way I can keep everything quick and easy so I don't get lazy and start skipping days. It also lets me have clickable thumbnails on all my posts here so it keeps the size of the individual posts down to a nicer level.
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bogs
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Duct tape heals all wounds

Nice tip!
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Potter
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Col. Potter

lets put it to a vote..... All in favor of this being put in the Project forum because it's going to be Geo's long lost drawings of their super car model that should have came out in 1989 say I.
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Johnny Mullet
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Fear the Mullet

Moving to the project forum...............
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Coyote X


Trunk hinges built

Today was a slow day with what seems like not much progress. I first cut out 4 plates to go on either side of the fiberglass to reinforce the hinge area. I bolted them through the fiberglass and drilled the large hinge bolt hole once they were in place. I then put the trunk lid on and positioned it properly. Once it was in place I just had to weld in a connecting section to the hinges. They worked out well where they were located but the roll bar was hitting the body and I could not open the trunk. So I had to take one of the hinges apart so I could get the trunk open. After that I just had to grind a bit of the body edge away around the roll bar to clear it.

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The only thing left now is to come up with a better latch system to open the trunk. I didn't like the setup it had since it had no safety and if it wasn’t latched properly it could fly up while driving and damage it. I will most likely use the Metro latch and pull cable in the center to open it. I will figure out something for the safety catch once I get a good position to mount it.
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Coyote X


Trunk latch made

I wanted a trunk latch that worked like a real car and not some crazy thing that needs pins or several places to unlatch it like it used to be. I mounted the Metro hood latch to the roll bar using only one bolt for now but I will build a mounting plate later on. I put a brace across the trunk lid and put a pin on the brace to hit the latch. Right now I only have a set of cables hanging out of the side of the car to open the trunk but it works good enough for now the way it is. I need to modify the trunk hinges slightly. Instead of having them welded solid I need to make them bolt on so they can be adjusted. When I welded them down good and solid the tab shifted slightly and now the trunk is slightly off center. That is an easy mod to make and I will do that after I take the trunk lid off.

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It was hard to get a good picture of the trunk latch. All the colors kind of blended together. After everything gets painted and cleaned up it will be a lot easier to see how it works. The plan is to have a normal pull handle on the dash to pop the trunk lid. Then when I get out I can pull the safety latch located in the drivers side wheel well and pull the lid open. A set of gas struts will hold it open most likely. I will see if I can come up with a good way to mount them next. If I can’t then I will probably just use a safety chain to keep it from going too far backwards.
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Coyote X


Rear frame nearly finished

The last two days I have been welding up the frame. Today I finally finished welding everything up and put a coat of paint on it to see what I had. The frame has most of the bracing done. I need to get some thin wall square tubing to put a few more braces in. I will do that before mounting the trunk lid since that is mostly what needs bracing.

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Now that the back is mostly done. I will clean and put the struts and suspension back on it in case I need to be able to move the car around before starting on the front end. I plan on using the Mustang II setup with modified lower control arms to get rid of the control rods. That will give me more room to extend the foot well area all the way up to the suspension.
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Coyote X


I finally got around to updating the main page on metroxfi.com so maybe now it will be less confusing to people looking at the site. I know everyone that ran across my latest updates without seeing this thread were probably really lost.
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Johnny Mullet
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Fear the Mullet

Awesome! Keep us posted!
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bogs
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Duct tape heals all wounds

That looks completely incredible !
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Coyote X


This build is a lot more involved than any other build I have tried. But it is coming along great I think. The paint really made it stand out and start looking like I was getting somewhere. Once the front end is reworked it really should start coming together well. At the rate things are going I am hoping to have the front end done next week or so. It should be a lot easier since I am not having to totally fabricate the suspension mounts and am just attaching a stock crossmember to the frame. Once the front frame is done it is time to start putting the car together. The only major issue left to figure out is the pedals I think. Either way it should be a rolling car at Geopalooza. If I am lucky it can start and move under it's own power.

Today I cleaned out the interior of the car and unbolted the floor. I tried to take one of the control arms off but all the bushings are rusted to the bolts and it isn't coming off easy. So tomorrow I will probably just cut the front end off the car so I can rework it on the ground before welding it back up under the body. I would like to just remove the top half of the body to build it but having to resquare the body on the frame is a huge pain. I might try something similar to the back and just spot weld everything in place and make sure it is all square then remove the body and do the finish welding.

I guess it is like the back end and I won't know for sure what I am doing until I start doing it :)


On a side note I figured out how to route the video from my security cameras to justin.tv so it would be possible to broadcast video of when I am working in the garage. I can't think of anything more boring than watching me stare at a car and occasionally do some work, but I might have to try broadcasting sometime.
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